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Sixty years ago this week, author Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking book, Silent Spring. Carson claimed that pesticides, especially his DDT, were polluting people and the environment. And that the chemical industry was spreading disinformation to profit from this disaster. “Silent Spring” influenced the modern environmental movement, and in 1972 he led to the ban on DDT.

Today, thanks to a new era of industry disinformation, DDT is back.

Elena Konis argues that the current science denial movement, led by anti-vaxers, climate change deniers and Covid-19 skeptics, has its roots in the efforts of industry and right-wing think tanks to question science doing. Connis is a professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of “Vaccine Nation” and the new book “How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT.”

“Back in the 1950s, chemical companies hired these PR firms to basically defend their products and use them now as playbooks on how to undermine public trust in evidence that their products can harm. I started outlining what is known,” Connis said. In Vermont Conversation. “This includes things like questioning scientists who talk about the dangers of certain chemicals or technologies. This includes encouraging you to cover your aspects of the article. It also includes stating scientific arguments in a vacuum even though the scientific consensus applies almost entirely to a particular aspect of the issue. It includes creating and making it look like the discussion is important.”

The result is a situation where people say, “Trust this or reject it.” Take ivermectin, don’t wear a mask, whatever it is… we’ve lost sight of the fact that science is a process. It’s about the experiment. It’s about asking questions about the world we live in, coming up with answers that make sense in the moment, and adjusting those answers as the moment and circumstances change.

“We have gone from a country that seems to trust science and scientific institutions to one where we are encouraged to question everything until we can easily find the evidence and justification we need. ” said Conis.

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