The Playbook: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make a Killing in the Corporate World

JENNIFER JACQUET is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and director of XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement at New York University. The author of Is Shame Necessary?, she lives in New York City

"Science is so powerful that the powerful want to control it. From the author of Is Shame Necessary?, comes a biting satire of the techniques used by the corporate world to obfuscate and deny scientific truths. Taking the form of a corporate meeting agenda, The Playbook highlights the tactics used by the business elite to contradict climate change, ignore health risks, and undermine worker safety. The Playbook is a caustic handbook for tobacco, oil, and pharmaceutical company executives-epistolary non-fiction-advising whom to hire, how to recruit experts, how to obfuscate, and how to relentlessly and effectively challenge the threat of science, policy, reporters, and activists. Jacquet likens the machinery of deception and delays to a casino, with its deliberative architecture and design-the dimmed chandeliers, the comfortable furniture, the dealers, the drinks-to keep the customers inside comfortable and gambling as long as possible. The Playbook will help any business buy time if it is threatened by science, the most reliable form of knowledge the world has ever known. Part strategy, part social history, part resistance, part lampoonery, The Playbook illuminates the methods and motives of many successful scientific denial campaigns, and the social forces that may outwit them"--

Executive Summary xv   1. Denial: A Fiduciary Duty 3 2. The Arsenal 25 3. Recruiting University Experts 43 4. Strategic Communication 69 5. Challenge the Problem 89 6. Challenge Causation 105 7. Challenge the Messenger 121 8. Challenge the Policy 137 9. Outside Opportunities 151 10. Near- Term Threats 161 Appendix 171 Glossary of Terms 177 Notes 183