Fake News: Disinformation, Deception, and Magical Thinking Over Time

Cigarettes: Advertising, Fake News and Fighting Science Conclusions and Questions

The tobacco industry in the United States has had a long and successful history of influencing public perception of cigarettes, using both overt and covert methods. Advertising isn't what we would normally consider fake news, but effective advertising exploits trends in society and manipulate our emotions in ways we are often unconscious of. The industry used it to great effect to help reinforce an attitude already present in some women that cigarette smoking was a way to signal independence, equality with men and modernity. The industry effectively exploited this impulse and sold cigarettes as a social statement women could make.

Attempts to sell are sometimes more hidden. Early pioneers in the industry used public relation stunts to help enforce this view of smoking and also to make smoking in public by women an acceptable practice. Seemingly real public events can actually be easily manufactured by those seeking to influence the public. The cigarette advertiser Edward Bernays believed subtle forms of marketing, not obvious advertising, was more effective because in it people have the illusion that they are freely deciding to do something. 

Beyond advertising and publicity stunts, they used movies and television to create a sense of glamour around smoking. They paid to put cigarettes in movies and put movie stars on the payroll to publicly smoke a particular brand of cigarette. In people's minds this helped make cigarettes synonymous with wealth and celebrity.  While some rules have been put in place to discourage the types of paid product cigarettes are still a common sight in movies and streaming content. All these efforts come together to create an emotional response in some people to create a desire to smoke. 

There was nothing illegal about advertising or using less straightforward methods to sell a legal product. People did not need to be forced to smoke, many people saw it as a pleasurable activity. But when scientific evidence began to overwhelmingly show a link between smoking and cancer, tobacco industry efforts took a much more sinister turn. In the face of falling sales, executives decided to work together to fight the acceptance of the science in the public. This is where a more sinister attempt to shape public perception started, and it continued long after even industry executives, paid researchers, and advertisers knew that their product was a cause of cancer and other diseases.

The tactics they deployed against science research are still in use today. When evidence seems to become overwhelming on one side of a question, a winning strategy is to cast doubt on that research. Only a few skeptical voices are needed to do this, and they may be researchers in entirely different fields (for example, a statistician doing medical research). This is enough to frame a "controversy" where one does not exist, causing laypeople to distrust what they read or hear about scientific research. If the experts cannot agree, why should they adopt a finding as worthy of acceptance?

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