The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread

by Cailin O'Connor

Of course, smoking does cause lung cancer—and also cancers of the mouth and throat, heart disease, emphysema, and dozens of other serious illnesses. It would be impossible, using any legitimate scientific method, to generate a robust and convincing body of evidence demonstrating that smoking is safe. But that was not the goal. The goal was rather to create the appearance of uncertainty: to find, fund, and promote research that muddied the waters, made the existing evidence seems less definitive, and gave policy makers and tobacco users just enough cover to ignore the scientific consensus. As a tobacco company executive put it in an unsigned memo fifteen years later: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the public.”