Combating Disinformation, Fake News, and Climate Denial
Panelist at the United Nations COP25 Climate Talks in Madrid Address Scientific Disinformation in a Post Truth World
Remarks I gave for the panel.
Like McDonald’s, Coca-cola, and Levi jeans, scientific disinformation is an iconic American product. It was created back in the 1950s when the tobacco companies hired a pr firm to counter growing evidence on the health effects of tobacco. This PR firm created disinformation by “embracing skepticism” and coopting academic researchers, funding nonprofits, undermining independent researchers, and providing canned quotes from “independent” scientists to journalists. These policies continue today.
In 1979, the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) head of communications told People magazine, “[The American Council on Science and Health] just makes blanket endorsements of food additives. [The] organization is a sham, an industry front.”
But, in 1997, the Global Climate Coalition — which targeted the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — funded the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) to write a paper denigrating climate modeling, downplaying climate health problems and highlighting dissenting opinions.
In 2013, Mother Jones reported on leaked documents showing ACSH’s funders included Chevron, Coca-Cola, Bayer Cropscience, McDonald’s and the tobacco conglomerate Altria.
Documents from a court case show that Monsanto began funding ACSH in 2015 to attack the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer agency, scientists, journalists and non-profits critical of GMOs and the pesticide glyphosate. When ACSH launched their new book on junk science in 2017, one of its speakers that day was Nina Federoff, the former president of American Association for the Advancement of Science — the world’s largest science society –and a lobbyist for the biotech industry.
Since 2017, the ExxonMobil Foundation provided grants to ACSH, which defends fracking, denies the dangers of chemicals such as BPA and opposes efforts to limit sugar in sodas. Many of its members are prominent academic researchers at universities globally.
ACSH has overlapping membership with various skeptic groups such as the Committee on Skeptical Inquiry, a “pro science” group, whose members attack epidemiology and toxicology showing the dangers of chemicals and pesticides. Not surprisingly, documents show that the agrichemical industry’s strategy to promote its products was called “embracing skepticism”, an approach created by tobacco companies. Former speakers at the Committee’s meetings include TheSciBabe, who was a sponsored speaker of Monsanto and who now promotes Splenda. Their podcast is run by Kavin Senapathy who is promoted on the Web site of Monsanto and CropLife, the lobbying group for pesticides.
In 2005, I reported on a group called the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), and I called several of their members — prominent scientists, members of the National Academies — and informed them that TASSC was started by a law firm working for tobacco companies to downplay the dangers of second-hand smoke. I later reported that TASSC’s Director Steven J. Milloy — or “Mr. Junkscience” — was on the payroll of the tobacco industry, and that he attacked researchers working on climate change and the dangers of pharmaceuticals such as Vioxx.
To be clear, researchers working on climate science are some of the worst when it comes to denial. They admit that climate science is real, but deny decades of peer-reviewed research showing that money buys influence. As reported by two young scholars in The Guardian, the fossil fuel industry has colonized academia. Shell, Chevron, BP and other oil and gas companies fund Harvard’s energy and climate policy research, and Harvard researchers consult for industry. MIT’s Energy Initiative is funded almost entirely by fossil fuel companies, and MIT has taken $185 million from climate denialist David Koch. Stanford’s Global Climate & Energy Project is funded by ExxonMobil, and UC Berkeley’s Energy Biosciences Institute is funded by BP.
Again, these are not new strategies. The tobacco companies began funding universities back in the 1950s to buy similar acquiescence, access to professors, brand building and to tame outspoken researchers.
If you think the answer is journalism, think again. A senior employee at the ACSH is on the board of USA Today and regularly writes op-eds for them. I have reported for the BMJ on educational programs for reporters that were secretly funded by Coca-cola, to shift the discussion on obesity away from sugary drinks, to lack of exercise. And the agrichemical industry has funded a series of biotech bootcamps to cultivate reporters about GMOs and pesticides.
Studies have found that journalists’ love of controversy causes them to give equal sides in scientific debates even when evidence lands in one direction. And journalists rarely report on their sources’ financial conflicts of interest.
Perhaps the only tiny light of hope comes from medicine. Both NEJM and JAMA instituted reforms to financial conflicts of interest in the mid-1980s, but the two leading science journals did not catch up until 1992 (Science) and 2001 (Nature).Yet highlighting financial influence is critical. Besides climate change, researchers have documented corporate influence skewing science in food, synthetic chemicals, risk analysis, pesticides, air pollution and genetic technology. Unlike medicine, these areas of science do not have the same volume of peer reviewed literature documenting corporate influence on universities and published studies.
The National Academies released a 2009 report documenting corporate influence on medicine and how it alters patient care. The following year, the US Senate passed a small provision that I initially drafted and then worked for years to pass called the Physician Payments Sunshine Act. The Act requires companies to report when they give money to doctors. Similar bills were passed in several other countries, although nothing close to this exists for other areas of science.
Indeed, medicine is light years ahead of the rest of science. In one example, The New York Timespublished a front page story documenting a cancer researcher’s failure to disclose his financial ties to industry. The physician resigned from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center one week later. In a second example, The New York Timespublished a front page story exposing Florida professor Kevin Folta’s financial ties to Monsanto. Instead of apologizing, Folta sued the newspaper in a case that the presiding judge later dismissed with prejudice.
Folta went on to host talks at the Committee on Skeptical Inquiry and other “pro science” organizations.
Another important tool are the courts. Nothing changed with tobacco until the companies were sued, forcing their documents and e-mails into the light of day. At this time, lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry, opioids companies and Monsanto are shining a light on corporate strategies to create scientific disinformation. In the case of Monsanto, those documents helped to change the EU’s guidance on pesticides and will require companies to disclose data when applying for pesticide registration.
As such, there are three points that remain important for anyone examining scientific controversy and disinformation:
1. Follow the Money –If you think everything you need to know is found in the pages of the research literature, then you still lack an adult understanding of science.
2. Name & Shame –The trains did not run on time by themselves. People made the trains run on time.
3. Show Me the Documents! –I cannot tell you the number of academics I have gotten fired from leading, Ivy League universities. Do not be fooled by someone’s title.
For too long, corporate strategies to co-opt science were successful in confusing the public and legislators about the safety and health of products. We know this from tobacco. We continue making the same mistakes. It is time to stop.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
News Coverage of the Panel
Climate Summit: “Denialists are losing” A group of experts at COP25 analyzed the disinformation and fake news that plant skepticism about climate change
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La desinformación es uno de los principales obstáculos en la lucha contra la emergencia climática.
Desinformación y ‘fake news’: cómo luchar contra el negacionismo climático
Reducir las emisiones, buscar alternativas limpias, bajar los ritmos de consumo… La hoja de ruta contra la crisis climática incluye multitud de transformaciones estructurales. Entre los retos, impedir que las ‘fake news’ oculten la verdad de la emergencia climática a la población.
Los negacionistas están perdiendo
Un grupo de expertos ha analizado en la COP25 la desinformación y las noticias falsas que intentan sembrar el escepticismo sobre el cambio climático
