The world’s largest public relations firm has used insights from its lauded annual global survey of consumer trust and corporate credibility to help fossil fuel and petrostate clients promote climate obstruction.

According to a new briefing from the Clean Creatives, an advocacy group focused on cutting the public relations industry’s ties with fossil fuels, the PR juggernaut Edelman has employed its purportedly definitive “trust barometer” — the newest edition of which was released on Monday at the World Economic Forum — to help fossil fuel companies more effectively manufacture public trust. With Edelman’s help, these corporations turned oil and gas workers into a positive public face for fossil fuels, obscuring the role of the profit-hungry executives who actually pull the strings.

The trust barometer has “always been positioned as this quasi-academic contribution of Edelman: ‘We’re just looking at how things are shaped in the world,’ as if they’re doing it in some magnanimous gesture or service to the world,” Kert Davies, director of special investigations at the nonprofit Center for Climate Integrity, told the Lever. “This report shows that the trust barometer is built to generate business.”