S&S Dinner Dialogues, with Prof. Jory Weintraub - Science Miscommunication: How and Why Corporations Spin Science to Advance their Agenda, and What We Can Do About It
Event Details
Just as quickly as scientists in the 50s started to uncover links between cigarettes and human disease, tobacco companies started to produce and promote their own versions of “science” to counter medical evidence. Their methods for doing this were so successful that corporations, lobbyists and interest groups have continued to employ this playbook to spin science in ways that advance their agenda, right up through today. In this Dinner Dialogue we’ll explore and discuss how the strategies developed by tobacco companies in the 50s continue to be applied in “controversial” areas of current science, such as climate change, vaccines and even evolution. (Note: Smoking will NOT be allowed at this Dinner Dialogue event, no matter how hard you try to convince us it is safe!)
Videos & Readings:
- Doctors Recommend Smoking 60 Years Ago – YouTube
- Early 1960’s Cigarette Ads – YouTube
- “Merchants of Doubt” trailer – YouTube
- Climate Science Denial Explained: Tactics of Denial – Skeptical Science
Jory Weintraub is the Science Communication Program Director and a Senior Lecturing Fellow with the Duke Initiative for Science & Society.
View All Dinner Dialogue Hosts
Where to meet:
Selected attendees will be notified via email several days in advance of the dinner with details regarding meeting location. All dinners will be within reasonable driving distance to Duke campus.
Science & Society will also provide a shuttle for those unable to arrange transportation to the dinner dialogue location. Shuttles will depart 30 minutes before the scheduled event from the front entrance of the North Building on West Campus. Click here for a map.