Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Fred Seitz was one of America’s most prominent scientists and helped build the atomic bomb when he was still a young scientist during World War II. He “had spent his career at the highest levels of American science” (10), working on various defense projects and writing textbooks on physics for both academics and laypeople alike. He spent his life in “the highest echelons of American science and policy” (25), wielding influence in government as a result of his scientific bona fides. He was the president of Rockefeller University, which received funding for scientific research from the tobacco industry. After he retired, he directed a program for the tobacco company RJ Reynolds that gave out money to fund scientific research which spread doubt as to the causality of cancer from first- and secondhand smoke.

Seitz was a virulent anti-communist who very much believed that the success of communism, however small or theoretical it may be, would certainly lead to the death of capitalism and the disintegration of the American way of life. Seitz saw industry goals as inherently tied to the success of capitalism, believing corporations could provide the necessary means to destroy communism. As such, he emphasized his connection to the National Academy of Sciences—for a while, he was its president—in order to give the appearance that his claims were sanctioned by them and to strengthen his arguments.