Free Radicals - Michael Brooks [108]
This raises an obvious question. Plenty of scientists – plenty of climate scientists – have grandchildren. So why does Hansen cut such a lone figure on the scientific barricades? We might put another related question here, too: why did the fight to ban CFCs take so long? Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway framed the same issue another way in their revealing book Merchants of Doubt. They delve into the details of some of the biggest scientific battles of the last hundred years and find the scientists strangely disappointing. Oreskes and Conway wanted to tell ‘heroic stories of how scientists set the record straight’ on acid rain, climate change, tobacco marketing and the ozone crisis. But only in a very few cases were they able to. ‘Clearly, scientists knew that many contrarian claims were false,’ they point out. ‘Why didn’t they do more to refute them?’
It is clear that the open anarchy we have seen in the actions of Sagan, Carson, Hansen and others, though inspiring, is rather rare. Its rarity is in marked contrast to the prevalence of, say, scientific fraud. Analyse the history of scientists speaking truth to power, and you will find the scientists strangely timid. Sometimes, it turns out, scientists are nowhere near as anarchic as you might – given all we have seen – reasonably expect.
One reason for this is simple human timidity. Some scientists have been reluctant to make strong claims about climate change lest contrarians attack them. An oceanographer once told Oreskes that she would rather err on the side of caution in her estimates because it made her feel more ‘secure’. The threat of personal and professional attacks – intimidation and bullying – has put many scientists off correcting the erroneous outpourings of climate change deniers.
Other reasons have much more to do with the downsides of the secret anarchy of science. There is, for instance, the self-interested desire to ‘just get on with it’. In the same way that Barbara McClintock revelled in rejection because she could continue her research untroubled by interested colleagues, many researchers avoid controversy because they want to pursue scientific inquiry and nothing else.
Then there is the fact that scientists cling to the notion that the truth will out in the end. It is not the job of the scientist, some say, to get involved with the day-to-day process of informing the public about the scientific case in matters of public policy. Oreskes and Conway focus on this excuse and conclude, magnanimously, that scientists’ failures to engage with pivotal issues mostly arise from a hopeless naivety. Scientists, as a whole, have a rose-tinted view of the power of science and genuinely believe that if they just quietly continue their laboratory research, then the scientific quest for truth will eventually triumph. The secret anarchists have, in other words, fallen victim to their own deception.
The final excuse for inactivity may be the most toxic by-product of the secret anarchy. Many scientists have announced that their expertise is of no value when it comes to deciding on a course of action. In a hearing about ozone depletion held before the US Senate, Michael McElroy said that when it came to making policy recommendations, his own advice ‘isn’t worth any more than the advice of any informed layman’. In 2008 the climate scientist Susan Solomon took the same stance, telling the New York Times that, ‘If we as scientists go beyond what we know into our personal opinions and values, we begin to engage in the same sort of personal speculation masquerading as authoritative that we dislike when it is done by the sceptics.’
Though it could be lauded as humility, such reticence has much more to do with the secret anarchy. After decades of executing the post-war policy of keeping a bowed and subservient head – for the sake of Brand Science – scientists just aren’t comfortable with raising their voices. Even when the world needs someone to say something.
This attitude is