re: #33 Prof. Backpfeifengesicht, PhD

To explain my aversion to the title: doubt is one of the cornerstones of the modern democratic civilization. The opposite of doubt is dogma. So by casting doubt as something negative the authors not only do disservice to science, reason, etc., but also fall into a trap: “Oh, you reject doubt, you dogmatists!”. All this could have been avoided through the usage of qualifiers such as “unreasonable”.

True, but the movie’s title is a derivation from cigarette manufacturers being referred to as “merchants of death”. To have added “unreasonable” to the title would have been to make it longer, less catchy, and it wouldn’t be as easy to draw the connections the filmakers want drawn.