When evidence emerged that smoking was linked to lung cancer, tobacco companies formulated a clear strategy. By investing in doubt and even denial, as Jennifer Jacquet puts it, they delivered delay. So they suggested that the case was not yet watertight, that factors other than smoking were involved or that we needed more research. And that put off the day when governments insisted on warning labels, consumers changed their buying habits and companies faced legal challenges. In the same way, eye-wateringly expensive efforts to deny – or cast severe doubt on – the clear conclusions of climate science have delivered huge “payoffs” for interested parties such as oil companies, including what the book describes as “effectively zero legally binding international policy”.
The basic story may be broadly familiar, but Jacquet has found a brilliantly effective way of revealing just how extensive and systematic such corporate strategies are – by creating a machiavellian secret guide for executives worried about what the latest science might mean for their business. The Playbook claims to “contain sensitive information” and to be “not meant for distribution”. Countless examples of corporate deviousness are presented as success stories. Whenever research “implicates a product in a problem”, we read, companies and other interested parties should rely on a tried-and-tested, four-stage “arsenal” of responses.
