It's no secret that polls are used to shape public opinion at least as much as they're used to measure it. The website of one major U.S. polling firm, the Mellman Group, boasts its "extensive experience developing effective communications strategies that lead people to choose our client's product or service, join their organization, hold their opinion, or vote as we would like."

Polling was used as a perception management tactic in the national debate over the children's health insurance program known as SCHIP. As President Bush prepared to veto an SCHIP reauthorization bill, Republican strategists worried about the impact on their party. Republican pollster David Winston came up with a solution: present the party's opposition as an attempt to "'put poor kids first' rather than expand coverage to adults, illegal immigrants and those already with insurance," reported the Wall Street Journal. "Independents favored that message 47%-38%." The veto went ahead, with the "poor kids first" theme figuring prominently in Republican talking points and briefing materials, such as the White House's "Five Key Myths About President Bush's Support for SCHIP Reauthorization."

Polls are also frequently employed as part of a "bandwagon" strategy: most people support (or oppose) this, so you should support (or oppose) this, too. Last year, a poll purported to show strong opposition to "net neutrality," the principle that networks should provide access to any data, without discrimination. But the poll questions were highly leading, asking participants whether they preferred "new TV and video choice" and "lower prices for cable TV," or "barring high speed internet providers from offering specialized services." The poll was funded by Verizon Communications, which opposes net neutrality.

Another telecom-related poll was unveiled last month at a press conference in Madison, Wisconsin. According to a press release (PDF) put out by the newly-formed Wisconsin Video Choice Coalition, "Wisconsin residents across demographic, geographic and party lines overwhelmingly support a state bill that would encourage competition to cable TV."

By all accounts, the legislation in question is controversial. Why, then, did the poll find such strong support for it?

The Hygiene Council, a "think tank" created and funded by the cleaning products company Reckitt Benckiser, touts the need for "good hygiene practice" in the "home and community." Ruth Pollard reports that the council "is pushing products that contain the expensive -- and potentially damaging -- antibacterial additive, triclosan." Aside from promoting commonsense measures to prevent infections such as the washing of hands and appropriate preparation and refrigeration of foods, the council is enthusiastic about the chemical treatment of household surfaces. "Commonly touched surfaces should be regularly disinfected with products such as LYSOL Disinfectant Spray," the council states on its website. Peter Collignon, the director of infectious diseases at Canberra Hospital, believes that promoting the use of products containing triclosan was "a marketing exercise with no real benefit" that would "do nothing to stop multi-resistant bacteria in hospitals. If anything it may actually contribute to it." Triclosan products are used in hospitals as a disinfectant, particularly against staphlycoccus.

Nuclear Energy Institute coaster"If we are going to seriously address our energy needs as well as our concerns about global climate change, one source stands out -- nuclear," writes Christine Todd Whitman in the San Francisco Chronicle. It's one of two recent op/eds by the former EPA administrator (the other was in BusinessWeek) that fail to disclose that Whitman is a paid consultant for the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). Patrick Moore, Whitman's co-chair of the NEI-funded "Clean and Safe Energy Coalition," has also been busy, promoting nuclear power in Michigan. "Nuclear energy is the key," Moore told a Grand Rapids audience. Meanwhile, in Britain, environmental groups have dismissed a public consultation on nuclear power as a "public relations stitch-up" by the pro-nuclear government. This is the second consultation on the issue; Greenpeace won a legal challenge against the first. Liberal Democrat Sir Menzies Campbell accused the UK government of "making up its mind on nuclear power long before this latest consultation had even begun," reports the BBC.

Five years ago in their book "Trust Us We're Experts," CMD's Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber exposed the propaganda machine selling Americans the idea that global warming is good for us. Newsweek's Sharon Begley examines the current situation: "If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. ... Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. ... Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless."

An old advertisement for Exxon (then Esso)

In an apparent policy shift, earlier this year Exxon Mobil called climate change "a serious issue," saying that "action is warranted." The oil company also said it would stop funding groups that downplay the risks from global warming or lobby against measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions. But Exxon still funds about 40 "skeptic groups," including the American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and National Black Chamber of Commerce, according to a new report from the environmental group Greenpeace. Exxon did "cut its donations to these groups by more than 40 percent from 2005." Rep. Brad Miller urged Exxon to release data on its 2006 donations, saying the money "appears to be an effort to distort public discussion about global warming." Exxon gave $3.9 million to "global warming deniers" in 2004, $3.6 million in 2005, and over $2 million in 2006. Exxon challenged Greenpeace's characterization of the groups as "deniers," and said the groups "do not represent Exxon or speak on its behalf."

As a reporter for Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T), a small industry trade publication, Paul Thacker discovered an entire industry built around spinning science for the purpose of confusing the public while benefiting big business. He wrote exposés documenting the tobacco and oil industry ties of Steven Milloy's junkscience.com, which purports to debunk bad science about issues such as global warming. He uncovered the $2.9 million media campaign behind "Project Protect," a front group for the timber industry that represented itself as an organization of concerned citizens in Oregon. But when he began writing about the Weinberg Group, an international scientific and regulatory consulting firm specializing in "product defense" for the chemical industry, he ran afoul of the American Chemical Society, which publishes ES&T. A few months later, after unearthing evidence that the White House tried to prevent scientists from speaking out about the link between climate change and the increasing strength of hurricanes, he was fired from his job.

Cancer United, a cancer patient group created and launched by the PR firm Weber Shandwick with funding from the drug company Roche, has got off to a rocky start. On its website the group states that it aims to run an 18-month-long campaign for more uniform cancer treatments across the European Union. However, before the group was launched, it was revealed that the study it relies on was also funded by Roche. The study by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm argues that survival rates increase the more a country spends on drugs. Michel Coleman from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told the Guardian that the study was "woefully simplistic research." A Labor member of parliament, Ian Gibson, resigned from the group after discovering Roche's role. "I feel very silly and stupid," he said. The press conference convened in Brussels to announce the new group was "sparsely attended."

Although the American Council on Science and Health styles itself as a "scientific" organization, it does not carry out any independent primary research. Instead, it specializes in generating media advisories that criticize or praise scientists depending on whether they agree with ACSH's philosophy. It has mastered the modern media sound byte, issuing a regular stream of news releases with catchy, quotable phrases responding to hot-button environmental issues.

USA Today cites ACSH as one of its most frequently-quoted sources for information on public health issues. ACSH itself carefully tabulates its media successes in a periodic "ACSH Media Update" provided to the corporations and other funders that support its work. A look at its media update for the period from July 1997 through January 1998 provides a revealing list of headlines:

As campaigning Republicans face attacks from environmentalist on climate change, industry friendly Consumer Alert has relaunched the Cooler Heads Coalition and its website globalwarming.org. The group says it advances "sound science and dispel the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis." Members of the Coalition come from a wide range of industry front groups and right-wing think tanks, including the group's original founder the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, Pacific Research Institute, and Americans for Tax Reform. According to its website, "Cooler Heads" focuses on "the consumer impact of global warming policies that would drastically restrict energy use and raise costs for consumers. Members of the coalition point out that the science of global warming is uncertain, but the negative impacts of global warming policies on consumers are all too real."

PR Watch has exposed the antics of Steven ("the Junkman") Milloy more times than we can stand to remember, as he flacks for the tobacco industry, speaks up for asbestos, and attacks environmentalists as "terrorists" and "fear profiteers." Nowadays he writes a column for Fox News, where he is helping publicize a PR stunt concocted by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), an industry front group that is threatening to sue Whole Foods for baking bread which (like all bread) contains trace amounts of acrylamide, a probable carcinogen that ACSH says is harmless. (Milloy and ACSH haven't always been this chummy. ACSH director Elizabeth Whelan, who disagrees with Milloy's defense of secondhand cigarette smoke, once accused him of "junking all science.")