Dr. Naomi Oreskes discusses her book about American business and the free market. (Photo by Sudon Choe.)

Drawing almost 100 people to the Clark Fox Forum in Hillman Hall, Dr. Naomi Oreskes captivated WashU undergraduates, graduate students, and community members alike while discussing her latest book, co-written by Erik Conway, “The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loath Government and Love the Free Market.” 

Oreskes is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. She began her professional training as a geologist, but her research has brought her to the role that politics play in science.

WashU professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary sciences Michael Wysession invited Oreskes to speak as part of the endowed William C. Ferguson lecture series. This series was paused during the pandemic, and is only now returning with this lecture. Wysession had been working with Oreskes to schedule a lecture six years ago, but the lockdown prevented it from happening.

Wysession was very excited to have the opportunity to get to know Oreskes through this lecture series. He even rescheduled one of his classes to encourage students to attend, hoping the WashU community would be similarly impacted.

Wysession said that reading Orsekes’ earlier book “Merchants of Doubt” made him think deeply about the meaning of his own scientific research, and helped him think about how he can use his experience to make an impact.

“I need to be responsible for the benefits that society has given me, and the privilege of being able to have a job where I get paid to learn,” Wysession said. “In my case, this has meant work with earth science literacy, science education and national education standards.”

Oreskes was inspired to write “Merchants of Doubt” after meeting Conway at an academic conference. They had both observed scientific findings related to research being attacked, and decided to co-author a paper that eventually became the book. It discusses how the same people behind climate change propaganda were also behind Big Tobacco propaganda.

“We looked at a series of topics where people had challenged the scientific evidence culminating in climate change, showing that the attack on climate science was not out of the blue and that there had been a pattern of attacking science and scientists related to the ozone hole, acid rain, the harms of tobacco, and the harms of pesticides,” Oreskes said. “We thought that was pretty suspicious, so we started digging in.”

They concluded that the politics obscuring scientific truth were a result of market fundamentalism ideology — a belief that the market should be unregulated by the government and that this freedom is inseparable from other first amendment freedoms. 

“We got interested in where this ideology had come from, and we discovered a much bigger, much more complicated, much more depressing story than we ever imagined,” Oreskes said. “[There’s] this really long history of business interests in the United States trying to turn us against the government, actively trying to persuade us that the government is our enemy.”

Her argument is that American people have been taught to accept Howard Pew’s “indivisibility thesis,” the idea that freedom of speech, press, religion, and enterprise are inseparable. Oreskes asserts that Americans have learned to think that allowing the government to regulate business might set precedent for us losing those other freedoms. 

Oreskes and Conway have written three books together, including a speculative fiction novella titled “The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future” about what would happen if all of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) worst case scenarios became true, in addition to their nonfiction works, “Merchants of Doubt” and “The Big Myth.” 

Some students like senior Jeremy Jacobson had already heard of Oreskes work, and were excited to hear that she would be coming to speak on campus.

“I read part of her previous book, “Merchants of Doubt,” so I was interested to hear about how this work expanded on it,” he said.

Senior Ethan McCormick decided to attend because he wants to attend more events before graduating. 

“With the current state of the world, both economically and politically, [her work] just seems super relevant,” McCormick said. “At this point, anyone who reads the news has been exposed to this fugazi approach of certain scientists to their work, and discrediting other individuals.”

In the same vein, several of Wysession’s students expressed gratitude towards Oreskes for being openly critical of political propaganda and willing to hold her colleagues accountable. 

“You don’t really hear University speakers always speaking so openly in front of powerful figures in our institution that don’t necessarily agree,” sophomore Margo Crothers said.