astroturf
oracknows | September 8, 2017As a medical blogger with a skeptical bent and a rather aggressive proclivity towards defending science-based medicine, I generally like STAT News. Sure, it's occasionally screwed up royally (e.g., its credulous false balance reporting on a patient of cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski named Neil Fachon), but in general it's usually a good source of medical news and analysis. No publication is perfect, of course, but STATNews is generally better than average, and I appreciate that.
That's why I was disappointed to see how thoroughly a pharma-backed astroturf group whose mission is to loosen…
denialism | March 9, 2017The American Council on Science and Health recently got some exposure on twitter, then a little too much exposure, after publishing this highly problematic (and hysterically bad) op-ed/infographic on twitter and on their site.
This opinion piece, presented as if there is some method or objective analysis, purports to show which are the best and worst science news sites. But this immediately started to fall apart on the most cursory inspection. First of all, notice the x-axis, it's clearly some kind of subjective assessment, and it immediately fails to be credible as the New York Times is…
oracknows | February 18, 2015
Ever since the Disneyland measles outbreak hit high gear last month and permeated the national consciousness, the antivaccine movement has, justifiably, been on the defensive. We've been treated to the spectacle of a truly despicable cardiologist spewing antivaccine nonsense with an added dollop of contempt for parents of children with cancer who are worried about the degradation of herd immunity by non-vaccinating parents driving vaccine rates down, leading to pockets of low vaccine uptake. We've had antivaccinationists likening vaccine mandates to human trafficking and rape. Then, of…
tlambert | November 24, 2009Gavin Schmidt has done a wonderful job at RealClimate patiently explaining the context of the stolen emails. He's made it perfectly clear that the claims of scientific malpractice are without foundation. He must be doing a really good job, because the Competitive Enterprise Institute intends to sue him.
[CEI seeks documents] relating to the content, importance, or propriety of workday-hour posts or entries by GISS/NASA employee Gavin A. Schmidt on the weblog or "blog" RealClimate, which is owned by the advocacy Environmental Media Services and was started as an effort to defend the debunked…
tlambert | February 19, 2008Thanks to the Tobacco documents we've learned how tobacco companies have secretly funded astroturf organizations like junkscience.com, secretly paid for think tanks to run political campaigns for them, and even created their own astroturf scientific journal. The latest pile of astoturf to be uncovered is detailed in a new paper by Anne Landman, Daniel Cortese and Stanton Glantz:
'The multinational tobacco companies responded to arguments about the social costs of smoking and hazards of secondhand smoke by quietly implementing the Social Costs/Social Values project (1979-1989), which relied…
tlambert | September 21, 2007Jim Giles, who broke the story of how for-profit publishers had hired Eric Dezenhall to run a PR campaign against Open Access, has a post at the New Scientist Science News blog, where he posts a copy of Dezenhall's proposal. It always nice to see more of the inner workings of the astroturf industry:
4 Enlist Think Tank Support
Seek studies, white papers and public commentary from think tanks that may quantify the risks, the societal price tag of public access. Groups that may be considered include the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings, Cato, Competitive Enterpise Institute and…
tlambert | August 27, 2007No really! That's the argument. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
In January I wrote how for-profit publishers had hired an infamous PR firm to run a campaign against open access publishing. They've now produced an organization called PRISM (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine!) which is campaigning against Open Access. Coturnix has a comprehensive roundup of the reaction. I thought I'd look at one of the articles PRISM offers in support of their case. Alan Caruba -- "Open Access" or Covert Propaganda? who writes:
In his book, "State of Fear", author Michael…
tlambert | May 30, 2007In 1995, several think tanks mounted vitrolic attacks on the
title="Food and Drug Administration">
href="http://www.fda.gov/">FDA using expensive radio,
television and print ads. In an article in the Los Angeles
Times Myron Levin
href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/yqd47d00">wrote:
Although the attacks do not mention tobacco, the industry is a major
beneficiary. By arguing that the FDA has neglected its basic mission,
the critics have made a case against the agency embarking on new
initiatives, such as tobacco control...
Some of the FDA attackers -- including the Washington…
tlambert | January 27, 2007revere reports
The for-profit publishers don't like BMC or Public Library of Science (PLoS) or any of the other open access publishers and are determined to crush them. So they hired the PR firm of Eric Dezenhall, who also worked for convicted Enron execs and others of that ilk, to do "media messaging." We know this because someone on the inside squealed and provided emails and memos to Nature who spilled the beans in this news article.
When you want to attack scientists, who you gonna call?
Dezenhall also recommended joining forces with groups that may be ideologically opposed to…
tlambert | October 13, 2006Jim Hoggan has the details on a brand new Canadian astroturf group, the Natural Resources Stewardship Project. The chairman is none another than Tim Ball, who is still puffing up his resume. The executive director is Tom Harris, whose other job is at a PR firm, High Park Group that works for the Kyoto-opposing Canadian Electricity Association.
The NSRP has a nicely done site -- looks like there's some money behind them.
tlambert | October 6, 2006Via Sarah Pullman, a handy guide to the history and practice of Canadian Astroturf.
tlambert | October 5, 2006Last year I wrote:
The Australian Environmental Foundation is a brand new environmental organization. Unfortunately they have chosen a very similar name to the long established Australian Conservation Foundation, so similar that the ACF has sued for trademark infringement. Probably the best way to keep them apart is to remember that the Australian Conservation Foundation is a grass roots organization with a goal of preserving forests, while the Australian Environmental Foundation is an astroturf organization with a goal of preserving logging companies.
The AEF has now handed out its first…
tlambert | August 7, 2005Barista has more on the history of Spiked. It seems that they have set up another astroturf operation called "Sense about Science", chaired by Dick Taverne.
tlambert | June 13, 2005The Australian Environmental Foundation is a brand new environmental
organization. Unfortunately they have chosen a very similar name to
the long established Australian Conservation
Foundation, so similar that the ACF has sued for trademark infringement. Probably
the best way to keep them apart is to remember that the Australian
Conservation Foundation is a grass roots organization with a goal of
preserving forests, while the Australian Environmental Foundation is
an astroturf organization with a goal of preserving logging companies.
The AEF's spokesperson is Kersten Gentle, Victorian State…
tlambert | April 19, 2005 A new organization Climatechangeissues.com has sprung into existence in Australia to
support solutions to the unresolved issues of climate change which are based on sound science, use market mechanisms and trade liberalisation as a key driver of economic growth and poverty reduction.
They are funded by
organizations, individuals, companies and foundations who support a balanced approach to public policy debate and who encourage reliance on markets to improve public welfare, raise standards of living and achieve sustainable development.
Their website contains the usual collection of…
tlambert | February 28, 2005 I wrote earlier about how tobacco company documents, released as apart of the Tobacco Settlement Agreement proved that Philip Morris created junkscience.com to argue that environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) was harmless. Those documents also tell the story of how they set up a scientific journal controlled by tobacco-friendly editors so that research finding that ETS was harmless could be published. In 1987 Philip Morris cam up with a plan (details in this document) to:
Establish a genuine scientific journal on indoor air quality. The journal could be…
tlambert | November 28, 2004 The Lavoisier group is an Australian astroturf operation. John Quiggin observed that:
This body is devoted to the proposition that basic principles of physics, discovered by among others, the famous French scientist Antoine Lavoisier, cease to apply when they come into conflict with the interests of the Australian coal industry.
Melissa Fyfe has an interesting profile in The Age on the Lavoisier group. Some extracts:
At 401 Collins Street on Monday night, 50 men gathered in a room of plush green carpet, pottery and antique lights to launch a book about the science…
tlambert | October 13, 2004 The grandly named EnviroTruth web site has section that purports to debunk "myths" about climate change. The "myths" include the usual false claims such as satellite measurements don't show warming, but "myth" number 11 is pretty funny.
Here's "myth" 11:
Those Who Question Whether Human Activity Contributes in Any Significant Fashion to Climate Change are Secretly Funded by Coal, Oil, Gas and Other "Smokestack" Industries.'
Brandon MacGillis of Ozone Action, a Washington DC-based public interest group, refers to global warming doubters as "part of a handful of skeptics, mostly coal…
tlambert | May 28, 2004 Last year I wrote about how Tech Central Station was an astroturf operation, drafted by a public relations company to provide supposedly independent support for the PR companies clients. The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute (ADTI) is another astroturf operation.
As part of the Tobacco Settlement Agreement Philip Morris (PM) agreed to release millions of documents about their operations. These detail how ADTI was hired by PM to conduct a public relations campaign against the Clinton health plan in 1994. ADTI provided PM with regular progress reports to prove…
tlambert | March 5, 2004 Andrew Wakefield published a study linking immunization injections with autism. The Lancet now says that it should never have been published because of a "fatal conflict of interest". At the time Wakefield was being paid to collect evidence to support possible compensation claims. Ten of his coauthors have issued a retraction, though Wakefield has refused. I think it was unethical for Wakefield to conceal his conflict of interest.
George Ricaurte published a study alleging that MDMA (Ecstasy) causes brain damage. It turns out that he actually used a different drug in his experiments.…