Ignorance Is Someone Else's Bliss

Bill Watterson

In a January 6 interview, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum bypassed a question about how he would deal with North Korea's Kim Jong-un by comparing that dictator to the leaders of Iran so that he could criticize the Obama administration's backing of the recently signed nuclear deal. Iran, he insisted, is not abiding by the deal. Is that true? I decided to check. According to Politico, Iran did, as Santorum mentioned, test a ballistic missile, but ~ and this he did not say ~ that was not a violation of the nuclear deal. In fact, Politico reports, "Since the nuclear deal formally took effect on Oct. 18, so-called Adoption Day, Iran has removed thousands of centrifuges and begun reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium, State Department officials say" (http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/iran-nuclear-deal-obama-argument-216865). This is but one recent instance of a phenomenon being studied by Stanford University science historian Robert Proctor, who became interested in it when the tobacco industry's years-long misinformation campaign came to light in 1979. He and UC Berkeley linguist Iain Boal have named this area of study "agnotology." Its focus, Proctor says, is on "the deliberate creation of ignorance." What he's found, according to this article, is that "ignorance spreads when firstly, many people do not understand a concept or fact and secondly, when special interest groups—like a commercial firm or a political group—then work hard to create confusion about an issue" (think the Obama birther brouhaha, the climate change debate). The more ignorant the audience, then, the easier the deception and exploitation. Something to think about during this campaign season ~ and especially in this age of talking heads and instant access to anyone's "expert" website: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160105-the-man-who-studies-the-spread-of-ignorance