''Merchants of Doubt'' is a 2014 American
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
directed by
Robert Kenner
Robert Kenner is an American film and television director, producer, and writer. Kenner is best known for directing the film ''Food, Inc''. as well as the films, ''Command and Control'', ''Merchants of Doubt'', and ''When Strangers Click''.
Ke ...
and inspired by the
2010 book of the same name by
Naomi Oreskes
Naomi Oreskes (; born November 25, 1958) is an American historian of science. She became Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University in 2013, after 15 years as Professor of H ...
and
Erik M. Conway.
The film traces the use of public relations tactics that were originally developed by the
tobacco industry
The tobacco industry comprises those persons and companies who are engaged in the growth, preparation for sale, shipment, advertisement, and distribution of tobacco and tobacco-related products. It is a global industry; tobacco can grow in any ...
to protect their business from research indicating
health risks from smoking. The most prominent of these tactics is the cultivation of scientists and others who successfully cast doubt on the scientific results. Using a professional
magic
Magic or Magick most commonly refers to:
* Magic (supernatural), beliefs and actions employed to influence supernatural beings and forces
* Ceremonial magic, encompasses a wide variety of rituals of magic
* Magical thinking, the belief that unrela ...
ian, the film explores the analogy between these tactics and the methods used by magicians to distract their audiences from observing how illusions are performed. For the tobacco industry, the tactics successfully delayed government regulation until long after the establishment of
scientific consensus
Scientific consensus is the generally held judgment, position, and opinion of the majority or the supermajority of scientists in a particular field of study at any particular time.
Consensus is achieved through scholarly communication at confe ...
about the health risks from smoking. As its second example, the film describes how manufacturers of
flame retardants
The term flame retardants subsumes a diverse group of chemicals that are added to manufactured materials, such as plastics and textiles, and surface finishes and coatings. Flame retardants are activated by the presence of an ignition source a ...
worked to protect their sales after
toxic effects of the retardants were reported in the scientific literature. The central concern of the film is the ongoing use of these tactics to forestall governmental action to regulate
greenhouse gas emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and lar ...
in response to the risk of
global climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
.
[ Interview with Kenner.]
Production
Interview subjects
The filmmakers interviewed more than a dozen individuals who have been involved in a series of conflicts ranging from the regulation of tobacco products due to the health risks to global
climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
. In the sequence in which they appear in the film, they are:
*
Stanton Glantz
Stanton Arnold Glantz (born 1946) is an American professor, author, and tobacco control activist. Glantz is a faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine, where he is a Professor of Medicine (retired) in ...
is a professor of medicine and activist for regulation of tobacco smoking. In 1994 he received a carton of documents copied from the records of the
Brown and Williamson tobacco company that revealed their awareness of health risks as early as the 1950s.
*
Sam Roe Sam Roe is a journalist who was part of a team of reporters at the ''Chicago Tribune'' that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for an examination of hazardous toys and other children's products. He is currently an editor for the ...
and
Patricia Callahan Patricia Callahan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American investigative journalist for ProPublica.
Early life and career
Callahan attended from Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Illinois and graduated from Northwestern University's Medill Schoo ...
are reporters at the ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'' newspaper who in 2012 exposed "manufacturers that imperil public health by continuing to use toxic
fire retardant
A fire retardant is a substance that is used to slow down or stop the spread of fire or reduce its intensity. This is commonly accomplished by chemical reactions that reduce the flammability of fuels or delay their combustion. Fire retardants m ...
s in household furniture and crib mattresses, triggering reform efforts at the state and national level." They were finalists for a
Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting
The Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting has been awarded since 1953, under one name or another, for a distinguished example of investigative reporting by an individual or team, presented as a single article or series in a U.S. news publicat ...
.
*
James Hansen
James Edward Hansen (born March 29, 1942) is an American adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is best known for his research in climatology, his 1 ...
is a former NASA scientist whose 1988 testimony on climate change to congressional committees helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and has become a prominent advocate for regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.
*John Passacantando is the former executive director of
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by Irving Stowe and Dorothy Stowe, immigrant environmental activists from the United States. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth t ...
, an organization of environmental activists.
*William O'Keefe is the chief executive officer of the
George C. Marshall Institute
The George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) was a nonprofit conservative think tank in the United States. It was established in 1984 with a focus on science and public policy issues and had an initial focus in defense policy. Starting in the late 198 ...
, an organization that opposes government regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.
*
Naomi Oreskes
Naomi Oreskes (; born November 25, 1958) is an American historian of science. She became Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University in 2013, after 15 years as Professor of H ...
is a professor of the history of science and the co-author of the book that inspired the film.
*
Fred Singer
Siegfried Fred Singer (September 27, 1924 – April 6, 2020) was an Austrian-born American physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, trained as an atmospheric physicist. He was known for rejecti ...
is a physicist and environmental scientist who founded the
Science & Environmental Policy Project
The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) is an advocacy group financed by private contributions based in Arlington County, Virginia. It was founded in 1990 by atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer.
SEPP disputes the prevailing scientific ...
(SEPP) in 1990 to work against regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, among other issues.
*
Michael Shermer
Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of ''Skeptic'' magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientific ...
is a writer and publisher of the magazine ''
Skeptic
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the pe ...
''. He was initially a "contrarian" regarding regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, but his views changed as the science of climate change advanced.
*
Matthew Crawford
Matthew B. Crawford is an American writer and research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Crawford majored in physics as an undergraduate, then turned to political philosophy. He earned his PhD f ...
is a writer. He is a former director of the Marshall Institute who resigned over the influence of the Institute's sponsors in determining the Institute's activities and positions.
*
Marc Morano
Marc Morano (born 1968) is a former Republican political aide who founded and runs the website ClimateDepot.com. ClimateDepot is a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a US non-profit organisation that promotes climate c ...
is a political activist who has published the climate denial website
ClimateDepot since 2009. To encourage complaints to scientists whose work is viewed as supporting action on greenhouse gas emission, the website publishes their addresses.
*
Ben Santer
Benjamin David Santer (born June 3, 1955) is a climate researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and former researcher at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. He also worked at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology ...
,
Michael E. Mann
Michael Evan Mann (born 1965) is an American climatologist and geophysicist. He is the director of the Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. Mann has contributed to the scientific understanding of his ...
, and
Katharine Hayhoe
Katharine Anne Scott Hayhoe (born 1972) is a Canadian atmospheric scientist. She is a Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor and an Endowed Chair in Public Policy and Public Law in the Texas Tech University Department of Political Science. I ...
are climate scientists who have received personal threats because of their global climate change work.
*
Tim Phillips is the president of
Americans for Prosperity
Americans for Prosperity (AFP), founded in 2004, is a libertarian conservative political advocacy group in the United States funded by Charles Koch and formerly his brother David. As the Koch brothers' primary political advocacy group, it is one ...
, which works against government regulation on climate change and other issues.
*
Bob Inglis
Robert Durden Inglis Sr. (born October 11, 1959) is an American politician who was the United States House of Representatives, U.S. representative for from 1993 to 1999 and again from 2005 to 2011. He is a moderate member of the Republican Par ...
is a former congressional representative from South Carolina; he lost his seat in the primary election following his announcement that he had changed his view and recognized
global climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
as a problem that government should address.
Professional magic
The film embeds commentary and performances by magician
Jamy Ian Swiss
Jamy Ian Swiss (born November 30, 1952, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American magician, author, speaker, historian of magic, essayist, book reviewer, and scientific skeptic. He is known for sleight-of-hand with playing cards.
Magic
Swiss is ...
. The premise of these interludes is that there is an analogy between the techniques of professional magicians and the tactics of public relation organizations. Magicians learn how to distract their audiences from noticing the deceptions that underlie their tricks and illusions. The organizations distract the public from the risks associated with products. These tactics were systematically developed by the tobacco industry in the 1950s in response to scientific research showing that smoking was a significant health risk; the research was a significant threat to tobacco sales. The principal distraction tactic has been the use of convincing personalities who claim that the uncertainties in the risks militate against taking action.
An unsigned review in ''
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'' explains, "To make his point clear, Kenner follows up Swiss’s magic act and fancy patter with a snappy montage of various experts over the years denying that cigarettes cause cancer, or extolling the virtues of pesticide, or proclaiming that asbestos is “designed to last a lifetime — a trouble free lifetime.” And then the inevitable parade of
climate change deniers
Climate change denial, or global warming denial, is denial, dismissal, or doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, or th ...
bloviating in Congress or on cable news, all backed by Sinatra singing 'That Old Black Magic.'"
A. O. Scott wrote in ''The New York Times'' that Swiss' "presence, and the animated playing cards that sometimes fly across the screen, feel like a glib and somewhat condescending gimmick, an attempt to wring some fun out of a grim and appalling story."
Reception
Threatened lawsuit
One of the subjects of the film,
Fred Singer
Siegfried Fred Singer (September 27, 1924 – April 6, 2020) was an Austrian-born American physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, trained as an atmospheric physicist. He was known for rejecti ...
, wrote the director indicating that he was considering a lawsuit. Although no lawsuit was filed, Kenner noted in an interview that "when
inger
Inger may refer to:
People
* Inger (given name), a list of people
* Inger, the main character of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale ''The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf''
* Robert F. Inger (1920–2019), American herpetologist
* Stella Inger, America ...
implies litigation is very expensive, I think it's an attempt to be intimidating." In the 1990s, Singer had sued Justin Lancaster over his statements regarding the inclusion of
Roger Revelle
Roger Randall Dougan Revelle (March 7, 1909 – July 15, 1991) was a scientist and scholar who was instrumental in the formative years of the University of California, San Diego and was among the early scientists to study anthropogenic global ...
as a co-author of a climate change paper with Singer and
Chauncey Starr; Revelle had died shortly after the paper was published. That lawsuit ended when Lancaster withdrew his statements as "unwarranted", although Lancaster later expressed regret over the settlement.
Critics' views
The film has been widely reviewed in the mainstream U.S. media and garnered mostly positive reviews. On
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 84% based on 89 reviews, with an average rating of 6.95/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "''Merchants of Doubt'' is a thought-provoking documentary assembled with energy and style, even if it doesn't dig as deep as it could." On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Justin Chang wrote for ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' that it is "An intelligent, solidly argued and almost too-polished takedown of America’s spin factory — that network of professional fabricators, obfuscators and pseudo-scientists who have lately attempted to muddle the scientific debate around global warming — this is a movie so intrigued by its designated villains that it almost conveys a perverse form of admiration, and the fascination proves contagious." William Goss wrote for ''The Austin Chronicle'' that "Merchants spends much of its running time exposing trends of political subterfuge before working in an earnest call to action regarding climate change. Using the same type of tinkling score and shots of children at play as campaign ads shown earlier in the film, this late-inning agenda comes off as noble as it is hypocritical. Regardless of one’s personal beliefs, it’s tough to respect a movie that ultimately invites viewers to question every case of propaganda except its own."
Home media
''Merchants of Doubt'' was released as a DVD on July 7, 2015.
[ This is a multi-format package (both Blu-Ray and DVD disks). The Blu-Ray has an optional audio commentary from the director, deleted scenes, and interview footage from the Toronto international Film Festival.]
References
External links
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* {{Rotten Tomatoes, merchants_of_doubt, Merchants of Doubt
Documentary films about global warming
+Merch
Films about media manipulation
Films based on non-fiction books
Sony Pictures Classics films
2014 in the environment
2014 documentary films
2014 films
2010s English-language films