Junkyard dogs of science: … Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber expose the… dirty war waged by big business against environmental regulation

New Internationalist, July, 1999 by Sheldon Rampton, John Stauber

WHEN Hurricane Mitch slammed into Central America in late October of last year, some people sat down and wrote checks to disaster-relief organizations. Others sat down and wrote position papers.

Measured in terms of the death toll, Mitch was the region's worst natural disaster in 218 years. As the hurricane squatted over Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador, it dumped some 40 cubic kilometers of water-three-quarters of a normal year's rainfall-in the space of two days. The result was like a tidal wave on land. Flash floods filled rivers with hundreds of times their normal flow. A wall of water swept through the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, destroying whole streets in a matter of minutes. Dams burst. Bridges and highways were swept away.

It was only natural to wonder if global warming was to blame for the disaster. `This was perhaps what is becoming a typical disaster in today's world of El Ninos and global climate change,' observed J Brian Atwood, head of the US Agency for International Development, which coordinated relief activities. Speaking to CBS News, he called the hurricane `a classic greenhouse effect'.

For Patrick J Michaels, people like Atwood are part of the problem. Michaels, a professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, penned an article titled `Mitch - That Son of a Gun'. He attacked Atwood's remarks as `White House huckstering... If there's any possible way to conflate human suffering with global warming, the Clinton administration will do so... Rumors persist that Vice President Gore has been advised to make global warming a central theme of his presidential run in 2000. Threatening hundreds of thousands with imminent drowning unless they vote for him is a crude but probably effective trick.'

Michaels' commentary was printed in the Washington Times and the Journal of Commerce. Rewritten as local editorials, it appeared in newspapers as far apart as the Wisconsin State Journal and the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. `Just how stupid does the Clinton administration think we are?' asked the version that appeared in the Tribune-Eagle.

Stupid enough, apparently, that none of these outlets bothered to check Michaels' credentials. If they had, they would have found that Michaels is part of a small but vocal minority of industry-funded climatologists who dispute the mounting evidence which suggests that global warming is a consequence of modern industrial activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels. By his own account, Michaels has received more than $165,000 in funding from fuel companies, including funding for a non-peer-reviewed journal he edits called World Climate Change. He has served as a paid expert witness for utilities in lawsuits, appears on television and radio and testifies before government bodies. At the time Hurricane Mitch struck, he was also a `senior fellow' at the Cato Institute, a right-wing, industry-funded think-tank that campaigns against `unnecessary' and `harmful' environmental regulations.

Third-party technique

The use of scientists as spokespersons for corporate interests is an example of a public-relations strategy known within the trade as `the third party technique'. Merrill Rose, Executive Vice-President of the public-relations firm Porter/Novelli, sums it up succinctly: `Put your words in someone else's mouth.' Remember the TV commercials with actors in lab coats pretending to be doctors and claiming that nine out of ten of their colleagues prefer a specific brand of aspirin? With commercials you are on your guard. But put the message in the mouth of someone like Patrick Michaels and you have a `real scientist' speaking. The commercial interests behind the message are much better disguised.

How effective is this strategy? According to a survey commissioned by Porter/Novelli, 89 per cent of respondents consider `independent experts' a `very or somewhat believable source of information during a time of corporate crisis'. Sometimes the technique is used to spread doubt about a product's hazards; sometimes it is used to hype or exaggerate benefits. Pharmaceutical companies use it to create a positive `buzz' around their products.

PR Week magazine describes a campaign by the Ogilvy firm to help its client, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, hype an allergy medication called Zyrtec. Ogilvy cultivated a partnership with a third party, the National Allergy Bureau (NAB is supported by a grant from Pfizer) to add credibility to its aggressive spring allergy campaign. The NAB distributed a press announcement on the impact El Nino would have. Video and radio news releases and a community news feature all highlighted the El Nino-allergy connection. The NAB hotline (800-9-POLLEN) in the messages helped drive consumers to their phones, where they received branded-product information on request. Media contacts were encouraged to mention Zyrtec in allergy stories. The campaign enticed reporters to revisit the topic of allergies with a timely angle. Media coverage was estimated at almost 100 million `audience impressions'. The El Nino theme produced numerous top-tier placements in USA Today, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Boston Globe. The video-news release, done by Medialink, secured TV coverage that included a segment on network-wide Dateline NBC.