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The Disinformation Playbook

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The Disinformation Playbook

How Business Interests Deceive, Misinform, and Buy Influence at the Expense of Public Health and Safety.

Nic

Feb 26, 2024

Transcript

The audio article above, can also be found below, if you would prefer to read it yourself...

The article in question, written by the ‘Union of Concerned Scientists’, has recently come to my attention and it clearly explains how ‘Big Pharma’ have twisted the narrative of COVID-19, and all of the fall out, in their favour.

Each of the steps detailed in the article have been played out, for lack of a better term, perfectly. Well, perfectly, if you are involved in the world of Big Pharma. If on the other hand, you are a normal citizen who just wants to live their life in piece, these practices have been used to coerce and deceive you at EVERY step.

Case in point;

1) The Fake

- Conduct counterfeit science and try to pass it off as legitimate research.

Every new drug/vaccines is required to be approved by a board of independent experts, the FDA (or MHRA in Britain). But what you’re not told is that this board is NOT independent.

A quote from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will explain how it currently works…

“When this drug goes to FDA to get approved, it goes to a panel. Tony Fauci’s always saying it’s an independent panel who decides, based upon real science, whether or not this drug is worthy of approval. It’s not an independent group, they’re virtually all his, or [Bill] Gates’ principal investigators (PI’s).

“Those guys go sit on that panel for a year, and they know that they’ve got their own drugs back at Baylor University they’re working on, or Berkeley or Columbia, that they know are going to be in front of that same panel next year. And they’re all scratching each other’s backs. And they approve that drug and then they go off the panel, finish their drug, and then that drug goes in front of a panel that’s similarly constituted and populated…”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - The Real Anthony Fauci

2) The Blitz

- Harass scientists who speak out with results or views inconvenient for industry.

Another quote from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will explain very clearly how the harassment works…

These PI’s control the journals, they control the public debate, they’re on TV all over the world, and these are the people that form the narrative, that protect the orthodoxy…

If you look at Tony Fauci as the pope, the PIs are the cardinals, the bishops and the archbishops. And they’re the ones that protect the orthodoxy, that make sure that the heretics burn, that doctors who disagree are … delicensed, that they get discredited, that they get gaslighted and vilified and marginalized. They’re the army that controls the narrative.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - The Real Anthony Fauci

3) The Diversion

- Manufacture uncertainty about science where little or none exists.

Big Pharma and the mainstream media repeatedly told you that Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine were “bad for you” or “toxic” or “wouldn’t help you if you had Covid-19”. Both of these remedies have now been medically proven to be helpful if you were to have Covid-19.

But because Big Pharma had the mainstream media at it’s control, their voice was the loudest. That was until voices such as Joe Rogan and his ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ podcast, with his estimated viewership that reaches an average of 11 million people per episode started to discuss a different side of the story…

“They [Big Pharma] don't really give a f**k about your health. They give a f**k about you following the rules and if you follow the rules, especially pertaining to this, then they make a f**k load of money and they have no accountability. So when someone like me says, 'Hey I got better real quick,' they are like, 'Oh you f*****g idiot, you're taking horse dewormer'..."

"They knew I wasn't taking veterinary medicine. They knew that the guy who invented it literally won the Nobel prize... [They were like] 'F**k you man, you're taking horse medicine'...

How can anyone ever trust them now, when you know this is how they treat something so easily provable, of being false?"

Joe Rogan - The Joe Rogan Experience podcast

4) The Screen

- Buy credibility through alliances with academia or professional societies.

Pharmaceutical companies receive substantial government assistance in the form of publicly funded basic research and tax breaks.

Billions of taxpayer money goes into the creation and marketing of new drugs. The Los Angeles Times reports that, “Since the 1930s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has invested close to $900 billion in the basic and applied research that formed both the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.” Despite taxpayers’ crucial investment, U.S. consumers (and governments around the world) are increasingly paying more for their prescription drugs.

A 2018 study on the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) financial contributions to new drug approvals, found that the agency “contributed to published research associated with every one of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 2010–2016.” More than $100 billion in NIH funding went toward research that contributed directly or indirectly to the 210 drugs approved during that six-year period. The NIH Research Project Grant (R01)—which supports health-related research—was by far the most common kind of grant used to fund the science that supported the new drugs. In all, NIH gave out nearly 118,000 R01 grants related to those drugs from 2010 to 2016.

5) The Fix

- Manipulate government officials or processes to inappropriately influence policy.

Once again, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a lot to say in regards to this topic, his book ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’ is a hard slog to get through, but a very eye-opening read.

“Billionaires are colluding with media, corporations and politicians to make themselves richer.

The most important productive strategy or the big talk around the oligarchs and the intelligence agencies and the pharmaceutical companies who are trying to impoverish us and obliterate democracy, their strategy is to create fear and division.

So orchestrate fear, divide one party from the other and blacks from whites and get a lot of infighting so nobody notices that they are making themselves billions and billions, while they impoverish the rest of us and execute the controlled demolition of constitutional democracy.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Here is the ‘The Disinformation Playbook’ article, by the ‘Union of Concerned Scientists’ in full...

The Disinformation Playbook.

How Business Interests Deceive, Misinform, and Buy Influence at the Expense of Public Health and Safety.

Published Oct 10, 2017 Updated May 18, 2018

Science helps keep us safe and healthy. The public safeguards that keep our drinking water clean and our children's toys safe rely on independent science and a transparent policymaking process. And we all rely on scientific information to make informed choices about everything from what we eat to what consumer products we buy for our families.

But the results of independent science don’t always shine a favourable light on corporate products and practices. In response, some corporations manipulate science and scientists to distort the truth about the dangers of their products, using a set of tactics made famous decades ago by the tobacco industry. We call these tactics the Disinformation Playbook.

To be clear: most companies don’t engage in disinformation. The deceptive practices that make up the Playbook are used by a small minority of companies—and yet, as we show, they are found across a broad range of industries, from fossil fuels to professional sports.

Here are five of the most widely used “plays” and some of the many cases where they have been used to block regulations or minimize corporate liability, often with frightening effectiveness—and disastrous repercussions on public health and safety.

1) The Fake.

Conduct counterfeit science and try to pass it off as legitimate research.

Companies underwrite a good deal of scientific research, and society often benefits from it. But bonafide scientific research demands a high degree of scientific integrity to ensure that results derive from the evidence, and not from a desire to meet a predetermined, non-scientific objective. People who have a financial stake in research outcomes should not publish in scientific journals without full and clear disclosure of conflicts of interest—especially when the results involve the safety or effectiveness of a company’s products.

To evade these standards, some companies choose to manufacture counterfeit science—planting ghost-written articles in legitimate scientific journals, selectively publishing positive results while underreporting negative results, or commissioning scientific studies with flawed methodologies biased toward predetermined results. These methods undermine the scientific process—and as our case studies show, they can have serious public health and safety consequences.

2) The Blitz.

Harass scientists who speak out with results or views inconvenient for industry.

Companies and industry trade associations sometimes try to bury scientific information by harassing or intimidating scientists whose research threatens their bottom line. This coercion can take several different forms: our case studies show how corporations have threatened to defund scientists’ research, interfere with their promotion or tenure, transfer them to other positions, or tarnish their reputations.

Some corporations have also sought to muzzle scientists by including gag orders in research or employment contracts, or through litigation and open records requests to tie up their time and resources, making universities less likely to support important, policy-relevant research.

Each of these tactics has the same goal: to silence scientists and stifle independent science. This behaviour violates the spirit of scientific inquiry, which is open to all ideas and findings and inclusive of fellow experts looking to learn more about our world. Any efforts to make scientists feel threatened, or to discourage them from publishing or even continuing their research, are direct attacks on our country’s scientific enterprise, compromising its ability to effectively serve the public.

3) The Diversion.

Manufacture uncertainty about science where little or none exists.

As evidence emerges about a product’s adverse effects, companies will sometimes try to undermine the science by falsely spreading doubt about the harm, deceiving the public and undermining the efforts of regulatory bodies to protect the public. A now-infamous memorandum from a tobacco executive in 1969 captured this strategy well: “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public.”

Our case studies show how corporations have deployed trade associations and front groups with innocuous-sounding names to undermine science, influence public opinion, and gain access to policy makers while maintaining the illusion of independence.

Working to manufacture doubt and create the appearance of uncertainty where little exists is a blatant abuse of the way independent science operates to develop knowledge and inform the public about threats to their health and well-being.

4) The Screen.

Buy credibility through alliances with academia or professional societies.

Many companies forge strong financial connections with university research departments with the legitimate goal of advancing public knowledge. Corporations sometimes sponsor academic chairmanships, sponsor students, or fund research. Arrangements like these can help companies improve their image by affiliating with a prestigious academic institution or professional society.

Transparency and scientific independence are crucial in such relationships. As a group, industry-funded studies are more likely to produce results favourable to industry. This doesn’t mean that corporate funding of scientific research will necessarily lead to biased results, but it underlines the need for full disclosure so that the objectivity of scientific literature can be adequately assessed.

As our case studies show, companies have sometimes exploited their academic alliances to influence research and spread misinformation that serves corporate interests while undermining science.

5) The Fix.

Manipulate government officials or processes to inappropriately influence policy.

Like public interest organizations, many companies or industry trade associations lobby the government to help enact legislation favourable to their interests. Some companies, however, go so far as to undermine the way federal agencies use science to develop policy, pushing for changes that make it harder for agencies to fulfil their science-based missions, or using political connections to gain access to top-level agency officials. Such actions compromise the government’s ability to protect the public.

Unfortunately, a “revolving door” between industry and government presents a huge opportunity for people with industry ties and clear financial conflicts of interest to hold key decision making positions. Such officials can help develop policies that benefit a former or prospective employer, policies that may live on long after their departure.

While it’s certainly reasonable for industry to participate as a stakeholder in policy decisions, transparency and public vigilance are needed to keep companies from using their deep pockets and powerful networks to promote policies that undermine scientific evidence and threaten public health and safety.

- Union of Concerned Scientists

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