Political philosophy has a legitimate role in policy debates, but not in the underlying climate science. There are no Democratic or Republican carbon dioxide molecules; they are all invisible and they all trap heat.

On June 13 a larger group of Australian scientists one-upped that American letter by publishing their own open letter with even more uncharacteristically blunt statements of scientific fact. Besides direct calls for media accountability, the Australians are taking their letter one step further by following it up with a two-week series of statements titled “Clearing up the Climate Debate.” Each statement in the series explains a basic science concept that the media gets wrong again and again, such as: why we know the greenhouse effect is real, why we know humans are contributing to it, and the difference between peer review and rhetoric.

Below is the text of the initial letter (emphasis is ours). At the bottom you can find a list of all of the signatories and links to each of the daily statements. Now to be fair, not everyone on the list is a “climate scientist.” In July 2010 a group of 31,000 purported climate scientists was slammed for inflating its numbers with nonscientists in a similar short petition stating that there is “no convincing scientific evidence” for anthropogenic climate change.

But here’s the difference. That petition had only 39 actual climate scientists among its 31,000 signatories, and scarcely more than a quarter of the total had doctorates in any field at all. The signatories of the Australian letter by contrast at least seem to all hold professorships, and have published in the peer-reviewed literature. Some of them can even be found in the interactive climate science literature graphic we featured last week. And let’s also not forget that while a National Academies study found that 97 percent of climate experts agree that climate change is “very likely” caused by human activity, in the end science is–thankfully–not decided by majority vote.

Here’s the Australian letter from June 13:

The overwhelming scientific evidence tells us that human greenhouse gas emissions are resulting in climate changes that cannot be explained by natural causes.

Climate change is real, we are causing it, and it is happening right now.

Like it or not, humanity is facing a problem that is unparalleled in its scale and complexity. The magnitude of the problem was given a chilling focus in the most recent report of the International Energy Agency, which their chief economist characterised as the “worst news on emissions.”

Limiting global warming to 2°C is now beginning to look like a nearly insurmountable challenge.

Like all great challenges, climate change has brought out the best and the worst in people.

A vast number of scientists, engineers, and visionary businessmen are boldly designing a future that is based on low-impact energy pathways and living within safe planetary boundaries; a future in which substantial health gains can be achieved by eliminating fossil-fuel pollution; and a future in which we strive to hand over a liveable planet to posterity.

At the other extreme, understandable economic insecurity and fear of radical change have been exploited by ideologues and vested interests to whip up ill-informed, populist rage, and climate scientists have become the punching bag of shock jocks and tabloid scribes.

Aided by a pervasive media culture that often considers peer-reviewed scientific evidence to be in need of “balance” by internet bloggers, this has enabled so-called “sceptics” to find a captive audience while largely escaping scrutiny.

Australians have been exposed to a phony public debate which is not remotely reflected in the scientific literature and community of experts.

Beginning today, The Conversation will bring much-needed and long-overdue accountability to the climate “sceptics.”

For the next two weeks, our series of daily analyses will show how they can side-step the scientific literature and how they subvert normal peer review. They invariably ignore clear refutations of their arguments and continue to promote demonstrably false critiques.

We will show that “sceptics” often show little regard for truth and the critical procedures of the ethical conduct of science on which real skepticism is based.

The individuals who deny the balance of scientific evidence on climate change will impose a heavy future burden on Australians if their unsupported opinions are given undue credence.

The signatories below jointly authored this article, and some may also contribute to the forthcoming series of analyses.

Signatories

Winthrop Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Australian Professorial Fellow, UWA

Dr. Matthew Hipsey, Research Assistant Professor, School of Earth and Environment, Centre of Excellence for Ecohydrology, UWA

Dr Julie Trotter, Research Assistant Professor, School of Earth and Environment, UWA Oceans Institute, UWA

Winthrop Professor Malcolm McCulloch, F.R.S., Premier’s Research Fellow, UWA Oceans Institute, School of Earth and Environment, UWA

Professor Kevin Judd, School of Mathematics and Statistics, UWA

Dr Thomas Stemler, Assistant Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics, UWA

Dr. Karl-Heinz Wyrwoll, Senior Lecturer, School of Earth and Environment, UWA

Dr. Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleoclimate scientist, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Research School of Earth Science, Planetary Science Institute, ANU

Prof Michael Ashley, School of Physics, Faculty of Science, UNSW

Prof David Karoly, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne

Prof John Abraham, Associate Professor, School of Engineering, University of St. Thomas

Prof Ian Enting, ARC Centre for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems, University of Melbourne

Prof John Wiseman, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne

Associate Professor Ben Newell, School of Psychology, Faculty of Science, UNSW

Prof Matthew England, co-Director, Climate Change Research Centre, Faculty of Science, UNSW

Dr Alex Sen Gupta Climate Change Research Centre,Faculty of Science, UNSW

Prof. Mike Archer AM, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, UNSW

Prof Steven Sherwood, co-Director, Climate Change Research Centre, Faculty of Science, UNSW

Dr. Katrin Meissner, ARC Future Fellow, Climate Change Research Centre, Faculty of Science, UNSW

Dr Jason Evans, ARC Australian Research Fellow, Climate Change Research Centre,Faculty of Science, UNSW

Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Global Change Institute, UQ

Dr Andy Hogg, Fellow, Research School of Earth Sciences, ANU

Prof John Quiggin, School of Economics, School of Political Science & Intnl Studies, UQ

Prof Chris Turney FRSA FGS FRGS, Climate Change Research Centre and School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW

Dr Gab Abramowitz, Lecturer, Climate Change Research Centre,Faculty of Science, UNSW

Prof Andy Pitman, Climate Change Research Centre, Faculty of Science, UNSW

Prof Barry Brook, Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change, University of Adelaide

Prof Mike Sandiford, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne

Dr Michael Box, Associate Professor, School of Physics, Faculty of Science, UNSW

Prof Corey Bradshaw, Director of Ecological Modelling, The Environment Institute, The University of Adelaide

Dr Paul Dargusch, School of Agriculture & Food Science, UQ

Prof Nigel Tapper, Professor Environmental Science, School of Geography and Environmental Science Monash University

Prof Jason Beringer, Associate Professor & Deputy Dean of Research, School of Geography & Environmental Science, Monash University

Prof Neville Nicholls, Professorial Fellow, School of Geography & Environmental Science, Monash University

Prof Dave Griggs, Director, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University

Prof Peter Sly, Medicine Faculty, School of Paediatrics & Child Health, UQ

Dr Pauline Grierson, Senior Lecturer, School of Plant Biology, Ecosystems Research Group, Director of West Australian Biogeochemistry Centre, UWA

Prof Jurg Keller, IWA Fellow, Advanced Water Management Centre, UQ

Prof Amanda Lynch, School of Geography & Environmental Science, Monash University

A/Prof Steve Siems, School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University

Prof Justin Brookes, Director, Water Research Centre, The University of Adelaide

Prof Glenn Albrecht, Professor of Sustainability, Director: Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy (ISTP), Murdoch University

Winthrop Professor Steven Smith, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, UWA

Dr Kerrie Unsworth, School of Business, UWA

Dr Pieter Poot, Assistant Professor in Plant Conservation Biology, School of Plant Biology, UWA

Adam McHugh, Lecturer, School of Engineering and Energy, Murdoch University

Dr Louise Bruce, Research Associate, School of Earth and Environment, UWA

Are you a scientist? Do you agree? If you’d like to add your name to the list, send an email to megan.clement@theconversation.edu.au

This is the first part of our series Clearing up the Climate Debate. To read the other instalments, follow the links below:

• Part Two: The greenhouse effect is real: here’s why.
• Part Three: Speaking science to climate policy.
• Part Four: Our effect on the earth is real: how we’re geo-engineering the planet
• Part Five: Who’s your expert? The difference between peer review and rhetoric
• Part Six: Climate change denial and the abuse of peer review
• Part Seven: When scientists take to the streets it’s time to listen up on climate change
• Part Eight: Australia’s contribution matters: why we can’t ignore our climate responsibilities

This article is adapted from a Climate Progress post by Joe Romm.

Recent surveys suggest that nearly half of all American adults do not accept human evolution and an even larger majority is open to the teaching of nonscientific alternatives in our public schools.

There was a time when such statistics could be accepted without much alarm. After all, one need not accept or even understand evolutionary biology to become an excellent aerospace engineer, a computer scientist, or even a heart surgeon. And besides, isn’t society in the midst of a period of secularization such that advocates for creationism will be an ever-shrinking and increasingly marginal minority?

These two arguments are undermined by recent research on the teaching of evolution, and recent trends in the politicization of science in America. As a result, scientific illiteracy with respect to evolution is better viewed as a symptom of broader weaknesses in science education and we can expect that the tactics used by evolution deniers will soon be applied to other issues such as climate change.

Our recent book on how evolution is actually taught in the nation’s public schools reveals a broader undermining of science that has the potential to breed distrust of sound science in mainstream American culture.

• We estimate that at least 13 percent of all public high school biology teachers flout U.S. federal court decisions by explicitly endorsing creationism or intelligent design in their classrooms.
• We find that even in states with very rigorous content standards with respect to evolution, teachers’ coverage of evolution is largely dictated by their own personal values and their desire to accommodate local community sentiment.
• To avoid controversy, many teachers disassociate themselves from the material—explaining that students need to learn it simply to pass the test.
• Other teachers who themselves accept evolution nevertheless encourage students to come to their own opinions about the validity of evolutionary biology—conveying the idea that it is just a matter of opinion.
• Still others focus only on microbiology. Not only do most avoid human evolution entirely but many omit fossil, genetic, and anatomical evidence of common ancestry of vertebrates—leaving high school graduates open to the common creationism argument that there is no real evidence for the emergence of new species.

It is not hard to see how these practices produce new generations of citizens who lack an appreciation for the nature of scientific inquiry and whose distrust of science will make them easy marks for those who see the findings of mainstream science as a threat to their profits or ideology (a phenomenon well documented by Oreskes and Conway in their book, Merchants of Doubt).

In sidestepping potential controversy, teachers are missing opportunities to explain how science actually works. For example, the field of evolution has many great examples of how scientists gain increasing confidence in hypotheses as replications and convergent evidence from disparate approaches cumulate in favor of the same conclusion. Teachers are missing opportunities to explain how modern science moves forward through the efforts and integrity of thousands of highly competitive individuals, all operating under the scrutiny of peer review.

In short, the current teaching of evolution represents an opportunity lost—the opportunity to prepare the next generation of citizens to play an informed and meaningful role in public debates that hinge on scientific evidence.

If this missed educational prospect was not cause enough for concern, it seems clear that instruction in earth science is likely to become embroiled in similar politics. Increasingly partisan and ideological politicians and activists are linking the two topics. Consider Ken Mercer, a former member of the Texas Assembly and current two-term member of the Texas Board of Education. When asked a question about his stance on evolution, he stated, “what we do have is the right for our kids to raise their hands in class and ask honest questions, especially in the areas of evolution and global warming.” As reported in a recent New York Times article, the joining of these two issues offers tactical advantages to each camp. Evolution deniers can claim that their skepticism of mainstream science is not rooted in religion because they also ask for teaching of “gaps” and “weaknesses” on climate change research, while climate skeptics can gain strength by allying with well-organized networks of socially conservative Christians who seem predisposed to doubt the conclusions of mainstream science.

These two trends—the cultivation of distrust in science generally and the convergence of interests of evolution and climate change deniers—signal a new chapter in the politicization of science. We can expect that mainstream science will be under attack in several venues. These include state boards of education that approve curricular standards, and local school boards that make choices among state-approved textbooks and instructional materials. But our research suggests that the most consequential arena will be the nation’s classrooms and the key players will be the nation’s science teachers. Moreover, the surest way to ensure teachers will not bow to political pressure is to arm them with a rigorous science education to complement their expertise in pedagogy and classroom management. If our research on high school biology teachers generalizes to science teachers more broadly, we can expect that many lack confidence in their ability to respond to politically motivated pressures with cogent explanations rooted in scientific research. Lacking such confidence, the sensible choice is to downplay scientific conclusions that generate controversy.

In this light, policymakers should review the rigor of science education that is typical of newly minted science educators and, where appropriate, elevate the expectations of what background is necessary to be considered well qualified. Such reforms have the potential to reduce the number of children who become casualties of the new science wars.

Podcast interview with Dr. Eric Plutzer conducted by Diana Epstein, a Policy Analyst at American Progress. Article by Dr. Eric Plutzer, professor of political science, and Dr. Michael B. Berkman, professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Penn State University Political Science Department. Dr. Plutzer and Dr. Berkman are the authors of the new book Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle to Control America’s Classrooms. This article was cross-posted at Climate Progress.

References

Berkman, Michael, and Eric Plutzer. 2010. Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle to Control America’s Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kaufman, Leslie. 2010. “Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets.” The New York Times. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/science/earth/04climate.html).

Newport, Frank. 2010. “Four in 10 Americans Believe in Strict Creationism.” Gallup (http://www.gallup.com/poll/145286/Four-Americans-Believe-Strict-Creationism.aspx).

Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of Doubt. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 2005. “Religion A Strength and Weakness for Both Parties.” Washington.

Tuma, Mary. “Q&A | Ken Mercer, Republican Nominee for State Board of Education, District 5.” Community Impact Newspaper (http://impactnews.com/vote10/candidates/8633-qaa-ken-mercer-republican-nominee-for-state-board-of-education-district-5).

Let’s be clear. Congress should not attempt to make scientific decisions. The role of Congress is to take the best science and use it to make the best possible policy. The three amendments rejected unanimously by committee Republicans each lays out a fairly basic statement about generally accepted climate science.

• Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado offered an amendment that simply reaffirmed what EPA scientists stated, that “‘the scientific evidence is compelling’ that elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases resulting from anthropogenic emissions ‘are the root cause of recently observed climate change.’” That amendment was rejected in a party-line vote with all Republicans voting no.
• Rep. Jay Inslee of Washington state offered an amendment, again quoting the EPA, which stated “the public health of current generations is endangered and the threat to public health for both current and future generations will likely mount over time as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere and result in ever greater rates of climate change.’” This, too, was rejected in a party-line vote with all Republicans voting no.
• The last amendment, offered by Rep. Henry Waxman of southern California, asserted even more unassailable scientific findings. His amendment stated simply that “Congress accepts the scientific finding of the Environmental Protection Agency that warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.” It was also unanimously rejected in a party-line vote with all Republicans voting no.

This is really getting ridiculous. In countries around the world, political parties on the left and right are debating how to deal with climate change. But by continuing to debate whether the world is even warming—an objective, empirical, verifiable, scientific fact—our great nation is demonstrating to the rest of the world that we are still in the Stone Age on this issue.

Let’s keep in mind that virtually every credible climate scientist and science organization, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, has declared climate change a “settled fact.” Here is another quote from the academy which reaffirms all three of the rejected amendments:

Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities … and in many cases is already affecting a broad range of human and natural systems.

The National Academy of Sciences might be thought of like the Supreme Court for science, so what they say matters a lot. But then again, even the U.S. Supreme Court itself has decided that the EPA should have the authority to regulate carbon pollution in the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA decision.

Notwithstanding the advice of every U.S. science agency and the opinions of virtually every credibly international science organization, the committee voted 34-19 to pass the Upton-Inhofe dirty air bill, H.R. 910, which eliminates the ability of the federal government to regulate planet-warming carbon pollution. The Project on Climate Science summed it up nicely:

Through this antiscience legislation, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is substituting ideology for the intensive, comprehensive, peer-reviewed analysis of thousands of scientists, including the scientists at the EPA.

Comically, as Joe Romm noted yesterday, one of the committee members voting against the amendments John Shimkus (R-IL), cites the Bible as his reason for rejecting climate science. “God said the earth would not be destroyed in a flood.” Another, Michael Burgess (R-TX), cited an online public opinion poll (in and of itself an unscientific way of sampling opinion data) as reason for rejecting the science of global warming. Making matters worse, it turns out the particular poll was targeted by well-known climate science denial website Watt’s Up With That in a campaign to skew the results.

Meanwhile, a recent Gallup poll (the scientific kind with random sampling, rather than self-selecting Internet sampling) indicates more than 50 percent of the public believe global warming is happening and is mostly due to human activities. But again, opinions–even scientifically polled public opinions–don’t determine science. Just because 99.99 percent of the world public believed the sun revolved around the earth in the time of Galileo does not mean his theory of heliocentrism was wrong.

So, on the one hand we have virtually every credible government and nongovernmental science organization in the developed world reaffirming the fundamental science behind global warming is sound. On the other hand, you have an online poll that was co-opted by a well-known science denial blog. Who would you believe? Apparently the opinion poll, if you are a Republican member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“The denial of science has taken deep root on the Committee,” said Rep. Waxman (D-CA) in a recent talk he gave at the Center for American Progress. Even more troubling is the amount of money taken by Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans from major polluters with a stake in undermining the scientific consensus about climate change.

Certainly it is the duty of a congressional representative to represent constituents’ opinions. But perhaps the representative needs to draw the line where those views directly contrast with reality. We need our leaders to understand the difference between opinion and science. More importantly, we need them to look past childish debates on scientific subjects about which they have no expertise. Instead they should concentrate on how our government can work to address great challenges science gives us the power to identify.

Sean Pool is Assistant Editor for Science Progress.

Efforts to improve climate literacy may prove ineffective because they don’t reach their intended audience, or perhaps because those people who disagree with conclusions from climate scientists need more than explanation. People don’t want to be told that they are science illiterate. They may disagree with the scientific consensus because of misconceptions about the process of science or because of distrust. They want to see the data for themselves and make their own conclusions.

We at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, or NSIDC, think we should help them do just that. Scientists and writers at the NSIDC have been experimenting with such an open approach to data sharing since 2006. Through the Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis website, we not only make near-real-time data available to the public, but also explain it in basic terms. The project is a collaboration between scientists and science writers at the center, and made possible by our access to near-real-time data.

The decline of Arctic sea ice extent is one of the most visible signs of climate change. Since satellite records started in 1979, Arctic sea ice has declined more than 30 percent at the end of summer. Researchers expect the trend to continue, with the Arctic Ocean becoming ice-free in summers well before the end of the century.

NSIDC archives and distributes data related to snow, glaciers, sea ice, and other elements of the cryosphere, or frozen regions of the Earth. And since we provide satellite data on sea ice extent, we have become a go-to resource in recent years for both journalists and the general public who want to know more about the changes in the northern polar region.

The white Arctic sea ice cover reflects sunlight that would otherwise warm the frigid ocean waters beneath the ice. As the ice cover declines in summer, more heat accumulates in the ocean, which leads to further melting and amplifies climate warming.

The Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis website started out of a need to efficiently convey information. In 2006, overwhelmed with questions about shrinking Arctic sea ice extent, our data center started a simple web site to share updates on conditions at the end of the summer melt season. Then in 2007, Arctic ice extent fell to a record low, covering just 4.28 million square kilometers for the month of September. That record low fostered an explosion of interest in sea ice data from the general public as well as journalists, and that attention spurred us to turn our simple site into a year-round project.

The site, now partially funded by a NASA grant, includes daily updates of sea ice data, along with monthly to weekly posts written by scientists in collaboration with science writers. The posts provide context for the data—scientists compare the current extent to previous years and discuss the weather contributing to current conditions. We also address questions brought up by readers.

Making data available to the public is a popular idea, but simply providing access to data is not enough. Most NSIDC data were publicly available before we started the Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis website—they were just difficult for a nonscientist to find and interpret. Scientific terms such as bias, statistical significance, and error can be easily misinterpreted and need explanation.

In addition, data documentation for scientific users sometimes assumes basic knowledge that nonscientists lack—for example, where the data come from in the first place, how they are obtained, and what conclusions one can make from the data. We learned this lesson after a sensor degraded on a satellite, yielding erroneous sea ice extent. Scientists quickly caught the problem and had another data source lined up, but the erroneous data led to pointed questions and even accusations of malfeasance from readers of our site. Although our site provided links to technical documentation that explained the glitch in the satellite data, most readers didn’t read it, or didn’t understand it. We ended up explaining the issue with a series of special posts that started with the basics.

People have responded both positively and negatively to the Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis website. We receive a surprising amount of criticism, often from people who disagree with mainstream climate science and see our site as biased. At the same time many journalists, teachers, and others have written in to commend the site. By explaining our data and science to the public we open ourselves to greater public scrutiny, but we also facilitate better communication and understanding of sea ice and climate.

Government and science organizations are increasingly pushing the idea of free and open access to data. But in order to make those data useful and clear, we also need to provide people with the tools to understand and work with the data. The Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis website is doing just that for ice data. We hope others will join us in making climate change data more transparent and available to all.

Katherine Leitzell is a science writer at the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder Colorado.

Indeed, totally absent from the document are the words “education,” “science,” “research,” or “technology” (“new technologies” is used once, but only to describe the use of computers and the Internet in the development of the Pledge itself). “Innovation” appears only once, in a section about government red tape, while “skill(s),” “training,” “export,” and “infrastructure” are all totally absent. Despite repeated calls for increased American “competitiveness,” nowhere in the Pledge is “sustainable” or “long-term” growth mentioned.

The words tell the story. The omission of so many of the essential prerequisites for sustainable and long-term economic growth makes the Pledge’s repeated calls for increased American “competitiveness” ring hollow. An economy that does not invent and commercialize new ideas quickly falls behind in the 21st century global economy.

Economists have realized that technological innovation is an indispensable driver of economic growth and job creation, and that “governments have a key role to play.” Multiple independent studies, including one by Nobel Laureate Robert Solow, have shown that that the “traditional” inputs of capital and labor can only account for at most 15 percent of measured economic growth, whereas the remaining 85 percent is driven by technological innovation.

The World Economic Forum’s “Global Competitiveness Report for 2010” also categorizes the U.S. economy squarely within the “innovation-driven” category, meaning that its growth is driven by the practical application of new technical knowledge, in contrast with the “factor-driven” or “efficiency-driven” categories. The report also warns that the relatively high wages and the associated standard of living that we enjoy in our developed, innovation-driven economy can only be sustained if businesses are able to compete by innovating new and unique products.

But as we pointed out last week, technological innovation is increasingly dependent on a robust science system, which in turn requires talented scientists, mathematicians, and engineers to function. Unfortunately, the United States is falling behind in educating the innovators who will power the American economy of the future.

Our students rank 21st in science literacy among 30 developed countries and 25th in math literacy, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This puts American 15-year olds on par with those in the Slovak Republic, and far behind students in Canada, Germany, South Korea, and Japan. In 2010, only 43 percent of U.S. high school graduates in 2010 were ready for college work in math and 29 percent were ready in science, according to Change the Equation, a network of U.S. chief executive officers concerned enough about our national competitiveness to band together in support of better science, technology, engineering, and math teaching in our elementary and secondary schools.

Indeed, less than one-third of U.S. eighth graders show proficiency in mathematics and science, according to a report prepared by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. And according to the World Economic Forum, the United States ranks only 48th in quality math and science education, far behind countries such as Canada, India, Poland—even Tunisia and Qatar. (see chart)

Figure: The United States balance of trade in advanced technology goods has been declining steadily. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau Foreign Trade Statistics, compiled by Science Progress.

As President Obama said in January, “Make no mistake: Our future is on the line. The nation that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow.” Unlike the “Pledge to America,” President Obama has put his money where his mouth is. While the Pledge refers repeatedly to the need to help businesses and entrepreneurs invest and invent, one wonders whether its authors have ever asked the companies they claim to advocate for what they really need to stay competitive in the 21st century.

In stark contrast stands the Obama administration’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign, which has set an ambitious agenda and partnered with the private sector to “elevate STEM education as a national priority essential to meeting the economic challenges of this century.” As part of this campaign, the White House has helped to convene over 100 major U.S. companies to found a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Change the Equation, which is investing more than $700 million in overhauling STEM education in the United States (STEM education stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math—four economically important skill sets where American students are falling behind).

These companies are supporting the president’s STEM education agenda and even putting millions of their own dollars into it because they know that without concerted action to keep America’s students competitive in math and science now, they will be unable to obtain quality employees to keep them competitive in the future. These investments will fund a growing array of public-private partnerships including:

• More than 350 science centers and science museums are pledging to offer 2 million hours of science enrichment to at least 25,000 youth in all 50 states.
• Intel Corp. has committed to a 10-year, $200 million campaign to support teaching in math and science.
• Raytheon Co. will leverage its unique expertise in modeling and simulation to expand its national “STEM Modeling Tool” to the state level, empowering policymakers to identify promising STEM education policies.
• In partnership with Lockheed Martin Corp. and Military Child Education Coalition, the National Math Science Initiative will announce a new effort to expand access to Advanced Placement classes in STEM subjects to public high schools that serve a large number of military families.
• A “Bridge to Science” Program with Nature Publishing will make a three-year, $5.5 million commitment to a series of programs to build stronger connections between parents, students, and scientists, including the creation of an online platform for parents and children to become “citizen scientists.”

Thanks in part to these public-private partnerships, President Obama announced this week the goal of recruiting 10,000 new STEM teachers in the next two years, a down payment towards the president’s goal of training 100,000 new STEM teachers by decade’s end.

These investments in science, technology, engineering, and math education are not only a good use of public resources, but they are essential elements driving of sustained growth in today’s global and innovation-driven economy. No pledge, plan, or platform for securing America’s long-term prosperity can possibly fulfill its goals without addressing these critical issues.

Sean Pool is Special Assistant for Energy, Science, and Technology Policy at the Center for American Progress. Austin Frerick, an intern with CAP’s Education Policy team, contributed invaluable research to this article.

Last week Fox News and other conservative media outlets tried once again to fabricate controversy over climate science when they pounced on a presentation made by the president’s science adviser Dr. John Holdren in Oslo. In it, Holdren makes the case (for the umpteenth time) that it’s time to move past the oversimplified term “global warming” and start facing the painful reality that without sharply reducing our carbon pollution, we face something more akin to a “global climate disruption.”

Sadly, even the Atlantic monthly (which is seen as center-left but is center-right on climate) repeated the right-wing narrative that the White House was somehow pushing new rhetoric in place of real science with its stenographic post, “Right Has Field Day With New ‘Global Warming’ Term.”  Ironically, the Atlantic criticized Holdren’s phrase  “global climate disruption” while its own construction “the scientifically supported but nevertheless controversial theory of global warming” is risible.  Yes, well, it is only “controversial” if one buys into and keeps repeating right-wing anti-science talking points.

I’ve been writing about efforts to come up with a better term than “global warming” for a long time (see “Is ‘Global Weirding’ here?”).  I myself tried to coin the term “Hell and High Water” a few years ago, since that is a more accurate description of what is to come if we stay on or near our current emissions path.  It didn’t take — even though Time magazine used the phrase for its Pakistan flooding story, which didn’t mention global warming and which wasn’t shared with U.S. readers anyway!

It was GOP strategist and wordmeister Frank Luntz who counseled in a confidential 2003 memo that the Bush administration and conservatives should stop using the term “global warming” because it was too frightening:

It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming and “conservation” instead of preservation.

1) “Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming”. As one focus group participant noted, climate change “sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.” While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.

So let’s set the record straight on two points.  Holdren’s speech focused on laying out the rock-solid and increasingly dire science (must-see PPTs here).  And the term he was recommending is essentially identical to one that he and many other scientists suggested 13 years ago:

Scientists’ Statement
Global Climatic Disruption

June 18, 1997

We are scientists who are familiar with the causes and effects of climatic change as summarized recently by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We endorse those reports and observe that the further accumulation of greenhouse gases commits the earth irreversibly to further global climatic change and consequent ecological, economic and social disruption. The risks associated with such changes justify preventive action through reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases. In ratifying the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United States agreed in principle to reduce its emissions. It is time for the United States, as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, to fulfill this commitment and demonstrate leadership in a global effort.

Human-induced global climatic change is under way. The IPCC concluded that global mean surface air temperature has increased by between about 0.5 and 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 100 years and anticipates a further continuing rise of 1.8 to 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit during the next century. Sea-level has risen on average 4-10 inches during the past 100 years and is expected to rise another 6 inches to 3 feet by 2100. Global warming from the increase in heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere causes an amplified hydrological cycle resulting in increased precipitation and flooding in some regions and more severe aridity in other areas. The IPCC concluded that “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” The warming is expected to expand the geographical ranges of malaria and dengue fever and to open large new areas to other human diseases and plant and animal pests. Effects of the disruption of climate are sufficiently complicated that it is appropriate to assume there will be effects not now anticipated.

Our familiarity with the scale, severity, and costs to human welfare of the disruptions that the climatic changes threaten leads us to introduce this note of urgency and to call for early domestic action to reduce U.S. emissions via the most cost-effective means. We encourage other nations to join in similar actions with the purpose of producing a substantial and progressive global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions beginning immediately. We call attention to the fact that there are financial as well as environmental advantages to reducing emissions. More than 2000 economists recently observed that there are many potential policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions for which total benefits outweigh the total costs.

The Framework Convention on Climate Change, ratified by the United States and more than 165 other nations, calls for stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at levels that will protect human interests and nature. The Parties to the Convention will meet in December, 1997, in Kyoto, Japan to prepare a protocol implementing the convention. We urge that the United States enter that meeting with a clear national plan to limit emissions, and a recommendation as to how the U.S. will assist other nations in significant steps toward achieving the joint purpose of stabilization.

Initial Signatories

• Dr. John P. Holdren
• Dr. Jane Lubchenco
• Dr. Harold A. Mooney
• Dr. Peter H. Raven
• Dr. F. Sherwood Rowland
• Dr. George M. Woodwell

Signed by 2409 scientists as of June 11, 1997

Now I don’t actually think Holdren should spend time proposing different names for global warming in his capacity as White House science adviser, even if he has been doing so for over a decade.  It just gives people an excuse to ignore the science and call it “controversial.”  That said, it would be nice if any of his critics actually looked at his terrific presentation.  I am reposting a few of his PPTs.

Scientists have been advocating for a new term for “global warming” for a long time. That’s because slight changes in global average temperature can have drastic effects on local climates and ecosystems around the world, affecting billions of lives. The simple term “global warming” does not capture the very severe and uneven impacts that warming is already having on society.

“Global warming is in fact a dangerous misnomer,” Holdren said, “because it implies something that is uniform across the planet, is mainly about temperature, is gradual, and indeed might even be good for you.” He then went on to tell how “the phenomenon in question” is none of these things. It is “highly non-uniform, it’s not just about temperature….  It is not gradual but rapid compared with the capacity of society to adjust … [and] it’s gonna be mostly bad and worse and worse going forward for more and more people.”

Warmer average global temperatures mean more devastating storms like Nashville’s Katrina, more floods like the devastating one that put one-fifth of Pakistan underwater, more intense droughts and wildfires like the one that wiped out tens of thousands of homes in Russia and caused them to stop exporting wheat for the year, and long-term droughts like the on Australia has faced for more than a decade years (see Absolute must read: Australia today offers horrific glimpse of U.S. Southwest, much of planet, post-2040, if we don’t slash emissions soon).

Unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases also means a host of other interrelated problems from ocean acidification to species migration to the erosion and eventual submersion of coastal communities due to sea level rise.

Anyone who follows the science of climate change will agree that the term “global warming” is outdated, oversimplified, and gives only an incomplete picture of the multitude of ways in which a warmer world will disrupt not only the functioning of Earth’s ecological life support systems, but also our economic, social, and geopolitical systems. So Dr. Holdren’s suggestion that we replace the 40-year-old misnomer with something more accurate is welcome and long overdue.

Despite the laughable conspiracy theorists’ pouncing on Holdren’s remarks — “Sounds like somebody’s starting to feel uncomfortable because the icecaps and Greenland ice sheets aren’t melting fast enough” — the dire nature of the facts and analyses that he presents go far beyond simple “global warming.”

That’s why so many people have been recommending other terms for so long.  James Gustav Speth, the former chair of the Council on Environmental Quality under the Carter administration and founder of both the World Resources Institute and the National Resources Defense Council used the term “global climate disruption” in an article as far back as 2005. Other examples of scientists using the term before the Obama administration include:

• The organization of university presidents in 2007
• Chuck Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering in 2008
• Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine in 2008
• References in academic journals like this one in 2009
• Paul A.T. Higgins of the American Meteorological Society in a report for the American Association for the Advancement of Science earlier in 2010

So fear not, conservative and center-right media. “Global climate disruption” is not some new White House brand name designed to trick people into the malevolent clean energy conspiracy. It is simply a more accurate way of describing the many catastrophic impacts that global warming will have on our society, environment and economy if we keep listening to the siren song of “do nothing” from your fellow anti-science disinformers.

Shakespeare wrote in “Romeo and Juliet,”

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Call it what you will, but that which we call global climate disruption by any other name will still drastically alter our way of life, cause irreversible damage to our climate, and harm the health and welfare of billions of people.

Joseph Romm is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and is editor of ClimateProgress.org. Sean Pool is Special Assistant for Energy, Science and Technology Policy at the Center for American Progress. A version of this article is cross-posted under the title “Climate disruption caused by global warming driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases” at Climate Progress.

You’re going to be hearing a lot about these milestones over the next twelve months, as the science community gears up for an annum of anniversaries that will—hopefully—help engage our broader culture in the scientific process. Or at least, that’s the stated goal of the COPUS network—it stands for “Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science”—which has organized the “Year of Science 2009” initiative to connect science-related events across the country and raise awareness about the nature of science and its importance to policy and our future.

And it’s not just big anniversaries: We can expect science-related issues to come up repeatedly in Washington and in the media as the new administration starts governing. How will president-elect Obama resolve the stem cell and climate issues—solely through administrative and executive action, or by championing new legislation? Expect an answer this year. Meanwhile, the administration has a science budget to propose in short order, and will be investing heavily in clean energy to fire the economy and create jobs. Such initiatives start this month with the push towards an economic stimulus bill.

When you combine a new science-friendly administration in Washington with all these historic milestones, there’s no doubt it adds up to a unique opportunity to get the broader American public better connected with the world of science that lies right under their noses, but which many citizens seldom perceive. Still, it’s worth asking a few questions about what we hope to achieve by capitalizing on these convergences.

Take, for example, the string of anniversaries: All celebrate momentous scientific achievements, but each also has, as a subtext, conflicts between science and religion. Galileo, we all know, was persecuted by the church; and Darwin’s theory is the reason Oxford University’s Richard Dawkins, the world’s leading anti-religionist, claims he can now be an “intellectually fulfilled atheist.” Does science or the American public benefit if these anniversaries become a new cause for debating the alleged rift between faith and reason—or are we just inviting another round of culture war skirmishes?

While there are reasons to fear an uptick in divisiveness this year—as some of the science world’s more confrontational types try to use the Darwin anniversaries as a reason to assault the public’s religiosity—there’s zero chance the administration itself will get involved in such politically futile and damaging advocacy. Obama’s science team isn’t a bunch of culture warriors; they’re deadly serious about tackling what is arguably the biggest issue we face, our intertwined climate and energy problem. And you don’t waste time needling people of faith if you want to solve such an intricate and massive challenge. In fact, over the past two decades, faith communities have joined the green movement in force, working to protect the environment and avert the worst threats of climate change. This is a new opportunity for those groups to collaborate with other freshly energized efforts.

Still, we’re left with a potentially large gap between the role of science in policy and politics this year, and the level on which the coming science anniversaries could be discussed. One dialogue moves us forward toward solutions; the other holds us back. It’s totally Bush era to argue endlessly over how science clashes with religion; and it’s absolutely critical to use science to get us out of the energy and climate mess we’re in.

There’s no avoiding the fact that as we discuss the great achievements of Darwin and Galileo—and how far we have and haven’t come since their times—we’ll awaken some dragons that still slumber among us. I would hardly propose toning down our science celebrations for this reason, but I would suggest adding to them, leavening them by adding a new dimension.

You see, there’s another science anniversary coming this year that I believe deserves considerably more recognition. On May 7, 1959, a British scientist and novelist named C.P. Snow delivered a now-famous lecture entitled “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.” Snow wasn’t nearly as important a researcher as Darwin or Galileo—in fact, his early scientific career involved a publishing-related scandal that may have helped push him on to literature—but his delineation of the broad disconnect between the scientific and humanistic ways of thinking has resonated powerfully across the last half century, and describes a problem that’s very much still with us.

The COPUS “Year of Science” advocates want to communicate about science—they want to bring science to the rest of America, seizing upon this year’s auspicious timing to do it. It’s a noble goal, but Darwin and Galileo alone don’t necessarily get you there. You need a lot of Obama—and more than a little bit of Snow—as well.

Chris Mooney is contributing editor to Science Progress and author of several books, including The Republican War on Science and the forthcoming Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. He and Kirshenbaum blog at “The Intersection.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified Galileo as the original inventor of the telescope.

Since then, the economic woes have continued, and so has the slaughter in the science journalism field. A few weeks back we learned that the Weather Channel, owned by NBC Universal, owned by General Electric, killed its “Forecast Earth” program, which focused on climate change and featured the respected on-air climatologist Heidi Cullen (it is unclear if she is leaving the network entirely). This occurred in the context of a 10 percent workforce cut—many experienced meteorologists were also let go.

And now we learn that CNN, owned by Time Warner, has let go of its entire science, technology, and environmental unit, including Miles O’Brien, respected producer Peter Dykstra, and numerous others. O’Brien, a veteran reporter, was known for being tough on science issues—including holding accountable Senator James Inhofe, the leading Republican global warming denier and a veritable misinformation machine. A CNN spokeswoman said the network wanted to “integrate environmental, science and technology reporting into the general editorial structure rather than have a stand alone unit,” and observed that Anderson Cooper 360 will continue to cover our “Planet in Peril.” But the fact is that with fewer science journalism experts on hand, we can only expect to see less science coverage over all from CNN, and worse coverage when we do get it.

Environment and energy issues appear (at least to me) to be growing in attention and interest, but covering them alone is no substitute for full-fledged science coverage.

Cable news was a tough place for science-related journalism even before the recession. In its 2008 “State of the News Media” survey, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that in 2007, cable news outlets gave science and the environment drastically short shrift. If you were to watch five hours of cable news, the report noted, you could expect to see 1 minute of science and technology coverage and 1 minute and 25 seconds of environmental coverage—compared with 10 minutes of celebrity and entertainment content, 12 minutes of accidents and disasters, and “26 minutes or more” of crime.

But while cable news may carry less substantive science than some newspapers, let’s not forget that science coverage is struggling across the board. The pinnacle of newspaper science journalism is the hallowed Tuesday New York Times science section, but as Andrew Revkin of the Times notes at his blog DotEarth, “we (like everyone in print media) are doing ever more with less.”

Moreover, don’t be fooled when a CNN, or some other outlet, points to its “green” coverage in order to underscore a continuing science journalism commitment. Environment and energy issues appear (at least to me) to be growing in attention and interest, but covering them alone is no substitute for full-fledged science coverage, any more than medical coverage or tech coverage are a substitute.

Science journalism should cover important developments in knowledge, where science is taking us, how science education and funding trends affect the competitiveness of the nation, science policy, and much else. Not only does science touch virtually every aspect of Americans’ lives—from health to economics to the Internet—but the federal government finances an enormous amount of research and development with taxpayer dollars. This year, that amount was more than $142 billion. Informed citizens deserve to understand more about what they’re getting from that investment. Medical, tech, and environmental coverage, though they may draw on science, rarely get into such areas.

Science journalism, at its best, should also be a vehicle for making ongoing advances in science relevant to non-scientist members of the public. Personalized medicine, designer babies, space militarization, geoengineering, brain-computer interfaces…how far away are such advances, and how will they affect people’s lives? Science journalism should put such questions on everyone’s radar, and then provide the best possible answers. It should help us forecast the future—and prepare us for it. Without such forward-looking journalism, we run a grave risk of not seeing what’s coming until it’s too late.

So what can we do? We have two options. We can continue to watch the economic contraction in the media business (witness the recent bankruptcy of newspaper giant Tribune Co.) destroy science coverage, and wring our hands whenever the latest dire news comes in. Or, we can take action to turn the tide.

For my part, I can say that the folks who created the ScienceDebate2008 organization are eyeing declining science coverage in the media and wondering how we might try to stick our thumbs in the dam. We’re convinced that disinterest from the press was one of the key reasons that we couldn’t get the candidates to commit to a live, televised science policy debate. Moreover, we know that while we’ve already lost a painful amount of science journalism, there is more yet that can be saved. However, it may require science defenders to actively raise money, whether by small donations over the Internet or bigger philanthropic ventures.

The CNN move last week did trigger considerable ire in the science blogosphere, so now may be the time to rally ourselves. My hope is to be able to write more, soon, about precisely how we can do so to greatest effect. In the meantime, I am very open to suggestions.

Chris Mooney is contributing editor to Science Progress and author of several books, including The Republican War on Science and the forthcoming Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. He and Kirshenbaum blog at “The Intersection.”

Science, Cultured

Science Progress contributing editor Chris Mooney surveys the interactions between science, politics, and culture from Los Angeles, California. He is author author of several books, including The Republican War on Science and the forthcoming Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. He and Kirshenbaum blog at “The Intersection.” (Photo: flickr.com/sarahfelicity)

Last week, along with fellow blogger Sheril Kirshenbaum, ScienceDebate2008 CEO and screenwriter Shawn Otto, and many other usual suspects from the Los Angeles science world, I attended the debut event for a very new sort of venture: The Science and Entertainment Exchange. Sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based National Academy of Sciences, but with entertainment industry might behind it as well—most centrally Jerry and Janet Zucker, the director/producer couple who also backed Proposition 71, the successful California stem cell ballot initiative, in 2004—it was perhaps the most significant merger of minds from two utterly different spheres that I’ve ever witnessed.

It’s no secret that scientists have had their problems with Hollywood in the past. I’ve written here about the troublesome mad scientist trope that appears regularly on television and the screen; and blockbuster films are also constantly being blasted for containingbad physics, bad biology, bad epidemiology, and so on. Not to mention all the ridiculous technobabble that occurs in sci-fi and disaster flicks, which invariably feature a set-piece in which someone wearing a white coat (surprisingly often it is Jeff Goldblum) explains why all hell is about to break loose.

Much of this was deliciously spoofed in a hilarious short film by Zucker Productions that opened the Exchange event in Los Angeles—a parody of The Day the Earth Stood Still in which it is scientists, not aliens, who arrive in Hollywood in a flying saucer, and warn the entertainment community that they’re in big trouble if they don’t mend their ways. I devoutly hope someone puts this video up on YouTube; the million views it would likely draw would go farther than any single event to bring scientists and entertainers together, joined by belly laughs.

In reality, of course, the tone of the Science and Entertainment Exchange is not hectoring in nature, and scientists aren’t going to blast Hollywood types with lasers if they get the facts wrong. Quite the opposite. The point of the Exchange is to create more collaboration, rather than the standard wagon-circling or ritual denunciation. As recently hired Exchange director and science writer Jennifer Ouellete (author of The Physics of the Buffyverse) puts it:

Let’s face it: ragging on the depiction of science in film and TV is a time-honored tradition on the Interwebs. There’s an entire Website devoted to Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics, and io9 just put up a poll asking readers to vote on which technical inaccuracies in science fiction annoy them the most….That said, I’m convinced that while the constant snark directed at science in movies and TV might be entertaining to those in the “geek clique,” it is not, in the long run, constructive, or conducive to fostering change in how science is portrayed in Hollywood. It’s easy to point fingers and toss off zingy crowd-pleasing one-liners; it’s a lot more difficult to actually offer well-considered workable alternatives in a format that is easily accessible to those in the entertainment industry.

National Academies president Ralph Cicerone echoed this point in Los Angeles. “We understand stories trump science in Hollywood,” he observed, and reassured the assembled audience—of what appeared to be over 300 people—that the goal of the Exchange was certainly not to turn every fiction film into a documentary. That would be, like, boring; the utter opposite of entertainment.

And just as scientists are trying to better understand the entertainment world, it’s not like everybody in the “industry” despises science. Far from it. Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy and emcee of the Los Angeles event, confessed himself a total geekophile: He said he’d seen Carl Sagan’s Cosmos “100 times” and added that he felt Scooby Doo is in many ways the best thing on TV, because it glorifies the use of reason and problem solving, rather than just letting the supernatural resolve any plot difficulties. Later on in the afternoon, I watched a full room of rapt writers and other industry creatives sit through a fascinating breakout session in which neuroscientists David Poeppel and Eric Haseltine explained “The Mysteries of the Brain and Mind,” where reality is definitely stranger than fiction—and the potential fodder for entertainment plots abounds.

So how well did the Exchange succeed in its debut, and what does the future hold? So far I’m hearing virtually unqualified applause—see for instance University of Southern California physicist Clifford Johnson’s take—and for scientists to pack a house in Hollywood is no small feat. Let me add to the accolades: This is a new departure for the scientific community, but precisely the sort of outreach measure that can help it better connect with our broader society. And as MacFarlane emphasized, these are two communities that need each other—the scientists can provide amazing (and also realistic) story ideas, and the entertainers can help spread the word about science to massive audiences through the medium of fictional film and television.

As this project moves forward, however, I’d like to end with a word of caution. For this kind of experiment to work, it is absolutely critical that the dialogue be fully two-directional. Scientists can’t just lecture, they also have to listen. They know the facts better than anyone, and no one disputes this. But they don’t necessarily understand how those facts can best fit into a story—something entertainers eminently excel at.

Attending an Exchange salon on “The Frontiers of Genomics” that featured J. Craig Venter, Lawrence Goldstein, and Gene E. Robinson, for instance, I heard a ton of science, but could only think of two movie plots. One would be a retread of 1997′s GATTACA—but Hollywood has already been there and done that. The other would be a story in which the synthetic bacteria that Venter hopes to create run rampant and threaten to destroy the world—in short, yet another retread of the Frankenstein myth. This is most emphatically not the kind of story that scientists want entertainers to tell. But the problem is, Venter didn’t give me (or the audience) anything better.

That’s a very minor criticism: The Exchange is just beginning, and I’m sure it’s already inspiring fruitful collaborations. And Jennifer Ouellette, who I know a little, is an ideal person to set up shop in Hollywood and start merging two very different worlds, something she has been doing anyway for some time. So suspend your disbelief, scientists—and I’ll see you at the movies.

Chris Mooney is contributing editor to Science Progress and author of several books, including The Republican War on Science and the forthcoming Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. He and Kirshenbaum blog at “The Intersection.”

The range of these suggestions underscores the intensifying challenge for policymakers in the face of rapid scientific and technological change. It’s the complexity of this change, the issues raised, the challenges posed to society, and the entangled morals and values in all of it that creates a new imperative to integrate methods of risk analysis, legislative practices, science advisory processes, and emerging forms of stakeholder engagement in decision making.

This requires engaging the public in new ways by encouraging broad deliberation. One way of thinking about this is to focus on “opening up” the decision making process by allowing a plurality of voices and lines of argument to enter into the discussion. This is in contrast to “closing down” the process through use of the same groups of experts, types of analysis, or singular, prescriptive framings of the policy problem.^[1] This “opening up” could be achieved through a unique appraisal methodology called Multicriteria Mapping, which through its novel approach to discussing different options in contested areas of technology policy might be up to the task of opening up decision making and engagement methods in the way just described.

Developed by Professor Andrew Stirling and others at the University of Sussex,^[2] MCM was first used in a study of stakeholder perspectives on GM crop policy in Britain,^[3] and has since been used to look at policy options for issues such as xenotransplantation^[4] (essentially the transplantation of cells, tissue, or organs from a nonhuman animal source into a human), future energy scenarios,^[5] and a multi-country European Union study on obesity policy.^[6] The methodology is based on principles of deliberation, participatory public engagement, and the integration of both “quantitative” and “qualitative” approaches to policy appraisal.

This requires some further explanation. MCM is a novel interview technique that allows for an array of views and opinions on a particular policy or technological issue to be expressed, and their specific effect identified. Like other types of multicriteria analysis,^[7] MCM allows one to understand the importance of individual criteria—the issues, beliefs, and values deemed relevant—upon a particular policy choice, or “option” in the language of the method. What makes MCM distinct is that it is highly transparent and, though mediated through a structured process, is sensitive and accommodating to the unique views of individual participants.

This is particularly important when it comes to deliberating on issues that involve scientific advances and technological solutions that have unknown costs and uncertainties associated with them—not to mention moral implications. Using MCM, an individual can analyse different decision options or ways forward in these situations, while still acknowledging the various influences and subjective viewpoints that affect them. It does not focus on identifying a single “best” option, but rather allows one to explore the diversity of perspectives that shape the perception of each option itself.

As shown in the nearby box, an MCM exercise is a five-staged interview process.^[8] The detailed interview, often lasting up to two hours, is mediated through an open-source computer software program. First, the interviewer defines a set of core options regarding the chosen policy issue. These are carefully developed by the interviewer after a thorough review of relevant literature and discussion with key stakeholders. For example, core options in a simple MCM exercise about energy policy might be nuclear power, coal burning, and wind energy. The options are discussed at the beginning of the interview with the participant and, if they wish, the participant can define his or her own options to add to the analysis.

Secondly, the participant is asked to define a set of criteria he or she will use to evaluate the options. Criteria are the different judgements, assumptions, technical views, or personal beliefs that a participant holds about the policy issue. In our example of energy policy, criteria might include public health effects, contribution to global warming, electricity cost, and amenity.

Once defined, these criteria are used to assess scores and then explore uncertainty for each of the options. Taking each criterion in turn, participants evaluate the options based on how well they “perform” under individual criterion. A pessimistic and optimistic value is used to evaluate this performance, usually on a scale of 1 to 10 or 1 to 100. This allows for participants to reflect any uncertainty they feel exists. For example, if the criterion “amenity” were used to evaluate wind energy, then the participant might give it a score of 3 to 7—depending on whether the wind turbines were located within an environmental area, rating a score of 3, or in an urban setting, which rated a 7. By enabling this expression of uncertainty, we can see the particular sensitivities of each option and the criteria that cause them.

The final stage of an MCM interview is weighting the different criteria. Participants assign 100 different points across the criteria so that they are able to express their relative importance of each. They are able to see how these weightings affect the final option rankings, and so can experiment until they get a proportion that accurately represents their views. At the end of the interview the final map of the performance rankings of the options is discussed with the participant (see box below).

An MCM exercise ultimately enables one to characterize an array of policy options for the technological issue at hand, and then analyze the options’ strengths and weaknesses under a set of evaluative criteria. One is left with an array of qualitative and quantitative information that combines to form a picture of the conditions, sensitivities, and framings associated with each policy option alongside the perspective of the participant.

It is this feature that makes it most appealing when it comes to engaging the public, politicians, specialists, and policy makers on pressing issues of science policy. Though MCM requires a particular level of specialist expertise in a given area to be most effective, it can be used as part of wider public consultation exercises. A good example of this was seen in the Deliberative Mapping project, which integrated expert and citizen assessments about options for treating end-stage kidney failure.

Here, the MCM exercise was modified for use in citizen panels where the panelists did not possess a detailed knowledge of the scientific issues at hand. The panelists worked together in moderated groups and jointly reached agreement about the evaluative criteria used and weighted. There were several points at which citizens and specialists came together to share views and exchange ideas. In other cases, an MCM exercise has been modified so that individual citizens work with pre-determined criteria and explore different weighting combinations in order to achieve a policy option ranking that best reflects individual views.

The key to success, however, in any deliberation or participatory engagement exercise is, as Rick Borchelt and Kathy Hudson argue in their Science Progress column “Engaging the Scientific Community with the Public,” about “agreeing up front to accommodate public input politically, not just to listen and nod politely.” To do this, we must open up policy and decision-making processes to the variety and plurality of views that exist about complex issues of science and technology policy. We must avoid processes that simply go through the motions of soliciting different views or engaging the public in order merely to “tick the box.”

Part of this is finding the right tools that encourage transparency and openness, and MCM is just one suggestion. But in order to realize effective, meaningful, engaged and deliberative dialogue among the body politic, we must move towards developing these and other approaches. Only then will science policymaking truly be opened up.

Molly E. Morgan is a Ph.D. student in Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. Her doctoral research is using MCM to compare stakeholder views on the governance of human embryonic stem cell research in the U.S. and the U.K.

Notes

[1] A. Stirling, “Opening Up and Closing Down: power, participation and pluralism in the social appraisal of technology,” Science Technology and Human Values, 33 (2) (March 2008): 262-294.

[2] A. Stirling “Multi-criteria mapping: mitigating the problems of environmental valuation,” Valuing Nature?: Ethics, Economics and the Environment, John Foster, ed., (London: Routledge, 1997).

[3] Stirling A, Mayer S, “Rethinking Risk: a pilot multi-criteria mapping of a genetically modified crop in agricultural systems in the UK,” Report for the UK Roundtable on Genetic Modification, SPRU, (University of Sussex, August 1999).

[4] Burgess J, Stirling A, Clark J, Davies G, Eames M, Mayer M, Staley K, Williamson S, “Deliberative Mapping: developing an analytic-deliberative methodology to support contested science-policy decisions,” Public Understanding of Science, 16 (3) (2007): 299-322.

[5] McDowall W, Eames M. “Towards a Sustainable Hydrogen Economy: A Multi-criteria Mapping of the UKSHEC Hydrogen Futures,” (London: Policy Studies Institute, 2006).

[6] Stirling A, Lobstein T, Millstone E, “Methodology for obtaining stakeholder assessments of obesity policy options in the PorGrow project,” Obesity Review, 8 (2) (December 2006): 7-27; and other articles in this special issue.

[7] Multi-Criteria Analysis Manual, DTLR (2001) DTLR, (London, Department for Transport, Land and the Regions), available at http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/corporate/pdf/146868.pdf.

[8] For more detailed information, various resources are available at http://www.multicriteria-mapping.org/.

Sizzle ultimately answers that “why” question in a surprisingly penetrating way. But not before a comedic romp in which Olson’s all-too-dryly scientific agenda for putting together a good documentary on climate change—he thinks it will be great to have lots of data, scientist interviews, and PowerPoint slides—gets repeatedly dashed. His funders commence a search for a celebrity host like Tom Cruise (“not a scientist but a Scientologist—most people don’t know the difference”) and his African American cameraman, Marion, constantly interrupts the interviews to inject global warming skepticism and thus “keep it real.” What ultimately results is a film that might be best described as An Inconvenient Truth meets Best in Show. It also may be the funniest global warming movie ever made (unless you count The Day After Tomorrow, which didn’t mean to be).

Olson’s previous movie, Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus, represented a more straightforward attempt at science documentary. But it offered some challenging and unconventional lessons, critiquing scientists for their inability to communicate about evolution and even, at times, catching them behaving badly. (In the film’s poker table scene, one scientist says of talking to the anti-evolution folks: “I think you have to stand up and say, you know, ‘you’re an idiot.’”) Sizzle continues this theme about communication, but through a richer departure: Now Olson has merged climate science with improv comedy, provided a little-heard African-American and gay perspective on climate change, and thereby further dramatized the incredibly vast gap between how scientists think about the issue and how ordinary people do. Or as Olson puts it upon hooking up with these funders and this camera crew: “I’d ventured a long ways from my old science lab.” Yes he has—and he has produced a film that sets a kind of trap for too-literal-minded scientists: If they react negatively to it, they’ll just be proving Olson’s point—that they don’t know how to relax, how to “keep it real,” how to communicate.

If you want to communicate science, you can’t just rely on facts; you have to make the story matter to people.

For indeed, as Sizzle builds towards its payoff (more on that in a second), it increasingly moves from interviewing real climate scientists—who tend to be staid and matter-of-fact—to interviewing a troupe of global warming “skeptics”—who are wrong on the science, but also extremely colorful and memorable. The gang is perhaps epitomized by University of Southern California geologist George Chillingarian, who appears to wear a fake mustache that isn’t quite attached properly, and who serves the film crew champagne. Marion calls him “Dr. Chill,” and it’s not just the science that he’s talking about.

Luckily, Olson knows his climate science far too well to give global warming “skeptics” the last word. In fact, even though he finds them the better communicators and on camera personalities, he still knows how they can be trumped. And so Sizzle proceeds to phase three, which involves interviewing real people in New Orleans, whose lives have been upended and who have become the poster children for the risks of climate change to American communities. These citizens, we soon see, are even more “real” than the climate skeptics. Katrina did massively more to dramatize global warming than thousands of scientific papers could do, and Sizzle gradually becomes recognizable as a narrative exploration of that lesson: If you want to communicate science, you can’t just rely on facts; you have to make the story matter to people.

That’s a critical punch-line, because for the media, for documentarians, for filmmakers, global warming is probably the hardest story there is to tell. It’s a slow-acting problem; there’s no single obvious culprit (greenhouse gases are invisible); the science is confusing and contested; and there’s very little any one person can do about it. There aren’t any clear heroes; there isn’t any stark bad guy; ultimately, it’s all just molecules doing their thing. But none of this means we shouldn’t be upset—to answer Mitch’s question—because as Katrina showed, not even a country as rich as the United States can necessarily cope with the changes that are coming. And that means a lot of pain. A lot of suffering. A lot of impacts on real people.

At the outset of Sizzle, even before he runs into Mitch and Brian, Olson-the-mockumentary-character participates in a scene that will be all too familiar for people trying to promote science (or anything else) in Hollywood: He meets with studio executives to try to get funding for his global warming documentary, and they won’t give him the time of day. Yet even without such big-time support, Olson-in-real-life has managed to produce a wonderful film, a remarkable achievement. In light of this, it would be a true shame if scientists, science bloggers, and science pundits make the same mistakes as the literal-minded scientist-documentarian portrayed in this film, and fail to realize what Olson (in real life) has accomplished.

Let’s hope they avoid that error. Let’s hope they can chill. Let’s hope they get real.

Chris Mooney is a contributing editor to Science Progress and the author of two books, The Republican War on Science and Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming. He blogs on The Intersection with Sheril Kirshenbaum.

In all seriousness, though, to hear Holt and his fellow congressional equation solvers —Vern Ehlers (R-MI) and the recently elected Bill Foster (D-IL)—tell it, they are strangers in a truly strange land. Ehlers, for instance, relates having to occasionally rush to the floor to prevent fellow members from killing science programs they don’t even understand—assuming, for instance, that “game theory” research involves sports, and that A.T.M. studies have something to do with banks (actually, this is a communications technology).

But is creating another technocratic agency the only way to bridge the divide between science and Congress?

Many people would probably agree that this gap between science and most of our elected representatives needs closing—but how to make that happen remains a complicated matter. The traditional solution advocated by science policy aficionados involves the institutionalization of congressional scientific advice—hence the seemingly never-ending quest to revive the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. However, as I reported several months back, even with a presumably sympathetic Democratic Congress that project has foundered—and it’s unclear that we can expect much movement on this front in the near future.

But is creating another technocratic agency the only way to bridge the divide between science and Congress? Not necessarily. Of late I have noticed mounting interest in another solution—namely, electing more scientists, regardless of party affiliation, to office. To this end, Scientists and Engineers for America has been training scientists on how to run electoral campaigns, and one such scientist who I know personally, physicist and former Holt staffer Don Engel, is currently seeking a delegate position in the Maryland State House.

Other scientists in the running for 2008 include chemical engineer Christopher Rothfuss, who is shooting for a Wyoming Senate seat, and Michelle McMurry, a biochemist running for a California House seat out of San Francisco. But I can’t help thinking: Trainings are great as far as they go, but if advocates really want to usher more scientists into politics, why not do it the good old-fashioned way?

One possibility would be for interested individuals to form a nonpartisan Science PAC, devoted to funding candidates who are either scientists themselves, or who make science a strong priority and have good records on science issues. With adequate funding, the PAC might not only select, say, five or ten members to support each election cycle; it could also target science “bad guys”—climate change deniers, officials who promote manufactured scientific controversies, anti-evolutionists, policymakers bent on environmental degradation—who deserve to be unelected and give campaign funds to their opponents. To some extent, groups like the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters already support advocates for science-based policies like these. It’s the same basic principle.

The point is that if scientists want to play politics, then they ought to actually play politics—no half measures. It doesn’t have to be done in a partisan way—a great candidate for Science PAC support would be someone in the mold of Republican physicist Vern Ehlers—but it certainly should be done in an uncompromising and unapologetic one.

At the same time, it seems to me that for the vast majority of scientists, who will of course never hold office, we need something else entirely. These researchers require training in the language of politics, its norms and expectations, so that when they do have run-ins with elected representatives—for instance, when they are called in to brief or to testify—they don’t end up poorly equipped to communicate. I already know that scientists who go through the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s congressional fellowship program learn the realities of talking with mega-busy elected officials, but that’s because they actually work in Congressional offices. Alas, only a few dozen scientists a year have this opportunity.

To broaden scientists’ familiarity with (and realism about) politics, then, the best option would seem to be providing the option of graduate level training in communication and political skills—a curriculum designed to help a scientist, who must brief an elected representative, learn how to quickly and succinctly deliver the central message. When talking to Congress, pretty much the worst thing you can do is lose everyone in charts, graphs, and uncertainties; but without the right kind of training, the inclination of many scientists could be to do just that.

None of which is to say we don’t need to revive the Office of Technology Assessment—going all the way back to 2003, I have been making very this argument in print. But at the same time, it’s not the only answer; we must simultaneously come up with many other creative ways of reconnecting the two cultures of science and politics.

Chris Mooney is a contributing editor to Science Progress and the author of two books, The Republican War on Science and Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming. He blogs on The Intersection with Sheril Kirshenbaum.

Dr. Neal Lane, Malcolm Gillis University Professor and senior fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, and former science advisor to President Bill Clinton, offered a keynote address highlighting three significant challenges for the United States that will require technical solutions: climate change and rising global demands for energy; the competitiveness of American business and industry; and affordable and effective health care.

“Looking forward, the quality of our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren in the 21^st century will depend on the U.S. continuing to be a leader in science and technology,” he said, adding that he believes that leadership is well within the grasp of the United States, but it is not a given. “Our success will depend on America making many of the new discoveries and new inventions,” he said, “but it will also depend on how we use that technology to deal with a host of serious problems that threaten Americans, and in some cases billions of people around the globe.”

The room erupted in applause when Lane said that the federal government must restore the public’s trust in the integrity of science. Scientific information cannot be used to spread dogma, he said. He stressed that government websites and publications must provide accurate information, government scientists must be able to speak openly, and only qualified individuals should serve on advisory committees. “I never thought I would put those down as bullets in a talk,” he lamented. “It seemed very obvious to me.”

The “science fair” presenters gathered after the keynote for a panel discussion moderated by R. Alta Charo, Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law & Bioethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. Baden spoke about the need to direct federal funding not just to support research, but to the laboratory infrastructure at public universities that cannot otherwise keep up with the more lavish facilities of private schools. Without good labs, he said, these schools lose talent to the wealthier schools. Building on ideas in Lane’s keynote, Kalil talked about the need to increase funding high-risk, transformative research, early-career researchers, and long-term projects.

Addressing the issue of ethical approaches to scientific research, Hudson argued that the United States must rethink the structure of clinical drug trials. In her opinion, drug researchers are too focused on “protecting” their subjects from the science, rather than communicating with them and addressing their concerns. Batten also emphasized the necessity of effective science communication, this time between scientists and policymakers, citing as a prime concern the Bush administration’s regressive policies regarding climate change.

Charo identified a common thread running through the concerns of all the participants: the dilemma of basing policy on “truth,” when politicians can manipulate the concept into something that no longer resembles the truth of scientists. “Scientists talk in terms of hypotheses and probabilities,” she pointed out, whereas “politics and law tends to move on the assumption that the case is ‘X’ and we need to base a policy on it.” But troubles arise over who gets to own that truth, she said. In light of the inherent uncertainly of science, she explained, the United States has seen the difference in the treatment of truth used to delay necessary policies, as in the case of global warming. She also pointed to political manipulations of truth that have been used to “justify absolute falsehoods” as in the case of the Terri Schiavo controversy and battles over reproductive rights. She added that “nationally, we’ve seen it blurring the definition of science in the continued attempts to introduce creationism and so-called ‘Intelligent Design’ into the school system.”

Rick Weiss, CAP Senior Fellow and former science reporter for the Washington Post, closed the event, arguing that science must trump the superstitions that lead to uninformed policies on issues like contraception, sex education, and drug abuse. “Imagine what the world would be like if reason and evidence were really the currency of the day.” Science, he reemphasized, is crucial to solving the most pressing issues in environmental protection, health care, food security, and climate change, but equally important is the effective communication of science that will drive sound policymaking.

To watch video of the entire event, visit the CAP events page.

Last Thursday, Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ), one of the aforementioned three physicists, appeared at the Washington D.C. chapter of Student Pugwash USA for an event on “Science, Technology, and the 2008 Elections.” He spoke of a dire need for scientists on Capital Hill. He also spoke of his own efforts to facilitate discussions between Congress and top scientists. One of his main projects is to revive the de-funded Office of Technology Assessment, which was dissolved in 1995. The OTA was a bipartisan group designed to directly inform Congress about the scientific implications of their policy decisions. Holt said that Congress, under then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, voted to disband the OTA because they could “just go to their neighborhood professor.” Laughing, he said this amounted to a “self-imposed Congressional lobotomy.”

Science Progress Contributing Editor Chris Mooney wrote in support of Congressman Holt’s revival efforts earlier this year: “The need for OTA has only become more apparent, not less, over time, as policymakers see more and more that many political issues have inescapable technical components.” To make critical policy decisions about climate change, health care, and the future of innovation in the United States, lawmakers need the best scientific advice, whether it comes from their colleagues, from outside experts, or from Congressional researchers.

The survey covered employees at EPA headquarters, in each of the agency’s 10 regions around the country and at more than a dozen research laboratories. The highest number of complaints about political interference came from scientists who are directly involved in writing regulations and those who conduct risk assessments such as determining a chemical cancer risk for humans.

Nearly 400 scientists said they had witnessed EPA officials misrepresenting scientific findings, 284 said they had seen the “selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome” and 224 scientists said they had been directed to “inappropriately exclude or alter technical information” in an EPA document.

Nearly 200 of the respondents said they had been in situations where they or their colleagues actively objected to or resigned from projects “because of pressure to change scientific findings.”

This is merely the latest in a string of black marks on the reputation of the Agency. Along with Administrator Stephen Johnson’s dismissal of his staff’s recommendation in favor of California’s request for a waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions, a strong juridical rebuke of the the Agency’s failure to properly regulate mercury emissions, and internal rifts between the staff union and Agency management over the handling of scientific information, this is further indication of an EPA without adequate leadership, and an executive branch with a contempt for scientific integrity.

There may be markets—and therefore, potential profits—for materials in which hitherto no one had an interest.

What’s so new about digital publishing? One short answer is long tail economics. In 2004 Chris Anderson published “The Long Tail” in Wired, followed by a book of the same title. He argued that traditional production and marketing follow the Pareto Principle, or the “80/20 rule:” 20 percent of the population holds 80 percent of the wealth; 80 percent of profit comes from 20 percent of goods produced. For example, 20 percent of movies will be “hits” and produce 80 percent of a studio’s profit. Anderson argued that the 80/20 rule operates under conditions of scarcity, but that under conditions of abundance of goods and of access to those goods, there is potential for profit in that hitherto untapped 80 percent of goods, which can be cheaply produced and marketed. This is the “long tail,” in which there are niche markets for nearly every product. It’s easy to see how this applies to the entertainment world. But who would have an interest in obscure or difficult scholarly publications in the humanities or social sciences? I don’t think we know. What we do know is that if millions, and perhaps eventually billions, of people have access to on-line search engines and digital media, as Michael Jensen pointed out in his article, “The Deep Niche,” there could be many “niche” markets that simply wouldn’t have existed before. There may be markets—and therefore, potential profits—for materials in which hitherto no one had an interest.

Academic—especially commercial academic—publishers have already begun to exploit such new potential markets. Here is just a sampling:

• A typical journal article can be purchased as a PDF at Science Direct for $30; at Kluwer for $32; at Ingenta for $42. Ingenta began in the academic and research sector, and has expanded to include other forms of publication. Its motto for publishers is “maximizing the value of your content digital assets.”
• Articles in JStor, a subscription journal database, appear in Google searches with a link to a page where an article can be purchased.
• The Review of Metaphysics, a scholarly philosophical journal, sells individual articles and book reviews linked to the books they review at Amazon.com for between $5.95 and $9.95, depending on year of publication, as well as a subscription to the journal for $40.
• Individual book chapters as well as entire books can be purchased as PDF files at the National Academies Press. Just recently, a print copy of a new book was $45.86, a PDF file of the book was $15, and of an individual chapter was $2.50.
• Highbeam.com is an on-line research service that maintains a library of scholarly articles; like JStor, its articles are indexed by Google. In order to view the articles in its database, one must pay a membership fee: $29.95 per month, $199.95 per year, with a 7-day free trial period. Highbeam pays a publisher a licensing fee, just as JStor does; and each may “sell” an article or access to it.

While the profits in the humanities and social science may be small compared to those in the entertainment industry and the hard sciences, the underlying economics are the same. Whether academic or commercial, the publisher’s main interest, just like that of the Hollywood studio’s, or any media entity’s, is in profit; for the publisher, maintaining control over and asserting copyright is a means to profit.

When we turn to the knowledge/culture creators (e.g., scientists, writers, scholars and academic authors, artists, actors), there is more divergence of interests. Most artists and (non-academic) writers think that they, the creators, should have a share in the potential profit of their work. For example, the recent WGA strike was over writers’ share in the profit from “reuse” (sale, on-line streaming, video and DVD downloading, and ad revenue from on-line streaming) of their work. On the other hand, as users, many artists find the permissions and fees for reuse stifling of creative work, and in that respect, are interested less in profit than in looser interpretations of fair use. Academic and scholarly authors (especially in humanities and social sciences; less so in the sciences where there may be commercial gain to be had from the application of scientific work) have shown little concern for issues of monetary gain, and typically have been most interested in dissemination of and access to scholarly works for the sake of ongoing research, scholarship and educational purposes. This is a reflection in part of the academic value of open availability of ideas and knowledge and in part of what has been the economics of print publication. The academic value in openness of ideas is also tied to the fact that the producers of academic and scholarly work have been—and so far still are—the primary users of the work produced, and as such tend to be more interested in open access than in monetary gain for the knowledge/culture creator.

Traditionally, academics have focused on the research and/or “prestige” values of their work, and traditional criteria for tenure and promotion have reinforced the latter. Prior to digital media, in principle, anyone could have purchased a scholarly article. But, in practice it was pretty unlikely because the means of developing an interest in a topic and gaining easy access to the sources did not exist—unless one were associated with a university or research institution—and the sources themselves were scarce and expensive (e.g., small print runs, materials going quickly out of print, high subscription costs). Moreover, in the humanities and social sciences, unlike in the sciences, there is usually no commercial application from which profit could be made. But with digital production (and hence cheap storage and reproduction), the costs of maintaining and delivering digital inventory is miniscule compared to the costs of maintaining print inventory, as Anderson pointed out in his “long tail” analysis, and with on-line search engines there are potential markets even for infrequently purchased items. As the examples above indicate, publishers are already exploiting these markets.

In addition to potentially new dispersed “niche” markets, there are corporate and university markets. The Copyright Clearance Center negotiates, on behalf of publishers, hefty fee structures for corporate access to and reuse of scholarly and research databases. Same with the copyright fees charged to university libraries for “reuse” of scholarly material in the form of Electronic Reserves, course packs and the like. These are all forms of profit, which are magnified by digital media.

If the “markets” for scholarly works are changing, and developments in digital technology—the cyberinfrastructure—suggest that they are, then academic authors and institutions need to take a very different stance towards the conditions under which authors’ works are published and distributed, and to become much more actively involved in reshaping the digital publishing world.

As long as academic authors continue to sign exclusive and restrictive publishing agreements, publishers will control the market.

Whether the interest is profit or dissemination, academic authors need to stop signing restrictive publishing agreements. First, if there is profit to be had, academic authors should have a fair share of it. An academic publishing contract which stipulates that an author collects no share of the sales in each form (e.g., print or digital) until at least 300 copies of that form are sold annually does not give the author a fair share of the profit. There is no extra cost to the publisher annually; once produced, the sale of a digital product is almost entirely profit; similarly for print copies if print on demand is well-established. Second, for purposes of dissemination, authors may be poorly served by a standard restrictive publishing agreement which grants publication and distribution rights exclusively to the publisher. If a publisher decides to not distribute or “print” the work, the author may have little or no avenue for having her or his work distributed.

Universities, too, have an interest in how this new world is structured. As things stand now, universities already pay the salaries of academic authors, and hefty subscriptions to journals and research databases. Thus, when a university has to pay copyright fees it could, ironically, and unlike corporate clients, end up paying twice or even thrice for the use of material. For example, if the school puts a digital copy of one of its print journals on E-reserve, or if a faculty member posts a digital copy of an article from one of the university’s print or electronic journals on a course management website, the university may have to pay a copyright fee—yet the university already owns that material, paid for it, and may even have paid to produce it, as one of its own employees, or an employee of another university, which is in the same boat, may have created it in the first place.

There have been attempts by academic organizations and universities— such as MIT, and most recently Harvard—to have open access digital repositories of at least their own faculty members’ works, but thus far, these efforts have not been particularly successful. Until such efforts are widely coordinated among all universities—and not just a few elite ones —and equipped with indexed and searchable information, this does not constitute the kind of system-wide restructuring of the publishing domain that would be in the broad interest of researchers, scholars, and the public. There is a lot of discussion about this—for example, at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at Berkeley and at the information technology non-profit Ithaka, but thus far no coordinated action.

There are alternative copyright licensing structures, such as Creative Commons or the GNU Free Documentation License, that might serve as models of what could be developed for publishing digital works. But whatever the models developed, the main point is that as long as academic authors continue to sign exclusive and restrictive publishing agreements, publishers will control the market. Once an author has signed the copyright and licensing rights to her or his work over to a publisher, the law is on the side of the publisher who enforces copyright as a means to making profit. Such enforcement can include curtailing the author’s ability to disseminate her or his own work, as well as collecting clearance and reuse fees through the Copyright Clearance Center and issuing “take-down” notices of electronically posted material.

Under The Copyright Term Extension Act, copyright for a work created after January 1, 1978 subsists from its creation and (with some specific exceptions) endures for a term consisting of the life of the author and 70 years after the author’s death. If an author has signed a standard exclusive and restrictive academic publishing agreement, and if a work unexpectedly “sells,” the profit will go exclusively to the publisher and the licensing fees will be collected exclusively by the publisher.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act gives copyright holders, usually commercial publishing and media companies, legal tools to enforce alleged violations of technological anti-piracy measures on digital media. DMCA is particularly worrisome since it appears to give greater control to the copyright holder of digitized works that are encoded and encrypted in digital media than to copyright holders of print media; the former appear to have exclusive control over access and use for an indefinite period of time. Copyright infringement does not have to have been established for a “take down” notice to be issued under DMCA, even when a strong or reasonable fair use defense could be made. It remains to be seen whether and to what extent this will adversely affect things like Interlibary Loan of digital materials and any subscription or password protected materials.

All the more reason then for academic authors with the luxury of salary and tenure to take the lead and to be actively engaged in widespread coordinated action to restructure the publishing world—untenured academics are in a more vulnerable position until the profession reconceives its criteria for tenure and promotion. For example, authors could stipulate in their publishing agreements that no reuse fees be collected from universities and public libraries. Or, they could play a role in pricing so that even those not affiliated with a university could afford to purchase scholarly work. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition has developed tools for authors to help them renegotiate agreements with publishers and this might be a place for individual academic authors to start.

Universities, too, need to engage in coordinated, systematic action to facilitate more reasonable conditions for the dissemination of ideas that is the lifeblood of research.

At the same time, individual attempts to negotiate with publishers may not be a sufficiently coordinated action to make a dent in current publishing practices and to overcome each individual’s interest in publication for other reasons—for example, getting their ideas published, prestige, tenure, and promotion. All the more reason, then, for scholarly organizations and universities to get into the act if humanities and social science scholars are really going to reorient themselves to the technology and new economics of digital publishing. Even in the sciences, which are ahead of the humanities and social sciences in terms of grappling with the implications of digital publishing, a huge amount of scientific scholarship still lives behind a subscription wall, earning publishers huge amounts of money. However, the sheer volume of research available in open-access repositories like PubMed Central (for life sciences) and arXiv.org (for physics and computational sciences) is evidence of very different approaches in the sciences: not negotiations with publishers, but either Federally-mandated access (for NIH-funded research) or total circumvention of the traditional publishing route (despite the fact that many of the papers uploaded to arXiv.org are eventually accepted for publication in professional refereed journals). In the humanities there have been some developments in this regard, including Ars Disputandi and Philosophers’ Imprint, but thus far, they have tended to be somewhat isolated and marginal.

Universities, too, need to engage in coordinated, systematic action to facilitate more reasonable conditions for the dissemination of ideas that is the lifeblood of research. Right now publishers compete with one another developing software tools that may be of little use to users, and there is tremendous duplication of effort and resources both among universities—between presses, libraries and IT departments—and publishers building the cyberinfrastructure for producing and managing scholarly work. Universities are the primary customers and users of scholarly work, and therefore, have tremendous leverage if they exercise it in a coordinated fashion.

While there may be some discipline-specific issues such that a single model won’t work for all areas, institutions—i.e., universities and scholarly organizations—and academic authors from all areas need to take an active role in setting the terms for digital publishing and in exploring the development of systematic and coordinated reputable peer reviewed open access venues. ”Open” need not necessarily mean “free,” but it does mean that publishers’ interest in profit should not be the controlling force of the digital publishing world, at least as far as scholarship and research are concerned. Researchers, scholars and academic institutions need to take the lead. Doing so would encourage treating knowledge and culture products as public goods, rather than only as property, and as part of the information commons that nourishes open and informed democratic societies.

©2008 K.A. Wallace

K.A. Wallace is a Professor of Philosophy at Hofstra University.

Jonah Lehrer at the Frontal Cortex argues that we need more science critics and an open public atmosphere for critiquing science. His suggestion to science bloggers: Don’t post anonymously.

Eric Berger over at SciGuy discovered that the Federal government spends 200 times more on bioterrorism preparedness than on hurricane research. This discrepancy is even more significant, he suggests, because bioterrorism might happen while hurricane disasters will happen.

Jacob Goldstein at the Wall Street Journal Health blog covers several stories on the growing number of parents refusing to vaccinate their children over fears that the injections may be linked to autism or neurological disorders, despite the fact that no solid evidence exists suggesting vaccines pose any such danger.

The Chronicle’s Wired Campus covered the news that Intel and Microsoft have teamed to open research centers at top universities to enlist them in a new initiative to harness the power of parallel computing for the next generation of computing systems. It’s worth noting the long-haul five-year commitment to the research.

Goldston, a scholar in residence at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the former staff director of the House Science and Technology Committee under Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), was responding to the new report, “Into the Eye of the Storm,” by B. Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration, and Harold Salzman, a sociologist and senior research associate at the Urban Institute. Their study argues against conventional wisdom to say that U.S. students are improving in performance in math and science and that the number of graduates in science and engineering actually exceeds the available jobs.

Industry and policy professionals alike have argued that declines in the S&E workforce threaten U.S. economic competitiveness, especially with China and India graduating large numbers of scientists and engineers each year. Goldston noted that, “we need to make sure that we’re not using competitiveness as a screen.”

Indeed, Salzman and Lowell’s findings suggest that education reform may not be the key to maintaining the prominence of U.S. science and engineering in the global market. But Golston pointed out that competitiveness is not the ultimate issue. Rather, he suggested, “we need to talk about what kind of economic future we want the U.S. to have.”

Reorienting U.S. science and engineering policy for the 21st century should not focus solely on producing more engineers and scientists, he said. Policymakers must also ensure that graduates entering these fields have the opportunity to analyze problems and design solutions that make our economy more dynamic and more equitable.

Tackling this issue from a different angle, William Bates, vice president for government affairs at the Council on Competitiveness, lauded the U.S. S&E students for their creativity, pointing to programs such as the Georgia Tech Computer Science program, which marries traditional instruction in computer architecture with various “threads” leading to practical application of those fundamentals. “We need scientists that think like artists and artists that think like engineers,” he said.

That’s exactly what other countries are learning from the United States, added Salzman. He pointed out that test scores in South Korea, Japan, and Singapore outpace those of the U.S. in math and science but are low on reading and literacy. South Korea in particular is backing away from education policies that emphasize “test-and-drill” results and instead cultivate creativity and innovation.

The major report sounding the alarm on the state of U.S. STEM education is the National Academies’ Rising Above the Gathering Storm, but Goldston pointed out that Salzman and Lowell’s new data analysis does not necessarily mean that the recommendations of the former report are misguided. Improving STEM education is in general a good thing and, as Goldston pointed out in an August editorial in Nature (subscription), none of the Gathering Storm recommendations “contributes in any obvious way to the agenda of an interest group.” In the same article, Goldston wrote that:

As a result, Congress hasn’t spent much time discussing, say, what might be done to increase the demand for, rather than just the supply of, scientists and engineers, or what sort of training they should be getting in the liberal arts. Rather, in an era of unprecedented global competition, most of the policy ideas are simply recycled proposals from the competitiveness debate that occurred two decades ago, when the United States felt threatened by Japan.

That’s why policy makers and scientists alike must challenge reactive questions like, “How do we stay ahead,” which do not serve the long-term interests of the U.S. economy, U.S. citizens, or the global common good. Or, as Daniel Sarewitz, Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, pointed out in his recent analysis of U.S. science policy, most elements of the debate simply revolve around questions of “how much” rather than questions of “what for.”

If we can understand from Salzman and Lowell’s paper that the country is not fumbling into the future with a shrinking cohort of inept science and engineering graduates, then we can begin to ask how to shape an economy that gives those bright minds the space and resources to make the world a better place.

“If I want a graduate student who can do math,” I heard a distinguished scientist remark a few weeks ago, “I’ll go to Germany.”

The beginning of October marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, and as we leave that milestone behind, what would President Eisenhower’s science advisers have thought about such a statement? They might well have slapped their foreheads, wondering whether their pioneering National Defense Education Act and its remarkable contributions to our economy, our military preparedness, and our educational system have been forgotten.

There would be reasons for their chagrin. Although the quality of science and engineering education in the United States might still be superior to those of our competitors, the raw numbers are alarming. By 2000 Chinese engineering graduates had increased 161 percent while ours had declined by 20 percent. Fewer than 6 percent of high school seniors taking the SATs in 2002 planned to study engineering, down by a third from the previous decade. In the next few years more than half of the Sputnik generation of trained scientists and engineers will retire. Yet as measured by gross domestic product, federal investment in the physical sciences is half of what it was in 1970.

Twenty-first century America needs to prepare for the century of science and engineering. One pathway is adoption of a new National Defense Education Act. A bill for a 21st-century NDEA was introduced in congress in February 2006 but never became law. A landmark report from the National Academies published earlier this year delivered a chilling conclusion:

Although many people assume that the United States will always be a world leader in science and technology, this may not continue to be the case inasmuch as great minds and ideas exist throughout the world. We fear the abruptness with which a lead in science and technology can be lost—and the difficulty of recovering a lead once lost, if indeed it can be regained at all.

Another bill, the America COMPETES Act, includes provisions for math-science education grants programs for schools that serve low-income students and for expanded advance placement programs. House and Senate staffers are now discussing funding levels for these very modest efforts. Even if they are funded, they are at best a tepid response to a deep and ongoing national problem.

Before Sputnik America’s leaders were sure that the Soviet Union, which could barely produce enough food for its people, could never overtake us in a technological race. Today the warning signs are clear. Will it require another national trauma for our current leadership to respond?

America has more than enough scientists and engineers, according to a new report from the Urban Institute. BusinessWeek writer Vivek Wadhwa points out that ACT and SAT scores have gone up over the past 20 years and between 1993 and 2001 65% of students who obtained a bachelor’s in engineering went on to pursue a masters degree or job in another field. Moreover, between 1985 and 2000, the U.S. produced 435,000 science and engineering degree-holders, but only added 150,000 jobs per year to the science and engineering workforce. His conclusion is that we do not need more science education, but that the government needs to generate demand for scientists and engineers by creating national programs to solve large scale problems like global warming and the spread of infectious diseases.

Inside Higher Ed features a Q and A with Paula E. Stephan and Ronald G. Ehrenberg, editors of a new book of essays on Science and the University. They discuss the change in America’s scientific goals from the 1950′s to today, balancing competition and collaboration with foreign scientists, and the proper approach scientists should take to the federal funding process.

“Demand-side” innovation theory seems to be the right regulatory approach for the EU, according to The European Policy Centre. An article on Science|Business Policy Bridge highlights some of the Centre’s recommendations, including, “creating the right market conditions in Europe for companies to innovate, academics to discover, and investors to take risks.” They claim that those conditions “don’t necessarily come from spending more money on research…Instead, it’s a question of freeing technology markets to work more efficiently.”

This past Wednesday, the House Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Education held a hearing to address the NSB action plan.

Education policy is typically in the hands of the nation’s 14,000 local school districts, but according to Medill Reports, “concerns about the country’s lagging competitiveness in science education have created bipartisan support in Washington for a national plan.” Dr. Steven Beering, Chairman of the NSB, noted at the hearing that reaching consensus between those thousands of local boards on STEM education would be unimaginable.

Math and science scores for U.S. students are abysmal in comparison to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (see Marc Pearl’s column). Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), ranking Republican on the subcommittee, introduced a bill (H.R.325) in May that would implement “rigorous and voluntary American education content standards in mathematics and science” (Via the Chronicle).

The primary recommendation of the NSB report is the creation of a non-federal “National Council for STEM Education” to coordinate education programs through the country. The report also includes the following recommendations:

• The President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy should create a standing Committee on STEM Education within the National Science and Technology Council.
• The Department of Education should create a new Assistant Secretary of Education, who will coordinate that department’s STEM education initiatives with others.
• The NSF should create a national road map for primary, secondary, and collegiate STEM education.

The National Council would then coordinate a massive effort to define coherent STEM curricula, develop metrics to test student learning, strengthen the linkage between K-12 and college science and math education, and increase the number of qualified teachers in STEM classes through professional development and competitive compensation.

For coverage: Medill Reports, Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription), WCFCourier, Education Week.

Public interest in science reporting is low: 16 percent of the U.S. public follows science stories closely, according to Pew polling data. And many science reporters lack training in scientific disciplines and get assigned beats across an unmanageably large spectrum of scientific fields. So it’s no surprise that what gets covered in the news often misses the mark.

But what about blogs? Bloggers such as PZ Myers are gaining a reputation online, and also have solid backgrounds in the sciences. And interestingly, some of the devoted followers of this media are science journalists.

As members of the Scientific American-sponsored panel pointed out, science blogs could be just the “revolution” science journalism is looking for. But what if science blogs aren’t just a source, but an authority?

Feedback from journalists could surely improve the quality (and presumably, the reach) of some bloggers, as USC astronomy and physics professor Clifford Johnson pointed out. But journalists could learn some tricks from bloggers, too.

Because most scientists aren’t trained at communicating the details or significance of their work, and most journalists don’t have a science background, the details are lost in the reporting.

Traditional science journalism is also frequently trapped in the counterproductive the conflict-and-drama-driven model. Much science coverage in the mainstream media concerns recently-released studies that claim to reverse current understandings:

At the point of publication, most individual papers have “had almost no impact on thinking,” said Scientific American Editor in Chief and discussion moderator John Rennie. Many papers are later proven wrong.

As Matt Nisbet pointed out in response to a recent New York Times Magazine article on epidemiological studies, the release of a new scientific study is not necessarily newsworthy. But with more and more science journalists trolling the profusion of science blogs for story leads, the focus could be brought back to more significant science.

So can science bloggers establish their own authoritative voice in the media? If 16 percent of the public included trustworthy science bloggers in their media orbit, we might be on the way to revolution.

But if the American public’s grasp of scientific knowledge is weak, then its science-related policymaking may be seriously flawed. And when one considers the attention given to science news and the state of science knowledge in this country, it is easy to despair.

Public opinion surveys by The Pew Research Center for People and the Press, which looked at 19 news categories during the years 2000 to 2006, found that only 16 percent of respondents reported following science news closely, tying it with news of other nations for last place in reader interest. It is perhaps good news that the public claims to be almost as uninterested in celebrity scandals and sports, but the 16 percent of respondents with a special interest in science news stories compares unfavorably with the 37 percent of respondents who closely followed news of natural disasters or the 40 percent who followed weather news and the similar proportion who tracked stories relating to money.

In their areas of expertise scientists are particularly well-respected and are trusted to make sound judgments that extend beyond the realm of pure science.

One reason for this low interest in science news may be that it hardly leaps out to the average television viewer, newspaper reader, or web crawler. Looking at how the “newshole” is apportioned, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that in the most recent quarter science and technology news ranked 19th out of 26 topics in the news time or space devoted to it, occupying about a 1 percent share across all media.

Tests of the public’s science knowledge seem discouragingly consistent with the scant attention given science news. The most recent National Science Foundation Science Indicators report draws on different surveys to tell us that only about 54 percent of Americans realize that antibiotics do not kill viruses, fewer than half know that genetically modified foods are in their neighborhood grocery store, and only 44 percent believe that human beings developed from other animal species (about three-quarters of those responding realize that the theory of evolution says this, but many reject the theory).

Indeed, more people believe that houses can be haunted than accept the theory of the Big Bang, and 29 percent are not certain that the earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa. This relative lack of interest in and knowledge of science appears to bode ill for scientifically informed public policies. The actual situation is, however, both better and worse than these figures indicate.

It is worse in that much of what qualifies as science news is event coverage rather than science coverage. Some people who say they closely follow stories about climate change may be paying attention only to stories about the threat that polar ice melting poses for the polar bear or walrus population. Others who track climate change stories may mistakenly believe that climate scientists are more or less equally divided about whether human activity has contributed to climate change and that there is no way of knowing which group of scientists is most likely correct.

Neither breed of science-news followers may have learned anything about the science itself from reading the news. In addition, the NSF science knowledge data are likely to be unduly rosy. Since most of the NSF’s survey questions require answers of true, false, or uncertain, some correct answers may be uninformed guesses.

But looked at another way, if 44 percent of American adults (and the proportion is higher in other surveys) accept the theory of evolution, then about 100 million Americans grasp this most basic of scientific paradigms. Even the 16 percent of the population who say they closely follow science stories numbers in the tens of millions. That’s a lot of people.

But what, or more precisely who, informs those 44 percent who grasp the efficacy of the theory of evolution or those 54 percent who know that antibiotics do not kill viruses? There are many sources. Evolution has long been taught in high school biology courses, and not only do doctors explain medications to their patients, but there have also been enough news stories highlighting the limitations of antibiotics so that if those who follow science news tell their families and friends, knowledge will vastly expand.

Particularly important for the prospects of sound science-based policies is the consistent finding that Americans hold scientists in great respect. In a 2004 Harris interactive poll, for example, scientists and physicians received the highest prestige ratings among 22 occupational groups. And scientists and physicians were the only professions rated in the top prestige category by more than half of those responding.

We might, were it possible, get the biggest science bang for our educational buck if we could teach biology to seminarians or physics to news anchors and talk show hosts.

Moreover, in their areas of expertise scientists are particularly well-respected and are trusted to make sound judgments that extend beyond the realm of pure science. Thus, in the United States, scientists are considered more trustworthy than any other group involved in biotechnology issues such as genetically modified foods. Similarly, about 80 percent of the population expresses great trust in nanoscientists—even though most Americans probably have only a dim understanding of the intricacies of nanotechnology, let alone the social and ethical implications of nanotech research and development.

These polling data are important because of what they reveal below the radar of science poll conclusions. Science-knowledge questions and standard inquiries into science news familiarity typically focus on what respondents do and do not know. They shed little light on why respondents do or do not know, and do or do not seek to know, more about science. Thus they miss reasons to hope for sound science-based policies as well as mechanisms for boosting the American public’s basic understanding of science.

We can safely assume that some people do not seek out knowledge because they trust others to make crucial decisions. If the trust is well placed, and technical knowledge is required to decide wisely, then deferring to the more knowledgeable is likely to be a good decision-making strategy. We see this in the investment decisions that have led to many of America’s scientific triumphs; in particular in the public’s willingness to support, through the NSF and other federal agencies, large investments in basic science research that has no obvious or immediate practical payoff.

It is also true that people learn much of what they “know” not from the news or through formal education, but rather from those they interact with. These informal networks may provide accurate or inaccurate information. It seems safe to assume that most people who reject the idea of evolution have learned little about the science that supports evolutionary theory. Rather, they have accepted as “fact” what others have told them, or they simply defer in their judgments to the knowledge claims of others, including, in the case of evolution, the Bible.

But it seems also safe to say that many who report believing in evolutionary theory have as little first-hand knowledge about the science supporting evolution as those who reject it. The difference between the two groups lies not in what they have been taught about evolution or acquired from their own reading, but rather in their network embeddedness: to whom they listen and to whose authority they will defer—often to the point of accepting a conclusion with little understanding of the underlying facts and issues.

From this perspective, it is good news indeed that many people know enough science to correct their neighbors’ misapprehensions and that scientists are widely accorded considerable respect. This means that when scientific consensus is reached on an issue, many will accept the consensus judgment regardless of how well they understand the science. In fact, only an authority as powerful as the perceived word of God is (for some) able to forestall widespread deference to science.

But fairness should mean presenting the actual state of scientific consensus.

One implication of the importance of networks to knowledge is that improving the science education of those people whom others look to for knowledge may be as or more important to the development of sound science-based policies as directly educating the broader public. We might, were it possible, get the biggest science bang for our educational buck if we could teach biology to seminarians or physics to news anchors and talk show hosts. Absent this, we should realize that every person who is well educated in science or who follows science news closely potentially contributes to well-informed science-based policies—not only by expressing his or her own educated preferences but also by affecting the preferences of others.

But as important as it is to educate people generally—and opinion leaders in particular—in science and modes of scientific thought, it is equally important to develop mechanisms to accurately convey degrees of scientific consensus to the public. When people mistakenly think there is scientific uncertainty about an issue, it frees them to act in disregard of science. When they think there is a consensus that does not exist, they may be unduly deferential in accepting policy recommendations.

Businesses have long recognized the power of scientific consensus and have thrown up scientific smokescreens to suggest more uncertainty than exists on issues and so forestall attempts at regulation or changed public preferences. The efforts of big tobacco to create an appearance of controversy on the health effects of tobacco are the best known example, but there have been many others. Politicians also are not above making scientific judgments appear less or more certain than they are when this suits their political agendas.

The ability of businesses and politicians to make science controversies appear more alive than they are is facilitated by the tendency of the media to give significant time or space to both sides of a scientific dispute, perhaps because this may seem to be what fairness requires. But fairness should mean presenting the actual state of scientific consensus. Giving two scientists equal time to offer conflicting views on whether human activity has contributed substantially to global climate change suggests a deep division within the scientific community on the subject. But suppose any such debate were followed by information that 97 percent of scientists polled agreed with one position rather than the other. Imagine if that information preceded the debate.

From the point of view of informed public policy it is fair to ask whether the American science glass is half empty or half full. I lean toward half full, but that hardly matters. Either way the situation can change. We as a nation have much to gain if change is in the direction of a scientifically better informed public and science policies that accept rather than contend with the best thinking that science can offer.

This requires the ability to separate genuine scientific debates from manufactured scientific controversies. A desire that the world be a certain way doesn’t make it so. It is true that even a widely accepted scientific consensus may be mistaken, but scientists do not hasten to arrive at consensus. When they do, we ignore the best current science at our peril.

Science progress, with its implications for ethics, policy, and better living, depends on citizens who can recognize good science or who at least know enough about science to place their trust only in the science judgments of those who do. If this new publication, Science Progress, requires a rationale beyond promoting knowledge for its own sake, this is it.

Richard O. Lempert is the Eric Stein Distinguished University Professor of Law and Sociology at The University of Michigan Law School.