The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread

by Cailin O'Connor

As a scientific consensus emerged during the middle part of the 1970s that CFCs posed a serious risk to ozone levels, and US policy makers began to implement regulatory responses, the chemical industry pushed back. Led by DuPont, the massive American chemical manufacturer, industry representatives argued against doing anything. They sang a common refrain: it was too soon to act, because there was still too much uncertainty. DuPont placed ads in newspapers and magazines across the country, arguing that “there is no persuasive evidence” in favor of the Rowland-Molina claims that CFCs contributed to ozone depletion and asking, “Should an industry be prejudged and useful fluorocarbon products be destroyed before any answers are found?” Likewise, a 1975 op-ed piece in the industry magazine Chemical Week claimed, of the role of CFCs in ozone depletion, that “we’re talking about a basically unknown effect on a little-understood phenomenon brought on by a debatable cause,” and went on to conclude: “One fact is clear: We don’t have the facts. We don’t even know for sure whether there is a problem.”