Journalists Sell Off Science to Sell a Story (and their Souls)
The War on Science Started with Agenda-Driven Activists and their Journalists
In 50 years from now, our great grandchildren will study how affluent societies in the 2020s willfully threw out advanced technologies and innovations that had brought great discoveries, saved lives, delivered incredible progress, higher living standards and consumer well-being. What caused the loss of trust in scientific expertise that led to an academic research purge? It wasn’t our dogma-driven leaders that frittered away our trust in science and technology and it wasn’t even the poor choices by scientists themselves. Historians will find the root cause of the decline in prosperity, well-being and innovation being a small group of dogmatic activists, working with the remnants of a dying media to confuse and frighten the public.
We are living in a time of war: a war on growth, investment, technologies and scientific progress. Key to this strategy is to destroy trust in experts, scientists and companies that had developed these technologies that have led to enormous growth in economies and public goods. This undermining of research, science and technology - a denormalization of growth and progress - is being done by taking scientists’ standard research and lab practices out of context, twisting the scientific method in a concerted effort to make them look corrupt and mal-intentioned.
This misrepresentation of scientists has become a well-used playbook to create fear and outrage against pesticides, plastics, chemicals, processed food, fossil fuels, vaping and the latest attack, painkillers. History will reveal how the real corruption was the political motivations of the activists and their loyal journalists who feigned ignorance as they processed and packaged the fears sold to them. Aided by unlimited funding pumped into their campaigns by foundations and opportunistic tort law firms using a group of compromised scientists to amplify doubt and outrage.
The Method Behind Their Madness
Activists think they’re very smart in taking responsible scientific practices out of context to make a story or campaign they can package as scandal. The scientific method demands that researchers question any and all scenarios or possibilities, but when activists and special interest groups (lawyers, NGOs, post-capitalist campaigners, Marxist degrowth academics…) find experts speaking with precision and responsibility, they question the scientists’ intentions.
When scientists are confronted with possible confounding evidence, respect for the scientific method dictates they look at it and question whether it might challenge their technologies or developments. The scientific method always involves questioning, retesting and seeking to improve on previous discoveries, theories or developments. But a journalist with an agenda would present such situations as: “Science is uncertain that their developments are safe!” or “Faced with confounding evidence, scientists chose not to act (ie, cover-up)!”
The media seem unable to look at the reality long enough to realize they are also being exploited by these master manipulators. As the scientist or expert is increasingly maligned in the popular discourse, the public is increasingly willing to believe the worst, especially if it involves industry researchers.
Here are three such cases of activists and their media selling off science to sell a story. While their playbook is easy to read, most have chosen to remain illiterate.
Emily Kopp – Research Opportunist
The most recent misreporting on the scientific method insinuates that J&J scientists (now Kenvue) knew more than a decade ago that when pregnant women took their popular pain reliever, Tylenol, it “caused autism”. Emily Kopp published this great scoop taking several J&J email conversations out of context to argue that they knew all along that their product was dangerous and there was some industry cover-up to deny the public the truth. Conspiracy theorists love these types of gotchya reports as do the media (and grifters like RFK Jr).
“The weight of evidence is starting to feel heavy to me” was the line Kopp jumped on. Two scientists were starting to look at a large series of studies (including also studies on ibuprofen risks) and were sharing views as they sifted through the limitations and confounding factors in each publication. In another J&J email exchange from 2008, scientists were reacting to early claims by individuals questioning the link of prenatal use of Tylenol with autism. What the emails showed was how scientists were receiving information and looking more deeply into it. Gosh, what a scandal!
This is normal research for a scientist. Follow up, gather information, test again and re-evaluate. Research for a journalist like Emily Kopp, on the other hand, is to “Control F” a targeted word in thousands of FOIAed emails and then take the word out of context to amplify her conspiracy theory. Worse, unlike a scientist, Kopp lets the bias fill in the gap in her evidence. Scientists were talking about studies and letters suggesting a link and after further meetings, nothing came of it (therefore we can assume management covered up the autism link). The reality, whether Kopp wants to accept it or not, is that despite a few studies, the scientific consensus on prenatal Tylenol use, to this day, is that it is safe.
Many of the studies that were discussed in Kopp’s gotchya emails had serious flaws. But assumed corporate cover-ups are so much more interesting to report on. And Kopp bases her yellow journalism on the assumption that her readers are too stupid or too lazy to read the links to the texts she cherrypicked.
Kopp learnt journalism ethics from her limited time at US Right to Know (which seems to be running out of funding), where she picked up the scandal manipulation playbook left on her desk by her predecessor, the ethically-challenged Carey Gillam.
Carey Gillam: What did Monsanto Know?
Much of the activist media hype around the “Shlock and Awe” Monsanto Papers campaign focused on a leaked email where Monsanto’s chief scientist, Donna Farmer, made several scientifically sound remarks. She stated: “We cannot say it [glyphosate] is ‘safe’...we can say history of safe use, used safely etc,”. No legitimate scientist would use the word “safe” which is non-existant except as an emotional feeling. Nothing, in toxicological terms, can be claimed to be safe, not even water. Scientists talk about “safe use” or “safer”. Farmer was talking like a scientist should, with precision, but the manipulative media, on the Monsanto hunt, fried her by taking her words out of context.
In another leaked email, Farmer states:
“you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen … we have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement. The testing on the formulations are not anywhere near the level of the active ingredient.”.
This is how scientists speak, precisely, about what they know and what they cannot know. Roundup formulations have a large number of chemicals, like surfactants (that are also used in detergents) that could be carcinogenic at very high doses. This was not an admission that Roundup was carcinogenic (as attention hounds like Carey Gillam tried to portray), but that there was only so much they could know. Gillam used it to claim Monsanto had not sufficiently tested the product, but could they have tested every chemical?
There are over 1000 chemicals in a cup of coffee. We have only tested 22 of them. This does not imply that all of the other chemicals in that coffee are carcinogenic. Mind you, of the 22 tested, Bruce Ames reminded us that 17 have been shown to be carcinogenic to rats. Perhaps the only difference is that there isn’t a feral pack of wolves trying to put coffee companies out of business by preying on our fear and ignorance.
Donna Farmer’s reputation was dragged through hot coals on the ashes of the Monsanto pyre by these manipulative, unwashed journalists when all she did was act in a scientifically responsible manner.
Naomi Oreskes: What did Exxon Know?
Naomi Oreske’s strategy to tobacconize the fossil fuel industry by litigating the hell out of energy companies for the effects of climate change (a playbook methodically laid out in La Jolla in 2012) started with the New York Attorney General subpoenaing ExxonMobil. The thousands of files and emails, going back 40 years, were then scoured for evidence that Exxon had known about the risks of climate change from the use of their products and had run a campaign to cover it up. Sure enough they found a document suggesting that the company had information they withheld and this became the basis for the “Exxon Knew” campaign and the countless tort lawsuits now being conducted against Exxon and other energy companies.
As an aside, it should be noted that Oreskes played heavily in the campaign and has been paid consulting fees from three law firms suing ExxonMobil (that she was only forced to disclose under oath). So after all of her articles and books condemning scientists who take industry funding, we should start a campaign called: Oreskes Knew.
But what was the big document … the smoking gun? Like all large industries, their scientists conduct risk scenario-building exercises to develop more robust risk management preparations (often envisioning worlds 20 or 30 years into the future). I once worked on such an exercise with a company, and they are quite detailed, serious and responsible. One such scenario, of the five possible worlds we drew up in this exercise was that of a world where climate change was accelerating.
What ExxonMobil knew was that they had to draw up all possible scenarios to be able to manage the company over the long term. Smarmy academic activists like Oreskes thought they could take responsible research out of context. I suppose the money was good.
The scientists have merely been doing their jobs, responsibly, as they had been taught. But they have not done a good job teaching others what guides their actions and decisions (so opportunists fill in the blanks and turn an ignorant society against science, research and technology. They need to tell their stories and why they do what they do. When vulgar “investigative reporters”, with the support of well-funded agenda-driven activists, turn words and actions against the research community, they ignore the real story, the benefits of their discoveries and the fallout from public fear and distrust. The real story is left untold and trust is lost.
I would like to know how our great grandchildren will interpret the end of this dreadful passage in history. When I am feeling optimistic, I would imagine the fate of these political activists and journalists ends in a shameful humiliation. Most of the time though, my outlook is negative and I worry our great grandchildren will be living in some distorted Handmaid’s Tale dystopia where no one can trust anyone. If enough of us write about what is happening today, future generations might just be saved from the dogmatic ignorance that has cursed our contemporaries.