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Documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner doesn’t go in front of the camera to make a point like Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11, Occupy Los Angeles) or Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold). But he’s no less of a passionate social activist, with our health and that of the environment, two of his chief concerns. That passion and a touch of satirical humor driveMerchants of Doubt, a look at pundits-for-hire and Kenner’s first theatrical release since 2008’s Oscar-nominated peek behind the veil of America’s corporate-controlled food industry, Food, Inc.
Based on the 2011 book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, the film opened in New York City in March but is opening elsewhere throughout this month, May and June. Focusing on how industries shape and sabotage scientific research for political gain, the film covers much-less-visual territory than the rolling fields and livestock of Food, Inc. Kenner and his team use onscreen graphics and clever analogies to a magician’s tricks to enliven what otherwise might be a talking-head movie about some dry subject matter (flame-retardant chemicals, climate change). Magician Jamy Ian Swiss, with his card tricks and spade-and-clover cufflinks, opens the film as a colorful, down-to-earth guide and returns throughout with insight about the psychology of illusions.
But the film’s spine belongs to Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University, and Stanton Glantz, an American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professor of Tobacco Control. Glantz, a researcher on the effects of secondhand smoke, is the keeper of a treasure trove of internal tobacco-company documents that have offered a playbook on positive spin to other industries. As Glantz explains, the research these companies did in the 1950s showed that smoking caused cancer, but for decades, they cast doubt on the science and shifted the debate to issues such as personal freedom for the sake of corporate success.
Linking to what’s called “the Big Tobacco playbook” provides structure that creates genuine shock in the reveals, particularly in the segments following Chicago Tribune reporters Patricia Callahan and Sam Roe and their award-winning series on toxic flame-retardant chemicals. As interviews, the reporters are a lively pair, as are Marc Morano, executive director of the climate-change skeptic site ClimateDepot.com (“I’m not a scientist, although I do play one on TV occasionally,” he says), and Michael Shermer, head of the Skeptics Society and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine. “Some people call us debunkers, but let’s face it: There’s a lot of bunk that need to be debunked,” Shermer says.
Read more of my review here at Word and Film.