Post-normal science: the case of climate science

Science as Culture (forthcoming), 2015

The term ‘Climategate’ refers to the episode in November 2009 when emails between climate scientists were stolen and published online. The content of this private correspondence prompted criticism from diverse commentators who cast doubts on the methods, claims, and members of the climate science community. In response, individual scientists and scientific institutions published statements responding to the allegations of scientific fraud. Gieryn's concept of ‘boundary-work’ can be used to analyse the rhetoric of scientists in situations where their legitimacy is disputed. More specifically, boundary-work can be used to analyse the responses of scientists in terms of: how they represent the attributes of science, what types of boundary-work they undertake (e.g. expulsion, expansion, and protection), and the professional interests that come into play. A boundary-work analysis of the commentaries published in the aftermath of Climategate reveals that scientists characterised climate science as consensual, asocial, and open. Scientists depicted climate science as consensual with the purpose of expelling dissenters and protecting areas of climate science from criticism. Scientists also described knowledge about climate as being ideally produced apart from society so that they could preserve their autonomy and exclude individuals who are accused of being ‘politically biased’. Scientists characterised climate science as necessarily open as the means to justify both existing and additional public funding for science and to avoid external corrective interventions against scientific opacity. Scientists and their critics alike interpreted the stolen emails as embarrassing deviations from the alleged social demands of a consensual, objective, and accessible science. AVAILABLE ONLINE: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09505431.2015.1041902

Science (New York, N.Y.), 2010

2014

Science has touched every aspect of our lives, adding value and comfort to our long hours of hard work - including small digital pens, computers, and even smart houses. The truth is, however, that not many of us are scientists, and the lack of knowledge as to specificities of the field often leaves us suspicious when examining political support a supposedly scientific endeavor might receive. Indeed, the often lucrative nature of science has helped promote the interaction between the scientific community and external institutions like corporations and political offices, a partnership that raises the question of whether this cooperation jeopardizes the integrity of the scientific method, culture, or identity. In a number of cases, external organizations - including governments - have had a constructive drive on science, but in many other cases, it has been restrictive. Commodification of the scientific research culture remained a rather low profile topic until turn of the century conc...

Climatic Change, 2013

Myanna Lahsen is concerned about the backlash to climate policy triggered by Climategate in 2009. To counteract such backlash in the future she recommends more symmetrical studies of the social aspects of climate science. There is a need to study distorting extrascientific factors on standard climate science. The study of climate "deniers" or "contrarians" as in Merchants of Doubt (Oreskes and Conway 2010) is not enough. There is a "dominance of idealized understandings of science" on both sides in the climate debates, and this makes the public "vulnerable to backlash campaigns," claims Lahsen (2013). And this widespread misunderstanding needs to be revealed before political progress can be made. However, she is not clear on what these "idealized understandings" are. Is there, for instance, a "tendency on the part of IPCC scientists and sympathizing academics analysts to uphold climate science as unassailable and purged of the imprint of social processes that create it." And is it common among climate scientists to hold a "scientific fundamentalism" that sees "science as an objective authority that operates separately from particularities of culture and politics"? All scientific knowledge is uncertain and preliminary, likely to be revised in the future. This insight was clearly articulated by the end of the 19th century. Since then it has become widely accepted both in the history and philosophy of science and among most working scientists. However, this fundamental uncertainty does not prevent empirical science from producing highly reliable knowledge. "Truths" as we say in daily discourse. Lahsen apparently accepts IPCC's conclusions on ACC (anthropogenic climate change) as a sound basis for climate policy. There is a scientifically well-founded difference between mainstream climate science and the controversial claims of the contrarians. Lahsen takes the idea of "co-production" of science and society to be a suitable basis for the new deal needed in studies of climate science and politics. In recent decades a large body of theoretical and empirical scholarly literature has shown how "science is internally heterogeneous and inextricably interlinked and co-produced with society," she writes. But, once again, this was hardly a new insight of the new wave of science studies starting in the 1970s (Jasanoff 2004). The social dependence of scientific knowledge, and the political threat to sound science, was at the center of the research programmes of logical empiricists and critical rationalists in the 1930s to 1950s. Such questions were also central through the

Annals of The Association of American Geographers, 2001

Having outlined a theory of heterogeneous social construction, this article describes the scientific construction of climate change as a global-scale environmental problem caused by the universal physical properties of greenhouse gases. Critics have noted that this reductionist formulation serves a variety of political purposes, but instrumental and interest-based critiques of the use of scientific knowledge tend to ignore the ways in which a politics gets built into science at the upstream end. By retracing the history of climate modeling and of several scientific controversies, I unmask the tacit social and epistemic commitments implied by its specific practices. The specific scientific framing of global climate change has reinforced and been reinforced by the technocratic inclinations of global climate management. The social organization of climate change science and its articulation with the political process raise important questions about trust, uncertainty, and expertise. The article concludes with a discussion of the political brittleness of this dominant science-led and global-scale formulation of the climate change problem and the need for a more reflexive politics of climate change and of scientific knowledge based on active trust.

This paper will demonstrate how collective apathy concerning global climate change has taken hold in the U.S. It will focus on the machinations of the conservative antienvironmental countermovement, that systematically undermined scientific consensus on anthropogenic-driven climate change, to intentionally misled the public. Secondly it will deal with the U.S media norm of so-called balanced news coverage. This media framing of balance, has led to a biased distortion of the facts about climate change, and enabled further inaction on the part of the US -and subsequently other -governments. Lastly, the evolutionary mismatch of an EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness) era human brain in the modern world, prevents individuals from being able to perceive the amorphous, though very real threat of global climate change. Our brains are wired on a need-to-know basis, and to respond to easily perceived threats. The majority of the population is scientifically illiterate, precisely because our survival has not historically depended on scientific knowledge. As the impacts of climate change grow in severity, so does the level of collective and individual denial.

Nature Climate Change, 2014

There is a gap between the current role of the climate science community and the needs of society. Closing this gap represents a necessary but insufficient step towards improved public discourse and more constructive policy formulation on climate change. How should climate scientists balance their efforts between investigating the climate system and engaging with policy-makers and the public? When engaging, should they merely aim to inform policy, or should they advocate specific actions? In a newly published study 1 we argue that these questions are unresolved, and that there is a gap between the role of the climate science community and the needs of society. The implications of climate science merit widespread constructive and thoughtful discussion. Yet the public discourse is commonly fraught with contention, and climate scientists often find themselves on the receiving end of emotionally-charged reactions to their work. To turn this situation around, we encourage the community to reconsider its professional practices, skills and norms, and to adjust its training and development activities accordingly.

MPI Report 195, 1996

In this paper we present a preliminary and exploratory analysis of a series of in-depth interviews conducted with twenty eight climate scientists. After justifying the need for such research we present some preliminary results. These are in the form of: (1) the perceptions of risk and hazard as they relate to global warming; (2) the typification of issues drawn from the triadic relationship of science-politics-public and; (3) the typification of 'scientificpersonalities'. The perceptions of risk and hazard and typifications of issues are presented as brief edited excerpts from a broader range of the interviews. The typification of 'scientific personalities' are presented as three lengthy edited excerpts from interviews with three scientists. Finally, based on the qualitative data in the interviews, we draw a brief conclusion regarding the nature of the research of global climate change. While the data demonstrates that, for the most past, the risk of global climate change is a consensual product of scientific practice, the hazards associated with the event are determined to have a much closer affinity with the scientist's personal belief system. It is often these beliefs that come to play a role in the application of science to the public and political spheres.

Progress in Human Geography, 2011