Industries that harm people and the environment are threatened when science reveals their harmful effects, because it puts public and political pressure on them to change, potentially endangering profits. Sadly, the laws that govern corporations require them to do whatever it takes to maximize short-term profits, but make no provisions for protecting people and the environment or refraining from misleading the public. So rather than changing in response to scientific findings, industry will hire creepy PR firms and lobbyists to dispute and suppress the science. The creeps take advantage of the fact that science is complicated to cast doubt on the good science, inject their own phony science, and create a false sense of uncertainty about whether their industrial activity is actually bad.
It's scary how successful the lobbyists have been. For example, even as the scientific evidence connecting humans to global warming has gotten stronger and stronger, more and more people are skeptical or confused about climate change because of misleading PR campaigns by the "Manufactured Doubt" industry.
One of the bloggers who I most admire, weather scientist Dr. Jeff Masters, just did an excellent job of calling out the Manufactured Doubt scam. I was going to put in some snippets of his post here, but it's
so good you should really just read the whole thing. Please check out
Dr. Masters' Post and spread it around to all your friends.
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