How science makes environmental controversies worse

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2004.06.001Get rights and content

Abstract

I use the example of the 2000 US Presidential election to show that political controversies with technical underpinnings are not resolved by technical means. Then, drawing from examples such as climate change, genetically modified foods, and nuclear waste disposal, I explore the idea that scientific inquiry is inherently and unavoidably subject to becoming politicized in environmental controversies. I discuss three reasons for this. First, science supplies contesting parties with their own bodies of relevant, legitimated facts about nature, chosen in part because they help make sense of, and are made sensible by, particular interests and normative frameworks. Second, competing disciplinary approaches to understanding the scientific bases of an environmental controversy may be causally tied to competing value-based political or ethical positions. The necessity of looking at nature through a variety of disciplinary lenses brings with it a variety of normative lenses, as well. Third, it follows from the foregoing that scientific uncertainty, which so often occupies a central place in environmental controversies, can be understood not as a lack of scientific understanding but as the lack of coherence among competing scientific understandings, amplified by the various political, cultural, and institutional contexts within which science is carried out.

In light of these observations, I briefly explore the problem of why some types of political controversies become “scientized” and others do not, and conclude that the value bases of disputes underlying environmental controversies must be fully articulated and adjudicated through political means before science can play an effective role in resolving environmental problems.

Introduction

One may or may not find believable the claim by Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, that, starting out as “an old left-wing Greenpeace member” gloom-and-doom environmentalist (Lomborg, 2001, p. xix) he gradually convinced himself, through the power of statistical analysis, that the environmental conditions upon which humanity depends for its well-being were not getting worse, but were actually getting better. Whether or not Lomborg did undergo a data-induced perceptual transformation, his underlying claim is a familiar and comfortable one. Our commitments to acting in the world must be based on a foundation of fact, and when a conflict arises between the two, then our commitments must accordingly change. Thomas Lovejoy, in a sharply critical review of Lomborg’s book, nevertheless supports a similar view, where appropriate action is determined by scientific inquiry: “researchers identify a potential problem, scientific examination tests the various hypotheses, understanding of the problem often becomes more complex, researchers suggest remedial policies—and then the situation improves” (Lovejoy, 2002, p. 12; emphasis in original). David Pimentel, another Lomborg critic, argues in the same vein: “As an agricultural scientist and ecologist, I wish I could share Lomborg’s optimism, but my investigations and those of countless other scientists lead me to a more wary outlook” (Pimentel, 2002, p. 297).

So Lomborg and his critics share the old-fashioned idea that scientific facts build the appropriate foundation for knowing how to act in the world. How, then, are we to understand the radical divergence of the supposedly science-based views held by opposing sides in the controversy? If we accept the arguments of the critics, the divergence is simply a reflection of Lomborg’s (perhaps willful) misunderstanding of the data. Yet, as Harrison (this issue) amply documents, Lomborg also has his supporters within the community of scientists. Are we instead witnessing a debate that exists because the science is incomplete, and thus allows for different interpretations? Stephen Schneider (2002, p. 1), another of Lomborg’s critics, notes: “I readily confess a lingering frustration: uncertainties so infuse the issue of climate change that it is still impossible to rule out either mild or catastrophic outcomes, let alone provide confident probabilities for all the claims and counterclaims made about environmental problems.”

There is an obvious problem of causation here. If the science is insufficiently certain to dictate a shared commitment to a particular line of action, from where do these commitments spring? For Lovejoy, the process starts when “researchers identify a potential problem,” but the recognition that something is a “problem” demands a pre-existing framework of values and interests within which problems can be recognized. And Pimentel’s “wary outlook” (not to mention Lomborg’s rosy one) presupposes some expectations of what the world ought to look like in the first place.

This paper thus confronts a well-known empirical problem. In areas as diverse as climate change, nuclear waste disposal, endangered species and biodiversity, forest management, air and water pollution, and agricultural biotechnology, the growth of considerable bodies of scientific knowledge, created especially to resolve political dispute and enable effective decision making, has often been accompanied instead by growing political controversy and gridlock. Science typically lies at the center of the debate, where those who advocate some line of action are likely to claim a scientific justification for their position, while those opposing the action will either invoke scientific uncertainty or competing scientific results to support their opposition.1

A significant body of literature both documents and seeks to understand this dynamic (see, e.g., the admirable synthesis by Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998). This literature is characterized, for example, by the understanding that scientific facts cannot overcome, and may reinforce, value disputes and competing interests (e.g., Nelkin, 1975, Nelkin, 1979, Collingridge and Reeve, 1986), that scientific knowledge is not independent of political context but is co-produced by scientists and the society within which they are embedded (e.g., Jasanoff, 1996a), that different stakeholders in environmental problems possess different bodies of contextually validated knowledge(e.g., Wynne, 1989), and that the boundaries between science and policy or politics are constantly being renegotiated as part of the political process (e.g., Jasanoff, 1987, Jasanoff, 1990).

This work adds up to a deeply textured portrayal of the troubled relationship between science and decision making in the realm of the environment. Yet, as the Lomborg controversy highlights to a degree that is almost painful, high-profile public discourse surrounding environmental disputes remains stubbornly innocent of this past 20 or more years of constructivist scholarship. The notion that science is a source of facts and theories about reality that can and should settle disputes and guide political action remains a core operating principle of partisans on both sides of the Lomborg case and other environmental controversies.2

Much, perhaps most, of the recent literature grounds its critique in the difficulties associated with the first component of this pervasive and strongly held notion—that science is a source of verifiable facts and theories about reality. In this paper, I treat this realist notion not as a contestable idea but as an initial condition of the policy context—a starting point for further analysis. My goal is to offer an interpretation of the current, lamentable state of affairs whose acceptance by political actors does not require an abandonment of fundamental cosmologies. Thus, I look for explanation not in the social construction of science, but precisely in “the fact that scientists do exactly what they claim to do,” (Hull, 1988, p. 31) and argue that the fulfillment of this promise is what gets us deeper into the hot water—science does its job all too well. The argument, in brief, is this: nature itself—the reality out there—is sufficiently rich and complex to support a science enterprise of enormous methodological, disciplinary, and institutional diversity. I will argue that science, in doing its job well, presents this richness, through a proliferation of facts assembled via a variety of disciplinary lenses, in ways that can legitimately support, and are causally indistinguishable from, a range of competing, value-based political positions. I then show that, from this perspective, scientific uncertainty, which so often occupies a central place in environmental controversies, can be understood not as a lack of scientific understanding but as the lack of coherence among competing scientific understandings. These considerations lead me finally to consider the question of why environmental controversies tend to become highly “scientized,” and to speculate about what might happen if we could “de-scientize” them.

But first, as a sort of control case, it might be helpful to visit a major political controversy that was not resolved through resort to scientific research: the 2000 US Presidential election.

Section snippets

Determining an integer

The front page of the 6 May 2000 Washington Post reported that political scientists were using mathematical models to predict the winner of the forthcoming US Presidential election between Democratic candidate Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush (Kaiser, 2000). The models, which integrated such factors as the state of the economy and public opinion data, indicated that Gore would handily win the election. But by the time the polls in most states had closed, it was apparent that victory in

Excess of objectivity

I want to explore the possibility that environmental controversies typically bear a much greater likeness to the 2000 Florida election controversy than might at first seem apparent. To do so I begin by considering why facts5 often fail to behave in the manner that both Lomborg and his critics claim they should.

In July 2003, two conservative think-tanks, the Hoover

Value in discipline

While this argument may help make clear why “more science” often stokes, rather than quenches, environmental controversies, I believe it does not go far enough. It seems to me that there is likely to be a causal connection between the ways that we have organized scientific inquiry into nature, and the ways we organize human action (and thus political decision making) related to the environment.

For example, consider the controversy over the Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate (ATOC)

Origins of uncertainty

Reduction of uncertainty is a central, perhaps the central, goal of scientific research carried out in the context of environmental controversies ranging from climate change to ecosystem restoration, as variously articulated in innumerable policy documents, research reports, and scientific articles. The standard model, of course, is that if uncertainty surrounding the relevant scientific facts can be reduced, then the correct course of action will become more apparent. Uncertainty is thus

Why scientize?

The organization of science—its methodological and disciplinary diversity; the multiple institutional settings in which it is conducted—make it a remarkably potent catalyst for political dispute. Recognizing that simple, linear formulations leading from “more science” to “less uncertainty” to “political action” are inherently flawed, others have suggested that society needs to adopt new ways of thinking about the conduct of science, new ways of evaluating how and when science is valid or

Acknowledgements

Roger Pielke Jr., Beth Raps, Richard Nelson, Charles Herrick, and Naomi Oreskes provided valuable comments on this paper. I also thank three anonymous reviewers for their extraordinarily penetrating critiques of the penultimate version (to the numerous arguments against anonymity in peer review, add this: one is deprived of the pleasure and benefit of continued engagement with thoughtful reviewers). Discussions with Daniel Metlay have contributed greatly to my understanding of the Yucca

Daniel Sarewitz is Professor of Science and Society and Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University. Recent publications include Living with the Genie: Essays on Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery (co-edited with Alan Lightman and Christina Desser, Island Press, 2003); Prediction: Science, Decision making, and the Future of Nature (co-edited with Roger Pielke Jr. and Radford Byerly Jr, Island Press, 2000), and Frontiers of Illusion:

References (120)

  • Benedick, R., 1991. Protecting the ozone layer: new directions in diplomacy. In: Mathews, J.T. (Ed.), Preserving the...
  • G. Bowker et al.

    Pure, real and rational numbers: the American imaginary of countability

    Social Stud. Sci.

    (2001)
  • Brunner, R., 2000. Alternatives to prediction. In: Sarewitz, D., Pielke Jr., R.A., Byerly Jr., R. (Eds.), Prediction:...
  • Cartwright, N., 1999. The Dappled World, A Study of the Boundaries of Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,...
  • S.A. Changnon et al.

    Human factors explain the increased losses from weather and climate extremes

    Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc.

    (2001)
  • Chichilnisky, G., Heal, G., 1995. Markets for tradable CO2 emission quotas principles and practice. OECD Economics...
  • Climate Change Science Program, 2003. Strategic Plan for the US Climate Change Science Program. Climate Change Science...
  • Collingridge, D., Reeve, C., 1986. Science Speaks to Power: The Role of Experts in Policy. St. Martin’s Press, New...
  • Collins, H., 1985. Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practices. Sage,...
  • Costanza, R., 2000. Visions of alternative (unpredictable) futures and their use in policy analysis. Conserv. Ecol....
  • Dupré, J., 1993. The Disorder of Things, Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. Harvard University Press,...
  • The Economist Print Edition, 2003. Hot potato revisited. Economist November,...
  • EIA (Energy Information Agency), 2001. Renewable energy 2000: issues and trends. Available at...
  • Ezrahi, Y., 1990. The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy. Cambridge University...
  • Fleck, L., 1979. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (original published...
  • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2003a. Weighing the GMO arguments: against. Available at...
  • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2003. Weighing the GMO arguments. Available at...
  • C.E. Forest et al.

    Quantifying uncertainties in climate system properties with the use of recent climate observations

    Science

    (2002)
  • Funtowicz, S.O., Ravetz, J.R., 1992. Three types of risk assessment and the emergence of post-normal science. In:...
  • G.C. Gallopı́n et al.

    Science for the twenty-first century: from social contract to the scientific core

    Int. Social Sci. J.

    (2001)
  • Gaskell, G., Allum, N., Stares, S., 2003. Europeans and biotechnology in 2002. A report to the EC Directorate General...
  • Gibbons, M., 1999. Science’s new social contract with society. Nature 402 (Suppl.),...
  • Glantz, M.H., 1995. Assessing the impacts of climate: the issue of winners and losers in a global climate change...
  • Gough, M., 2003. Politicizing Science. Hoover Institution Press, Stanford,...
  • Harrison, C., 2004. Peer review, politics and pluralism. Environ. Sci. Policy 7 (5),...
  • M.C. Heron et al.

    Overvoting and representation: and examination of overvoted presidential ballots in Broward and Miami-Dade counties

    Electoral Stud.

    (2003)
  • Herrick, C., Jamieson, D., 2001. Junk science and environmental policy: obscuring public debate with misleading...
  • C. Herrick et al.

    Ex post evaluation: a more effective role for scientific assessments in environmental policy

    Sci. Technol. Hum. Values

    (2000)
  • Holling, C.S., 1998. Two cultures of ecology. Conserv. Ecol. 2 (2),...
  • Holt, M., 2003. Civilian nuclear waste disposal. Congressional Research Service, Order Code IB92059, Washington, DC,...
  • Houghton, J.T., Ding, Y., Griggs, D.J., Noguer, M., van der Linden, P.J., Dai, X., Maskell, K., Johnson, C.A., 2001....
  • Hull, D.L., 1988. Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science....
  • D. Jamieson

    Ethics, public policy, and global warming

    Sci. Technol. Hum. Values

    (1992)
  • D. Jamieson

    Scientific uncertainty and the political process, annals

    Am. Acad. Political Social Sci.

    (1995)
  • S. Jasanoff

    Contested boundaries in policy-relevant science

    Social Stud. Sci.

    (1987)
  • Jasanoff, S., 1990. The Fifth Branch: Science Advisors as Policymakers. Harvard University Press, Cambridge,...
  • S. Jasanoff

    Beyond epistemology: relativism and engagement in the politics of science

    Social Stud. Sci.

    (1996)
  • S. Jasanoff

    The dilemma of environmental democracy

    Issues Sci. Technol.

    (1996)
  • Jasanoff, S., Wynne, B., 1998. Science and decision making. In: Rayner, S., Malone, E. (Eds.), Human Choice and Climate...
  • Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., Tversky, A., 1982. Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge University...
  • Cited by (906)

    View all citing articles on Scopus

    Daniel Sarewitz is Professor of Science and Society and Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University. Recent publications include Living with the Genie: Essays on Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery (co-edited with Alan Lightman and Christina Desser, Island Press, 2003); Prediction: Science, Decision making, and the Future of Nature (co-edited with Roger Pielke Jr. and Radford Byerly Jr, Island Press, 2000), and Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Progress (Temple University Press, 1996).

    View full text