Market fundamentalism drives science denial

My review of The Big Myth is out

This week, I have a book review out of The Big Myth by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

More than 10 years ago, Oreskes and Conway wrote a landmark book called Merchants of Doubt that explained how highly credentialed scientists, led by Fred Seitz and Fred Singer, used their credentials in physics to position themselves as experts on everything. Seitz et al. then proceeded to cast doubt on all science that implied a need for government regulation - tobacco, acid rain, ozone, climate change — not through scientific papers but through op-eds and white papers from conservative think tanks. Last fall, I taught a course for first-year undergraduates from Merchants that the students loved.

As I said in the review, Merchants tells us the how of science denial, but The Big Myth tells us the why. It is a meticulously researched tour of the last 100 years and how corporations and conservative operatives have made market fundamentalism into American dogma. Examples of how they did this are in the review, but it is a huge, sweeping book filled with eye-opening stories.

Speaking of stories, I talked about this stuff on Story in the Public Square, which is a PBS program hosted by two great folks from Rhode Island. Here’s the video: