Is science always right? No. So what why trust science? The question, especially recently, many have asked themselves. Unfortunately, many have found an easy answer by endorsing the theses of those whom Oreskes calls "merchants of doubts". That is, those who carry out, by all means, the strategy of creating the impression that the science involved in the various issues is unstable and that the related scientific themes rightly remain the subject of dispute.
To do this, it often happens, even in Italy, all'personal attack aimed at scientists and experts, thereby pushing discovery or scientific work into the background. A work that may not be perfect, of course, but which is always subjected to strict and repeated revisions and shared within a community, the scientific one, where data, theories, hypotheses, theses and conclusions are gutted and analysed, checked , criticized, shared or rejected. Everything then goes on, in general, for long and articulated periods of time.
But this does not seem to interest the merchants of doubt, as well as their followers. Sometimes a sarcastic comment on the expert or scientist who has advanced a thesis more or less distant from the mainstream is enough for everything to become and generate nothing but a great confusion.
It is instrumental, wanted and planned: discredit scientists to discredit science.
How can you trust a scientist when you believe you have easily and publicly denied him? Or when it is proven that he has made a mistake? Who has committed more than one?
For Naomi Oreskes the problem is easy to solve: you don't have to trust. Never trust the individual scientist or unconditionally expert. Precisely because he can be wrong, or act out of interest. It can happen. Then what to do? Also for this you need the curriculum and its evaluation, as well as all the work carried out and the results obtained.
The focal point is that trust should not be placed in scientists taken individually but in science as a social process, precisely because it guarantees its consent only after having subjected its theses to rigorous and plural scrutiny. Because even in the moment of greatest diffusion of the most absurd and bizarre theses, there existed and exists a scientific community that did not and does not offer its consent, highlighting the ideological aspects and hidden interests that lie behind those results.
Why should we believe scientists when our politicians don't? It is another of the recurring questions. To answer, we need to focus on the reasons why these different categories (scientists and politicians) carry out their work, on the purpose they want to achieve and the interests they must pursue. For Oreskes, one should never argue because in doing so one ends up admitting that the dispute exists, it is real. You should never return fire with fire. Rather shift the terms of the debate. And a useful way to do this is to highlight the ideological and economic motivations that push us to deny science, to demonstrate that those objections are not scientific, but political.
The superior reliability of scientific theses derives, in his view, from the social process that produces them. A process that is certainly not perfect, nor is the method used (the scientific method). Instead, underlines the author, it is necessary to give an image of science as community activity of experts, who employ different methods to gather empirical evidence and sift through the conclusions they draw. With certain margins of error, like any other human activity, but an activity carried out with determination, knowledge, competence and self-sacrifice. Otherwise it would not be possible to explain the progress, successes, discoveries, inventions and innovations… despite everything.
The book
Naomi Oreskes, Why trust science?, Bollati Boringhieri Editore, Turin, 2021.
Original title: Why trust science?, Princeton University Press, Princeton-NJ, 2019.
Translation by Bianca Bertola.
The author
Naomi Oreskes teaches History of Science and Earth Sciences at Harvard University. She has worked as a consultant for the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the US National Academy of Sciences. She serves on the boards of the National Center for Science Education and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund.
