Merchants of Doubt Initial Thoughts

My feelings about Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Orestes and Erik Conway differ from that of the previous book. The Sixth Extinction, although dealing with a depressing topic, kept me engaged and wanting to read more. However, so far I find this book a struggle to read. Although the information is interesting, the chapters are long and take much more time to get through. Furthermore, the details of the story seem to repeat themselves from chapter to chapter as we see the same characters up to the same old tricks. Most of the time while reading I just got angry at the misinformation that was being spread to the public. This was especially true of the tobacco chapter which was denying the harm of its product to the consumer.

Although I don't really enjoy reading the book, it does allow for interesting discussion questions. One thing that is present throughout the book are the scientists who are portrayed as "villains." Singer and Sietz are two of the more prominent characters throughout the story that seem to always be against what the "hero" scientists are saying. Although in hindsight, we do know that the "hero" scientists have been correct, it is hard to know exactly what the motivations of the "villains" are. The book does seem to be one-sided in this sense. We can speculate as to why Singer and Sietz act the way they do, like their fear of Communism which was common throughout society in their time, but the book seems to portray them as evil scientists. I have to believe that people do things because they truly think that they are doing the right thing, even if in hindsight it was the wrong thing. Although I did get angry at these scientists constantly throughout the book, I wonder if these feelings were do to the writing as well as the fact that from my "future" perspective that I know they are incorrect in their actions.  I think it would be interesting to get their perspectives on their actions, or how they are portrayed in this book.

One thing I noticed throughout the book was the anti-conservatism or anti-Republican views of the author. Although it may be true that more conservative people hold the anti environmental views, I think this book would alienate more conservative readers even if they do agree with the environmental movement. I noticed that this was the views of one of the reviewers on GoodReads who was offended by the bias against Republicans. I feel like this book would not do a good job of swaying people's views, but rather affirming the views of people who already agree with the environmental movement. Whereas Kolbert was more objective in telling her story, you cannot escape the authors views in  this book.

I am hoping that the second half of the book follows a different format. I feel like I am reading the same thing over and over again with each chapter. Although Kolbert also used a case study approach to her chapters in The Sixth Extinction, I felt like each chapter brought something new to the table. So far this book seems to use a lot of words to just repeat the same message with different situations.