Saturday, 23 July 2016

Doubt Is Not Our Product

Doubt Is Not Our Product

In my Atlas Shrugged series, I wrote about the tobacco companies who tried to conceal the health risks of smoking by sowing confusion and uncertainty. The strategy was to counter all the scientific evidence with ginned-up studies and paid-to-order experts so that people wouldn’t be sure what to believe. Their memos said that “doubt is our product” and that their goal should be “establishing a controversy” in the public mind. That story is an object lesson in how corporations that sell dangerous products are incentivized to encourage ignorance.

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