VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

GazerRise Fantastic!

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

LipjamUK This documentary starts with these merchants of doubt and their work with tobacco industries. The case builds against disinformation regarding the detrimental effects of cigarettes on health. It then moves to chemicals in fire retardants. However, the viewer is being lead all the while to the case for man-made climate change. It is put alongside the other scientific cases and effectively gives the viewer the impression that it has the same scientific validity.Making a case that there are paid lackeys of vested interests who made erroneous statements previously on one subject does not make a case one way or the other on the validity of an other subject. It just demonstrates that there are vested interests using a tried and tested strategy for the continuation of their business at all costs. The fact that these companies are abusing our planet for the own financial gain is a fact. Should we stop them? Of course yes! Should we look after the environment? Of course we should! Does that mean everything said about man made climate change is true? I just don't know. If man made climate change is a fact. I would consider myself a skeptic for no other reason that if giant super computers cannot predict the weather for more than 3 days with any degree of accuracy and then I am told that climate can be predicted 10, 20, 100 years in the future? Excuse me if I ask what is the basis for making such bold predictions? The climate can change and this is a fact otherwise we would still be in an ice age. The causes and the end results of this is where I would struggle because I have no faith in the research or the proponents of this case. The research is just not sufficient nor is it likely to be in the near future. Those making it are very big on zeal but not so hot on evidence.Call me naive but I thought the way to silence skeptics is to prove your hypothesis beyond doubt. Not to complain that there are those who disagree. This is a distraction and nothing to do with whether the case being made is valid. One of the main problems I have with Climate Change (and the trend in most recent headline research) is it is impossible to prove or disprove. It is more akin to religious faith than provable science because it is too far away, or too long ago, or not yet happened. You just have to believe it because who can show it to you. It is the evidence for things not yet seen, nor likely to be. This documentary is a propaganda tool for climate change. I say this because having considered all the above. The amount of actual evidence presented proving man-made climate change is virtually non existent. It is mostly emotive dialogue and anecdotal presentation. They spend most of the film discrediting their opponents. Isn't that the point made at the start about what the tobacco industry did? They boohoo about getting nasty emails from nasty people. They repeat the mantra that climate change is true because they have been to Antarctica and because they say it is. What has all this to do with valid science? The fact people can say I do not believe in ... whatever the theory is means you just have not proved it. Good science is about proving your hypothesis beyond doubt. If it is too nuanced for a clear demonstration then that is sufficient cause for the possibility that you may be mistaken. If the theory is too complicated to outline simply then that means you do not fully understand what you are trying to explain. Stop saying it's proved it when you cannot produce incontrovertible proof. Of course the proof cannot be produced because this proof exists in the future and unless someone can build a time machine it can never be proved, it so it will always remain a hypothesis at best. Hence the need for propaganda like this.

Reno Rangan I want to begin with what usually comes in the final paragraph in any review that it is a must see film. No matter who you are, whatever your profession is, you must not skip it for many reasons. The film was based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Naomi Oreskes and directed by the Oscar nominated documentary 'Food, Inc.' filmmaker.Recently I read somewhere that 'there are more fake flamingos in the world than real ones'. I thought it was a stat that makes clear there are very less flamingos than we presumed. But the point is it gives a different meaning when the same line used as a reference for this film. It is going to be big stride, yes it is. It all began after the WWII and carried out throughout 50 years during the Cold War, but just recent decades everyone realised its seriousness.When someone interferes with our personal thing, stating that he's an official from the respective field, we ask for the identity proof. But what if it is a conspiracy, how we are going to know it. The common people are always falling prey for such tricks because of the corrupted ministers and the powerful giant corporates. Like, we're the sheep herd and they are the wolves in the sheep's skin. This film is not trying to expose them their entire wrong doings, but on a particular topic, and that is the Global Warming.The media and press plays a crucial part here, but some of them opted a wrong path. Maybe because of the poor knowledge and investigation, or influenced people around them. So the story opens with the cigarettes, how the tobacco companies fooled people in the 60s, 70s till the 90s. The book this movie adapted was written by an American historian, so it's all about the things that happened in the States. But it is still very much the world's concern too, as America is one of the top countries to export modern science and technology to all the corners, especially the third world countries."We're leaving our children and grandchildren, the legacy of people who failed to lead."Today's world's hot topic is, the climate change. Because of human there are plenty of species gone extinct than the natural extinct happened in the presence of human alongside. So, the biggest them all is he's posing a same threat to himself. If that happens, the human will be wiped out. The earth will recycle itself over the thousand years of evolution and the life will be restored, the new kind. Human is the only animal on the earth who do stuff for pleasure and those pleasures comes in many ways. One such thing is the money.Science is not one hundred per cent perfect, not yet, but that is the closest estimation that we have today to predict anything advancely. The world is not the same compared to 100 years ago, the religion is no more threat to the science. The evolution in science is taking place at a brisk pace, lots of stuffs were studied, understood, discovered in the last two decades than over two thousand years. Those who are doing their work is constantly interrupted by the new kind of troublemakers. Those people are the hired counterparts to the scientists who claims they are experts, but why they are doing it is a disgusting truth.It is a very good message movie. You might probably realise from now on who to believe and why, because that was this documentary's notion that makes people open their eyes to the truth and reality. If you're still in your blindfold, then you're on the wrong side with the wrong people. I want to make you clear on one final thing that this documentary is not trying to prove the Global Warming theory, but it was a debate between the people who tried to stop it and the people who tried to prove it was not a hoax. It is about exposing the dirty works.9/10

Dung Bui Merchants of Doubt is a tale of how the various industries have slighted the American public by putting out propaganda that is amazingly deceptive and oftentimes just plain false. The film opens up with a magician saying that it is his job to tell people lies – but at least he is honest about telling them lies. In contrast, the documentary goes on to prove that not all is what it seems especially when money and politics are involved. Indeed, the attacks and defense come from all fronts and in various methods, from unproved hypotheses, word-spinning, white lies, and just plain falsities being announced from the ground up to those in positions of power.Tobacco has long been proved to have negative effects on health. There are those that acknowledge it clearly and choose to smoke, others that vehemently deny the research and claim it as heresy, and the vast majority that has yet to come to any decisive conclusion. This was particularly true in the past. Clearly the tobacco manufacturers stand to lose a lot of money if the scientific results were made widespread to the public, so they used the resources at their disposal – the marketing budget and political power of these huge corporations dwarfs those of the scientific journals – to effectively stomp out the idea that tobacco would harm its users.The same goes for global warming. They claimed that most scientists in fact did not agree that global warming was happening, even the preposterous idea that the world was actually getting cooler. Afterwards, there were claims that over 30,000 American scientists did not agree with that finding – these "scientists" were later found to be either dead, made-up, or not truly scientists at all. After that, they admitted that global warming was happening – but that mankind was not the cause. Then they claimed that the effects were caused by man, but that curbing the production whose byproducts harmed the atmosphere would not outweigh the benefits that they output. The purpose of this propaganda and flip- flopping was to buy time to delay the skeptics in order to allow them to keep their profits even longer until the next make-believe story.What is scary is that these battles aren't always waged on the outside. There are methods that companies use in order to get on the inside of their "enemies," many of which are supposed to be neutral. There are such methods as death threats, both public and private, some dispatched by companies while others are victims of fanaticism. Still yet are the moles that hide behind titles and sneak in to the root of their problems. For example, one think tank institute's president ended up being a registered lobbyist for a cause he had a conflict of interest in. To even imagine how this preposterous situation could come up naturally is baffling to say the least, but it is quite difficult to believe that it is a coincidence. This is not the only case – three of the major producers of flame retardants were have found to be the sole supporters of a Citizens for Fire Safety organization. Further lies were found in a doctor's inconsistent testimony that three infant patients of his that never existed died from pillows that weren't flameproof, all for the support of flame retardant products. The same magician that was introduced at the beginning of the movie later says that those in his profession often tell smaller lies just to cover up for larger lies. Even the relationship between global warming and oil is littered with lies told to increase opportunities. While this clearly crosses the lines of morality, it is in a way admirable in terms of the analytical skills and methodical approach taken to effectively persuade their audiences. One must be an effective communicator, like a magician, in order to sway the mind and perspective of your audience. We can take the opportunity to learn from how they apply these methods in argumentation and persuasion. If you have the motivation to make whoever you are addressing to believe something else, to persuade or argue with them towards another opinion, you would have to do some research and change up your methods in order to increase your chances of success. We have learned from Merchants of Doubt that there are many ways to do this. Although you cannot fool everyone, if you have an idea of what doubts are being brought to the table, you can potentially eliminate them from being brought up in the first place. Alternatively, you could just tell a smaller lie in order to cover up the truth. Even furthermore, you could also just bring up the reputation of other "dependable" sources to "prove" your point, regardless if what you claim is true or not. There will always be skeptics, but that doesn't mean that you cannot persuade them. Even if someone doesn't believe what you say, you can always take a step in his or her direction. If someone tells you that eating vegetables is good for you and you argue that they are not, maybe you can make progress by saying something like "well, maybe vegetables aren't bad for you," or "eating vegetables is good for you, but choosing not to eat vegetables will not necessarily adversely affect your health." Going a step further, you could make the argument that the health benefits provided by eating vegetables do not outweigh the taste that you must endure while eating. You might even draw up claims that the researchers for the FDA support your conclusion whether they do or not. The point is that there are many ways to persuade people to believe or offer alternative perspectives regarding what you want them to. Even magic cannot be entirely eliminated as an option. Kenner, Robert (Producer, Director) & Robledo, Melissa (Producer). (2014). Merchants of Doubt (Documentary). United States: Sony Pictures Classics.

Jack Dell I made the mistake of reading the user reviews before watching and was expecting a mediocre film. Thankfully it was much better than expected. I found it to be thoroughly interesting and entertaining while doing a great job of detailing the depth of scumbaggery and deception behind the climate change denialist movement. The imagery, interview editing, flow of the narrative, choice of people to interview, camera work were all outstanding. I highly recommend that anyone who is not already committed to denialism watch it. Some might find some parts shocking but overwhelmingly the evidence points to the views expressed in this film being true.