For instance, it is perhaps unsurprising that industrial propagandists are less effective when policy makers are otherwise well-informed. The more scientists the policy makers are connected to, the greater the chance that they get enough evidence to lead them to the true theory. If we imagine a community of doctors who scour the medical literature for the dangers of tobacco smoke, we might expect them to be relatively unmoved by the TIRC’s work. On the other hand, when policy makers have few independent connections to the scientific community, they are highly vulnerable to outside influence.
