David Michaels, PhD, a professor of environmental and occupational health at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, testified February 26 on Capitol Hill about how industries mislead the public about health and environmental risks. The event was held by the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, as part of a month-long series of hearings on climate change held by several congressional committees.
Michaels spoke about how the fossil fuel industry employs various tactics used by the tobacco industry and others, to misinform the public about dangers associated with climate change. In his testimony, he provided examples of previous cases of disinformation campaigns, including those related to opioid use, brain injuries in professional athletes and tobacco use.
“These disinformation campaigns are public relations disguised as science,” Michaels said in his testimony. “The scientific process is designed to encourage disagreement and debate—but it requires that participants contribute to those debates in good faith. Instead, each industry’s hired guns deliberately manufacture and magnify doubt in order to misinform policymakers and the public – with disastrous consequences for our collective well-being.”
Michaels, who is the former Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the Obama Administration, is considered one of the top experts on campaigns to mislead the American public. In 2008, he wrote a book called “Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health” on how various industries use similar tactics to manufacture uncertainty about scientific evidence, and is expecting a second book on the subject “The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception” to be published in early 2020.
Michaels’ full testimony can be read here and his oral statement can be watched here.