Science vs. politics
If you wonder why worldwide scientific consensus hasn’t yet quashed climate change denial in the United States, a panel this week at Harvard Kennedy School offered an answer: It’s the politics, stupid. Persistent efforts to cast doubt on a scientific certainty have their roots in philosophical opposition to big government and government regulation, expressed in a fierce, expertly managed, well-funded campaign, participants said. “It’s a story about government regulation, about organizations that take a position against government’s role in the marketplace,” said Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard. Oreskes, co-author of “Merchants of Doubt” (2010), which looked at campaigns to discredit scientific data from tobacco to the ozone hole to climate change, said the current opposition carries strong echoes of the tobacco wars. For decades, tobacco companies used disinformation to combat increasing evidence that smoking caused cancer and other illnesses. “It’s not just the same ideas, the same strategies, but the...