What Public Health Practitioners Need to Know About Unhealthy Industry Tactics

If you are working to improve public health and the environment, you need to know what your opponents are up to. Provided below is a quick guide to their tactics, which I have assembled as a summary from three sources: Oreskes and Conway’s Merchants of Doubt (reviewed in this issue),¹ Wiist’s “The Corporate Playbook, Health, and Democracy: The Snack Food and Beverage Industry’s Tactics in Context,”² and Freudenberg’s Lethal but Legal,³ reviewed in a previous issue of AJPH.⁴

1. ATTACK LEGITIMATE SCIENCE

• Accuse science of deception, calling it “junk science” or “bad science,” claiming science is manipulated to fulfill a political agenda.

• Attack the scientific institutions and government agencies perceived to be acting against corporate interests.

• Insist that the science is uncertain by:

  • ○Claiming we don’t know what’s causing it, and more research is needed.
  • ○Withholding any data unfavorable to the corporate product.
  • ○Using information in a misleading way; cherry-picking by using facts that are true but irrelevant.

• Insist that there are many causes to a health or environmental problem, and that addressing just one of them will have minimal impact.

• Exaggerate the uncertainty inherent in any scientific endeavor to undermine the status of established scientific knowledge.

• Use corporate-funded studies.

  • ○Fund researchers sympathetic to corporate causes or products.

2. ATTACK AND INTIMIDATE THE SCIENTISTS

• Create doubt by attacking the authenticity and integrity of the author.

  • ○Attack the credibility of the messenger; allege ulterior motives.
  • ○Have “attack dogs” intimidate opponents.
  • ○Smear the enemy—for example, by calling environmentalists “watermelons” (green on the outside and red on the inside), use hatred and fear of communism to transfer animosity to the environmental movement.
  • ○Threaten to sue—or actually sue—scientists and advocates but avoid or delay hearings of the facts.
  • ○Make accusations using the rhetoric of political suppression, maintaining the victimhood of corporations.

• Infiltrate scientific groups and monitor prominent scientists.

• Create enough doubt to forestall litigation and regulation.

  • ○Constantly repeat the doubt, using surrogates or “message force multipliers.”
  • ○Use pejorative terms repeatedly—“excessive” regulation, “over” regulation, “unnecessary” regulation, “Nanny state,” “health Nazis”—to promote fear and disdain.
  • ○Always demand more proof.

• Alternatively, aim for self-regulation instead of regulation; introduce corporate voluntary codes to forestall government regulation.

3. CREATE ARMS-LENGTH FRONT ORGANIZATIONS

• Create front groups.

• Run projects though front groups (“information laundering”)—especially law firms, because they can avoid scrutiny because of attorney–client privilege.

• Create research institutes that can create their own scientific studies.

  • ○Sponsor conferences and workshops.
  • ○Create “independent” newsletters, magazines, and journals (not subject to peer review).
  • ○Publish findings selectively.
  • ○Manipulate research funding, design, and authorship.
  • ○Distribute materials—targeted pamphlets and booklets, social media.
  • ○Use public opinion polling.

4. MANUFACTURE FALSE DEBATE AND INSIST ON BALANCE

• Create the impression of a controversy.

  • ○Maintain the controversy, keep the debate alive.
  • ○Create false dichotomies.

• Insist that responsible journalists cover both sides of the argument equally.

  • ○Demand balance, relying on the Fairness Doctrine.

• Divert attention from harmful products.

  • ○Focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR).
  • ○Set up CSR foundations; find small-scale, apparently well-meaning community activities.
  • ○Focus on other issues as the problem (e.g., physical activity instead of diet).

5. FRAME KEY ISSUES IN HIGHLY CREATIVE WAYS

• Insist that the problem is very complex, thus implying it can’t have a simple solution, if any.

• Insist it is premature to suggest remedies.

• Constantly repeat that technological advances will obviate the need for regulations and that the problem can be solved only through the marketplace.

• Insist on personal or parental responsibility and insist that government should have no role in influencing individual health behaviors.

• Use colorful imagery (e.g., “a billion dollar solution to a million dollar problem”); use words like “speculative,” “oversimplified,” “premature,” and “unbalanced.”

• Use the creation of fear as a tool for change of policy.

• Diminish the severity of the problem while giving some ground.

• Admit that it is a serious problem, but not a life-threatening one.

• Admit that there may be a problem, but it is less severe than everyone says.

• Argue that the problem is less severe than other problems—those should be the priority.

• Argue that the cost to fix the problem is too high.

• Argue that the benefits of the problem haven’t been considered.

• Argue that other options haven’t been considered.

• Understand and use the power of language—the other side’s language is filled with uncertainties, so make sure yours is certain.

6. FUND INDUSTRY DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS

• Run industry disinformation campaigns using new and creative forms.

  • ○Pay and co-opt celebrities and sympathetic expert witnesses.
  • ○Sponsor conferences to challenge scientific consensus.
  • ○Align with other issues—employment discrimination, antitax groups.

7. INFLUENCE THE POLITICAL AGENDA

• Donate to political parties across the political spectrum.

• Get representatives from unhealthy industries around the policy table, for guideline development or standard setting.

• Invest heavily in paid lobbyists.

• Get “friends” in important and influential government roles—for example, by targeted hiring of politicians, their advisers, or senior administration officials once they leave office.

• Aim to reduce government budgets for regulatory or scientific or policy activities against the corporate interest.