Bloomberg: The IPCC is 'seen by many as an advocacy organization rather than a neutral compiler of scientific evidence. This has done great harm'

Bloomberg Op-Ed: "Any movement that “fails to nurture opportunities for the falsification of its own beliefs” does not qualify as scientific, he says. Quite right. But you’d be hard-pressed to argue that all parts of the climate-science community, for instance, had nurtured opportunities for the falsification of their own beliefs. The e-mails published during the Climategate scandal suggest that was not a priority. Groupthink, getting with the program and extreme impatience with dissent seem more to the fore in some climate-science quarters than zealous self-criticism."

Why Science and Politics Don’t Mix - Bloomberg

By Clive Crook August 20, 2013 6:00 PM EDT


Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of such popular science books as “The Blank Slate,” recently wrote an essay for the New Republic in defense of science. From left and right, he notes, from intellectuals as well as from anti-intellectuals, science is under attack for its arrogance, vulgarity and narrowness of vision.

Why is this happening? Pinker asks. Because, he says, science is intruding on the humanities, disciplines lacking in vitality or any real purpose of their own, and the intrusion is resented. Far from deriding science as a campaign to diminish and oversimplify -- to reduce beauty to brain chemistry, say, or ethics to natural selection -- the humanities should welcome science as a source of new inspiration: “Surely our conceptions of politics, culture, and morality have much to learn from our best understanding of the physical universe and of our makeup as a species.”

No doubt that’s true. And while we’re praising science, let’s agree that Pinker is right to call it a force for enormous social good in all the indisputable ways he mentions. Fine. Intelligent critics of “scientism” -- the term they’ve adopted for science gone wrong -- wouldn’t deny any of this.

Their most valid complaints are different -- and Pinker ignores them, perhaps because he hasn’t understood them. Put simply, science is a force for good so long as it’s done well and its limits are recognized. But science isn’t always done well, and its limits aren’t always recognized. When it’s done badly or pushes past its proper bounds yet still expects to command respect, that’s scientism...

Unsettled Science

If science expects to command respect, it should not only be aware of its own limits, but it also should be practiced to a high standard. Pinker seems to take for granted that it will be. He applauds the scientific temperament. The defining practices of science “are explicitly designed to circumvent the errors and sins to which scientists, being human, are vulnerable.” Science is modest, you see -- intent on testing itself. Any movement that “fails to nurture opportunities for the falsification of its own beliefs” does not qualify as scientific, he says.

Quite right. But you’d be hard-pressed to argue that all parts of the climate-science community, for instance, had nurtured opportunities for the falsification of their own beliefs. The e-mails published during the Climategate scandal suggest that was not a priority. Groupthink, getting with the program and extreme impatience with dissent seem more to the fore in some climate-science quarters than zealous self-criticism.

Climate science, a far-flung family of loosely related disciplines, is unusual because it has become closely aligned with a set of costly and controversial policy proposals. This political orientation raises a question: Which comes first -- the science of climate or the art of persuasion?

Many climate scientists believe global warming requires urgent measures to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. They look despairingly at governments unable or unwilling to respond and campaign all the more aggressively. They have a case (I’m for a gradually increasing carbon tax, if you’re wondering), but their standing as advocates and activists has undermined their authority as disinterested scientists. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will release its fifth assessment report on global warming next year, is likewise seen by many as an advocacy organization rather than a neutral compiler of scientific evidence. This has done great harm: The scientist-advocates overreached and diminished their own effectiveness.

What to do about climate change is indeed a political question. Good science, along with good economics, is needed to inform the political judgment, but to claim that the science is settled and that the right policy is dictated by undisputed facts is false. The science isn’t settled, and even if it were, it wouldn’t dictate the policy. Voters know this, which is why the tactic didn’t work. Science, for its own sake and everybody else’s, should keep a cautious distance from politics.

(Clive Crook is a Bloomberg View columnist.)

To contact the writer of this article: Clive Crook at ccrook5@bloomberg.net