Merchants of Doubt

by

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

Dixy Lee Ray was a zoologist who served as the chair of the Atomic Energy Commission during the Nixon administration and later became the governor of Washington from 1977 to 1981. She was a firm anti-communist and free market fundamentalist and, after retirement, dedicated her time to fighting environmentalism. Most notably, she spread doubt about the dangers of ozone depletion and DDT in her 1990 book Trashing the Planet. While her writings were completely at odds with working scientists’ actual research findings, they gave an air of legitimacy to the contrarian positions of people like Steven Milloy and Fred Singer.

Dixy Lee Ray Quotes in Merchants of Doubt

The Merchants of Doubt quotes below are all either spoken by Dixy Lee Ray or refer to Dixy Lee Ray. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Science, Trust, and Public Policy Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5 Quotes

Scientists are confident they know bad science when they see it. It’s science that is obviously fraudulent—when data have been invented, fudged, or manipulated. Bad science is where data have been cherry-picked—when some data have been deliberately left out—or it’s impossible for the reader to understand the steps that were taken to produce or analyze the data. It is a set of claims that can’t be tested, claims that are based on samples that are too small, and claims that don’t follow from the evidence provided. And science is bad—or at least weak—when proponents of a position jump to conclusions on insufficient or inconsistent data.

Related Characters: Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway (speaker), S. Fred Singer, Frederick Seitz, Dixy Lee Ray, Sherwood Rowland
Page Number: 153-4
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

So Sri Lanka didn’t stop using DDT because of what the United States did, or for any other reason. DDT stopped working, but they kept using it anyway. We can surmise why: since DDT had appeared to work at first, officials were reluctant to give it up, even as malaria became resurgent. It took a long time for people to admit defeat—to accept that tiny mosquitoes were in their own way stronger than us. As a WHO committee concluded in 1976, “It is finally becoming acknowledged that resistance is probably the biggest single obstacle in the struggle against vector-borne disease and is mainly responsible for preventing successful malaria eradication in many countries.”

Related Characters: Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway (speaker), Rachel Carson, Dixy Lee Ray
Related Symbols: Silent Spring
Page Number: 231
Explanation and Analysis:
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Merchants of Doubt PDF

Dixy Lee Ray Quotes in Merchants of Doubt

The Merchants of Doubt quotes below are all either spoken by Dixy Lee Ray or refer to Dixy Lee Ray. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Science, Trust, and Public Policy Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5 Quotes

Scientists are confident they know bad science when they see it. It’s science that is obviously fraudulent—when data have been invented, fudged, or manipulated. Bad science is where data have been cherry-picked—when some data have been deliberately left out—or it’s impossible for the reader to understand the steps that were taken to produce or analyze the data. It is a set of claims that can’t be tested, claims that are based on samples that are too small, and claims that don’t follow from the evidence provided. And science is bad—or at least weak—when proponents of a position jump to conclusions on insufficient or inconsistent data.

Related Characters: Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway (speaker), S. Fred Singer, Frederick Seitz, Dixy Lee Ray, Sherwood Rowland
Page Number: 153-4
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

So Sri Lanka didn’t stop using DDT because of what the United States did, or for any other reason. DDT stopped working, but they kept using it anyway. We can surmise why: since DDT had appeared to work at first, officials were reluctant to give it up, even as malaria became resurgent. It took a long time for people to admit defeat—to accept that tiny mosquitoes were in their own way stronger than us. As a WHO committee concluded in 1976, “It is finally becoming acknowledged that resistance is probably the biggest single obstacle in the struggle against vector-borne disease and is mainly responsible for preventing successful malaria eradication in many countries.”

Related Characters: Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway (speaker), Rachel Carson, Dixy Lee Ray
Related Symbols: Silent Spring
Page Number: 231
Explanation and Analysis: