When scientists politicize science: making sense of controversy over The Skeptical Environmentalist

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Abstract

Scholars of science and society have long understood that in all but the most trivial of cases science cannot compel specific political outcomes. Rather, scientific understandings are frequently either intrinsically uncertain or diverse enough to be used to justify a range of competing political agendas. This paper argues that despite these understandings the use of science by scientists as a means of negotiating for desired political outcomes – the politicization of science by scientists – threatens the development of effective policies in contested issues. By tying themselves to politics, rather than policy, scientists necessarily restrict their value and the value of their science. The essay proceeds in four parts. It first discusses why the politicization of science by scientists might be worth our concern. Second, it reviews the debate over the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Third, it suggests that arguments that embraces a “linear model” (i.e., get the facts right, then act) of science’s relationship with policy encourage the politicization of science. The fourth section discusses a range of perspectives on the politicization of science by scientists, and the paper concludes with a discussion of an alternative way to think about the relationship between science, politics and policy.

Introduction

In recent years, combatants on opposing sides of highly contentious debates related to the environment, medicine and even national security have frequently asserted that science compels their favored political perspective. Whether the subject is global warming, estrogen therapy, or even the existence of weapons of mass destruction, it is not surprising to observe advocates selectively using and misusing information that supports their firmly held positions. What perhaps is surprising, at least to some observers of the scientific enterprise, is that scientists increasingly seem to be equating particular scientific findings with political and ideological perspectives.

When a 2003 paper in the journal Climate Research argued that 20th century climate variations were unexceptional in millennial perspective, advocacy groups opposed to the Kyoto Protocol predictably hailed the research as “sound science,” while advocacy groups in support of the Protocol called the paper “junk science” (Regalado, 2003). In this case, more troubling than the “cherry picking” of scientific results by advocates is that many scientist’s evaluations of the scientific merit of the Climate Research paper correlated perfectly with their public expressions of support or opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. Acceptance of the paper’s conclusions was equated with opposition to Kyoto, and correspondingly, rejection of the paper’s findings was equated with support for Kyoto. For example, one prominent climate scientist (on record supporting Kyoto) suggested in testimony before the U.S. Congress that the paper must be bad science because the editor who oversaw its publication had been critical of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol (Collins, 2003). And the editor (a social scientist who is on record opposing Kyoto) of a different journal that published a second version of the controversial paper commented, “I’m following my political agenda—a bit, anyway, but isn’t that the right of the editor?” (Monastersky, 2003).

If scientists evaluate the research findings of their peers on the basis of political perspectives, then “scientific” debate among academics risks morphing into political debates. From the perspective of the public or policy makers, scientific debate and political debate on many environmental issues already have become indistinguishable, and such cases of conflation limit the role of science in the development of creative and feasible policy options. In many instances science, particularly environmental science, has become little more than a mechanism of marketing competing political agendas, and scientists have become leading members of the advertising campaigns.

No recent example of this dynamic has received the amount of attention among the mainstream media as controversy over the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist (Lomborg, 2001a; hereafter TSE) by Bjørn Lomborg. Heated debate and controversy are rather the norm insofar as environmental issues are concerned, but reaction to TSE spilled over from the environmental community onto pages of leading newspapers and magazines around the world, and has thus come to occupy the attention of scholars who study science in its broader societal setting.

Why does the politicization of science matter? Consider the following controversy over science, policy, and politics. In October 2002, a number of scientists expressed concern that President Bush appeared to be “stacking” health advisory panels with scientists chosen more for their political views than their scientific credentials. A group of scientists writing in Science magazine explained that,

instead of grappling with scientific ambiguity and shaping public policy using the best available evidence (the fundamental principle underlying public health and environmental regulation), we can now expect these committees to emphasize the uncertainties of health and environmental risks, supporting the administration’s antiregulatory views. And in those areas where there are deeply held conflicts in values, we can expect only silence (Michaels et al., 2002).

In other words, rather than seeking to understand significance of science in the context of specific policy alternatives, these committees would instead focus on the political challenge of bolstering support for decisions already made, presumably based on factors other than science, e.g., ideology. Few would disagree with the premise that scientific outcomes should not be predetermined by political perspectives. Why? The result, invariably, would be bad science and most likely bad policy. But what about reversing the direction of causality? Do scientific perspectives determine political outcomes? In the case of TSE many scientists acted as if science does in fact compel certain political outcomes.

This paper argues that in its extreme forms the use of science by scientists as a means of negotiating for desired political outcomes – the politicization of science by scientists – threatens the development of effective policies in contested issues. Such politicization occurs in spite of the development by the science and technology studies community of considerable expertise in and understanding of the broader social and political context of science, including the causes and consequences of the politicization of science in political settings (e.g., Rayner, 2003, Kitcher, 2001, Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998, Sarewitz, 1996, Jasanoff, 1987). This paper focuses on the politicization of science by scientists themselves, a topic that has received by contrast somewhat less attention than the politicization of science by politicians and issue advocates.1 It first reviews the debate over the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist. In this context it suggests that the politicization of science by scientists is rooted in a “linear model” – get the facts right, then act – of science’s relation to society. Second, it discusses how aspects of the Lomborg affair can be understood as consequences of the linear model. The next section discusses a range of perspectives on the politicization of science by scientists, and the paper concludes with a discussion of an alternative way to think about the relationship of science, politics and policy.

The politicization of science by scientists is an issue worth addressing because at risk are the positive contributions science offers to politics and policy. More fundamentally, in its extreme forms the politicization of science by scientists presents a threat to the institutions of science and democracy. Because science, politics, and policy are inextricably intertwined, a challenge exists for developing practical strategies for decision makers to use science effectively. Utopian views of cleanly separating science from politics, facts from values are not helpful.

An alternative to the linear, get-the-facts-then-act model would start with the scientific community itself assuming a greater responsibility for addressing the significance for policy of scientific results (for further discussion, see Pielke, 2003). Addressing the significance of science for decision making requires an ability to clearly distinguish policy from politics. For science, a policy perspective implies increasing or elucidating the range of alternatives available to decision makers by clearly associating the existing state of scientific knowledge with a range of choices. The goal is to enhance freedom of choice. By contrast, a political perspective seeks to decrease the range of alternatives (often to a single preferred option) available to policy makers, i.e., to limit the scope of choice, for example, support of, or opposition to, the Kyoto Protocol. Because scientific results always have some degree of uncertainty and a range of means is typically available to achieve particular objectives, the task of political advocacy necessarily involves considerations that go well beyond science. This is one reason why the linear model is not just simplistic but detrimental to science itself. Science never compels just one political outcome. The world is not that simple.

Section snippets

Controversy over The Skeptical Environmentalist: political battle not policy debate

A focus on the intersection of politics and science is not new and has been studied for decades (see, e.g., Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998, and references therein). What may be new, or at least more meaningful than in the past, is the degree to which scientists themselves encourage political conflict through science. Examples abound in areas as diverse as international whaling (Aron et al., 2002), cloning (Nature Publishing Group, 2002), sex education (Clymer, 2002), history of firearms (Postel, 2002

The linear model

The perspectives of the scientists who have argued that because the science of TSE is wrong, a certain set of political views must also be wrong, reinforce, reflect, and derive from an ontological and epistemological view of the role of science in society that assumes that science can and should compel political outcomes. This view of the relation of science and politics has been called “the linear model” because it is based on first getting the science “right” as a necessary, if not

Other perspectives on politicization of science by scientists10

The case of debate over TSE is an example of a general problem: through their actions, many scientists encourage the mapping of established interests from across the political spectrum onto science and then use science as a proxy for political battle over these interests. As Herrick and Jamieson (2000) observe, “the imprimatur of science is being smuggled into deliberations that actually deal with values and politics.” This is a familiar strategy for undergraduates in Public Policy 101 who make

Making sense of the Lomborg affair: distinguishing policy from politics

To understand the role of scientists in the Lomborg affair requires understanding not only the role of the linear model as a perspective shaping how some influential scientists apparently view the role of science in society, but also possible alternatives to the linear model. To introduce an alternative, consider a thought experiment. Imagine a world that formalizes the implications of the linear model, in which scientific advice is provided to decision makers only through established political

Conclusion

There is no magic bullet or panacea for the challenges presented by the politicization of science by scientists. And perhaps worst of all would be a withdrawal of the scientific community from involvement in contested political issues, as was historically the case when scientists sought to be “value free” and removed from practical concerns. It makes no sense to try to return to a bygone era when science was thought to be separate from politics. There is a middle ground, where some scientists

Acknowledgements

Useful comments were provided by Chris Harrison, Chuck Herrick, Naomi Oreskes, Steve Rayner, Dan Sarewitz, and three anonymous reviewers. Over the past several years, University of Colorado students in three classes of ENVS 5000, “Science, Policy, and the Environment” devoted considerable effort and insight to making sense of the “Lomborg affair.” I have learned much from them. Ami Nacu-Schmidt provided essential assistance in preparing for publication all five of the papers in this special

Roger Pielke Jr. is a Professor in the Environmental Studies Program and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado. Roger also serves as the Director of the CIRES Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. His interests lie in the two-way connection of decision making and science and technology.

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    Roger Pielke Jr. is a Professor in the Environmental Studies Program and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado. Roger also serves as the Director of the CIRES Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. His interests lie in the two-way connection of decision making and science and technology.

    An early version of this paper was prepared for a symposium of the 2003 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

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