30 | New Scientist | 9 November 2019
Book
Why Trust Science?
Naomi Oreskes
Princeton University Press“I DON’T want you to listen to
me. I want you to listen to the
scientists.” That is what climate
activist Greta Thunberg told the
US Congress in September when
she offered a report by the UN’s
Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) rather
than her own words as testimony.
But why would anyone choose
to listen to carefully dehumanised,
committee-speak science over the
impassioned, but not impartial,
rhetoric of real human beings?
Because facts outweigh opinions,
say science insiders. The trouble
is, as Naomi Oreskes points out
in her fascinating new book, Why
Trust Science?, that is because we
have faith in science. In the end,
none of us can actually come up
with a convincing answer to the
question at the heart of this
discussion: why trust science?
Maybe because it works.
Surely the results of social
experiments like vaccination
speak for themselves? Death
and damage from diseases such as
measles and smallpox have been
radically reduced by inoculation.
Or we could cite the laws of
physics: if you blanket Earth
in a gas that absorbs infrared
radiation, trapping heat, it has to
experience significant warming.
Ah, but how do outsiders
know this is true? Frustrating as it
seems, Oreskes argues that this is a
valid question. Scientists, she says,
“need to explain not just what they
know, but how they know it”.
But attempts to do this can
confound the problem. Take IPCC
reports. They are the voice of
scientific consensus on climateThe great divide
Can we bridge the chasm between scientists and those who reject much of
what science shows? The first step is to understand it, says Michael Brookschange: thousands of scientists
contribute, and their findings,
researched over decades, are
distilled into a digest of objective
facts by teams of scientist-writers.
These reports aren’t designed to
be page-turners, nor to convey
scientists’ anguish at the dire
situation. They are coolpresentations of the scientific
conclusions and how they
were reached.
Perhaps, Oreskes suggests,
that is why they have made so little
impact on global policy-makers.
“The dominant style in scientific
writing is not only to hide the
values of the authors, but to hide
their humanity altogether,” she
says. “The ideal paper is written...
as if there were no human author.”Views Culture
ALESSANDRO DI CIOMMO/ZUMA WIRE/SHUTTERSTOCKneutrality of science, scientists
have gone down a wrong road.”
But it is hard to discern an
alternative. A 2017 study suggests
climate change researchers
offering policy suggestions aren’t
viewed as any less credible by the
public, unless they are advocating
new nuclear power stations. Even
the broader research community
is now accepting of scientists who
hold opinions on what should be
done about their research results.
Such actions do make it
easier for politicians to ignore
inconvenient truths, though. If
scientists had declared themselves
angry at decades of inactivity or
sounded an alarm to mobilise
public opinion, they would
have risked being grouped with
lobbyists – and there are better
lobbyists around, as Oreskes and
Conway’s book made clear.
Oreskes offers peer review andHumanity matters, as we
see with former doctor Andrew
Wakefield’s claim that the MMR
vaccine causes autism. Scientific
refutations of his flawed research
continue to be outgunned by
media accounts of parents who
declare their children have been
left with autism by the vaccine.
Now measles, mumps and rubella
are back. People are powerful.
The issues are complicated.
But as co-author with Erik Conway
of Merchants of Doubt, which
looked at the efforts by vested
interests to obscure real science
behind everything from smoking
to climate change, Oreskes knows
that part of the problem is that
a little mistrust goes a long way.
In the pursuit of a reputation
for unbiased objectivity, scientists
have declined to discuss their
values, she says. In fact, they
have pretended to have none – a
disastrous strategy. “Would you
trust a person who has no values?”
asks Oreskes. “In suppressing their
values and insisting on the value-Defending the scientific
method turns out to be a
very complicated matter“ In suppressing their
values and insisting
on science’s neutrality,
scientists have gone
down a wrong road”