Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change: Oreskes, Naomi, Conway, Erik M.: 9781608193943: Amazon.com: Books

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Anyone concerned about the state of democracy in America should read this book.” ―Former Vice President Al Gore, author of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

“A fascinating account of a very thorny problem.” ―Bill McKibben, author of EAARTH: MAKING A LIFE ON A TOUGH NEW PLANET

“Merchants of Doubt should finally put to rest the question of whether the science of climate change is settled. It is, and we ignore this message at our peril.” ―Elizabeth Kolbert, author of THE SIXTH EXTINCTION and FIELD NOTES FROM A CATASTROPHE

“If you read just one book on climate change this year, read Merchants of Doubt. And if you have time to read two, reread Merchants of Doubt.” ―Grist

“Brilliantly reported and written with brutal clarity . . . Oreskes and Conway do a great public service.” ―The Huffington Post

“A powerful dissection of how right wing think tanks and private corporations sow doubt on scientific consensus to block action on critical climate and public health issues.” ―Tom Steyer, via Twitter

“An important book . . . The next time a friend or Fox News commentator or political candidate assaults you with the claim that 'climate change isn't happening' or 'isn't caused by human activities,' you will recognize the source of their colossal misunderstanding.” ―Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul)

“It is tempting to require that all those engaged in the business of conveying scientific information to the general public should read it.” ―Science

About the Author

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. Her opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets. Her TED talk, “Why We Should Trust Scientists,” was viewed more than a million times.

Erik Conway is a historian of science and technology and works for the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of seven books and dozens of articles and essays. He lives in Pasadena, California.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 31, 2011
Edition ‏ : ‎ Reprint
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1608193942
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1608193943
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 10.7 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #38,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8 in Environmental Policy
- #41 in Environmental Science (Books)
- #100 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)
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Naomi Oreskes
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Naomi Oreskes is a renowned historian of science and professor at Harvard University, known for her groundbreaking work on the role of science in society and the defense of scientific integrity. Her research focuses on the history of climate science, scientific consensus, and the ways industries have challenged scientific evidence in the public sphere.
She is the co-author (with Erik Conway) of the bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, which exposes how a small group of scientists obscured the truth on issues ranging from tobacco smoke to climate change. She is also the author or co-author of eight other titles, including the award-winning Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don't Know about the Ocean. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and adapted into an award-winning documentary film.
Oreskes has written for leading publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Scientific American, and she is a frequent speaker on climate science, misinformation, and the social responsibility of scientists. She is widely recognized as one of the most influential voices advocating for evidence-based decision-making in public policy. In 2025, she was named the Volvo Environment Laureate.
Naomi divides her time between the Boston area and the Hudson River Valley, where she lives with her husband of 40 years, and her Australian Shepherd, Cassie. When she is not writing or teaching, you can find her skiing, kayaking, hiking, doing yoga, or drinking a good glass of red wine.
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Erik M. Conway
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Erik M. Conway is a historian of science and technology at Purdue University.
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Science guy dallas
Why this book is a must read
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2025
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Thoroughly immersive and disturbing book. As I am in my 60s Ive been alive through all these events. Having followed each as they unfolded I always knew something was wrong but was unable to put my finger on it- now I can. The level and degree of deception is staggering and truly disturbing. This is not the nation that our forefathers fought to colonize and preserve. Everything in life today is polarized. Sadly (IMHO) I believe the source of this polarization is politics and the problem is getting worse every year. This book clearly describes a world (and individual events) that I watched unfold. It tells the story of the deceptive ways major companies behave to avoid taking responsibility for the damage / injury their products do/might cause. Being a spouse of someone who passed from aesbestos exposure I have one request of anybody reading this review

Read all the one star reviews, and then ask yourself this question. Would you rather individuals / companies / countries err on the side of caution or wait until the danger is staring them right in the face. In my opinion the old saying "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" comes to mind. I think that we should re-embrace science, reward the profession when they raise concerns- not denigrate them. This book acknowledges the men and women of science who have not sold their souls to cash flush companies. a must read for anybody living in todays world

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Russell Ferrell
Merchants of Doubt Deceive the Public on Global Warming
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2018
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Merchants of Doubt is a book about an orchestration of obfuscation and doubt concerning some of the most pressing environmental issues in the history of humanity. Ever wonder why nothing is getting done about global warming? Why the public, despite overwhelming evidence, cannot accept the obvious reality of climate change and continues to dismiss it and revel in the status quo and business-as-usual. The answer lies in this book.

There have been several pivotal environmental issues that have impacted the health and welfare of people and the planet such as tobacco use (smoking), acid rain, the ozone hole, dangerous pesticides, and global warming. Since addressing these problems steps on the toes of vested economic interests and implies a failure of the market, partisan political and scientific operatives and free market fundamentalists come out of the woodwork to cloud the picture and confuse the public into believing that no problem actually exists and that more study is needed before doing anything. Action gets stifled for decades. Damages accumulate as greed translates into public policy that staves off any needed regulations or transformation of technology. For decades a concerted plan to peddle doubt and stave off the truth about the harmful health effects of cigarette smoking caused the needless suffering and early deaths of millions of people who were confused about the real dangers of smoking. It was the same for acid rain, CFCs (ozone destroyers), dangerous pesticides like DDT, and now global warming. In each instance, necessary action was delayed for decades causing enormous health and environmental costs. In the case of global warming, because of this concerted plan to sow doubt and confusion, the public cannot accept the fact that it is happening - thus delaying action for decades to a point where the planet has probably already passed a tipping point in which civilization cannot be saved.

We find that the Merchants of Doubt, because of their ideological imperative and ties to powerful economic interests like big tobacco and fossil fuels, have contrived and implemented a consistent plan to withstall any action to address global warming. The corporate media has been complicit in all this.

The vested economic interests have used scientists to peddle their doubt. These scientists all have something in common. They have close ties to the military industrial complex and corporate polluters in a nexus where government and corporation unite. They are staunch anti-communist cold warriors and free market fundamentalists. They are political conservatives. They oppose any environmental regulations that might alter the status quo or impede profits of giant corporations. Certain names are prominent throughout the book: Sanger, Seitz, Nierenberg, and Jastrow. These scientists were all involved in the dismissal of science in regards to tobacco smoke, acid rain, ozone depletion, and global warming. They are mostly physicists, not climatologists or biologists, with ties to big oil, big tobacco, and big defense contractors. The media legitimizes them when they are nothing but schills for big corporate polluters who want to maintain the status quo and their profits. No regulation is acceptable to them. If you want to know the truth about this concerted stratagem to deceive the public and the machinations of these anti-environmental scientists in doing so, you need to read Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

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Herbert Gintis
Really eye-opening and engaging historical material
Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2010
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
It is well known and undeniable that over the years there has been a strong political element to public debate about many scientific issues, including the chlorination of domestic water supplies, the harmfulness of smoking and of second-hand exposure to cigarette smoke, to the harmfulness of acid rain and the existence of global warming, to mention a few. It is certainly not distressing that there be debate over public policy dealing with such social problems, but it is indeed distressing that the scientific evidence is manipulated by political advocates rather than simply accepting the scientific consensus and debating policy issues on moral grounds.

What is not well known, but it proved with a barrage of statistics and historical data by Oreskes and Conway, is that the science-deniers have been a quite small but extremely influential scientists who moved from one policy to another in support of right-wing political positions favoring the unimpeded operation of competitive markets and consistently oppose state intervention to solve social problems. This right-wing philosophy has major social philosophers and policy analysts among its supporters, and the intellectual debate surrounding the proper role of government is on-going and important. But the simple fact is that the vast majority of citizens and voters in all the liberal democratic market economies have historically demanded that the state intervene in correcting the negative social effects of competitive markets. Indeed, it is hard to see how modern capitalism could have survived without the decisive intervention of the state in such areas as the welfare state, occupational safety and health, social security, regulating trade, finance, and pharmaceuticals, as well as setting standards for consumer safety.

Given the popular support for state intervention, the fundamentalist right-wing market libertarians appear to have required the obfuscation of scientific evidence to slow down the pace of state intervention. Prevention of such intervention in the long run has proven impossible, and probably will continue to do so in the future.

What is puzzling to me is why the same set of people became involved in so many different areas of economic regulation. Of course, these men had great prestige. Frederick Seitz, whom Oreskes and Conway single out repeatedly, is a solid state physicist who had worked on the Manhattan project, is an ex-president of the National Academy of Sciences and has worked with the President's Science Advisory Committee. He and a few others of similar stature have been at the center of virtually every major science-denial initiative. Why is there not more diversity in the leaders of the Merchants of Doubt, and why, after being defeated on one initiative (e.g., denying the harmfulness of tobacco) are the same men considered credible in dealing with a different issue?

This book is a major contribution to resource material on science policy dynamics. I am not sure there isn't a reasonable reply defending the actions of the Merchants of Doubt. These obfuscators never denied the importance of scientific evidence, and they played the game of policy analysis pretty fairly. How many times have "scientists" unanimously, or close to unanimously, offered a solution to a social problem in situations where they were just wrong. Consider, for instance, eugenics, scientific racism, psychoanalytic theories of mental illness, and the repressed memories movement. It is also important to recognize that in virtually every case, scientific truth triumphed in the end. The future is likely to be more of the same, provided liberal democratic institutions provide a level playing field for expressing public controversy.

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Ian B.
thoroughly researched
Reviewed in Australia on September 1, 2022
Verified Purchase

I have read this book as a climate skeptic and it has helped me to clarify and contextualise my thoughts. I would say we are in a new phase now as the book is a little dated, and the new phase is one of blatant hyperbole. The facts are that the doubling of CO2 in the air will lead to an anthropogenic world wide average temperature increase of 3 degrees and that thus will take about 100 years at the rate of 0.3 degrees per decade. However this has been hyped to mean catastrophe and this in turn is not science it is politics. Environmentalists live in the belief that any anthropogenic change must be bad and have convinced the majority that this is a crisis. This book is very factual but is couched in the true belief that climate change is innately dangerous and must not be ignored. In the urgency of selling the message this camp will not give credence to natural climate variation and have convinced the younger generation that the climate is broken however this is far from the truth. The book is mired in Malthusian thought and now our children think they must not have children of their own. The whole situation has spiralled to a very unfortunate place.

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Daniel C
Understanding the polític & economic interests behind scientific debates
Reviewed in Spain on January 9, 2017
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Sound historia of recent science. This book turned me into a believer of climate change after many years of skepticism. Strongly recommended

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Peer Sylvester
Der unbekannte Skandal
Reviewed in Germany on January 24, 2011
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Es ist eigentlich unglaublich, was hier berichtet wird: Eine kleine Gruppe von Wissenschaftler (allen vorran Nierenberg, Seitz und Fred Singer) nimmt massiven Einfluss auf das Bild der Forschung und auf die amerikanische Politik in allen wichtigen Fragen der letzten Jahre. Dieselben Leute verneinten das Ozonloch, den sauren Regen, die Möglichkeit des Nuklearen Winters, die Gefahr des Passiv- und Aktivrauchens und natürlich Global Warming. Sie taten dies (und tun dies noch heute) durch das Stellen von "aufklärerischen" Fragen, zu Fakten, die längst bekannt sind/waren oder die Irrelevant sind und legen anderen Foschern Worte in den Mund, die diese nie gesagt haben. Und das tun sie in großen Medien, während die Forscher nur in Spezialblättern antworten, die niemand liest. Der Effekt: In der Öffentlichkeit wurden es als "Debatte" wahrgenommen, als ob tatsächlich Uneinigkeit unter den Wissenschaftlern herrscht, was diese Fragen betrifft, obwohl das in weiten Teilen nicht zutraf (Die Folgen des Passivrauchens waren sogar der Tabakindustrie bekannt). Die Motvation war die Beeinflussung der Politik, was auch lange Zeit geglückt ist. Und liest man sich noch heute Artikel oder aktuelle Webseiten durch, die sich kritisch zu den genannten Themen äußern, findet man viele "Argumente" der Gruppe um Seitz & Co - ob die wissen, dass die Wissenschaftler, die sie zitieren eigentlich Physiker und ehemalige kalte Krieger sind, welche die Wissenschaft angreifen, um ihre Agenda (Verminderung von Verboten und Stärkung des freien Marktes durchzusetzen)?

Wer solche Vorwürfe erhebt und eine solche unglaubliche Geschichte erzählen will, braucht Belege und die liefern die Autoren (beides Wissemschaftshistoriker). Alles ist haarklein belegt - alleine das erste Kapitel hat bereits über 100 Quellenangaben. Dabei ist der Ton angenehm unaufgeregt. Auch wenn die Autoren keinen Hehl daraus machen, wo sie stehen (auf Seite der Wissenschaft), so vermeiden sie doch große Worte und Emotionen und lassen weitestgehend Fakten und die Historie sprechen, was den Worten noch mehr Gewicht verleiht.

Alles in allem ein wichtiges Buch. Es sollet viel bekannter sein, insbesondere sollten es auch mal die Journalisten lesen, die gerne über vermeitliche Streitfälle in der Klimafoschung berichten.

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David Gutierrez Mannix
great book
Reviewed in Mexico on July 8, 2019
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
great book

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Lorenzo Ígneo Souza Prudente
Indispensável
Reviewed in Brazil on March 27, 2024
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Indispensável para qualquer um que trabalhe, direta ou indiretamente, com ciência.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Why this book is a must read

5.0 out of 5 stars Merchants of Doubt Deceive the Public on Global Warming

4.0 out of 5 stars Really eye-opening and engaging historical material

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars thoroughly researched

5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding the polític & economic interests behind scientific debates

5.0 out of 5 stars Der unbekannte Skandal

5.0 out of 5 stars great book

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensável

Why this book is a must read

Merchants of Doubt Deceive the Public on Global Warming

Really eye-opening and engaging historical material

thoroughly researched

Understanding the polític & economic interests behind scientific debates

Der unbekannte Skandal

great book

Indispensável