Clarence Cook Little is the OG of science denial.
Big Tobacco recruited Little to head up their industry research committee in 1954. The committee was the brainchild of panicked cigarette CEOs and John Hill, head of PR firm Hill & Knowlton.
Cigarettes were under fire as researchers made the connection between smoking and lung cancer. Time magazine published a story headlined “Beyond Any Doubt”. Reader’s Digest ran with “Cancer by the Carton”.
Instead of refuting the research, Hill told the CEOs to push for more research. Pit scientist against scientist. Sow doubt, confusion and uncertainty. Keep customers smoking and delay regulation and litigation indefinitely.
The Tobacco Industry Research Committee set out to muddy the waters. Funded by Big Tobacco, run by Hill & Knowlton and headquartered one floor below the agency in the Empire State Building, the committee funnelled more than $300 million over 40 years for research aimed at making tobacco safe for smokers.
The committee needed a public face. Big Tobacco and Hill & Knowlton went looking for a “scientist of unimpeachable integrity and national repute.” They landed on 66-year-old Cook, who admitted he took the job because he needed the money and enjoyed visiting New York City. In an interview with Time, a fellow geneticist described Cook as “a handsome numbskull.”
“Clarence Cook Little set the mold, says David Lipsky, author of The Parrot and the Igloo. “The first scientist whose job was to remain publicly and inconsolably unconvinced of something. He would develop the first uncertainty catchphrase: ‘not proven.’”
Little was the first but not the last to shill for Big Tobacco. Lipsky says a cigarette industry recruiting document from the early 1990s lists “best-case qualities in scientists being fitted for team colors. ‘Ideal,’ runs the memo ‘are people at or near retirement, with no dependence on grant-dispensing bureaucracies.’ That is, without inboxes or nosy colleagues; institutional bachelors.”
Big Tobacco eventually conceded the win to science. Lipsky says the shills who found fame and fortune defending cancer sticks followed the Big Oil money and rebranded themselves as climate science deniers. It didn’t matter if they weren’t climate scientists or even scientists. They only had to play the part online and during media interviews.
Lipsky singles out two Canadians among the small but vocal and media friendly band of climate science deniers.
Timothy Ball went on Fox News billed as Canada’s first Canadian PhD in climatology and a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. “Dr. Ball was not, as he liked to say, Canada’s first climatology PhD,” says Lipsky. “There were plenty before his doctorate; Canada is a big, science-loving country.”
In fact, Ball’s doctorate was in geography. He was a geography and not a climatology professor. While he hadn’t published any carbon dioxide research in peer-reviewed science journals, Ball had written for History and Social Science Teacher and Manitoba Social Science Teachers Journal.
Steve McIntyre was a semi-retired mining executive with time on his hands. His hobby was asking climate scientists for their raw data. If ignored, McIntyre filed Freedom of Information requests.
“The laws allowed McIntyre to pursue this new hobby from the desk and peace of his Canadian home,” says Lipsky. ”McIntyre became expert in the intimidating arts; the weapons of hint, worry and push. Of the midday insinuation that expands to fill all thoughts at night.”
Along with filing FOI requests, McIntyre harassed scientists in online science forums hiding behind the alias Nigel Persaud.
“As Nigel, McIntyre would make any attack”, says Lipsky. ”On the other hand, Nigel could be unflaggingly – even embarrassingly – supportive of one Steve McIntyre.”
Exposing climate science deniers took its toll on Lipsky. “I became a very unpleasant person writing this book. There’s something about reading people who are lying that makes you suspicious and argumentative company.”
You’ll have a similar reaction reading Lipsky’s book. In selling their souls for fame and fortune, deniers have sowed doubt, eroded trust in science and cost us time we don’t have in the fight to keep our only home from baking, burning and flooding.
Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash.
Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.