OPINION:
Recently, I had the displeasure of seeing the new documentary titled “Merchants of Doubt.” The film’s argument is the same as virtually every other left-wing schlockumentary that pops up on Netflix these days: Evil corporate interests are standing against positive social change.
On a purely theatrical basis, the film is a flop. It can’t decide whether it’s an expose on how corporations prevent regulation, a profile of the Washington D.C. public relations world, or a sequel to “An Inconvenient Truth.” It tries to be all three but ends up being none. Save your money; you’ve seen this movie before.
The film’s one-sided message, which equates a conservative approach to policy reform with a handful of notorious examples of corporate malfeasance, demands a larger defense of the role that skepticism plays in today’s public policy arena.
History has shown that skepticism can be just as important to human well-being as activism. For instance, “Merchants” highlights my critique of the “food police” for chasing after fatty foods. But what it didn’t mention was that there was good reason to doubt the perceived scientific consensus on saturated fat consumption used to justify new taxes and regulations.
We were vindicated last year when a meta-analysis of 72 of the best available studies examining the relationship between saturated fat and health problems published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found no evidence of a link. In fact, new research increasingly suggests that fat consumption is healthy.
This is just one of many incidences in recent history where skepticism and doubt in the face of activism has been called for. Remember the alarmism around mercury in tuna? My firm was again doubtful. We were proven correct when the Food and Drug Administration recently suggested the mercury scare was overblown and called for pregnant women to consume more tuna for its health benefits.
What about the claims that our country was facing an obesity epidemic? We publicly doubted the validity of the Center for Disease Control’s 2004 figures claiming that obesity caused 400,000 deaths every year. We had reason to doubt the CDC’s methodology. An ensuing study by the CDC and National Institutes of Health researchers published in 2005 put the figure much lower at 26,000 deaths per year.
Or MADD’s push to eliminate any moderate level of drinking before driving? We doubted their statistics and mission. Even MADD’s founder, Candy Lightner, later questioned the organization’s goals, which had “become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned.”
The film’s oversight of such instances where doubt has been useful suggests that its message is more of a partisan appeal than an unvarnished look at public policy reform — shocker. This is especially ironic given that one of the film’s major themes is a call for the separation of partisan politics and science. Perhaps if it heeded its own advice, it could have appealed to a broader audience and improved on its meager takings at the box office.
Hypocrisy characterizes the film in other ways as well. Take the cherry-picked issues it chooses to cover in which only the right-wing receives scrutiny. No mention is made of the chronic misinformation that left-wing activists have spread on a variety of issues backed by a scientific consensus, such as the ironclad safety of genetically enhanced foods and bisphenol-A. Doubt cuts both ways, and activists have a long history of backing alarmist issues that make the front page one day and disappear from public view the next.
A truly balanced discussion of the issue would highlight how checks and balances to the populist passions of the day are a fundamental component of public policy. Unfortunately, that’s not the movie this director set out to make. Still, I’m willing to give him another chance: I’d happily pay money to see a sequel highlighting the repeated, unfounded alarmism of scientists, politicians and activists. Call it “Merchants of Fear.”
• Richard Berman is president of Berman and Co., a Washington public affairs firm.
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