Thursday March 15
Coffee Party Radio Special:
Eric Byler talks to Prof. Robert Proctor about the
Pioneers of Science Denial and the Human Cost of Misinformation
Thursday, Mar 15, 2012 - 5:30 pm Eastern Time (2:30 pm PT)
CLICK HERE to listen live | Call (646) 929-2495 to join the conversation
by Eric Yao
A recent exposé of the corporate funded Heartland Institute's secret documents revealed an elaborate plan to purposefully manipulate K-12 curriculum, with efforts to inject doubt about climate change into young students and ensure that paralysis on clean energy technology and climate change legislation continues for another generation. This exemplifies how far some international profiteering interests will go to systematically misinform the American public.
The strategy of misinformation includes:
- Assert there are many other causes of the problem
- Claim there is no consensus among scientists
- Downplay the validity of the science in any case
- Setup lobbying organizations that masquerade as a research institutes
- Inject polarization and misinformation into the national discourse using friends in elected office and in the One Percent Media
People fighting the One Percent agenda today may not realize this, but these tactics were pioneered by the tobacco industry. Sixty years ago, the tobacco industry began protecting its profits by penetrating academia, and undermining science in the very same way. Our guest on Thursday's special presentation of Coffee Party Radio will be Robert Proctor, Professor of History at Stanford University. [MORE]
