Hoodwinking the Nation

by Julian L. Simon

Most people in the United States believe that our envi- ronment is getting dirtier, we are running out of natural resources, and population growth in the world is a burden and a threat. These beliefs, according to Simon, are entirely wrong. Why do the media report so much false bad news about the environment, resources, and population? And why do we believe it? Those are the questions distinguished scholar Julian L. Simon set out to answer in his book, Hoodwinking the Nation.The opening chapter of this, the final book by Simon, discusses facts about population growth, natural resources, and the environment, and presents survey evidence of the public's view of these topics. The discrepancy between the facts and the public beliefs sets up the puzzle that the remaining chapters attempt to explain. Simon explores how and why false bad news is produced, citing government reports as often being the basis for environmental news scams and doomsday analyses. He examines the intellectual bases of concepts that lead to scares about resource depletion and population growth, and why biologists, in particular, tend to become overly alarmed about mythical environmental scares. Simon follows with an explanation of how the false bad news is disseminated. He notes that journalists know little about statistics and science and thus gather data in ways that lead to inaccurate conclusions, and politicians may misuse statistics in the service of their own policy and political goals. Simon contends that psychological and cultural mechanisms make people receptive to bad rather than good news and that most people have a too positive view of the past and a too negative view of the future.

Genres: Economics, Science, Environment, Nonfiction

154 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Eric_W]

I have always been a fan of Julian Simon who provided a useful antidote to the apocalyptic thinking (my crap-detector goes into overdrive when people indulge in that form of argument) of the likes of Paul Ehrlich, et al.

I first ran across Simon after I read a long article about the famous bet back in the early eighties. (http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/02/mag...) Essentially a battle between two schools of thought, the Malthusians v. the Cornucopians, the bet enlivened the debate between two ways of looking at the world.

I was reminded of this book recently when I read Penn Jillette's homage to books and reading http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/boo... in which he cites Simon's book as being important to changing his perspective.

I note there is a soon-to-be-released book about the famous bet in which the author takes a different tack. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/boo... I would quibble with his rather broad statement that it was the bet that created the gulf between economists and environmentalists, but I look forward to getting a copy of his book for my kindle when it's released in early September.

[Beth Haynes · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the 60's and 70's, Julian Simon went head-to-head against the doomsday preachers of environmentalism. In this book he examines why there are so many biologists who are environmental alarmists, and why the alarmist point of view is so dominant in the media and public discourse--especially when so much evidence exists that this point of view is wrong!! Simon then presents a better way of approaching these important issues--including a scientific (as opposed to a political-psychological) approach to understanding the true state of our world. A key contribution Simon is able to make as an economist is to point out and explain important fallacious assumptions of the environmental doomsters: 1) zero-sum mentality, 2)finiteness as a starting point of reasoning, 3) and the lack of an understanding of the processes of wealth creation and efficient resource utilization.

Only 127 pages, so its a quick, informative read.

[Shawn]

I've only read a one or two essays in this collection by the preeminent Julian Simon, but those were informative.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

originally ordered 8/17/99 - Simon's essays are about how the media wrongly shapes opinion toward "gloom & doom". Picks on statistics of both Bill Bennett & Al Gore. Lesson for all to be skeptical