Comment by Barrin92

> just a stubborn contrarian pushing against the orthodoxy.

It's not enough to be a contrarian, you also have to be right. Acknowledging that cigarettes are bad isn't "group think", it's an easy consensus because the evidence at every level, scientific, personal is very clear. Just walk up a bunch of stairs with a heavy smoker.

People who constantly act contrarian because they cannot accept that orthodox opinions are, most of the time, established opinion for decent reasons are both annoying and especially these days a blight on public discourse. They don't move science forward (forward progress is by definition only possible if matters are, at some point, actually settled instead of repeated for eternity), they try to get attention by standing out.

And of course companies tend to use these people because they can easily become useful idiots, it's no surprise that there's an entire cottage industry of "heterodox thinkers" these days. The book in the article, Merchants of Doubt, gives some great examples on this in regards to pollution and climate change denial.