Corporate science denial was born when tobacco firms funded fake research.

Evidence

The story begins at the Plaza Hotel in New York City in 1953. Here the heads of the major tobacco companies came together to figure out what to do in light of a devastating scientific paper that had recently been published linking cigarette tar to cancer in lab mice. The leader of the summit was John Hill, a legendary figure in public relations, who suggested that instead of continuing to fight among themselves over whose cigarettes were healthier, they needed a unified approach where they would “fight the science” by sponsoring additional “research.” The executives agreed to fund this under the auspices of Hill’s newly created Tobacco Industry Research Committee whose mission was to convince the public that there was “no proof” that cigarette smoking caused cancer and that previous work purporting to show such a link was being questioned by “numerous scientists.” — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 63

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: The 1953 undercover PR campaign echoes how denialist messaging gets manufactured before being laundered through media.

Related

• The tobacco industry invented science denial as public-relations strategy (similarity 0.90)
• Tobacco executives publicly claimed no proof existed while privately knowing otherwise (similarity 0.81)
• Tobacco firms ridiculed science showing tobacco harms to discredit it (similarity 0.80)
• The tobacco industry’s manufactured-doubt playbook became a template for all later science denial. (similarity 0.79)