Saturday Morning Confusion!

 The time is 1953 and big tobacco is dreading a report, about to be made public, that says smoking cigarettes causes lung disease and lung cancer!

The emerging science on tobacco's harms documented in the elite peer-reviewed literature, especially the causal linkage to lung cancer, threatened to undo more than a half century of unprecedented corporate success. 

With considerable anxiety and rancor within the tobacco industry, the industry's highly competitive CEOs came together in December 1953 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City to map a strategy. 

They realized that the threat they now faced was unprecedented and would require new, collaborative approaches and expertise. Not surprisingly, given their history, they turned again to the field of public relations that had served them so well in the past. 

They called upon John W. Hill, the president of the nation's leading public relations firm, Hill & Knowlton.

Hill offered the companies powerful advice and guidance as they faced their crisis. 

Hill understood that simply denying emerging scientific facts would be a losing game. This would not only smack of self-interest but also ally the companies with ignorance in an age of technological and scientific hegemony. 

So he proposed seizing and controlling science rather than avoiding it. If science posed the principal—even terminal—threat to the industry, Hill advised that the companies should now associate themselves as great supporters of science. 

The companies, in his view, should embrace a sophisticated scientific discourse; they should demand more science, not less.

Of critical importance, Hill argued, they should declare the positive value of scientific skepticism of science itself. 

Knowledge, Hill understood, was hard won and uncertain, and there would always be skeptics. 

What better strategy than to identify, solicit, support, and amplify the views of skeptics of the causal relationship between smoking and disease? 

Moreover, the liberal disbursement of tobacco industry research funding to academic scientists could draw new skeptics into the fold. 

The goal, according to Hill, would be to build and broadcast a major scientific controversy. The public must get the message that the issue of the health effects of smoking remains an open question. 

Doubt, uncertainty, and the truism that there is more to know would become the industry's collective new mantra.

Hill was above all a cynic, deeply committed to the instrumental ideals of public relations. He was profoundly confident that public relations strategies, well developed and implemented, could effectively serve the needs of his clients. 

He believed—and he convinced the companies’ leadership—that by calling for more research and offering funding, they could take high ground in their public pronouncements. 

Although he had quit smoking himself, he had no interest in examining and assessing the data or the emerging science. 

For Hill, science would be a means to a public relations end. The executives of the 5 major companies endorsed his strategic plan and hired Hill & Knowlton to manage their burgeoning corporate crisis.

And THIS, my friends, was the start of the anti-science movement in the United States of America!

From this auspicious beginning my friends, we were led to believe that the killing of JFK was orchestrated by a conspiracy, the moon landings were fake, the world is flat, evolution is a hoax, and vaccines are bad for you.

This, and other anti-science beliefs first fostered by John W. Hill, led us to the conclusion that common folklore and biblical prophecy took precedence over scientific fact and the development of my favourite quote of all time: "Tell people something enough times....., with enough conviction...., and they will believe just about anything!"

The way I see it anyway!