Is there a role for the uses of science besides crying wolf or fiddling while Rome burns?

Nedra and I enjoyed the presentation of Naomi Oreske at Indiana University’s Patten lecture.  She discussed why scientists become controversial over certain issues regardless of whether they endorse, reject, or ignore the applications of science to society.  She argued that from 1865 to 1945 science was largely regarded as championing reason, responding to social needs such as public health or helping farmers and manufacturers and promoting the idea of progress and civilization.  She calls his the Aspirational Era. It ended in 1945 because science, for the first time, had developed weapons of mass destruction that entered a worldwide arms race.  She called this the Existential Era of science. It led to efforts by scientists to speak out, Einstein and Nils Bohr were its major advocates.  By 1950 a third effort emerged that she calls the Select Committee Era in which presidential science advisors, and agencies of government were used to advise Congress on legislation.  It was the era that banned DDT, enabled legislation on acid rain, and pitted “truth to power.”  The present era, which began in 1973, she calls the Assessment Era,  It began with President Nixon abolishing the Presidential science advisor position because he resented the scientific criticisms of the use of napalm , carpet bombing, and Agent Orange spraying in the Vietnam War.  It has forced science to criticize government individually or through its own science organizations.

The distancing of government from science advising creates a tension between “crying wolf” and “fiddling while Rome burns” among scientists.  If they fail to advise they are blamed for their cowardice.  If they do advise and their fears do not come to pass, they are accused of being extremists or hysterical.  In her discussion of climate change, she showed why the ban on fluoridated carbon  compounds used as refrigerants and in can sprays worked to lessen the ozone hole at the south pole that was associated with these compounds in the stratosphere.  It was relatively minor in its economic impact to ban these compounds.  The manufacture was almost entirely done by one company (DuPont).  There were alternative chemicals that could be used.  And DuPont made hundreds of other products that were profitable.  But climate change is largely directed at fossil fuels and the companies that extract them only do that and most of the world feels economically tied to fossil fuels for its cars, utilities, airplanes, and a substantial part of the economy.  That is why these companies hire scientists to present their views as legitimate science.  They have the money to hire many scientists to publish papers that are contradictory and they will keep submitting peer review rejected papers until they find a journal that will publish that work. 

Scientists in general try to avoid going public with the implications of their work because they feel they lack expertise in politics, they fear loss of credibility,, and they prefer to be in their laboratories.  Oreske feels scientists need to add a moral dimension to their science. If their work can lead to harm and they see this, they should speak out.  She feels they should enlist the support of moral leaders, like the Pope or the leaders of most of the world’s religious community who favor a stewardship role of mankind for nature.  She argues that a major role of science is to improve out lot and this includes being a whistle blower when bad outcomes are recognized by scientists through their work.