Greenwashing
Stauber tells the amazing story of how leaded gas entered the mass market. In 1922, General Motors discovered that adding lead to gasoline gave cars more horsepower. When there was some concern about safety, GM paid the Bureau of Mines to do some fake "testing" and publish spurious research that 'proved' that inhalation of lead was harmless.
Enter Charles Kettering. Founder of the world famous Sloan-Kettering Memorial Institute for medical research, Charles Kettering also happened to be an executive with General Motors. Was it just a strange coincidence, that we would soon have the Sloan Kettering Institute issuing reports stating that lead occurs naturally in the body and that the body has a way of eliminating low level exposure? Through his association with The Industrial Hygiene Foundation and PR giant Hill & Knowlton, Sloane Kettering opposed all anti-lead research for many years. Without organized scientific opposition, for the next 60 years more and more leaded gasoline was sold, until by the 1970s, 90% of our gasoline was leaded.
Finally it became too obvious to hide that lead was a major carcinogen, and leaded gas was phased out in the late 1980s. But during those 60 years, it is estimated that some 30 million tons of lead were released in vapor form onto American streets and highways.
That is how the mass media/public relations game works, my friends. We all need to ask ourselves; what deceptions, lies and misinformation am I being fed in today's news report? The only way to navigate this milieu is with critical thinking skills. Face the fact that you have been deceived and duped for many, many years.
In 1991, Peter Huber wrote a controversial book and coined a new term. The book was Galileo's Revenge and the term was "junk science." Huber's shallow thesis was that all real science supports technology, industry, and progress. Anything else was suddenly junk science. Not surprisingly, Stauber explains how Huber's book was supported by the Manhattan Institute funded by many major Wall Street Investment Firms. Huber's book was generally dismissed by independent scientists, not only because it was poorly written, but because it failed to realize one fact: true scientific research begins with no conclusions.
Real scientists seek evidence because they do not yet know the truth. Valid scientific method follows a defined protocol:
- Form a hypothesis;
- Make predictions for that hypothesis;
- Test the predictions;
- Reject or revise the hypothesis based on the research findings.
Boston University scientist Dr. David Ozonoff explains that ideas in science are themselves like "living organisms that must be nourished, supported, and cultivated with resources for making them grow and flourish." (Stauber p 205)
There are great scientific ideas that don't get any financial support because the commercial angles are not immediately obvious. Such ideas often wither and die.
Another way you can distinguish real science from phony science is that real science points out flaws in its own research and calls for objective peer review. Phony science contends there were no flaws. Phony science is often not replicable.
Analyze this PR method and its constant pretensions to sound science. Corporate sponsored research, in areas of drugs, GM foods, or chemistry begins with predetermined conclusions. It's the clear job of such scientists to prove these conclusions are true, because of the economic upside that proof will bring to the industries paying for that research.
This invidious approach to science has shifted the entire focus of research in America during the past 50 years, as any intellectually independent scientist is likely to admit. Stauber documents the rapidly increasing amount of corporate sponsorship of university research. (206) The fact is, much research has nothing to do with the pursuit of pure, verifiable knowledge. Valid scientists lament that research has become just another commodity; something bought and sold. (Crossen)
It is shocking when Stauber shows how the vast majority of corporate PR today opposes any research that seeks to protect public health or the environment. It's a funny thing that most of the time when we see the phrase "junk science," it's often in a context of defending some activity or process that may threaten either the environment or our health. This makes sense when one realizes that money changes hands only by selling the illusion of health and the illusion of environmental protection. True public health and real preservation of the earth's environment both have very low market value to corporations.
Stauber thinks it ironic that industry's self-proclaimed debunkers of junk science are usually non-scientists themselves. (255) They can do this because the issue is not science, but the creation of images and mass perception.
When corporate PR firms attack legitimate environmental groups and alternative medicine providers, they use special words which will carry an emotional punch. The next time you are reading a newspaper article about an environmental or health issue, note how the author shows bias by using many derogatory terms. This is the result of very specialized training.
Another standard PR tactic is to use the rhetoric of the environmentalists themselves to defend a dangerous and untested product that poses an actual threat to the environment. We see such "greenwashing" in the PR smokescreen that surrounds genetically modified foods. They talk about how GM foods are necessary to grow more food and to end world hunger, when the reality is that GM foods actually have lower yields per acre than natural crops. (Stauber p 173) The grand design comes into focus once you realize that almost all GM seeds have been created by the sellers of herbicides and pesticides so that those plants can withstand greater amounts of petrochemical herbicides and pesticides.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
