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The book Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes, was made into a box office bomb (it crashed). But, darkly, it has an ongoing life in our schools. Tony Thomas uncovers the push to put propaganda in front of children, dressed up as education. The director of the film tells the world that his aim is to stop skeptics from being broadcast on TV. (Because that’s what you do when you can’t win a fair debate eh?)
This film was never about science, but about doing exactly what it claims to “expose”. (It’s projection all the way down.) The real merchants of doubt are those that seed doubts about honest whistleblower scientists, using character assassination, namecalling, tenuous associations, innuendo and allusion instead of scientific arguments. They don’t find a scientific fault in anything skeptics say, but resort to twenty year old false tobacco smears.
What we need are resources for teachers to help students critically analyze propaganda like this. How do children spot what isn’t said? What clues do we see in this movie that reveal its anti-science, political nature? Is it that they don’t let their skeptic targets talk about climate science at all? Readers suggestions are welcome. How do […]
“Merchants of Doubt” — the new attack-umentory released last week — has been a box-office bomb. Even the anti-carbon activists can’t be bothered watching the rehashed malevolent fantasy speculation about the scientists who dared stand against the establishment.
Jim Lakely at Heartland reports that total takings were $23,300 last weekend.
It uses 20 year old documents to absurdly try to tie the smoking campaign to the climate debate. Oreskes fights on the side with billions of dollars but tries to paint herself the victim of intimidation. No one is buying it. The Merchants of Doubt is an unwitting self projection of her own obsession trying to sell doubts about honest, upstanding scientists.
Fred Singer got his PhD in 1948 on cosmic ray showers. His thesis committee included J. Robert Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr. I’d like to see Fred Singer discuss atmospheric physics with Naomi. Bring on the debate that matters and let the smear campaign get all it deserves.
9.5 out of 10 based on 133 ratings
Naomi Orsekes’ big intellectual contribution to the climate debate is her fantasy that skeptics copy tactics from the tobacco lobby. It’s a trick to reframe real criticism — Dr A spots a real error, but Oreskes waves the “Tobacco tactic!” red flag. Stop the conversation!
Not only are these ad hom attacks tactics as old as the stone age, bone obvious, and used in every political hot-potato debate, but “tobacco tactics” are the stock and trade of Prof Naomi Oreskes. She’s make a whole career out of mimicking the tobacco industry.
Oreskes wrote an entire book designed to denigrate scientists based on tenuous links on unrelated topics with 20 year old documents. She is The Merchant of Doubt — it’s what she sells — “doubts” about the motivation of skeptical scientists. Her fantasies about skeptics using tobacco tactics is pure psychological projection. Perhaps she isn’t aware?
In a science debate about the climate, the only things that matter are evidence and reasoning about the climate. Those who can’t point out flaws in the science debate launch personal attacks from the gutter instead. What has tobacco got to do with Earth’s Climate? It’s not a forcing or a feedback, but the […]
Naomi Oreskes visited Curtin University in Perth last week. Blessed are those who came to bear witness to the true prophecies! Dr Roberto Soria from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, was there at what he so aptly describes as an evangelistic event. His dry satirical report of that day follows, a very enjoyable read for those who have been at the receiving end of similar sermons. Frankly, I can’t think of a better way to absorb the Oreskes message. Enjoy! — Jo
Naomi Oreskes preaches hatred of sinners
The Parable of Oreskes is epic!
Guest Post Dr Roberto Soria The glorious banquet is coming to an end. For 150 years hundreds of millions of guests have eaten to their hearts’ content at the Banquet of Gaia. But now, the Son of Man has arrived to deliver the bill. The diners are in shock. Some begin to deny that this is their bill. Others deny that there even is a bill. Still others deny that they partook of the meal, or suggest that they simply ignore the waiter. But there is no way out. The bill is due now, it is time to pay, or we […]
I wondered who was funding Oreskes to fly all the way around the world to deliver two seminars in Perth to audiences of mostly evangelical believers. Michael Kile (Quadrant magazine) reveals more of the details. Presumably she is funded by the Professors-at-large program at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Western Australia (UWA). We still have no details on the amounts.
UWA think achieving “international excellence” is so important they’ve put it in their logo.
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We see below how many of the UWA hosts benefit from climate change grants, and thus would potentially gain from promoting a baseless smear against critics who threaten their funding or status. These hypocrites are happy to promote the untruth that skeptics are funded to speak, when the they themselves are the ones who benefit financially from a dubious scare campaign. The professors-at-large program is supposed to foster public debate, but four of the ten Oreskes hosts signed a letter seeking to silence a skeptic from speaking at another university.
Who would sponsor an expert that is ignorant of 99.99% of their topic?
Oreskes claims skeptics are funded by big-oil, but misses that most oil companies […]
You’d expect a professor to have done the basic research.
Naomi Oreskes
Naomi Oreskes is famous (of sorts) for the book: Merchants of Doubt — it seeds doubts about skeptics by saying that skeptic’s “seed doubts” about climate change.
The skeptics seed doubts by questioning the evidence and pointing to contrary results (isn’t this known as “discussion”?). Oreskes seeds doubts by digging through biographies, analyzing indirect payments of minor amounts, hunting through unrelated topics and tenuous associations from 20 year old contracts.
The hypocrisy of saying that skeptics attack the messenger is lost on Oreskes who specializes in … attacking the messengers.
Oreskes’ work is based on a logical fallacy, inept research, and incompetent reasoning.
What is remarkable is that so many “intellectuals” or journalists can’t or won’t see through her thin rhetoric.
Oreskes can name virtually no significant funding for skeptics. Skeptics are almost all unpaid volunteers, working out of professional and patriotic duty, appalled by the illogical, anti-science sentiments of people like Oreskes. The enormous “vested interests” are well over a thousand to one in favor of alarmism as measured by funding, yet Oreskes has not even considered them. The largest proactive skeptical organization (Heartland) has […]
Background Briefing ABC Radio National July 17th
I’m sure Wendy Carlisle thinks she’s helping Australia.
The awarded writer who calls herself a science journalist, breaks laws of reason, makes a litany of careless errors, ambushes interviewees with false claims, and devoutly stares past hundreds of peer reviewed references as if they don’t exist. Yes, Anything but the evidence!
She thinks hunting through resumes of retired scientists is a good way to inform us about the need for a Carbon (sic) Tax.
It’s a wake up call ladies and gentlemen. This is the state of “science” at your ABC where polite discussion and meaningful research has been replaced with tabloid guttertalk.
The ABC is not part of the problem, it IS the problem. It’s not just that we spent $1 billion last year on the ABC — the real cost of the propaganda-machine disguised as “impartial reporting” is the billions of dollars we have already malinvested due to the ABC’s inability to provide rigorous and relevant science reporting, and the multi-billions more we are about to waste.
The nation is about to undergo a […]
Naomi Oreskes
The great Fred Singer takes the time to explain why Naomi Oreskes is a scientifically inept and a poor historian. Her famous claim of a scientific consensus based on 900 papers missed more than 11,000 that should have been included. Her grasp of science is so poor she isn’t familiar with the pH scale, thinks Beryllium is a heavy metal, mistakenly assumes that CO2 is trapped in the troposphere, and climate models can predict forest fires and floods. Embarrassingly, Oreskes doesn’t understand the difference between reactive oxygen and radioactive oxygen.
Armed with cherry picked distortions she sets about maliciously impugning upstanding senior scientists with distinguished records in science, and years of service. Unlike a professional historian she hasn’t even interviewed any of them to find out if the information she promoted was correct. Sadly Singer is the only one still with us to point out the flaws.
Years from now when their contributions are still recognized, Oreskes will be but a footnote in history classes of how poor research and largely baseless innuendo were used to serve a groupthink meme and feed a hate campaign against some of our best and brightest. No humility. No respect. No […]
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It’s Naomi Oreskes reasoning which is scary.
Some people just can’t think.
Naomi Oreskes “reasons” by Remarkable Parallels, which is as bogus a way of thinking as any tea-leaf-incantation that we thought we left behind in the caves. She thinks that because she can find parallels between Tobacco and Climate Skeptics, therefore skeptics are wrong about climate sensitivity due to a trace gas. Go figure why anyone struggles to analyze ice cores when they could have just done a Google search?
I can find remarkable parallels between Lysenko and modern climate science, but I don’t bother writing a book on it. If I want answers about the climate I look at the data from the planet, not data about personalities.
Mike Steketee (Some sceptics make it a habit to be wrong) has learnt a new way to throw names from Oreskes. Nick Minchin (recently retired Senator from the conservative opposition) is just the latest target of this effusion of confusion.
Now anyone who raises points against a policy can be called a “doubt-monger” and the Orwellian destruction of our language advances one more notch.
Naomi Oreskes IS the Merchant of Doubt
Ponder the irony of what Oreskes herself […]
Ad Hominem Unleashed (aka ABC): On the origin of the sceptics
Commentators on a sinking ship search for reasons to “keep the faith afloat”.
The debate has moved a peg. Instead of “oil shills” now we’re just paranoid ideologues afraid of reds under the bed.
Naomi Oreskes
The battle cry: the “skeptics” are shills of big oil, has become an own goal. The PR team for the catastrophic theory have no new evidence of Big Oil funding and thousands of people now point out that the UNskeptics were paid 3500 times as much (at least). So they are moving on… the religiously devout believers can’t admit they were wrong, and nor can they look at the evidence, so what’s left? Post hoc random over-analysis of the irrelevant. Before, skeptics were paid hacks… and now they’re wrong because they … are ideologically against big government and regulation. From one ad hom to another.
And again, the ABC uses our taxes to promote the smear campaign, support neolithic reasoning, and does everything it can to stop people talking about scientific evidence (by spreading misinformation or slurs about all the characters on one side). Oreskes and freelance writer […]
Stephan Lewandowsky reasons by bad-analogy
How do we know man-made climate change is a mortal threat? Some people discuss radiosondes, but for Lewandowsky, the answers lie in laser surgery, gravity waves, airplanes, bridges, AIDS, nanotechnology, falling apples, and driving cars into brick walls.
On Ad Hominem Unleashed (otherwise known as the ABC), Lewandowsky is working his way through the fallacies season by season — he’s tried argument from authority, he’s hailed expert opinion, and even pretended that expert opinion is evidence.
So now, moving right along into Spring, he’s come to a variation of the “insurance” argument. Having told us how absolutely certain everything is, with a straight face, he’s now telling us it’s uncertain, but basically, since we absolutely definitely know it might be bad, we ought to reject the best source of energy known to humankind, and try all the alternatives, no matter how uncertain they are, even if it kills people. (I’m sure he doesn’t think of it that way, but he might change his mind if he spent a day with a mother in Tanzania who can’t afford to boil drinking water and is nursing a child with typhoid.)
Follow his “thinking”
Lewandowsky is so ahead-of-the-pack […]
UPDATE: It’s now 900 peer reviewed papers. See PopTech for the additions and answers to all the common criticisms.
Counting papers is not science, but it’s a hell of a way to show just how counterfeit the line is that “deniers” deny the evidence.
The PopularTechnology list of peer reviewed papers is still growing and is up to 900 now. After thousands of sneering believers have ridiculed skeptics because “what-ever-you-say hasn’t been peer reviewed“, when they are given a list of hundreds of peer reviewed references, do they suddenly appear gracious, discover polite conversation and show an interest in the evidence? Not so. Instead, the sneer shifts gear, and attack the list of 800 papers because some of the papers are only a correction, an erratum, a submission (unpublished), a comment, an addendum, or a reply. And that’s a bluff too. Because if they had actually counted the list they’d know that there are a more items on the list than 800. The guys at PopularTech keep those not-peer-reviewed-but-valuable parts of the scientific conversation in the list, they just don’t count them. So this list is really 800 peer reviewed references plus other supporting material.
Naomi Oreskes claimed that […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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