Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway

I read Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway because a friend recommended it. I started reading with a sense of skepticism, but found the presentation of facts, history, and science compelling. Merchants of Doubt used facts and science to illustrate how people have twisted science for corporate greed, political agendas, and personal greed. Oreskes & Conway showed the documentation to back up their claims. They made the excellent point that science itself isn't biased; however, people with agendas are. Oreskes & Conway not only discuss the science, but how and why it was manipulated in a clear, easy to comprehend manner that is at once fascinating, enraging, enlightening, and frightening. They emphasize time and again the reality that facts and science don't change just because people choose not to believe them. Read Merchants of Doubt if you want to better understand how the government, the media, and corporations manage to manipulate the general public to believe things that support corporate interests but go against the interests of all Earth's inhabitants.

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