The salient characteristic of propaganda is not that it is (entirely) false. It is that it serves a specific interest and agenda rather than being a good-faith, best-effort attempt to convey truth.
It's a fundamental conflict in communications dating at least to Plato and the philosophers vs. the sophists.
Propaganda is most effective when it wraps its intended payload in an attractive, largely truthful message, and acts to nudge its intended targets in a direction they're inclined to go already.
False facts will get caught out. All you can do with an interpretation is argue about it.
It was specifically paid for and used to cast widespread doubt on smoking leading to lung cancer. It tried to convince people that "the science isn't settled" when the evidence was overwhelming.
It's an incredibly disingenuous and cynical piece of work that posits truth does not really exist b/c all "experts" are just lying to you with an agenda. Therefore, you can't ever really know the truth, therefore keep smoking.
I presume he got a bee in his bonnet about statistics at some point, and wrote his 'How to lie with Statistics' and because this became such a hit, it was assumed he know what he was talking about, and hence the interest from the cigarette manufacturers, the senate etc. This in fact was a mistake, and his credentials for appearing for the senate should have been checked.
So, the key take away from the book for me is that Statistics is hard, it's easy to confuse yourself or produce dubious results, but i'd look elsewhere for information about how to avoid pitfalls, and how to spot dubious conclusions beyond the most simplistic manipulation he points out.
https://timharford.com/books/worldaddup/
The ultimate cautionary tale here is Darrell Huff’s 1954 classic, How to Lie With Statistics. Huff’s book is clever, insightful, and impish, and it may be the best-selling book about statistics ever written. It is also, from cover to cover, a warning that statistics are all about misinformation, and that one should no more believe in them than in stage magic. Huff ended up testifying at a Senate hearing that the evidence linking smoking and cancer was as spurious as the evidence linking storks and babies. His unpublished sequel, How to Lie With Smoking Statistics, was paid for by a tobacco-lobby group.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/the-conspi...
People are very well aware that the war over what is truth and real continues to be fought. And that it is not merely corporations engaged in it, as control over truth and perception is at the heart of power. "All warfare is based on deception."
https://suntzusaid.com/book/1/18/
As a hint, if one side has a long record of lies, and another a long record of honest relations and owning their errors --- the smart money takes counsel from the second. It's wise to assess one's own sources on this basis from time to time.