Chapter 10 Exercises: Appeals to Authority and False Expertise

Propaganda, Power, and Persuasion

Exercise 10.1 — The Authority Signal Inventory (Individual)

Estimated time: 30 minutes

Collect five instances of an authority claim from five different media sources encountered in a single day. These can come from news articles, social media posts, advertising, product packaging, or political communications. For each instance, record:

  1. The exact authority claim as stated (what credentials, titles, or institutional affiliations are cited)
  2. The medium in which you encountered it
  3. The claim being supported by the authority
  4. Whether the credentials cited appear relevant to the specific claim being made
  5. Your initial intuitive response — did you extend trust before analysis?

After completing the inventory, reflect in writing (200–300 words): What patterns do you notice across the five instances? In how many cases was the authority claim in the relevant domain? In how many cases did you extend trust before analyzing whether the credentials warranted it?

Exercise 10.2 — Lateral Reading Lab (Individual or Pairs)

Estimated time: 45 minutes

Your instructor will provide a list of five sources — some legitimate research institutions, some industry-funded advocacy organizations, some academic journals, and one or two fabricated or marginal organizations. For each source, conduct a lateral reading investigation of no more than five minutes per source, documenting:

  1. What comes up on the first page of search results for the organization's name?
  2. What Wikipedia says about the organization (if it has an entry)
  3. Any news coverage of the organization's funding sources
  4. What peer-reviewed research databases show for publications from this organization

After completing all five, rank the sources from most to least reliable based on your lateral reading, and write a brief justification (one paragraph per source) for your ranking.

Reflection (100 words): What surprised you most in this exercise? Did any source's credibility differ significantly from what you would have guessed based on the name alone?

Exercise 10.3 — The FLICC Identification Exercise (Individual)

Estimated time: 25 minutes

The FLICC taxonomy identifies five techniques of science denial that exploit false expertise: False balance, Logical fallacies, Impossible expectations, Cherry-picking, and Conspiracy theories.

Below are five short excerpts from real or constructed media content. For each excerpt, identify which FLICC technique is primarily at work, explain in two to three sentences why you made that identification, and describe what a more accurate framing of the underlying issue would look like.

Excerpts for analysis will be provided by your instructor, drawn from documented cases of science denial in the areas of tobacco, climate, vaccines, or nutrition science.

Exercise 10.4 — The Manufactured Expert Profile (Small Groups of 3–4)

Estimated time: 60 minutes in class + 30 minutes preparation

Preparation: Each group member reads one of the following before class: - Chapters 1–3 of Oreskes and Conway's Merchants of Doubt (or the assigned excerpts in your course reader) - The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library guide (available at UCSF) - A briefing on the Oregon Petition provided by your instructor

In-class task: Using what you have read, your group will construct a profile of a hypothetical manufactured expert, designed using the techniques described in this chapter. Your profile should include:

  1. Credentials — genuine but in a different domain from the claim
  2. Institutional affiliation — an organization with an impressive-sounding name and limited genuine independence
  3. Funding relationships — structured to create some distance between the funder and the expert
  4. The claim being promoted — drawn from a real area of scientific consensus
  5. The technique — which FLICC technique does your manufactured expert primarily use?

Debrief question for class discussion: If you were the audience for this manufactured expert, and you did not have time to apply the six-step verification process, what signals in the presentation itself might still trigger suspicion?

Exercise 10.5 — The Frank Statement Close Reading (Individual)

Estimated time: 30 minutes

Obtain a copy of the 1954 "Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers" — available through the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library or provided in your course reader.

Read the document carefully and answer the following questions:

  1. What specific language does the statement use to characterize the scientific evidence linking tobacco to cancer? How does this language differ from the scientific characterization?
  2. What commitments does the industry make in the statement? Which of these commitments were subsequently honored, and which were not? (Use your knowledge from the chapter to answer the second part.)
  3. Identify two sentences in the document that perform the function of borrowed authority — citing scientific bodies or processes to transfer credibility to the industry's position.
  4. What is the document's implicit call to action? What does it implicitly ask readers to do or believe?
  5. Apply the five-part propaganda anatomy from Chapter 5 (source, message content, emotional register, implicit audience, strategic omission) to the Frank Statement.

Exercise 10.6 — Follow the Funding (Individual)

Estimated time: 45 minutes

Select one of the following research areas and use publicly available databases to trace the funding relationships behind at least three organizations or researchers who have publicly questioned the mainstream scientific consensus in that area:

  • Climate science skepticism
  • Vaccine safety claims
  • Sugar and cardiovascular health research
  • Opioid safety research (pre-2015)

Document your research trail: which databases you used, what you found, and what funding relationships you were able to establish. Write a 300-word summary of your findings, including any cases where you were unable to find funding information and what that absence might or might not imply.

Databases to consult: OpenSecrets.org, InfluenceMap.org, OpenPayments (U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services), Union of Concerned Scientists' database of industry-science relationships, DeSmog Blog's research database.

Exercise 10.7 — Comparative Authority Analysis: 1946 vs. Now (Pairs)

Estimated time: 40 minutes

Return to the two images described in Ingrid's opening narrative: the 1946 Camel cigarette advertisement ("More Doctors Smoke Camels") and a contemporary health influencer post.

Working in pairs, develop a structured comparison of the two using the following dimensions:

  1. Authority signal used — what specific credential or marker of expertise is invoked?
  2. Relationship between authority and claim — how closely does the cited expertise match the claim being made?
  3. Disclosure — what financial relationship between the authority and the product is disclosed? How prominently?
  4. Verification difficulty — how difficult would it have been for a typical audience member to independently verify the authority claim at the time of publication?
  5. Regulatory environment — what rules governed the authority claim in each era, and how effective were/are those rules?

After completing the comparison, write one paragraph (150–200 words) answering: Has the authority exploitation technique become more or less effective across these eight decades, and why?

Exercise 10.8 — Design a Verification Protocol for Your Target Community (Inoculation Campaign)

Estimated time: 45 minutes

This exercise directly builds your Inoculation Campaign project.

Your target community encounters authority claims in its specific media environment. A verification protocol designed for your community should reflect:

  • The specific authority signals most commonly used in your community's media (medical credentials? Economic expertise? Local official endorsement? Celebrity endorsement?)
  • The platforms where your community encounters these signals (social media? Local news? Community organizations?)
  • The realistic time and attention budget of your community members

Draft a verification protocol for your target community. The protocol should have no more than four steps (shorter than the six-step general checklist in the chapter, calibrated to your community's specific needs) and should be illustrated with at least one example drawn from your community's actual media environment.

Exchange your protocol with another student working on a different target community. Give written feedback (150 words) on whether the steps are realistic given the community's context and media environment.