Producing a smokescreen (Image: Andrei Pungovschi/AP/PA)

YOU can’t beat doubt as a corporate strategy – especially if your product is life-threatening when used as directed. These days we don’t have to speculate as to whether industries have manufactured doubt. They have admitted it too many times.

In 1972, Tobacco Institute vice-president Fred Panzer outlined his industry’s “brilliantly executed” defence strategy. A key tactic was “creating doubt about the health charge without actually denying it” while “encouraging objective scientific research.”

“Objective scientific research”: those words would almost make you believe that Panzer was talking about objective science. But when doubt is your goal, the misuse of language is …