A documentary about this kind of insidious industry, so-called experts hired to create public uncertainty about science topics, underscores a flaw in modern news reporting that more people need to know about.

| Oct 7, 2021

Fascinating and blood-boiling in equal measure.

| Oct 7, 2021

A criminally underseen documentary.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 16, 2020

Mr. Kenner knows how to keep his films visually interesting, as well as intellectually stimulating. And the story he tells in Merchants of Doubt is about as important as they come.

| Mar 11, 2020

The writing and research are meticulous, and director Kenner is not afraid to interview the people he's calling liars and shills.

| Jan 9, 2020

Merchants of Doubt isn't going to change the minds of any skeptics out there; it's more about preaching to the converted. Still, Kenner's is a well-delivered sermon that's worth listening to.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 10, 2019

Kenner, like Morano, Heimbach and Swiss, is pulling our strings all the while, right under our noses.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Mar 14, 2019

Cigarettes, climate change, and flame retardants are just some of the topics covered in this highly informative and unnerving documentary. Don Draper, avert your eyes.

| Nov 8, 2018

Full Review | Jan 30, 2018

Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner has turned it into a redundant, formally uninventive, Food, Inc.-like documentary

| Aug 24, 2017

It's nice to see the problem of climate change tackled from a new angle, but this is still another form of preaching, another film designed to outrage. But how is the audience meant to channel that outrage?

| Aug 14, 2017

If Merchants of Doubt were as interested in bridging that gap as in examining why it exists, the film might be a more useful tool in that ongoing conversation.

| Jun 23, 2017

Using a magician's tricks as a metaphor for corporate tactics is clever, and Kenner's found an eloquent talking head in history of science prof Naomi Oreskes, but as in his previous flick, Food, Inc., he keeps hammering away at the same idea.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 18, 2015

Based on the 2010 book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, the film lays out a convincing, follow-the-money trail from the tobacco industry's postwar efforts to prevent (or forestall) government regulation to a profitable lobbying specialty today.

| Nov 12, 2015

Kenner's sympathies are clear - "Don't let them stack the deck!" the film proclaims - and ultimately Merchants of Doubt does a much better job of making you think than convincing you of what to think.

| Nov 5, 2015

As a political propaganda film about the dangers of political propaganda, it's difficult to imagine Merchants of Doubt having any effect beyond the cold comfort it might bring the choir.

| Original Score: 87/100 | Jun 8, 2015

Director Robert Kenner delivers this rote but stirring documentary about the fake experts and pseudo-scientists that are employed by corporations to spread doubt in the media about scientific facts.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 30, 2015

The movie is at its best when profiling the titular merchants.

| Original Score: B | May 13, 2015

Movies have already been made about the science of climate change, from "An Inconvenient Truth" to "Chasing Ice." Robert Kenner ("Food Inc.") has made a movie about the anti-science.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 9, 2015

The film finds a wealth of worthy interviewees but it probably will preach to the choir on the one hand and be ignored by the other.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 8, 2015