Is the Misinformation Being Spouted by So-called Experts as Dangerous as the Reality of Climate Change or New Pandemics?

May 3, 2019 – Calling out those who misinform the public about whether vaccines are safe or not, or whether climate change is real, requires those who are informed from all walks of life to correct the record. It seems like such an enormous amount of energy, time and even money has to be spent to stop the dangerous spread of what is in essence propaganda from political groups, industry lobbyists, and celebrities who attract a following.

Last January, a sociology professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, along with two colleagues authored a paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, describing how large-scale misinformation campaigns were eroding public confidence in the scientific evidence about climate change. The effectiveness of these campaigns was leading to a general antipathy by those in government to implement policies to begin the transition away from fossil fuels, and other greenhouse-gas-emission-heavy industries.

Justin Farrell, lead author of the paper entitled, “Evidence-based strategies to combat scientific misinformation,” described the tactics of those trying to undermine science and the dangerous implications of these behaviours. The paper’s focus to counter misinformation, the “alternative facts” that increasingly get bandied about by those with a media voice, provided four co-ordinated strategies including:

• Public social inoculation against misinformation much the way the dispensing of vaccines helps build resistance to disease in the overall population. Information inoculation would involve exposing the public to the sources of refuted scientific arguments, laying them bare for all to see the whys and wherefores of those who spread lies.
• Launching lawsuits against organizations disseminating misinformation. For example, a number of cities have recently sued ExxonMobil and other energy companies because they buried the risk associated with their products even though their own scientists had already identified their role in anthropogenic climate change. The media coverage of such lawsuits serves the public social inoculation strategy well, while the court proceedings reveal the duplicity of the industry’s attempt to mislead.
• Revealing how the political process is being manipulated by lobbyists spreading misinformation in support of the industries they represent. In the battle to expose climate change skeptics for what they are, paid shills of the industry, society must become more vigilant. The authors point out the example of Entergy, a utility company in Louisiana, that hired a public relations firm which in turn paid actors to pose as supporters of a controversial power plant that was being considered to supply electricity to New Orleans. The traditional media need to follow the money, determine who is funding campaigns that spread misinformation, and exposing those in political power who are beneficiaries of the largesse spread by these operatives.
• Exposing those who hide behind foundations funded by private donors that sound above reproach. You may have come across some of these including: The Heartland Institute, The American Enterprise Institute, The George C. Marshall Institute, The Reason Foundation, The Heritage Foundation, The Manhattan Institute, Americans for Prosperity, The Searle Freedom Trust, The John Williams Pope Foundation, The Howard Charitable Foundation, and The Sarah Scaife Foundation, all dispensing science misinformation from energy industry leaders who hide behind these legitimate sounding organizations. Described as the “dark money” behind scientific misinformation particularly leveled at climate science, the effort by foundations like these involves hundreds of millions of dollars spent to buy politicians to not act, and to dispense paid “experts” to speak at conferences where they wave their credentials in front of audiences while spreading nonsense.

The authors note what they describe as “the huge imbalance” in money being spent by those dedicated to misinforming the public, versus those explaining the scientific evidence derived from research and experimentation. Farrell states, “as we learn more about these dynamics” referring to the spread of misinformation and the money behind it, “things will start to change. I just hope it’s not too late.”