agnotology - the science of creating ignorance

7/26/2019 Agnotology - The Science of Creating Ignorance

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Agnotology, the Science of Creating Ignorance

I came across the word agnotology a year or so ago and wondered about its origin. FromGoogle I found what must be a very early use of the new word agnotology, if not its coining, inan article by Linda Schiebinger titled Agnotology and Exotic Abortifacients: The Cultural

Production of Ignorance in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World. The most recent of its 55references is from 2004. The article emphasizes the work of Maria Sibylla Merian from 1699to 1701 in Surinam, then Dutch Guiana. She was the only one of many naturalists andanthropologists active among the indigenous peoples in Africa and the Americas whomentioned extensive use of abortifacients for menstrual regulation (population control) thatwere widely known among these aborigines. The silence of the others had to be self-censorshipimposed by no authority but by a rather universal cultural bias. I did not find agnotology inany dictionary including the most recent Oxford English Dictionary. I, personally, lookforward to a long and constructive relationship with agnotology (as a worthy [?]opponent). In any event the word must be quite new even though the behavior it defines mustbe almost as old as spoken language. The tobacco industry has fostered the most adept of

modern agnotologists.

In the 1960s I was browsing through a popular mens magazine and found an article quite

obviously planted by the tobacco industry to create doubt about the medically documentedhealth problems attributable to cigarettes. My suspicion was confirmed within a few weeks bya scandalan enterprising reporter had tracked down the details of how the article had beenplanted in the magazine, presumably without the knowledge of the editor (my sympathies goout to him).

On Sunday, February 18, 2007 (my 84th birthday) I attended a seminar at the annual meetingof the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) in San Francisco titled:

The Sociopolitical Manufacturing of Scientific Ignorance: Agnotology, organized by JonathanCoopersmith of Texas A&M University. The first presentation was a recapitulation of thefamiliar shenanigans of the tobacco industry plus an account of a creditable science magazinenamed Science Fortnightly that was published for several years apparently motivated entirely

to promote Kent Cigarettes. Also I had not heard before that the first Kent filters containedasbestos. So there were quite a few fronts for the tobacco agnotologists, most notably theGeorge Marshall Institute, very active in downplaying second hand smoke, and a coveyof charitable foundations providing grants for such fronts.

A useful list of these organizations includes the following:

The American Enterprise Institute $45,000,000 dispersed 1985-2006

The Carthage Foundation, $68,000,000 dispersed 1985-2003

The Cato Institute, operating budget $22,000,000 in 2007

The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation disperses $28,000,000 annually; it is one of the. . Koch family foundations along with the Charles G. Koch and the David H. Koch


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Foundations. . Collectively they have contributed $196,000,000, mostly to think tanks, from1980 to 2009.

The Earhart Foundation $95,000,000 in assets (major contributor to George MarshallInstitute)

The George Marshall Institute dispersed $5,500,000 1985- 2001

The John M. Olin Foundation existed 1953-2005 & dispensrd $370,000,000 to think tanks

The Linde and Harry Bradley Foundation, $290,000,000 in assets

The Mercatus Center received $11,874,500 1977-2009 from Koch family foundations

The Sarah Saife Foundation, $235,000,000 dispersed 1985-2003

The W. H. Bradley Foundation $13,000,000 in assets

Many have morphed into coveys of expert spin doctors practicing agnotology. Examples ofthe sorts of projects funded: 1) A commission to study the accuracy of teaching materials usedfor teaching environmental science; 2) Senior scientist program to foster sound science in

policy debate. It appears that these projects really exist to rebut an established consensus forthe benefit of sponsoring clients. The AAAS presenters emphasized many names recurring asparticipants in these organizations. The presenters had such listsuseful in evaluating themotives of any new organization not yet known to be a front for agnotology.

With help from Google I managed to duplicate such lists, proving an ability to apply theirmethod of identifying new such fronts in the future without even remembering an old list ofnamesall you need is the above list of known previous front organizations and you are offand running. While I was googling the useful list of agnotologist think tanks and institutes, Iwas amazed by the fact that the majority of them had affiliations with the LibertarianPolitical Party and several with George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

In 1957 the University of Virginia had established a branch in Fairfax, a suburb of Washington,DC. In 1972 the Virginia legislature voted to stop supporting the branch in Fairfax and thebranch became George Mason UniversityI am seeking the details. The Charles G. Koch

Foundation has been a major supporter of George Mason University. It is logical thatagnotology would be attractive to wealthy corporations that are major polluters of theenvironment. Capitalism is much more efficient in the realm of economics than in the realm ofsocial justicethis very term has become anathema to Libertarians according to BrianDoherty, author of Radicals for Capitalism (page 546). Is the Libertarian Party aware that itmay be inadvertently morphing into an oligarchy of agnotologists?


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Since I originally wrote this in 2008, the following have been published and will aid you indetecting agnotologists: 1) Radicals for Capitalism, A freewheeling History of the ModernAmerican Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty, Public AffairsTM, 2007, and 2) CovertOperarations by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, August 30, 2010, pages 45-55. Thefollowing amazing quotation is from the New Yorker Article:

The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, at the Smithsonians National Museum of NaturalHistory, is a multi media exploration of the theory that mankind evolved in response to climatechange. At the main entrance, viewers confronted wit a giant graph charting theEarths temperature over the past ten million years, which notes that it is far cooler now than it wasten thousand years ago. Overhead the text reads, HUMANS EVOLVED IN RESPONSE TO ACHANGING WORLD. The message, amplified by the exhibits Web site, is that key humanadaptations evolved in response to environmental instability. Only at the end of the exhibit, under

the headline OUR SURVIVAL CHALLENGE, is it noted that levels of carbon dioxide arehigher now than they have ever been, and that they are projected to increase dramatically in thenext century. No cause is given for this development; no mention is made of any possible roleplayed by fossil fuels. The exhibit makes it seem like a natural continuum. The accompanyingtext says, During the period in which humans evolved, Earths temperature and the amount of

carbon dioxide in the atmosphere fluctuated together. An interactive game in the exhibit suggeststhat humans will continue to adapt to climate change in the future. People may buildunderground cities, developing short, compact bodies or curved spines, so that movingaround in tight spaces will be no problem.

Such ideas uncannily echo the Koch message. The Companys January newsletter toemployees, for instance, argues that fluctuations in the earths climate predate humanity, andconcludes, Since we cannot control Mother Nature, lets figure out how to get along with herchanges. Joseph Romm, a physicist who runs the Web site ClimateProgress.org, is infuriatedwith the Smithsonians presentation. The whole exhibit whitewashes the modern climate issue,he said. I think the Kochs wanted to be seen as some sort of high-minded company, associatedwith the greatest natural-history museum in the country, But the truth is, the exhibit isunderwritten by big time polluters, who are underground funders of action to stop efforts to deal

with this threat to humanity. I think the Smithsonian should have drawn the line.

Mark Twain called willful withholding of vital information a silent lie. Here is an examplefrom the August 24, 2010, issue of a prominent national newspaper the day after United StatesDistrict Judge Royce Lamberth had granted an injunction prohibiting all federal funding ofhuman stem cell research. I found nothing incorrect in the report. The fact that humanembryos are provided by fertility clinics was there. The processing of the embryo including atwhat point the embryo was killed was there. The neglected fact: fertility clinics inevitablyproduce many more embryos than can be implanted and the leftovers are routinely destroyedafter the desired successful pregnancies are completed.

BS detection does not usually require such formal research as described above. Did you ever

wonder why a college graduate is required to have a major field of study? Four years of fullloads of course work is not enough. A subtle benefit of in-depth knowledge of at least onesubject is that it permits a personal check on the reliability of sources such as newspapers andmagazines. If their information in the field in which you are expert is seriously faulty, that isgrounds for not trusting them in an area where you are less well informed. Perhaps it isnoteworthy that Phi Beta Kappa does not consider vocational courses in calculating grade pointaverages for eligibility for election to their honor society. In other words, detailed knowledgein liberal arts and science may contribute more to BS detection than competence in a particular


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vocation. Ignore the rest of this paragraph if you are up on all the old jokes. BS can mean atleast two things. MS is more of the same and PhD is piled higher and deeper.

When I was a child, Charles Lindbergh was rich and famous. Reporters were very anxious toquote him on almost any topic, especially politics. Why was his opinion about matters other

than aviation so highly valued by the public? Even Lindbergh was probably not highlyqualified in aeronautical engineering. So be very careful about the credentials of your sources.Ignore the rest of this paragraph if you are up on all the old jokes. BS can mean at least twothings. MS is more of the same and PhD is piled higher and deeper.

I close with a 200 year old quotation from William Godwin who lived from 1756-1836:

Ignorance and credulity have ever been companions, and have misled and enslavedmankind: philosophy has in all ages endeavored to oppose their progress and to loosen theshackles they had imposed: philosophers have on this account been called unbelievers;unbelievers of what? of the fictions of fancy, of witchcraft, hobgoblins, apparitions,

vampires, fairies, of the influence of stars on human affairs, miracles wrought by the bonesof saints..fortune tellers...with endless variety of folly? These they have disbelievedand despised, but have ever bowed their hoary heads to Truth and Nature.

Addendum. There is a new book that should warrant careful reading: Merchants of Doubt, How ahandful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi

Oreskes and Erik Conway, Bloomsbury 2010 368pp. This book was favorably reviewed in theGuardian for September 3-9, 2010, and is a summary of agnotology from tobacco through StarWars (the strategic Defense Initiative), acid rain, the ozone hole, the fight over second hand

smoke, to the denial of global warming, and to the belated attacks on Rachel Carsonwithoutcalling it agnotology.

John A. Frantz, MD, NASW, April 8, 2008, revised September 2, 2010

A Lesson in Skepticism

A couple of generations ago (1938) a prominent citizen of Monroe was confronted by hisfrantic wife, I have heard on the radio that the Martians are invading. What should wedo? Pearl Guess answered calmly, Turn off the radio. As told by an old timer (Nate Roth)

Mark Twain is even more concise: The only difference between fiction and nonfiction is thatfiction should be completely believable.

agnotology - the science of creating ignorance

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