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How industry weaponizes science & sows doubt to serve their agenda

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C C Offline
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/indus...ce-agenda/

INTRO: “When you’re shining a light on something, almost everything else remains in the dark. And sometimes that darkness is deliberately kept dark.”

We may think of science as our foremost producer of knowledge, but for the past decade, science has also been studied as an important source of ignorance. The historian of science Robert Proctor has coined the term agnotology to refer to the study of ignorance, and much of the ignorance studied in this new area is produced by science. Whether an active or passive construct, intended or unintended, this ignorance is, in Proctor’s words, “made, maintained, and manipulated” by science.

In the conversation that follows, excerpted from a longer discussion published in the volume “Science and the Production of Ignorance,” Proctor and historian and philosopher of science Peter Galison describe some of the most important strategies used by industry over the years to produce this ignorance. Some of the well-documented tactics used by the tobacco industry, for example, included funding decoy research to distract from critical questions; organizing “friendly research” for publication in popular magazines; establishing scientific front organizations; and forever calling for more research and more evidence, setting standards for proof so high that nothing could ever satisfy them.

“It’s really quite brilliant,” says Proctor. “If you don’t like the science that’s out there, create some of your own. And then claim ‘we need more research.’ And then label your opposition as a bunch of close-minded fanatics.” The Proctor-Galison dialogue provides a historical context for today’s explorations of agnotology and makes abundantly clear why the rest of us need to be as concerned as they are with such ignorance and the new area of its investigation... (MORE - interview)
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