Last week, at the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton declared “I believe in science!” In contrast, Donald Trump has called climate science a "hoax." He's far from alone; a deep distrust of science seems to be spreading, particularly within the Republican party. While we expect politicians to disagree on how best to address the issues we face, it now seems that science, itself, has become a wedge issue.
Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard University and co-author of Merchants of Doubt, says the current skepticism and hostility toward science marks a significant departure from attitudes that were prevalent forty or fifty years ago, during the Cold War and Space Race, when many in the political and corporate sectors saw science as the answer to our problems.
"When I was growing up, there was much more of a sense that the authority of science was unquestioned and that sometimes there were times that actually, we, as citizens, did need to question the authority of science," says Oreskes. "We've seen a really dramatic reversal of what the relationship is between science and politics in America."
Oreskes doesn't see that change as a positive one. She says it's important for everyone to be informed and think critically, but also argues that - at some point - we need to trust the expertise of the scientific community "with a certain degree of healthy skepticism, but not corrosive skepticism, not stupid skepticism, not rejectionism." She compares it to trusting doctors, or lawyers, or airplane pilots.
"At the end of the day, we can't all be our own climate scientists" Oreskes says. "We can tie our own shoes, we can make our own decision about whether to smoke cigarettes or not, but we can't all do our own climate science."
Oreskes draws a subtle, but important, distinction between trusting science and trusting scientists who speak out on a particular issue.
"It should never really be about what one person says," says Oreskes, stressing that, while any one person or experiment can be wrong, the strength of science is the collective body of knowledge on any given subject. "We need to look at the consensus of scientific opinion and ask the question: Is there a consensus? And what does that consensus consist of?"
In the case of climate change, there is a nearly unanimous consensus that climate change is happening and that human-produced greenhouse gases are primarily responsible. On some specific aspects of climate change, and on many issues in the public spotlight, there is uncertainty and a lack of consensus. That is the nature of science. But Oreskes says that's no reason to discount the scientific endeavor, that - as Hillary Clinton said - we should believe in science, accepting the results of a robust investigative process.
"Most scientists don't like to use the word belief," Oreskes explains. "Belief sounds like faith and sounds like religion, and we want to say science isn't about belief, it's about evidence, it's about knowledge. I think maybe scientists should relax a little bit about that."