We owe this month’s Book Spotlight to the bright spotlights of Hollywood, in the form of an NPR interview with the director of the film “Merchants Of Doubt’.  “Merchants” was based on a 2011 book of the same that gave the inside story of the shills who are paid to sow doubt on doubtless issues.   Important as it is, “Merchants” has never made it into our Spotlight so we’re correcting that oversight now with the book, the movie, the website, and links to two articles from our “News To Make You Furious” column on these same (for lack of a better term) “people”.

“Merchants of Doubt”- Book

By Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway

(From Powell’s.com)  The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers.  Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly-some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is “not settled” denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. “Doubt is our product,” wrote one tobacco executive. These “experts” supplied it.

Merchants of Doubt”- Movie

(2014)  |  PG-13  |  96 min  |  Documentary  |  12 December  |  Director: Robert Kenner      Writers: Robert Kenner, Kim Roberts  |  Ratings: 7.0/10 from 172 users

Looks at pundits-for-hire who present themselves as scientific authorities as they speak about topics like toxic chemicals, pharmaceuticals and climate change.