Why Trust Science?

"You’ve asked me to choose the best books of 2019. I’d say this is more an important book of 2019. It’s important to engage with. I don’t agree with everything that Oreskes is saying, but she’s definitely worth reading and considering. She has become an important figure in climate activism, and because she’s also a historian of science, I am especially interested in what she has to say about the role that history of science can play in this pressing contemporary question of what the proper status of science in society should be. Back in 2010 she co-wrote a book with Erik Conway called Merchants of Doubt . That book demonstrated how various conservative scientists and corporate PR agents deliberately tried to sow doubt about the dangers of tobacco smoke, acid rain and global warming (among other things). Oreskes sees this book, Why Trust Science? as a companion to that. Essentially, why we should mistrust climate deniers is that first book, and then this book is trying to provide a justification for why, on the other hand, we should trust science. Going back to the question of form, this is an admirably clearly written book, but it doesn’t engage the empathy muscles that the other books do. In that sense, I think it will only probably be effective among a smaller subset of people, those who are more conditioned to read a book based on a series of academic lectures. In terms of content, what she’s saying is that there are two reasons we should trust science. One is that scientists study the natural world. The natural world is there to be studied and that’s what scientists do. So, in the same sense that a plumber fixes your plumbing and thinks about plumbing, a scientist thinks about nature and observes nature and, on that basis, can tell us something about nature. “In the same sense that a plumber thinks about plumbing, a scientist thinks about nature” That’s quite an old way of thinking about the trustworthiness of science, but Oreskes adds a novel twist—novel to the philosophy of science in the 20th century, that is—which is that it is the social character of science that provides a warrant for its trustworthiness. The fact that science is a collective activity that depends on open debate and criticism, and relies on tools like peer review and conferences and workshops where differences of opinion are aired, means that it gives us not exactly truth, but our greatest likelihood of truth. One of her key points is that the more diverse our scientific communities are, the more likely they’ll arrive at something closer to truth, because it’s less likely that members of that group will share the same implicit assumptions. The diversity of viewpoints in science that she’s advocating for is largely based on things that are visible, like race and gender. It’s certainly the case that we need more women and more people of different races, religions, classes, et cetera, in science, but I would say that that, in itself, is not sufficient to guard against the risks of unquestioned assumptions. If we rely solely on the visible identity of members, then we risk missing other kinds of implicit assumptions. Which is to say, I guess… No, I don’t. A big part of her emphasis of the value of science as a collective activity is that it produces consensus. Consensus is made by experts who have studied a long time to be good at what they do and are judged to be that way by their peers. But I think consensus can be a source of problems within science as well as strength. This book is written in the context of the climate change crisis, where much emphasis has been placed, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, on the fact there is a scientific consensus and therefore we should act, so I think that explains her approach, but that is also a weakness. It sidesteps the issue, which is that even the existence of scientific consensus hasn’t been enough to motivate societal action. To be clear, and fair to Oreskes, that is not her stated aim in this book. She would agree that opposition to climate science is about values that are larger than, and will not be resolved within, the framework of science but she has nevertheless chosen to focus on the content of science, and the trustworthiness of scientific consensus in this book. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . The commitment to the power of consensus also makes it harder to admit the risks of consensus, which is that if people are less likely to feel comfortable expressing opinions at the edge of current beliefs, you miss out on important outlying evidence or opinions and this is damaging to the process of science. So there’s a tension there between the diversity of views that you want in science and the consensus output that you’re seeking. So we can see how this book is motivated by the moment in which we find ourselves. Oreskes clearly feels that the stakes are high enough that she wants to pin her colours to the mast of consensus. They’re helpful in that they provide an example of the positive self-criticizing aspect of scientific enquiry. They force her to deepen or extend the argument. In the book, Oreskes also uses examples from the history of science to demonstrate how science is self-correcting in certain ways. She actually argues that they weren’t really examples of proper consensus. But this raises another problem, which is who gets to determine who counts as expert, and what counts as consensus? Though Oreskes points to the ways in which the markers of expert status, such as institutional affiliation and peer-review, are visible to non-experts, much as we would like to, you can never really finish the argument in that way. It’s always about values, which institutions and which processes we trust. Oreskes certainly understands the importance of values. She encourages scientists to be more open about their values, on the understanding that we share more values in common than we realize—even with those who seemingly disagree with us about things like climate change. She mentions the Ten Commandments as part of this seeking for more universal values—though the Ten Commandments are, of course, far from universal. The thing about values is that it’s not enough to say what your values are, it’s about showing what they are. That’s what a novel allows you to do, that’s what the interiority of a novel or a memoir allows you to do, which a lecture doesn’t. So I think that’s why an academic lecture will only convince those who are willing to think with you in analytic terms. That’s a really good point, actually, that the book is inviting its readers to engage with, and think deeply about, the nature of science. That is a really useful intervention on Oreskes’ part: to open up the process of what science actually is. It’s not some mystical thing. It’s done by people like you and me who are fully committed and passionate, for the most part, about what they do. That commitment doesn’t undermine the status of the knowledge that they make. In fact, it shores it up. She was very determined and in that sense sui generis. She’s often held up as a role model for young women and girls, but she was extraordinary and I think we need to make progress to the point where girls and women don’t need to be extraordinary to get to the same place as ordinary men. She was clearly brilliant, but the other thing about Marie Curie is that she was only able to achieve what she did in terms of her status because her husband met an untimely end. He was run over by a horse and carriage and she was therefore able to take over his post at the university. So her life was still very much circumscribed by the constraints of her time and even her accomplishments were only possible because of anomalous circumstance. Hopefully we’re a bit beyond that now."