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Show 33 of the productivity paradox" (p. 33). Similarly, in Merchants of Doubt Oreskes and Conway (2010) argue that private think tanks and industrial lobbyists have effectively obfuscated scientific conclusions about tobacco, acid rain, global warming, and pesticides such as DDT. Using the 1949 Fairness Doctrine to promote nonfalsifiable "pseudo scientific" claims, private enterprises such as the Heritage Foundation, the George Marshall Institute, and CATO have successfully stymied policy initiatives by manufacturing doubt about scientific consensuses. Accordingly, these think tanks perpetrate public skepticism by doubting science with questions disingenuous by the technical standards of argument, which have effectively diverted attention from important scientific findings about our current climate situation. Using public misunderstandings of science to their rhetorical advantage, privately funded groups are able to successfully manage public thought concerning science by circumscribing scientific claims for political purposes. Banning (2009) and Ceccarelli (2011) have argued that industrial corporations invested in the carbon-based economy have borrowed from big tobacco's playbook to "manufacture scientific controversies" on issues that are already grounded in scientific consensus. This point is well documented in sociology disciplines, where scholars such as McCright and Dunlap (2000, 2003, 2010, 2011) have done tremendous work to demonstrate that industries have effectively framed the global warming issue in terms of economic security rather than environmental security. As they explain, the success of corporate communication strategies is due in part to their direct access to key resources such as media outlets, which can shape dominant ideologies about industrial progress (see Bell & York, 2010). Mitchell (1995, 2006), Bell and York (2010), and Jacques, |
