The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread

by Cailin O'Connor

Indeed, as we have seen, the 1980s would reveal that the scientific consensus of the 1970s had been deeply flawed: the danger was far greater than anyone had understood! The problem was that the industry continued to call for more research, and for delayed action, irrespective of how much evidence came in. As late as March 1988, after the BAS findings showed the presence of the ozone hole, after Stolarski’s review of the NASA satellite data confirmed the BAS data, and after the 1986 and 1987 Antarctic expeditions provided direct detections of by-products of CFC interactions with ozone, the CEO of DuPont wrote to the US Senate to declare that there was no need for drastic reductions.15 By this point, it was hard to imagine what further evidence you could ask for. And yet the industry kept asking for more—for certainty.