and in how humans and nature can co-exist in mutual appreciation. realize that you're watching news coming up next the documentary manufacturing ignorance i'm all as like a in berlin thanks very much for your company take a bite. you feel worried about the planets. to. a meal on the green fencepost coast it's me it's clear remains true. joining critique dive into the green transformation remain for you for the plants of.

the 21st century human world is insatiable. with a constant demand for more technology more convenience and comfort more products on more shelves a lifestyle that also raises a growing number of issues what exactly is happening in the fields and farms that feed us. and in our medication. hasn't just realisation turned our world toxic. it's an issue of growing global concern. citizens on the streets accuse industry of hiding the truth from us

as the corporations defend then deny how are we to judge which side is right. so we turned to science asking researchers to be the are fritters of this argument . surely they should know best except that scientists who do step into the fray are then themselves targeted and are subject to influence corruption and infiltration. we're living in a world where there are many people who have a vested interest in fighting information fighting scientific evidence and discrediting even the notion that science could provide the truth about the natural world there are tensions only to find the 1st step is to identify these attacks and then expose the machinations of those trying to stand in the way of knowledge and in that context it's essential for us to understand who these people are what they do why they do it and how they do it. and we have to

understand how it is that the public sometimes participates in the spreading of this deliberate ignorance so we need to visit this landscape of manufactured ignorance. like most of the developed world northern greece has seen a collapse of bee colonies a phenomenon that's been observed since the 1990 s. it's become a textbook case for the manufacture of confusion and culturally induced ignorance. here too it began with an enigma with experts on able to explain what was happening and why it was a complete mystery. why was so many bees suddenly dying t.v. reports showed beekeepers in complete despair. i don't get it. then

a suspect was found a new generation of insecticides in our fields the latest innovation of the agro chemical industry containing malta. all active ingredients every syngenta formulation is the result of years of careful investigation and thorough research by our scientists a coincidence that bees started dying in their millions once these new products were being sprayed on our crops active ingredients which is why very quickly suspicion started falling in that direction could scientists solve the case. funny how gina has been searching for the truth in research at her beehives and in the lab and if we scientists with the help of beekeepers must find the answer at least what began as scientific research soon became a game of cat and mouse. normally scientists have the peace and quiet of their labs to examine data from field studies.

the mass death of bees is just one of many pronominal experts have been asked to explain. traditionally science has the role of highlighting natural mechanisms and reaching an explanation for the slightest observable fact. this is how science normally progresses by solving more and more mysteries. and in principle our knowledge of the world we live in increases however this fine principle sometimes has a few hiccups. for scientific observers the case of the vanishing bees is emblematic of this with something like ease and pesticides you should have been able to investigate it by collecting data by fall the way the evidence where it's taking you the crux of the idea is that when we find the evidence that tells us what's happening we tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth and

we let the chips fall where they may we commit in a way sort of committing to accepting the truth of those findings. but in the case of the bs that truth took a different course. in the early to thousands countless official reports pointed to the toxic effect of even very low doses of neo neck it annoyed and b.s. and yet 20 years on there is no universally accepted truth no consensus on the link between these pesticides and the disappearance of bees what explains that divergence. you need to be a very shrewd observer to see the whole picture of the moment the big problem appeared there was 4 to 5 times more research into causes not linked to pesticides . or natural pathogens like the sema and different viruses. but also

bad beekeeping practices climate change the loss of habitat not lighting the asian hornets and other invasive species like the small hive beetle i think basically research is much more intensive in causes unlinked to pesticides than into pesticides themselves. as is shown with a quick search in a scientific study database. as soon as pesticides were suspected there was a dramatic rise in the number of public and private studies focusing on alternative explanations 2010 the veterinary authorities were confused. about. any definite on being pursued. the more studies there were the less beekeepers could make sense of it all it seemed like a paradox until researchers discovered similarities and an older case when you see a flourishing of new studies emerge in any particular area

a little bit ironically it creates the appearance of being dedicated to pursuing the trail but it takes me directly back to the case of big tobacco we need to like that i can. go to head up here in the 1950 s. tobacco still enjoy the image of a completely harmless stimulant to be. back home. again. but that carefree attitude would not last. as this product contains scientist in december 953 the tobacco industry was in big trouble tracked researchers have found that painting mice with tar from cigarettes cause cancer. a revelation that sparked an embittered controversy. the

tobacco companies had a real crisis because they can't contest the evidence and say it's wrong they can just say we don't know and so the winners of all the major cigarette companies got together in new york city for. a meeting subsequently took place at new york's plaza hotel between the bosses of the 7 major manufacturers collectively known as big tobacco. imagine the scene. must get right to the heart of the matter the meeting would go down in the annals of ignorance it is a challenge to every one of us and we're all in this together unified in light of this threat to business the corporations came up with a plan they want this campaign in which they said you know we're aware of this science we think there are problems with it and as a matter of deep concern to us. now we are beginning

a campaign to spell out that basic point so that no one will be able to get it that if they decided to make a public statement they are pledging aid and assistance to the research effort into all phases of tobacco use and health for this purpose we are stablish ing and joint tobacco industry group the tobacco industry research committee. we're going to take yes. the press publish the declaration tobacco industry to start scientific research. believe me friends just a few has for your smoking pleasure and protect every advantage known to modern science just rip. gives you scientific fact. that middle class. the

opening of a center of research on tobacco didn't aim to further the knowledge to produce knowledge that would disapprove established facts. so they were using scientific methods to refute established science. that. it's really using science against itself the explicit use of science against science i think does represent a kind of watershed to systematically fund scientific research in order to undermine science effectively fighting fire with fire that's a watershed moment. so after they do side of this how did they operationalize one of the things that tobacco companies funded a lot of it was what i call distracted research. the labs backed by the cigarette manufacturers set up research projects known as special projects or s.p.'s an entire arsenal geared to diverting scientific findings. they covered lung cancer in

nonsmokers for example looking for links to residents working conditions and personal habits. they experimented on rabbits to see of lung cancer might be caused by toxins or viruses. as big tobacco generously financed hundreds of studies. some proved useful such as research into the precursors of cardiovascular disease. but other studies bordered on the absurd such as contact with aig yolk or tomato juice allegedly leading to skin tumors or the link between lung cancer and baldness or even between cancer and the month of birth with march supposedly putting you at greater risk. delay a plane goes and the idea is to say there are only kinds of course it is to spread ignorance clouding the issue with them on. drawing suspicion to other potential culprits is an effective strategy especially as long cancer could be

attributed to a combination of factors identifying a range of risk factors and pursuing multiple avenues of research is perfectly normal in science but it can also be extremely handy for creating confusion. it then becomes almost impossible to determine the true guilty party and that's the point that's extremely well understood and that designed playbook for pretty much every other science denial that that house. this is a story about tobacco this is a story about acid rain of story about the ozone hole this is a story about pesticides this is a story about climate change in its own eyes this feel a contraceptive pills i mean we have now seen this strategy used over and over and over again. about buying time soon as oddly it's

a winning strategy in the case of tobacco it's 70 years already and it's still going. in the case of the dying b.s. scientific insights have likewise been deliberately suppressed. with all that's gone on i'd say we've wasted 20 to 30 years. so we're talking about decades of dissent from ation and decades of delay. in the meantime the companies are still raking gobs of money. but eventually

a scientific law i constructed over several decades can start to develop cracks. 40 years after the 1st alerts on tobacco a humble employee and the us turned whistleblower and changed everything. a box of documents was sent to the university of san francisco. professor stanton glantz was in for a surprise that day i made 121994 a box of documents landed in my office for an anonymous source these or internal documents from at the very highest levels of the tobacco industry their senior scientists their senior lawyers their senior management their senior public relations people talking very very frankly about what they knew about the dangers of smoking. the documents were an

unexpected treasure trove for the professor. it was like a new world stumbling into a new world thanks as the leaked documents increased in number the truth broke and the tobacco bosses were cornered gentlemen the recent disclosures of documents have shaken my confidence that your companies care about the through these documents suggest possible manipulation of scientific research by industry attorneys. if these things are true then you should know that this kind of behavior is unacceptable and will not be allowed. based with damning evidence the corporations were forced to make decades of secret archives public. their collection of words started out a few 1000 pages grow up around $93000000.00 pages. these documents are now kept at the university of san francisco archives they contain the

details of a massive manipulation of science the tactics deployed the researchers recruited and the sums of money involved among the documents was an internal memo from 1969 that summed up the strategy of the tobacco industry. is our product since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists in the mind of the general public it is all for the means of establishing a controversy the key strategy is the creation of doubt about science. is a perfect weapon it's effective but also permission because doubt is legitimately part of science in fact it's an essential driver of science we investigate things because we have questions about them because we're curious or because we doubt the existing explanation is adequate so we need doubt in science would do it the word doctor is key to science we always say science doubts you do there are 2 types of

scientists yes you could get stablished to science where we no longer question that the earth is round or that apples fall at 9.8 meters per 2nd squared galileo measured it and we can measure it again but it won't change the results yet but here there is no doubt down to exists in ongoing science in what we have studied in proposing hypotheses so the strategy of doubters about saying that established accepted science is still subject to doubt would do it so what the tobacco industry did was to take a further chill and turn it into a vice. the use of scientific method against science itself and spreading skepticism through dissent from ation. but this massive rebel the tory documents in turn inspired a new field of study. how many of you before this week knew something about the history of tobacco most people of the old mia rescues shows her students how to

identify the methods used in historical obstructions of science the discovery of this long history of deception has led to a new field of intellectual study a new academic field and it's called agni taller g. and that means the study of ignorance. agnes is an unconventional field of study as academics attempt to unravel the mainsprings of our ignorance to look into what we don't know. we were laughed at it 1st because people thought it was not academic to study the absence of knowledge to study ignorance but i think people are are laughing a bit less now and starting to be a bit worried because we sense and they realise how pervasive the problem might be . what are the obstacles to knowledge. a question of growing relevance prompting those who study ignorance to find

a public voice. over the course of this talk oh introduce different ways of thinking about ignorance and particularly this phrase strategic ignorance we're going to ask you to think about example in your own life a strategic ignorance willful individuals a new understanding of ignorance as a manager until now ignorance meant not knowing what we might know one day thanks to research but now we're beginning to see that you can actively produce. what the issue now is identifying obstacles to our knowledge things that help the progress of science deliberately or not perhaps in some cases it's about what we prefer not to know unraveling all that is no mean feat which is why agnew tallent the study of ignorance needs to progress methodically and it's a fascinating field of inquiry with contributions from psychology sociology history

political science current science computer science network science there are a lots of disciplines involved that can help us understand how ignorance is speaking manufactured and how we can protect ourselves against. magnetometer he is still in its early days and has a lot of ground to make up i was in the generation of strategic ignorance has been constantly perfected. and to bunking it often means plunging into the details of scientific practice. there's a constant stream of innovations on the market accompanied by a fair share of scrutiny part of their threat to our health and more importantly what are safe levels that's the big question the one at the heart of a fierce dispute.

one such dispute began in this laboratory one day in 1909 carlos sonenshein and ana soto are both biologists. for years they had been trying to solve the mystery of cellular proliferation in cancer. suddenly before their very eyes some control cells cultivated in a test tube began to multiply for no discernible reason. it was a real. investigation. trying to find out where it came from because you had to do identify what is the source. they reviewed each piece of lab equipment. after 4 months of growing suspense they finally had their culprit. the centrifuge tubes. they contained a material that should have been inert but wasn't. the plastic additive in question

contained and dispersed a substance that acted like the hormone estrogen. were very fine we thought that this was a big deal the question now was what other products might contain the substance. toys disposable bottles food packaging and in all the plastics that end up in the environment and what impact does it have on our organism. the big question is establishing the doses through which the public can be exposed without a major risk to our health and that question really is the mother of all battles the impact of product x. on our health is studied by toxicologists the accepted rule is centuries old it's simple and seemingly makes good sense the effect is proportionate to the quantity consume. it's true for sugar and fats and applies to pretty much any product.

the golden rule of toxicology says the dose makes the point which by extension means that anything below that level isn't a poison. according to this rule of plastic with the care. touristic somebody's hormone that ends up in a baby's mouth shouldn't pose any problem because the quantity of synthetic estrogen ingested is minuscule. true or false this is the crux of the controversy. an experiment was carried out at the university of missouri by research record fred von sol he was the 1st to carry out a controlled experiment on lab animals to try to evaluate the activity of a common plastic called bisphenol a this as the structure of an estrogenic drug

they are using a sex hormone to make plastic this is insane. professor frederick bansal and his team spent years observing mice exposed to different doses of bisbee in all a to measure traces of the product they explored what happens at the limits of detection using ultra sensitive machines and what they discovered sent shock waves through the scientific community in fact the damage to the reproductive system was occurring at 25000 times below what had been considered a dose that would cause no work we were absolutely shocked to consider this was huge for several reasons. the most important being that some of these substances can have bigger effects at tiny doses than with stronger doses.

and why is that important because regulates 3 toxicology tests the home from this of these molecules at high doses and never tests or extremely rarely tests the hopefulness of these molecules at the tiny doses to which humans are generally exposed. except that at low doses instead of acting like a typical poison this pheno a is an end to disrupt or it alters our hormones the molecules that regulate among other things our reproductive system even in the tiniest observable doses can have devastating effects in other words researchers began to come across some barry unexpected relationships between the dose and the effect of a product and this was shaking up the world of toxicologists we were rejecting their dog the ecology community have not accepted it and they said

we reject this the resistance among toxicologists was understandable it was also convenient for the manufacturers of plastics it's not always that people intentionally want to science some people unwittingly through no fault of their own can a time be pawns in other people's efforts to pretty strategic ignorance. at the same time the plastics industry gives financial backing to alternative studies which its representatives used to defend their simple thesis that low doses cannot be dangerous more than 100 independent studies have shown that real life exposure to b.p.a. is about a 1000 times below the safe intake limit set by you i'm saying one thing industry is saying another and there needed to be explanations of how.

the difference was occurring eager to understand from solve collected studies published on the subject and as a true agnon just he set about explaining the disparity in their conclusions during that time i didn't get a lot of sleep and drank a lot of core of. his conclusion 93 percent of publicly funded studies indicated harmful effects at very low doses of bisbee you know a in contrast to none of the studies financed by the industry he eventually discovered the primary reason for this difference instead of an outright lie some creative trickery and the private sector lapse they put a lot of time and effort into figuring out how do we do a study that shows no effect. the 1st step is to find the right test animal model using catalogues of laboratory

mice and rats which can be chosen according to their biological parameters. they can be customized to fit the requirements of the relevant experiments and are then dispatched directly to the researchers lab. and history groups were using a very strange animal to try to show that bisphenol a cause or if you are interested the showing that between early is not a journey you would select. in which a does not become minister jinnie. so you have to be very careful about the mother you choose because you can choose the role model and you can choose their own model because you don't know or you can choose the mother because you know too well how can you do this. test rats tailor made to manipulate

the results and prove the innocence of this being all a another successful trick by the illusionists of science. so the most insidious offensives are hidden in the details. research protocols for example that outline the planning of a study and are delicately put in place. it only takes one corrupted protocol or a broken rule to stall scientific progress. what's at stake here is evidence based policymaking where the policy is faced on the best available evidence or where the policy is designed to satisfy a particular industry in their pursuit of profit will the manufacturers a big difference have a target democratically elected politicians who can decide whether a suspect product is banned or authorized. or need to see your sister. the moment we give up on evidence based policymaking we've

given up on democracy. they won't. see some. in 2010 the french parliament outlawed the guilty baby bottles but the ban was limited to this one single and a current disruptor present in one single product sold in one single country a small victory 20 years after the 1st alarm bells rang. a serious public health issue therefore continues to be covered up. among the population we're seeing a sharp increase in metabolic disorders such as obesity and diabetes hormone sensitive cancers neuro behavioral disorders and infertility in this proliferation of symptoms and a current disruptors are the prime suspects due to our exposure to them nevertheless the defenders of the plastics industry continue to so doubt.

the presence of a chemical in your body not as harmful any such affirmations are spread on the internet ready. yes the p.s.a. . the internet is host to a great many organizations with no apparent links to industry that tell us about everything from this being all way and energy sources to the disappearance of bees the climate food supplements animal welfare and fracking. online made to measure science is rampant. and the targets on this front is the general public us and our opinions these days we can weigh in with the click of a mouse on everything from pro or anti diesel homeopathy or baiting we click on like we tweet or re tweet this is now public opinion anonymous yet global social

networks seem to be the ideal form disinform ation. global opinion making is among the issues being monitored inside this building in paris. or was it a complex systems institute brings together mathematicians i.t. experts and data specialists. they develop tools to analyze the money. waters of social networks. over 3 months of each other larry os and his teams analyzed $20000000.00 posts on the climate that originated on twitter before spreading across the globe disappear so who is talking to home and how do the climate skeptics and their adversaries compete for this virtual space the team have put together

a system that can visualize this sprawling controversy and offer your noise with each dot represents one person a line between 2 people means that one of them has shared the other's post the more we forward posts the closer the dots get. it is what one of the children to do. thanks to the program the dispute over the world's biggest scientific debate becomes apparent we have all the twitter accounts that form the community of climate skeptics you can see that this community is very distinct in terms of sharing the information from the other community made up of those who agree on the climate consensus that's 140000 accounts that's a lot of people once the debate is rendered observable or you know what can we conclude. on the skeptic side the core is always active these people never stop tweeting there are fewer of them but they're more active which means they're trying to counterbalance the bait exactly that overactive. some accounts have 100200000

tweets in 10 years that's incredible so this is how they colonizing twitter it's crazy. with a solid core spreading their arguments on an astronomical scale a powerful asset for the climate skeptics in this battle for territory enough to keep their community alive despite the growing evidence for me. for the scientific community global warming is indisputable as is the evident impact of humankind. this consensus however does not impose itself on the web. we see the very regularly scientific facts prove the climate skeptics theories wrong said which is potentially dangerous for this community because they can lose members over it even so there's a kind of inoculates of reaction for 2 or 3 days they'll inundate the social networks with alternative facts don't keep their visibility in

a globalized environment. without social networks communities of this size wouldn't be able to survive the facts which so clearly disprove their beliefs that of course those. conspiracy theories abound on all manner of scientific subjects with bloggers free to propound their own theories. the corona virus a bio bio engineered virus contains nano particles that can be activated on a time phased arrangement by 5 there's like 7000000000 of those out you know. this isn't written in all of the political said they need they could create the organ easy reclaim the fake alter many thing and we have a cure based on want to give it out. amid all the rumors and counter rumors some call out a scientific conspiracy and are themselves called out fake news. share this.

or should you do if you want to be. on social media it's one side against the other. are these online arguments supplanting the patient and meticulous approach of science has it become to each their own truth. you know if i think that it will. drop it we have gravity that's not a matter of. whatever our beliefs we can't ignore reality the victims of climate change. the victims of particulates pollution. or those of infectious diseases where people are no longer vaccinated. they are all a grave reminder that ignoring scientific truths as a human cost in the end the facts do tend to prevail. and despite the hurdles to progress our knowledge increases gradually building up

in one way or another through the ages. a few centuries ago you had to be a mad person to go against common belief and state that the sun and stars don't turn around us but that the earth turns round and round like a spinning top those who champion this inconvenient truth pay dearly in europe the works of copernicus were banned galileo was sentenced to house arrest for life their research posed a threat to established beliefs. another time another setting what makes the world go around today is the economy when the law of the market replaces that of the church what new limits will be imposed on science. will this new confrontation decide which research is accepted. of course there are cases

of researchers being caught in a conflict of interests the scientist who ceases to remain objective because they're influenced by financial backers but the grip of the economy on science far outweighs these individual cases. what impact the market has on research can only be gauged if we look at the bigger picture. of the current framework within which science is done hugely influences which science we do the market economy frame science in a way that the us and privilege is science that can be monetized that is lucrative . researchers have to generate money and to find it and so science is turned into a marketplace where everyone is trying to attract attention.

to. basically competing values to highlight their specificity is really in come up with fashionable keywords. in the early 2000 is the magic word genomic you said you work to genomes which would vastly influence medicine you were given millions of dollars. to 2000 the research on how to use the word jew nomic in 2010 it was nanotechnology 2020 it's all tissue intelligence. i think you're ready to let all be still current competition is pointing science in a certain direction that you have created when ruled by artificial intelligence this is too cool i can walk around in the meantime there are a whole host of unknown fields set aside as of clash i. deemed less

fashionable or less profitable in the short term. certain scientific fields have been deserted. some researchers have identified what they call the problem of and done science now that science simply last uninvestigated because there's little commercial imperative in being an. undone science science that simply isn't done. the experiment never carried out the lab that never opened. the epidemiological study that doesn't exist because it was never financed. the scientific books never written the medical theses never published these are the vast territories of ignorance which we don't explore because they're not profitable because we prefer not to know. or because we never even imagined them.

our thirst for knowledge is limitless and our wonder at science unabated. but science is under threat of virus spreading and scientific denial spreading with it coordination is not an issue it's not that we know and it's not an issue for many doctors. as controversies multiply they cloud our understanding. don't close the deal out of collaborate there are now scientists beating back the tide of ignorance there are still only a few but for us the general public they are a new force we can count on their developing tools and methods to shed light on ways of protecting a common asset science and its meticulous progress. how

can a country's economy grow in harmony with its people find that when there are do worse we look at the bigger picture india a country that faces many challenges and whose people are striving to create a sustainable future clever projects from europe and india be kooky.

next on detail. what keeps us in shape what makes us sick and how come. my name is dr carson because i talk to medical experts. watch them at work. and then discuss what you can do to improve your health. state use and let's all try to stay. through. w. . it's an ongoing quest to. get to the arab spring began in

2000 the open. people stood up against corruption and dictatorship. control more security more freedom more dignity have their hopes been fulfilled. 10 years ago after the arab spring. rebellion starts june 7th w. . this is news and these are our top stories indian scientists have accused the government of ignoring warnings about the new more contagious corona virus variants which have overwhelmed the national health system officials have reported a record number of just.