Coverup

[[File:Exxon logo.svg|thumb|right|165px|Coverup: the sign of the double-cross]]
{{denialism}}
A '''coverup''' is a form of [[denialism]] in which the entity perpetrating the denial is demonstrably fully aware of their [[lie]]s or the lies made by entities that they fund ([[astroturf]] groups or [[experts for hire]]). Coverups are the opposite of [[willful ignorance]] in that there is demonstrable intent to deceive, and are therefore considered an expression of [[consciousness of guilt]]. [[Corporation]]s primarily engage in coverups in order to continue making bundles of money at others' expense ([[negative externality]]), and to a lesser extent to avoid or postpone criminal charges. [[Politicians]] engage in coverups to hide their scandalous behavior and thereby get reelected and to delay or avoid criminal charges.

[[Conspiracy theorists]] often include claims of coverups, but these are lacking in hard [[evidence]].

==Examples==
===By corporations===
*[[Asbestos]] causes [[cancer]] and pulmonary disease. Asbestos was known to be dangerous to workers since the early 1900s, and insurance companies began to take notice in the 1930s.<ref>''Fatal Deception: The Terrifying True Story of How Asbestos Is Killing America'' by Michael Bowker (2003). Touchstone. Page 18. ISBN 0743251431.</ref> The asbestos industry attempted to cover up the risks of asbestos into the 1970s.<ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/11/12/new-data-on-asbestos-indicate-cover-up-of-effects-on-workers/028209a4-fac9-4e8b-a24c-50a93985a35d/ New Data on Asbestos Indicate Cover-Up of Effects on Workers] by Bill Richards (November 12, 1978) ''Washington Post''.</ref> A coverup may still be ongoing in [[Russia]].<ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/07/11/approved-by-donald-trump-asbestos-sold-by-russian-company-is-branded-with-the-presidents-face/ 'Approved by Donald Trump': Asbestos sold by Russian company is branded with the president’s face] by Eli Rosenberg (July 11, 2018) at 9:00 AM) ''The Washington Post''.</ref><ref>[https://www.worthingtoncaron.com/News/2018/July/Russian-Asbestos-Industry-Earns-Trumps-Seal-of-A.aspx Russian Asbestos Industry Earns Trump's "Seal of Approval"]. Worthington Caron, July 2018.</ref>
*Exxon (later ExxonMobil) has known since at least 1977 that [[global warming]] from [[fossil fuel]]s could be an issue. By 1981, Exxon was "already factoring climate change into decisions about new fossil fuel extraction". In 1995, there was an internal Exxon report that unequivocally stated that "burning the companies' products was causing climate change and that the relevant science 'is well established and cannot be denied.'"<ref>[http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fight-misinformation/climate-deception-dossiers-fossil-fuel-industry-memos The Climate Deception Dossiers] (July 9, 2015 update) Union of Concerned Scientists</ref><ref>[https://s3.amazonaws.com/ucs-documents/global-warming/Climate-Deception-Dossiers_All.pdf Deception Dossiers: All Documents] Union of Concerned Scientists</ref> Exxon/ExxonMobil, for example, has funded the climate change denialist group [[Heritage Foundation]] since 1992, including $780,000 from 1998-2012.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20190607155149/http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=42 Factsheet: Heritage Foundation] ''ExxonSecrets.org'' (archived from June 7, 2019).</ref>
*[[Facebook]] frequently conducts research about effects of its social media platforms on its users. Facebook knows about the harmful effects of its social media, but does not act upon it and keeps the research confidential until someone leaks it.<ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/16/facebook-files-internal-research-harms/ Facebook keeps researching its own harms — and burying the findings: A series of leaked internal reports shows Facebook knows far more than it lets on. That’s by design.] by Will Oremus (September 16, 2021) ''The Washington Post''.</ref><ref>[https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039 The Facebook Files: Facebook Inc. knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands. That is the central finding of a Wall Street Journal series, based on a review of internal Facebook documents, including research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations to senior management.] by Justin Scheck et al. (September 15, 2021) ''The Wall Street Journal''.</ref>
*The Lead Industries Association engaged in a coverup of the hazards of [[lead]] by trying to publicly minimize the hazards of lead and [[Blaming the victim|blaming parents]] for their children's exposure while simultaneously conducting private research on lead hazards.<ref>''Lead Wars: Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America's Children'' by Gerald Markowitz & David Rosner (2014) University of California Press;. ISBN 0520283937.</ref>{{rp|29-33}} Lead was considered to be hazardous since ancient times.<ref>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/504874 Vitruvius, Lead Pipes and Lead Poisoning] by A. Trevor Hodge (1981) ''American Journal of Archaeology'' 85(4):486-491.</ref>
*The NFL has spent years denying the link between playing [[American football]] and contracting CTE, with their medical committees trying to discredit the doctors who performed autopsies on players. It wasn't until 2016 when they finally admitted the link, and even then they refuse to provide any compensation for the players who were afflicted with CTE.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/29/nfl-cte-brain-disease Brain injuries and legal battles: the NFL’s persistent problem with CTE], Andrew Lawrence, ''The Guardian'' 29 July 2025</ref>
*Starting with the U.S.'s entry into [[World War I]], the [[radium]] industry became powerful by hiring young women, mostly between the ages of 11-16, to paint watch dials using [[radioactive]] glow-in-the-dark paint. As they were told to lick the brushes, dentists started noticing that the workers' jaws began disintegrating, as well as facing serious ulcers and tumors. However, the radium companies responded by saying that radium was perfectly safe and even encouraging doctors to list the workers' cause of death as syphilis rather than radium poisoning. The denialism only ended after a lawsuit in 1928 revealed to the public the damages that radium was causing to the workers' bodies, and it also revealed that male workers from the company would often wear lead aprons to protect from radioactivity, while the female watch painters received no such protection.<ref>[https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/the-radium-girls-workers-who-painted-with-radium-and-suffered-radiation-exposure The Radium Girls: Workers Who Painted with Radium and Suffered Radiation Exposure], Marcia Wendorf, ''Interesting Engineering'' 8 August 2019</ref><ref group=note>[[Misogyny]] on top of reckless disregard for human life. Charming.</ref>
*In 2016, it was revealed that the Sugar Research Foundation (now known as the Sugar Association) "paid nutrition experts from Harvard University to downplay studies linking [[sugar]] and {{wpl|heart disease||".}} The experts published a 1967 review in the ''New England Journal of Medicine'', which wrongly influenced nutritionists for decades.<ref>[https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sugar-industry-sought-sugarcoat-causes-heart-disease Sugar industry sought to sugarcoat causes of heart disease: Payments revealed to authors of influential 1967 report touting fat and cholesterol as problems] by Laura Beil (9:00am, September 25, 2016) ''Science News''.</ref><ref>[http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2548255 Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents] by Christin E. Kearns et al. ''JAMA Intern. Med.'' September 12, 2016. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.5394.</ref>
*The first known report that [[tobacco]] might be linked to cancer was in 1898 when Hermann Rottmann proposed that tobacco dust might be causing elevated rates of lung cancer in [[German]] tobacco workers.<ref name=proctor>[http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/21/2/87.full#ref-9 The shameful past. The history of the discovery of the cigarette–lung cancer link: evidentiary traditions, corporate denial, global toll] by Robert N. Proctor ''Tob. Control'' 2012;21:87-91 doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2011-050338.</ref> In 1900, it was demonstrated that tobacco juice caused cancer in animals.<ref name=proctor/> The link between primary tobacco use was firmly established in the 1950s,<ref name=proctor/> but Big Tobacco has been in near-continuous denial of tobacco's carcinogenicity:<ref name=proctor/> no longer denying primary tobacco use but in denial of secondhand tobacco exposure at least into the 1990s. Leaked internal documents showed that "tobacco companies had long known the grave dangers of smoking, and did nothing about it."<ref>''The Cigarette Papers'' edited by Stanton A. Glantz et al. (1998) University of California Press. ISBN 0520213726.</ref>

<gallery>
File:StateLibQld 2 152895 James Hardie and Wunderlich float ready for the Victory Day procession in Brisbane, 1946.jpg|Asbestos promotion in 1946
File:Dutch boy collier white lead.png|Lead paint advertisement from 1912
File:Undark (Radium Girls) advertisement, 1921.jpg|Radium advertisement from 1921
File:Fat Time of Day.jpg|An advertisement from 1970, implying that one could lose weight by eating more sugar<ref>[https://www.businessinsider.com/vintage-sugar-as-diet-aid-ads-2014-10 8 Insane Vintage Ads That Make Sugar Seem Like A Health Food] by Lauren F. Friedman (Oct 29, 2014, 8:50 AM) ''Business Insider''.</ref>
File:If Sugar Is So Fattening.jpeg|Advertisement from 1977: [[Correlation does not imply causation|If sugar is so fattening, how come so many kids are thin?]]<ref>Bringing disgust in through the backdoor in healthy food promotion: a phenomenological perspective" by Bas de Boer & Mailin Lemke (2021) Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 24:731–743. doi:10.1007/s11019-021-10037-0.</ref>
File:Lucky-Strike-Doctor-Cigarette-Ad.jpg|[[Argumentum ad populum#Fifty Million Frenchmen|20,679 doctors can't be wrong]]!
</gallery>

===By governments/politicians===
*[[Watergate]] — [[Nixon]] was captured on his own White House tape recording system acknowledging that he knew about the burglary committed by his underlings (headed by [[G. Gordon Liddy]]), the blackmail by E. Howard Hunt Jr., and the ongoing coverup.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oe3OgU8W0s Nixon: raw watergate tape: 'smoking gun' section] (Apr 4, 2011) ''YouTube''.</ref> The {{wpl|subpoena}} of this tape led to his resignation.
*[[Ronald Reagan]] denied the selling of heavy arms to [[Iran]], the [[United States]]'s enemy, and tried to cover it up ([[Iran-Contra]]).
*Famously, the [[People's Republic of China]] has done its best to [[Censorship|censor]] any mentions of the [[Tiananmen Square Massacre]], and its attempted coverup of the event began shortly afterwards in 1989<ref>''The Truth About the Beijing Turmoil = 北京風波紀實'' (1989) Beijing Publishing House. ISBN 7200009261.</ref> and is still ongoing to this day.<ref>''Blocked on Weibo: What Gets Suppressed on China's Version of Twitter (and Why)'' by Jason Q. Ng (2013) The New Press. ISBN 9781595588715.</ref>{{rp|xxi}}
**China is also attempting to conceal [[Uighur genocide|its ongoing gross mistreatment of the Uighur people]] from the rest of the world.
*The government of [[Turkey]] adamantly refuses to acknowledge its role in the [[Armenian genocide]]. Unlike China's outright censorship of discussion of its abuses of power, Turkey simply denies that the Armenian genocide ever happened.
*Japan has a strong ultranationalist sect that has tried to downplay and deny its atrocities during [[World War II]], such as the [[Rape of Nanjing|Nanking Massacre]] and [[comfort women]].
*[[Donald Trump]] — after being informed that his name appears in the [[FBI]]'s [[Epstein Files]] ''a lot'' directed his minions to slow walk their release, contrary to the law that he signed and to his pre-election promise to have them released.

==See also==
*[[Obscurantism]]
*[[Burning the evidence]]
*[[Cherry picking]] — a method used by denialists
*[[Child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church]]
*[[Limited hangout]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Censorship]]
[[Category:Deceit]]
[[Category:Denialism]]
[[Category:Government coverups|*]]
[[Category:Pseudoscience]]

Categories: Censorship, Deceit, Denialism, Government coverups, Pseudoscience