The tobacco industry’s PR strategy manufactured doubt about EPA science

Evidence

What follows is the type of action plan developed for Philip Morris by the public relations firm Leo Burnett on how to respond to the Environmental Protection Agency’s report which classified secondhand smoke as a group A carcinogen (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1993). The first step was to create a “sense of doubt” about the EPA report, primarily by attacking the science as flawed (Leo Burnett, 1993). The agency also recommended shifting the focus away from secondhand smoke to general air-quality issues. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1670

Categorization

• XREF: Anchors the tobacco playbook alongside climate-denial and other manufactured-doubt campaigns. — connects to: Think tanks deliberately manufacture public doubt about settled science to shape policy — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 626; Climate denial trades on manufactured doubt, not persuasion of scientists — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 927; Tobacco executives publicly claimed no proof existed while privately knowing otherwise — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 323 (+3 more)
• SEED: Article angle: ‘sense of doubt’ as an explicit, documented industry PR tactic versus the romanticized notion of honest scientific debate.