Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

After Seitz retired from his illustrious scientific career, he was hired by the tobacco company RJ Reynolds to run its program funding “biomedical research at major universities, hospitals, and research institutes across the country” (10). This project, with funding over $45 million to be spent over the next six years (1979-85), would support research “in the areas of chronic degenerative disease, basic immunology, and the effect of ‘lifestyle modes’ on disease” (11).He was joined by James A. Shannon and Maclyn McCarty; the tobacco industry needed witnesses in the torrent of lawsuits, people who could say that cigarettes did not cause the diseases these companies were being sued for:

Every project Reynolds funded could potentially produce such a witness who could testify to causes of illness other than smoking….[m]any of the studies explored other causes of the disease—stress, genetic inheritance, and the like—an entirely legitimate topic, but one that could also help distract attention from the industry’s central problem: the overwhelming evidence that tobacco killed people (14).

In 1953, researchers had demonstrated that cigarette tar caused cancer, much to everyone’s surprise(except Nazi scientists, who had known for a long time but whose knowledge was suppressed after the war). The media had taken this story and run with it. Tobacco company presidents and CEOs panicked and hired the PR firm of John Hill to “challenge the scientific evidence that smoking could kill you” (15). These companies, through the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC), sponsored research to manufacture a debate about the health risks associated with smoking. They targeted the media, providing them with pro-tobacco information.

CC Little, who was convinced that cancer was caused by genetic weakness, not by smoking, was hired to head the TIRC; he created a pro-cigarette book to send to almost 200,000 doctors, media representatives, and politicians:“The industry made its case in part by cherry-picking data and focusing on unexplained or anomalous details” (18). The booklet asked questions in a way that the reader felt doubtful of the answer, even though these answers were known, transforming the “emerging scientific consensus into a raging scientific ‘debate’” (19). Due to the Fairness Doctrine, which required television “dedicate airtime to controversial issues of public concern in a balanced manner” (19), the media presented the issue as a debate.

The TIRC worked to make itself appear more legitimate by linking itself with mainstream medicine, publishing more booklets, and getting involved in politics. They were included as a vetoing power in the 1962 Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health. Even so, many scientists—some of whom were TIRC’s own—concluded that smoking was unsafe and carcinogenic. While the tobacco companies secretly admitted this—as well as the fact that nicotine was addictive—they publicly denied smoking had any negative effects.

In 1964, the Surgeon General released a report stating the deleterious effects of smoking, and everyone was terrified: “To argue that tobacco killed people was to suggest that our own government both sanctioned and profited from the sale of a deadly product” (22). The tobacco industry was in crisis, and the TIRC changed its name to the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR), cutting ties with John Hill’s PR firm. The tobacco companies kept denying that cigarettes were harmful. Even though the number of Americans who smoked had dropped from half to 33 percent by 1979, the industry still reported high profits which they wanted to safeguard against both government and civilian lawsuits. However, by 1979, none of the civilian lawsuits had been settled in favor of the plaintiff.

The tobacco industry had spent more than $50 million in biomedical research, but felt they needed to spend more, and so hired the illustrious Seitz who was grateful for the funding RJ Reynolds had given to his college, Rockefeller University. Seitz had also had a falling out with many members of the scientific community on issues such as nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War, and communism. Seitz blamed irrationality both for his argument with the scientific community and for civilians’ distrust of corporations and even of science itself. Seitz held technology in high esteem and was suspicious of environmentalists who he saw as being anti-progress. Seitz was more comfortable with conservative corporate bigwigs—like those in the tobacco industry—than either with the masses or his “liberal academic colleagues” (29). He also insisted that most diseases were caused by weak genetics, making him the perfect scientist to handle hiring researchers for the CTR.

Seitz sought out Martin J Cline, a disgraced scientist who worked with recombinant DNA. Cline had misinformed his grant providers concerning the nature of his scientific work, and so he lost funding. In 1997, Cline was called to testify in Norma R. Broin et al v. Philip Morris, a case which argued that secondhand in-cabin smoke was responsible for lung cancers in twenty-seven flight attendants. Cline was purposefully evasive when asked if smoking causes lung cancer, because there is no technical way to scientifically prove that a person who has lung cancer got it from smoking. While at first this tactic worked, eventually juries began to say that this was unreasonable, and would more often decide in favor of the plaintiffs.

In 2006, the tobacco industry was found guilty under the RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) as it had schemed to “‘defraud consumers and potential consumers’ about the hazards of cigarettes” (32). The industry knew that smoking was dangerous as early as 1953 and “conspired to suppress this knowledge” (33). This scheme worked so well that there is still widespread doubt that smoking is even harmful at all, although most organizations agree that it is. The tobacco industry capitalized on the public’s misunderstanding of the lack of certainty native to science, which is a process of discovery: “The tobacco road would lead through Star Wars, nuclear winter, acid rain, and the ozone hole, all the way to global warming. Seitz and his colleagues would fight the facts and merchandise doubt all the way” (35).