Manufactured scientific doubt was the proving ground for today’s wholesale rejection of truth.
Evidence
Why search for scientific disagreement when it can be manufactured? Why bother with peer review when one’s opinions can be spread by intimidating the media or through public relations? And why wait for government officials to come to the “right” conclusion when you can influence them with industry money? All of this is of course shockingly cynical, yet it is only a stop on the road that today leads to post-truth. After 2016, it seems quaint to worry about leaked memos, damning testimony, and videotaped contradictions when the notion of truth itself has now been thrown into question. How did anyone know that they could take things this far? Because of the success of these tactics in the next campaign: against global warming. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 70
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the broader theme running through Horkheimer/Adorno on the culture industry and manufactured consent, and to literature on strategic ignorance and doubt-as-product. — connects to: Manufactured doubt is the replicable engine of science denial.; Climate denial trades on manufactured doubt, not persuasion of scientists — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 927; Science’s claim to exclusive truth paradoxically enabled its own destructiveness (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Science denial pioneered tactics now applied across all factual reality
#corroborates(0.90) - Manufactured doubt is the replicable engine of science denial.
#corroborates(0.85) - Climate denial trades on manufactured doubt, not persuasion of scientists
#exemplifies(0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 927 - Theory contradicting facts remains true when the facts are mystified.
#exemplifies(0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 688 - Science’s claim to exclusive truth paradoxically enabled its own destructiveness
#expands(0.75) - Science’s truth-claims create a paradox because its destructive products are also true
#expands(0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 362 - Fighting post-truth requires doubting one’s own favored beliefs first
#qualifies(0.70) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 330 - Repeating a false claim to debunk it increases its plausibility
#responds-to(0.70) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 164