During Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s recent visit to Salon’s New York studios, the Rhode Island Democrat and co-author of “Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy” discussed the distinctive and insidious quality of what he called the “corporate science denial” machine. Whitehouse, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee that will soon consider President Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, said that the origins of “alternative facts and fake news” lay in corporate efforts to push back against scientific consensus, first on the harmful effects of tobacco and then on climate change.