Abstract
A notable feature in the public framing of debates involving the science of Anthropogenic Global Warming are appeals to uncritical ‘positivist’ images of the ideal scientific method. Versions of Sir Karl Popper’s philosophy of falsification appear most frequently, featuring in many Web sites and broader media. This use of pop philosophy of science forms part of strategies used by critics, mainly from conservative political backgrounds, to manufacture doubt, by setting unrealistic standards for sound science, in the veracity of science of Anthropogenic Global Warming. It will be shown, nevertheless, that prominent supporters of Anthropogenic Global Warming science also often use similar references to Popper to support their claims. It will also be suggested that this pattern reflects longer traditions of the use of Popperian philosophy of science in controversial settings, particularly in the United States, where appeals to the authority of science to legitimize policy have been most common. It will be concluded that studies of the science of Anthropogenic Global Warming debate would benefit from taking greater interest in questions raised by un-reflexive and politically expedient public understanding(s) of the philosophy of science of both critics and supporters of the science of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Keywords
1. Introduction
Philosophers may not find this a particularly attractive arena to step into, but we have a moral duty to help unlock the truth about climate change if we can. And we do possess a key, in the form of the principle of falsifiability set out by Karl Popper in his book The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934). (Lawson, 2014) The classic Popperian approach to science, in which potentially refutable hypotheses are defined and tested is not well suited to the challenges posed by an Earth System that is characterised by high degrees of complexity, non-linearity and a lack of definable cause-consequence relationships. (Oldfield and Stefffen, 2014)
The two quotes above, both from supporters of the scientific thesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGWS), help set the stage for the discussion to follow: Lawson’s quote captures a dominant theme that appears in numerous popular commentaries on the climate change debate, that is, Popper’s philosophy of science offers an epistemological ‘fix’ that should be used to settle the issue. Oldfield and Steffen’s quote represents a rare challenge to these views and highlights the way Popper’s philosophy may not be so easy to apply in practice but also how difficult it is to avoid its ‘authority’.
In the following discussion, I will critique, and appraise the implications of, the way various ‘pop’ versions of the philosophy of science of Sir Karl Popper have become a conspicious feature in debates involving AGWS in Web sites and other popular media. These references are most often used as tools by critics of AGWS to attempt to undermine its scientific authority but also appear in arguments of prominent AGWS supporters hoping to bolster their claims. References to other figures in the History and Philosophy of Science: most notably T.S. Kuhn, Galileo, Richard Feynman and appeals to images of science drawn from sociology of science, and critiques of post-modern views of science also appear but are less prominent (Douglas, 2009; Kuntz, 2012; Ravetz, 2012).
Because the vast majority of scientists support the AGWS thesis, the main focus of critical social analysis of argumentative strategies and motivations of adversaries in the AGWS debate has been of its critics. Far less attention has been paid to the strategies and motivations of its supporters (for some exceptions, see Demmerit, 2001; Lahsen, 2013; Ravetz, 2012). The fact that many AGWS critics have links with conservative political interest groups has encouraged a number of analysts to make generalisations about the match between the argumentative strategies (particularly their appeals to unrealistic images of ‘sound science’) used by these critics and their political orientations (Freudenberg and Muselli, 2013; McCright and Dunlap, 2010; Oreskes and Conway, 2010/2012). Many of these generalisations have supportive evidence but are misleadingly incomplete by failing to consider whether, or not, some features of the strategies they observe may also re-appear, in similar forms, in the arguments of supporters of AGWS and have broader political origins. In the following article, I will treat these questions in a more symmetrical manner assessing the claims and motivations of both critics and supporters of AGWS (Bloor, 1976). Treating the topic more symmetrically also discourages using participants’ terms like ‘denialists’, ‘sceptics’ and so on, which can convey pre-judged pejorative associations (Howarth and Sharman, 2015).
In using the AGWS supporter/critic dichotomy as a heuristic to assist in organising my analysis, I am not ignoring the fact that in practice there are important points of difference, in particular, in relation to policy recommendations, within the ranks of AGWS supporters and critics (Hulme, 2009). I believe that the use of this heuristic can be justified nevertheless, because in the popular arenas explored in the following article, points of difference in relation to specific policy proposals, or subtle details of scientific claims, tended to be back-staged relative to attempts to first establish a view for, or against, AGWS in general. These tendencies can be explained as by-product of the frequency of adversary styles of rhetoric in these arenas and the dominance in public discourse of linear models of science policy, where establishing the state of the science is sought prior to addressing policy questions. These points will be revisited in my conclusion.
2. Background: Putting Popper to work in scientific controversies and policy settings
The frequent use, in popular culture, scientific controversies and legal and policy settings, of references to Popper as a synecdoche for the ideal of the scientific method goes well beyond the recent AGWS debate (Balmer, 1994; Edmond and Mercer, 2002; Ellis and Silk, 2014; Reisch, 2010). A number of general explanations for the popularity of Popper in these contexts can be proffered. First, Popper was vocal, beyond the confines of formal philosophical discussion, in promoting his normative project of providing specific criteria for what allows a knowledge claim to be classed as scientific (Oldroyd, 1986; Fuller, 2005). Second, for some political audiences, Popper’s philosophy of science has positively resonated with his political philosophy and its well-known embrace of liberal politics and critiques of Marxism (Turner, 2005). Third, while much of Popper’s (1963) work displays the expected intricacies of specialist philosophical discourse, it is also frequently illustrated with apocryphal versions of episodes from the history of science accessible to the educated lay-person, such as Einstein’s ‘crucial’ experiments, and catch phrases such as ‘conjectures and refutations’. Last, simple versions of falsification also appeal to common sense ideas of the value of trial and error and the need to avoid explanations that involve tautologies. The capacity of Popper’s work to be represented by ‘sound bite’ philosophical aphorisms may have assisted it in being easily transported across diverse communicative contexts.
While I’m sure most readers would have some familiarity with Popper’s work, it is worth briefly recounting the basic features, and critiques, of his approach. Popper argued that for a hypothesis to be counted as scientific, it should potentially be able to be tested and proved false and then survive attempts at being tested. The surviving hypotheses are then held as conditionally true until they are tested and proved false. Over time, science progresses in an evolutionary manner with valid science being constituted by the survival of the currently fittest testable conditional facts. Popper (1963) suggested that we should value most highly hypotheses that are sufficiently precise to lend themselves to strong testing, and that scientists need to possess a critical attitude, regularly searching for possible falsifications of their hypotheses, and readily discarding their hypotheses if falsified. Popper has normally been ‘put to work’ in public and regulatory scientific disagreements to suggest that elements of an opponent’s arguments aren’t actually testable or falsifiable, so they are ruled a priori ‘out of court’ as being unscientific, or that if some part of an opponent’s claims has been tested and proved false, then all related claims should also be rejected.
As will be discussed in more detail at a later point, references to Popper’s philosophy have been particularly visible in public and regulatory contexts and political cultures where participants find themselves being called upon to legitimate their knowledge claims and policies by appeals to the authority of science in general. By science in general, I refer to science that is in a sense external and beyond the authority of individuals, expert credentials and authoritative institutions. These demands have been strongest within legal and regulatory cultures influenced by adversarial traditions (most notably in the United States) where contested scientific knowledge claims are frequently open to being publicly tested, deconstructed and reconstructed (Jasanoff, 2005). A notable example has been a rich tradition of references to Popper and pre-occupations with defining ‘the scientific method’ in litigation involving science and expertise (Edmond and Mercer, 2002).
Despite its popularity and common sense appeal, with the partial exception of support for significantly reconstructed versions in some specialist circles in philosophy of science Popper’s work has been subject to considerable critique across all theoretical proclivities of philosophy and science studies (Griffiths and Colyvn, 2011). Challenges have included that
It doesn’t provide an accurate view of the history of science, where in their infancies many scientific theories later to be accepted would have initially been vulnerable to straightforward falsifications (Barnes, 1986).
Many foundational scientific concepts, theories and models are not strictly speaking testable in a simple Popperian sense (Oldroyd, 1986).
The straightforward testing of hypotheses championed by Popper is much more complex in practice than he recognised. Numerous historical, philosophical and sociologically detailed accounts of testing have detailed the way scientists are required to make numerous judgements about things such as the following: What is actually being tested? How often do results need to be replicated, and under what conditions, to be deemed significant? Is the test situation itself adequate? Does a test result go against the weight of evidence provided by other tests relevant to a hypothesis? To what extent can a hypothesis be legitimately modified to be saved and fit a test result and, is it philosophically plausible to assume that theoretical terms remain sufficiently consistent in their meanings across all contexts to be subject to simple falsifications? (Chalmers, 1976).
Popper’s ideal of falsification is so detached from scientific practices it can be deployed in numerous potentially inconsistent ways depending on the rhetorical skills of those deploying it to back up their own position or direct against their opponents (Mulkay and Gilbert, 1981).
Popper’s project (and the positivist tradition in philosophy of science of which it forms a part) by aiming to identify a single straightforward scientific method is conceptually flawed as science in practice relies on a plurality of methods, techniques and practices (Collins and Pinch, 1993; Feyerabend, 1975).
A critical observation applying throughout analysis which follows will be how rarely in the AGWS debate there is any reference to the types of critiques of Popper noted above, or reflection on the limits to appeals to the authority of positivist-styled philosophy of science to start with. Popper’s philosophy of science becomes a synecdoche for the scientific method, and science itself, which means an argument against Popper appears as an argument against science. I should also note that my aims aren’t to expose the problems with the way that Popper’s ideas may be inappropriately simplified or misused per se, but, rather, to explore the ways they are being put to use and the consequences of this (Hilgartner, 1990).
3. Case study
Numerous studies have identified a pattern in traditional mainstream media in many Anglophone nations for AGWS to be framed as controversial and in ways that disconnect with mainstream scientific views. This is frequently explained as a by-product of politically conservative editorial influences and problems of ‘false-balancing’ providing AGWS critics with artificial credibility (Dunlap, 2013; Freudenberg and Muselli, 2013). While traditional mainstream media is still important as a venue for AGWS debate, there may also be some recent signs that the framing of AGWS as controversial may be declining in media outlets less subject to politically conservative editorial influences. For example, it is noteworthy that major newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald and Los Angeles Times have placed a moratorium on publishing ‘climate sceptic’ ‘letters to the editor’ (Elliot, 2013). These changes in editorial policies and general patterns of decline in the influence of traditional media have, no doubt, contributed to online commentaries, Web sites, blogs and niche-orientated forms of media involving celebrity and visible scientist commentators taking on an increasingly important role in the AGWS debate (Boykoff and Olson, 2013; Elgesem et al., 2015; Sharman, 2014). The relationship between new and old forms of media and audiences is not straightforward nevertheless, and it is worth keeping in mind that the quantity of commentary on blogs and Web sites and niche media may not offer an automatic indicator of their influence on broader debate (Mathews, 2015). Commentators may be orating into the cyber-wilderness, or merely preaching to the converted; there may also be ‘echo chamber’ effects where repetition and cross postings create an impression of the wider embrace of ideas than is actually the case. It is nevertheless, also widely recognised that NGOs and lobby groups operate on assumptions, that beyond political self-expression, discussions on Web posts, blogs and other online forums are frequently ‘picked up’ by politicians and wider media and can shape the broader political agenda-setting process (Sharman, 2014).
Keeping these points in mind, my case study will provide a brief interpretive analysis of a sample of the uses of Popper in the AGWS debate in popular media and Web sites pre-occupied with the AGWS question. I should, from the outset, make it completely clear to the reader that I am not offering a quantitative analysis of the use of Popper in these arenas. I will primarily draw from statements made in popular commentaries, where there are direct references to Popper and where these references play an important role in the arguments that are being presented. I performed a Google search linking terms such as Popper, Falsification, Climate Change, Global Warming, and AGW in traditional popular media such as newspapers and magazines. I worked backwards from the present (time of writing) focussing mainly on articles and commentaries/postings that have appeared over the last 5 years. I also paid special attention to Web sites pre-occupied with debating/defending AGWS. References to Popper were particularly prominent in the site Watts up with That? identified by Sharman’s (2014) work, mapping the climate blogosphere, as the most significant and popular for AGWS critics (see, for example, http://wattsupwithat.com/tag/Karl-popper). Other popular sites such as JoNova, Climate etc, Bishop Hill were also referred to, as well as broader conservative politically aligned special interest sites, such as Junk Science and The Scientific Alliance. I also searched sites openly supportive of AGWS such as the National Centre for Science Education and skepticalscience.com. The later has received a number of accolades, including winning a 2011 Eureka Prize from the Australian Museum for advancing climate change knowledge and offers a good counterpoint to Watts up with That? in terms of its status with AGWS supporters.
Studies of the AGWS debate suggest that there are important differences between national settings so the observations I make in the following discussion are more applicable to Anglophone contexts involving nation states with strong cultural and economic and political affinities to the United States, such as Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Canada (Grundman and Scott, 2014; Mann, 2012); this point will be returned to in my conclusion.
4. Analysis: Putting Popper to work in debate surrounding AGW science
To assist the reader I’ve constructed two tables (see further below) of themes and quotations which provide examples of the way Popper has been put to work in debate surrounding AGW science. Table 1 provides examples of the use of Popper by critics of AGWS and Table 2, the use of Popper by AGWS supporters.
Popper and critics of science of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGWS).
Popper as a tool to support AGWS.
It is interesting to note that most of the AGWS critics quoted in Table 1 (below) have at least some scientific credentials, but, with the exceptions of Curry and Bengtsson, not necessarily within the specialist climate science community (for a commentary on Curry’s uneasy relationship with the professional climate science community, see, Revkin, 2009). For example, The Scientific Alliance boasts a number of senior scientific advisors with backgrounds ranging from Microbiology, Chemistry to Geography, and Watt, Jo Nova and Monckton have much stronger credentials in journalism and public relations than professional science. For AGWS critics, encouraging a frame to understand debate about AGWS as a debate about how well AGWS fits with the Popperian scientific method, helps open up the borders of who can legitimately talk about AGWS, as questions of scientific method transcend any single specialised professional scientific discipline. This pattern of many AGWS critics working outside of professional climate science is consistent with Oreskes and Conways’ (2010) widely cited observations, but it should also be remembered that where the boundaries are set in regard to who can legitimately speak on AGWS is sometimes contested and constitutes an important area of interest for symmetrical analysis of the debate (Demmerit, 2001).
Referring to Table 1, six different but partially overlapping ways references to Popper were put to use to attempt to discredit AGWS were identified: 1(i) AGWS explains everything and is therefore unfalsifiable and can be ruled out of court as a priori unscientific; 1(ii) AGW science has in fact been falsified; 1(iii) AGWS relies on computer models which are too general to generate testable hypotheses and be exposed to ‘severe’ testing; 1(iv) Popper’s philosophy suggests consensus in science is unimportant; 1(v) AGWS is based on a retreat from classic Popperian moral standards; and 1(vi) The truth of AGWS needs to be consistent and timeless.
In brief overview, beyond claiming that AGWS is unfalsifiable, and that it has actually been falsified (points i, ii, and iii), Popper is also used to support a discourse about the ideal morality of scientific practice and the critical attitude which can be contrasted with the uncritical religious zeal of ‘believers’ in AGWS (point v). References to the so-called religious zeal of supporters of AGWS have been noted in a number of places as a relatively common feature of the rhetoric of more passionate AGWS critics (Nerlich, 2010; Woods et al., 2012). Linked to Popper’s method as a model for the scientific attitude, there is also an appeal to nostalgia in the claim that science was once practised in a moral critical and Popperian way, but that there has been a fall from grace, and that AGWS represents a variety of contemporary science that is expedient and less truthful than science once was, that is, if Popper was still alive today, he would be a fierce critic of AGWS etc. ‘good old fashioned falsification’ (point v) and ‘there is only on truth’(point vi).
Popper is used in a way that displays very little concern with the various critiques that are noted in basic philosophy and science studies’ primers provided earlier, and there is little evidence of concern with what might be involved in translating hurried sketches of abstract concepts to complex real world contexts. Confident assertions are offered up about an imagined straightforward consensus about what makes up the scientific method (i.e. Popper), and why AGWS simply doesn’t shape up to it. One of the key rhetorical functions of the use of folk versions of Popper by critics of AGWS then,is to set up a strict but inconsistent ideal model against which the inevitably messier actual practices of doing AGWS can be held up and found lacking.
As noted in my introduction, there have been a number of studies which have made observations that partially intersect with those I make above. For example, Oreskes and Conway (2010) document the strategies used by politically conservative lobbyists to encourage public misunderstanding of peer review, scientific uncertainty and the processes through which scientific consensus emerges. They suggest that this manipulation of ‘unrealistic’ images of science has been one of the factors that has contributed to the manufacture of uncertainty surrounding the claims of environmental scientists, inhibited regulation, and forms a part of a more general conservative attack on science. McCright and Dunlap (2010) also offer a complimentary analysis, with a more politically ‘structural’ dimension. They suggest that one of the background factors which has helped to account for resistance by political conservatives, especially in the United States, to AGWS, and science involved in regulation more generally, can be linked to the way they frame the epistemology of science so that it fails to articulate with the growth of ‘impact sciences’. In simple terms, many environmental and regulatory issues are considered as part of the domain of ‘impact sciences’ whose work dovetails with the concerns of various interest groups such as environmentalists and regulators attempting to navigate the challenges of reflexive modernisation. For McCright and Dunlap, conservative political movements have resisted ‘impact sciences’ as they are still wedded to traditional modernisation and industry underwritten by ‘production sciences’. They suggest that a key feature of politically conservative movements’ resistance to AGWS can be explained by this anti-reflexive attitude. As will be shown below, neither Oreskes and Conway, nor Dunlap and McCright, appear to consider the possibility that many prominent supporters of AGWS adopt similar expedient models of science to its conservative critics.
As a broad generalisation, specific references to Popper were less frequent among AGWS supporters than critics (e.g. compare skepticalscience.com with Watt’s up with That). While less frequent, references to Popper stood out by being made by eminent AGWS supporters. Referring to Table 2, above, the first example comes from a guest post on the blog of Bart Verheggen of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (a Popper link for skepticalscience.com); the second, an article in the Huffington Post by Richard Lawson, past speaker for the UK Green party and past Green District Councillor; Lawson (2014) also published a similar longer feature article in the popular philosophy journal, Philosophy Now; the third is a quote from a Tim Flannery lecture. Flannery is a well-known Australian ‘visible scientist’. He was 2007 ‘Australian of the Year’ and in 2011 was appointed as Panasonic Chair in Environmental Sustainability at Macquarie University and head of the Australian Climate Commission. He has published a number of award-winning popular science books and essays on topics ranging from anthropology to climate change, and in these, has referred to the importance of popularising Popper’s philosophy of science (Flannery, 2012). The fourth reference is from an answer to questions generated by a Reddit AMA (ask me anything session), provided by John Cook. Cook is Climate Communication Fellow at the Global Change Institute, University of Queensland. Cook has published award-winning research into the debate about the climate change consensus and various textbooks and online commentaries on the topic of climate change denial (Cook, 2013; Washington and Cook, 2011). He is the convenor of the skepticalscience.com Web site. A little like the Scientific Alliance discussed earlier, Cook and most of the scepticalscience.com team have stronger credentials as science communicators and scientific generalists than as specialist professional climate scientists.
Referring to Table 2, above, I identified four different but partially overlapping ways references to Popper were put to use to attempt to boost the authority of AGWS and rebut its critics: 2(i) AGWS is indeed falsifiable but has not been falsified; 2(ii) The claims of AGW critics have been falsified; 2(iii) Popper as an authority for the need to recognise the legitimacy of the scientific uncertainties involved in AGWS; 2(iv) That science needs to be disprovable but for climate change to be rejected, an alternative explanation to fit current evidence would need to be provided. In the first two examples, AGWS supporters offer similar readings of Popper to many critics but re-imagine the details of how AGWS fits with Popper. The third example offers a different readings of Popper’s philosophy itself to the AGWS critics, and in the final example, there is a reluctance to reject the authority of Popper, even if there appears to be little link with what is actually being proposed.
None of these uses of Popper suggest a reflexive attitude regarding the differences between ‘impact’ and ‘production sciences’ and display the same lack of nuance regarding how climate science is actually done as AGWS critics. The way Popper is put to use by prominent supporters of AGWS exposes gaps in McCright and Dunlap’s and Oreskes and Conway’s respective theses outlined above. The use of un-reflexive and artificially ideal models of science in AGWS debate is not unique to the strategies of politically conservative AGWS critics (Gauchat, 2011; Mercer, 2012; Yearley, 2012). The eagerness of these ‘visible’ AGWS supporters to link their claims to broader ideal images of the epistemological authority of science suggests how important this form of legitimacy has become in public discourse surrounding AGWS.
The quotations in both tables above also show the flexible and contradictory ways Popperian-inspired arguments can be applied to evaluating AGWS and their limitations as tools to ‘neatly’ close scientific debates. Let me list some ‘contradictions’ below:
For its critics, AGWS is as follows:
Unfalsifiable (Frank, 2012; Tracinski, 2014), yet has been falsified (The Scientific Alliance, 2010).
Flawed because it is inconsistent with timeless truth consistent with Popper’s scientific method (Monckton, 2013b), yet, according to Popper, science can never be completely proven (The Scientific Alliance, 2010).
For AGWS proponents:
Popper would have required more efforts at falsification than a few simple claims (Clusters, 2014), yet, at the same time, a small number of papers by climate sceptics have been ‘refuted’ and therefore their position falsified (Lawson, 2011).
More generally, considering proponents and opponents:
For proponents, Popper would expect more serious intellectual efforts to falsify AGWS than offered by critics (Clusters, 2014), yet for critics, if Popper were alive today he would be a fierce critic of the bias and lack of intellectual efforts of AGWS consensus scientists (Bengtsson, 2014).
For proponents, Popper was aware of the intrinsic uncertainties in science, so gaps in knowledge and uncertainties in AGWS aren’t inconsistent with his approach (Simpson, 2011), yet, for the critics, such uncertainties built into climate change models demonstrate AGWS is insufficiently precise to be subject to harsh tests (Curry, 2011).
Popper’s philosophy of science would appear to be predisposed to being applied to ‘real world’ scientific settings in multiple often contradictory ways. Despite its promise to AGWS critics and supporters as a device suited to deconstructing or authorising knowledge claims, Popper’s philosophy in practice seems better suited to creating confusion.
4. Concluding comments: Popper: Politics and the ‘authority of science’
As noted earlier, Popper’s philosophy of science has features which appear to have predisposed it to regularly re-appear in popular cultural representations of science; there are also a number of specific historical factors which plausibly explain its entry into the arguments of both supporters and opponents of AGWS.
A number of commentators have noted that formation of science policy in the United States has been strongly shaped by traditions which emphasise the need for ostensibly transparent decision-making processes and the use of adversarial processes to interrogate disputed knowledge claims. A spin-off of these traditions have been regular challenges to trust in institutional authority and expertise, and an emphasis on the symbolic importance of ‘rationality’ and scientific methods to underpin knowledge claims and decision making (Jasanoff, 2005; Porter, 2006). These appeals to rationality and scientific method help explain the conspicuous appearance of Popper in numerous controversial science policy debates in the United States, the most notable examples being creation science and law reform involving scientific evidence.
Both controversies have cultural links to the AGWS debate and display some interesting similarities in the way Popper’s philosophy has proved to be flexible enough in practice to be used in politically expedient ways to support multiple competing positions (Coady and Cory, 2013).
In the creation science debate, groups such as the Skeptics (not climate sceptics) and the National Centre for Science Education (both groups now actively lobbying against AGWS critics) appealed to Popper to support arguments that creation science relies on unfalsifiable assertions based on religious faith, and therefore could not be classed as a science (Albert, 1986; Morrison, 2011). While this strategy has had some traction in legal settings (Ruse, 1988), creation science supporters have also regularly cited in public debate Popper’s well-known ambivalence about how easy it is to actually falsify Darwinian Evolution in attempts to undermine its scientific status (Asimov and Gish, 1981; Sonleitner, 1986).
In the case of law reform, Popperian-inspired models of science became extremely popular during the 1990s to assist in addressing questions about when evidence could be admitted to courts and be considered scientific, most notably the 1993 US Supreme court decision in Daubert (Caudill and LaRue, 2006; Edmond and Mercer, 1996). The use of Popper to tighten admissibility standards was embraced by critics with different interests. These ranged from politically diverse groups who were concerned with the quality of expert evidence more generally, in particular, that associated with some sub-branches of psychology and medicine, to politically conservative think tanks who believed that courts were encouraging a toxic tort litigation crisis by turning their back on mainstream science by paying too much attention to marginal and novel claims based on ‘junk science’. Some of these ‘think tanks’, such as the Manhattan Institute, have also had long standing links with AGWS critics (Edmond and Mercer, 2004; Oreskes and Conway, 2010). Typical of the flexible ways Popper can be applied in practical settings, in some contexts, these standards have assisted in the alignment between legal decisions and mainstream science but in others have also been used to challenge established areas of forensic sciences and sciences relevant to public health regulation where scientific claims may be difficult to ‘package’ in Popperian terms (Cole and Lynch, 2005; Edmond and Mercer, 2004; Michaels, 2008).
While it is difficult to measure the direct influence on policymakers of Popperian-inspired representations in the AGWS debate, the way these representations frame the authority of science resonates with the way the authority of science has been framed in important policymaking settings involving AGWS. A notable example has been the staging of the US congressional hearings on climate science where scientists have been called upon as expert witnesses (Hampel, 2015). In these settings, scientists have taken on adversarial roles presenting an opportunity for the public authority of their claims to be ‘tested’ and undermined. For example, as scientists become identified with political interests (Republican or Democrat, etc.) accusations of conflicts of interest are given the opportunity to be aired, and adversarial process can expose scientist’s claims to difficult questions about how well they conform to unrealistic models of scientific method and standards of scientific certainty (Edwards, 2010). As a result of these challenges, pre-existing differences risk becoming even more polarised and entrenched, and the necessary messiness, challenges and uncertainties of AGWS are left unacknowledged, trust in scientific institutions undermined and opportunities for deliberative policymaking compromised.
While these examples are from the United States, and other nations have their own science policymaking traditions, or civic epistemologies (Jasanoff, 2005), the influence of the US models are still strong in nations with which it shares close economic, corporate and cultural ties, and particularly in scientific debates with global dimensions (Mann, 2012). It shouldn’t be surprising then that in the AGWS debate, in countries with strong links to the United States similar styled appeals to scientific authority appear, particularly given the capacity for the Internet to be borderless.
The way the authority of science is constructed in the AGWS debate is clearly an important topic for policymakers and analysts of the public understanding of science and philosophy of science (PUPS?) to consider further (Hampel, 2014; Ravetz, 2012; Wynne, 2010). This article also demonstrates the value of doing this in a symmetrical way. By focussing on both AGWS critics and supporters, it was shown that there were a number of similarities in the way pop-versions of Popper’s philosophy of science and appeals to the authority of science appear widely across the AGWS debate and that the use of politically strategic expedient models of good science and un-reflexive views of science are not the monopoly of AGWS critics and political conservatives.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Matt Kearnes and three anonymous reviewers from Public Understanding of Science for providing helpful critical comments on various drafts of the paper.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.