Thomas Friedman reports that Senator Lindsey Graham has become one of the first Republicans to indicate a willingness to advance climate change legislation. While we should all welcome Senator Graham’s change-of-mind, I am alarmed by his rationale. In essence, Senator Graham is jumping on the climate change bandwagon because he thinks it is good politics, not because he thinks it is sound science. He still maintains that “You can have a genuine debate about the science of climate change….”
Let’s be clear: There is widespread consensus in the scientific community that human activity is catapulting us toward a climate calamity. As such, Senator Graham’s nonchalant dismissal of this consensus are highly irresponsible. Most damaging of all, ordinary citizens hear his words and they start wanting not just to “debate the science”, but rather to “debate science” itself. He gives fodder to those who seek to discredit the entire scientific method.
Just last week, for example, I was walking down the National Mall in D.C. when I overheard two young men discussing how they thought global warming was a complete fallacy. They truly believed that it was a left-wing conspiracy to avenge Al Gore’s loss of the presidency in the 2000 elections. To prove this conclusion, one of the men proudly observed, “Just look at all of the snow D.C. got this year!”
Really, I hold no malice towards my fellow citizens who think that global warming is not real. But hearing those two men dismiss a solid scientific consensus as a conspiracy really got me wondering: despite all the standard science classes they had to take in high school, how could they have such a low opinion of scientific conclusions?
My perspective is that while our nation’s science teachers do an excellent job at teaching the “facts” of science, they need to do a lot better at teaching the philosophy and methods underlying science. In other words, rather than just teach the “what” of science, they need to teach more of the “how”. If they did, more people would understand that science is based upon doubt, not faith. So when scientists reach a consensus, it is not to be taken lightly. And furthermore, it is to be expected that fringe scientists will emerge who think they can shatter the consensus. Although that fringe is almost always dead wrong, they will always exist because success in science is geared towards disproving the current dogma. Sadly, most climate change deniers just don’t understand that science works this way.
Most of us fluent in science forget that as a philosophy, science is radically different than most other realms of human epistemology. Religion, for example, is not based upon doubt. It is based upon faith. So when science is taught as a series of facts rather than a methodology, people can’t see how it is any different from religion. They expect scientists to be “priests” revealing the truth. And when they read reports of debate within the scientific community, they think scientists are in a confused state of disarray. They lose their “faith” in science, when in fact it is operating perfectly.
Therefore, I close with a simple message for Senator Graham: I’m glad that you are helping to advance meaningful legislation to solve the climate crisis. But while you are at it, also be sure to also double down on federal funding of science education. Scientific debate is too important to America’s future to let the existence of those debates erode the public’s respect for science itself.
Hi, Samidh.
After having to read about global warming in every single news article about a heat wave, hurricane, or iceberg, I feel that there is justice in the equally silly response to this year’s cold winter. If people are losing respect for the scientific method, it is because it has organized itself around this issue in a very unconvincing way.
I have taken a LOT of science classes, but I have a number of issues with global warming science: it is not practical to reproduce the experiments; there is a huge bias towards results on the side supporting the consensus; systematic errors should be huge; it is based on models, especially models of human behavior. But most of all, politicians are involved, and this has become a moral issue. Good science is hard enough to do under the various pressures of egotism, obsessions, and job insecurity – how can there be any hope of doing it well when it is mixed up with politics?
Pointing to the consensus is not convincing, since argument by authority is exactly not the way that science works. Instead, global warming people should be pushing to open their data and code, have independent analyses done, make clear statements of their assumptions; basically do the modern equivalent of what Galileo did 400 years ago when he encouraged everyone to look through his telescope with their own eyes. The “Climategate” emails, among other things, sure make it look like that is not happening.
Paul, I think you raise an important point. Transparency and peer review are also cornerstones of the modern scientific method, so scientists should do everything possible to release their data for other members of the community to inspect. That’s why I support projects like Science Commons that are trying to create systems to facilitate this kind of data sharing within the scientific community. I suspect that the more data climate scientists made available, the more compelling a case they could build. (Provided, of course, that people understood concepts like margin of error.)
The larger question I was trying to examine in my post is what can we do to ensure that scientists feel more comfortable having public debates about their work? My hypothesis was that teaching more people about the elements of the scientific method would help them be more comfortable with dissent within the scientific community. As it stands today, people hear of the slightest disagreements amongst scientists and they conclude that science (as a whole) doesn’t have its act together.
The truth is that debate is ingrained into scientific culture. No matter how compelling the evidence might be (e.g., evolution), there will always be some who dispute the consensus. It doesn’t mean science is broken. It means it is working. I just wish more people shared that understanding.