Our thinking

Knowledge is power

24 May, 2024

The idea of the lone scientist, desperate to be heard as they sound the warning about imminent catastrophe while the world carries on regardless is a movie trope. From the good – the 2021 film Don’t Look Up – to the very bad (San Andreas, anyone?), we’re used to seeing scientists on screen tell us that we need to change, and quickly. And increasingly we see this in real life, as many researchers on climate change take more activist roles, with the notable rise of groups like Scientists for XR. When you spend your life thinking about the data, and what that data means, it’s understandable that you would be inspired to speak up and campaign for more, and more ambitious, action when you believe the world is not moving fast enough.   

But a recent comment piece in Climate Action,  a Nature journal, by climate scientist Ulf Buntgen takes a different approach. He argues that climate scientists should not engage in activism, or that if they must, they should keep it conceptually and practically separate from their research. The idea behind this is that scientists should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies, but should instead stick to responding to data, while activists pretending to be scientists are prone to misuse it to make a point.  

The article raises interesting questions around the role of science in society at large, and the importance of us being able to trust that the information that scientists present is unbiased, and reflects the fact, not their preconceived ideas. There’s an important point about the way scientists should seek to avoid bias in their work, and that activism may encourage further bias.  

But it’s also unrealistic to assume that scientific research can be a completely objective, disinterested quest for absolute truth. Many academic fields – climate change research included – have a priori interests in the outcomes baked into their very purpose, which in this case is preservation of a habitable biosphere, just as epidemiologists have a strong interest in preventing further pandemics in the future.   

There is inevitably a big gap between science – the world of theoretical models, null hypotheses and confidence intervals – and the policies they intend to inform. It can be difficult for practitioners to usefully interpret all this information. But who better to do it for them than those academics themselves? Now more than ever, we need good science, and good scientists to tell us what we need to do with what they learn.  

By Patrick Bapty