Library:Doubt Is Their Product
| Doubt Is Their Product | |
|---|---|
| Author | David Michaels |
| First published | 2008 |
| ISBN | 978-0-19-530067-3 |
| Role | Analysis |
| Domains | Health & Medicine Science & Environment |
| Tactics | Statistical & Evidentiary Distortion Propaganda Technique |
Doubt Is Their Product is a 2008 book by David Michaels.
Summary
David Michaels, an epidemiologist who served as Assistant Secretary of Energy for environment, safety and health under President Clinton, published this book in 2008. He later headed the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 2009 to 2017. The book documents how industries facing evidence that their products or workplaces cause harm hire scientists and consultants to manufacture doubt and delay regulation.
The title
The title comes from a 1969 memo by an executive at the tobacco company Brown & Williamson, which said that doubt was the industry's product because it was the best way to compete with the facts in the public's mind. Michaels shows that tobacco's strategy became a template copied across industries.
The product defense industry
Michaels describes a specialized business he calls product defense: consulting firms and scientists who produce studies, reanalyses and critiques for companies whose products are under scrutiny. Their goal is not to establish the truth but to make the evidence look uncertain enough to delay or weaken regulation. Common techniques include reanalysing data until a link disappears, attacking studies for minor flaws, demanding impossible levels of certainty and funding research designed to reach favourable conclusions.
The cases
The book covers a long list of hazards: asbestos; lead; vinyl chloride; chromium; beryllium, which Michaels encountered directly while at the Department of Energy; diacetyl, a butter flavouring linked to severe lung disease among microwave-popcorn workers; and the painkiller Vioxx. In each case he shows how the timeline of harm was extended by campaigns to cast doubt on the science.
"Sound science"
Michaels shows how industry-backed campaigns adopted the language of scientific rigour, promoting "sound science" and new legal requirements on government data. These sounded like calls for better evidence but functioned as tools to block regulation. He traces some of these campaigns to groups originally organized with tobacco money.
Afterlife
Michaels returned to the subject in The Triumph of Doubt (2020), arguing that the product defense industry had grown larger and more influential.
Relevance to Bullshitopedia
The book is a companion to Merchants of Doubt and essential for the Health & Medicine and Science & Environment domains. It teaches editors to ask who funded a study and why, and to recognize when demands for more evidence are a delaying tactic.