PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENCE

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming . By Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway . 2010. Bloomsbury Press, New York (ISBN 7981596916104). 355 pp. Hardcover. $$27.00. Michael Behe, William Demski, Duane Gish –– biology teachers often know these names (notorious creationists). But what about Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, Robert Jastrow, Bill Nierenberg, or Steve Milloy? These less widely known individuals posed equal threats to good science. In their eye-opening book, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway detail how these individuals (and others) deliberately orchestrated public skepticism about scientific consensus on tobacco, nuclear winter, acid rain, the ozone hole, second-hand smoke, global warming, and DDT. Time and time again, the same cast of characters effectively stalled timely political action. These critics were scientists, but scientists speaking outside their …