Naomi Oreskes, Harvard professor: ‘Science is vulnerable when it discovers things that threaten authority’

These are complex times for science — turbulent times, with the rise of populist movements that encourage conspiracy theories and leaders like Donald Trump slashing the budgets of the world’s largest research centers.

If she had to look back and compare these days to past eras, says Naomi Oreskes, professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, what comes closest is “the Lysenko affair in the Soviet Union [USSR].” She’s referring to the days when Stalinism promoted the theories of agronomist Trofim Lysenko, who, drawing on the already discredited Lamarckian theories of evolution, proposed “the idea that agricultural productivity could be increased through a process called vernalization, which involved exposing seeds to cold climates — tricking them into thinking winter had already passed so they would germinate earlier,” explains Oreskes.

“It was a disaster for Soviet agriculture, obviously, but also for scientists, because there were scientists who said this was ridiculous, that it wasn’t valid, and many of them were imprisoned,” she continues. “For many years, this was a kind of cautionary tale about the ills of the USSR because it harmed science. And it’s deeply ironic that we’re now seeing something very similar in the United States.”

Oreskes, 66, is one of the leading scholars on the role of science in society. Alongside Erik M. Conway, she is the author of two seminal works that explore the political and scientific tactics used to promote false ideas. In the bestseller Merchants of Doubt, they detail how a handful of scientists, with ties to industry and politics, orchestrated a campaign to mislead the public and deny issues like climate change and the harms of tobacco.

And in The Big Myth, the authors tell “the true story of a false idea: the magic of the marketplace,” as they describe the belief that the best way to meet our basic needs is to let the market work its “magic” rather than rely on government intervention.

The New York-born scientist was in Barcelona to take part in a debate series organized by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and spoke with EL PAÍS in a room at the cultural center just a few hours before her lecture. She spoke candidly about the state of science in her country and the long-term effects of Trump’s policies, but also about the rise of pseudoscience and how the global cloud of disinformation is built.

Citizens, she says, also need to do more: “Many of us have been lazy. We don’t want to take the time to investigate things thoroughly. We can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s the scientists’ fault for not communicating well.’ Scientists do need to work hard on becoming better communicators, but we also have to become better listeners,” she warns.

She continues: “In many cases, if you do a Google search, the top results will be misinformation — and people need to be aware of that and say, ‘Okay, the first results might not be what I’m most interested in. I need to look at data from scientific organizations.’ If I want oranges, I go to the supermarket. If I want science, I have to go to scientific websites.”

The scientist looks to history to maintain perspective on the present. She recalls, for example, the story of Galileo: “Galileo wasn’t attacked by other scientists for saying that the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe — he was attacked by the Catholic Church, the dominant political authority at the time. Throughout history, we’ve seen that science and scientists can be vulnerable when science uncovers things that threaten authority.”

Question. Are these tough times for science?

Answer. Yes, absolutely. And I think in the United States, it’s certainly the most difficult time for science right now. At least in the last century, it’s the hardest time since the American government became a bastion of science after World War II.

Q. In the United States, a vaccine skeptic is at the head of the National Institutes of Health, Trump is cutting funding for science... How are you experiencing all of this?

A. On a personal level, it doesn’t affect my grants. When I moved to Harvard 12 years ago, I decided not to apply for federal grants because I realized my work had a powerful political component and that would make us vulnerable. So I made the personal decision to seek private funding, and I was fortunate to be able to do so. But many of my colleagues and peers at many universities are affected. They’ve lost their grants; they don’t know how they’re going to fund their lab technicians and their postdoctoral students. Medical schools are having to euthanize laboratory animals because there’s no funding to keep them. It’s a colossal waste of resources.

Q. I’m also asking on an emotional level, and as a historian — what long-term consequences could all this have?

A. I think my emotions are working on two levels right now. As a historian, I realize that governments haven’t always supported science. In the U.S., strong federal support for science is a relatively recent development: until World War II, much of science was funded through private philanthropy or state by state. This is something that can change; nothing lasts forever, and science existed before the federal government became the largest patron, and it will continue to exist in the future. I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Science is ancient — as old as human curiosity about the natural world. So I’m not particularly worried about science in a broad sense.

But as a person who works in science, it saddens me deeply. And it astonishes me that in a modern and sophisticated country like the United States, we can have leaders who turn against science in such a dramatic and reckless way, because there’s no doubt this is going to harm the American people and people around the world.

This is the most difficult time for science in the U.S., at least in the last century."

Q. Do you think what is happening is undermining public trust in science?

A. There’s a lot of talk about a crisis of trust in science, but I think much of that discussion is greatly exaggerated, because most people in most countries trust science. But there are pockets of resistance, which can become significant, especially when there are groups of people who refuse to get vaccinated and we lose herd immunity and the benefits that come with it.

The most worrying thing about what’s happening now is the way Donald Trump is trying to politicize attacks on science in the name of efficiency, which is clearly not true. But Trump’s actions could backfire because he’s creating an opportunity to have a conversation about what these scientific agencies are, what research they do, why it’s funded. That’s an excellent opportunity for the scientific community to better explain what they do, and for everyone to end up with a deeper understanding of the value of scientific work and end up trusting science more in the long run.

Q. Is public trust in science eroding?

A. The data we have doesn’t support that. A colleague in Switzerland led a study that found the idea that the vast majority of people still trust science. That’s good news. What we need to do now is have more details, for example, in places where there is high trust, what is that trust based on? I’m not saying we should blindly trust science, but we should have informed trust in evidence-based science. I think it’s important to explain to people what evidence-based science is, how we know. If people learn to ask the right questions, they will find they can get right information.

Q. In a recent interview with EL PAÍS, researcher Anna Gilmore explained the tricks large corporations use to manipulate people, including fake science. It’s difficult for ordinary citizens to combat this. How can a person distinguish between good and bad science?

A. I totally agree with what Gilmore says, and one of the things we said in Merchants of Doubt is that their mechanisms are very sophisticated; they have many tricks at their disposal. And they deliberately try to make their work look scientific. They disguise everything as science in order to confuse us. If it confuses us, it’s not our fault. In a way, we’re victims of a scam. But at the same time, I think there are things we can do. There’s a crucial element to remember, which is that good science comes from scientific organizations; it doesn’t come from industry, or from right-wing or left-wing think tanks. It comes from scientists. And once we realize that, it’s not that difficult.

There are people with naive faith in progress and that science is moving forward, but there could be a regression.

Q. In Merchants of Doubt you say that “doubt is crucial to science, but it also makes it vulnerable to distortion.” Are we facing such distortion?

A. Yes, I think we’ve all experienced this. Public opinion in the U.S. shows that the American people generally understand that climate change is real and harmful. But many people who identify as conservative or vote Republican believe that climate change is due to natural variability. And they believe that because that’s what their political leaders have told them. We have to resist that. We have to identify misinformation as such and be able to say: this serves the interests of the fossil fuel industry, which wants to continue producing to make trillions of dollars, and they rely on this information to protect their interests, to confuse us.

Q. Conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine movements, and flat-earth movements are on the rise. Could there be a regression in scientific knowledge?

A. Yes, of course. There are many people who have a very naive faith in progress, that the world is progressing and science is moving forward, and it’s clear that’s not true. And yes, there could be a regression. I think it’s already happened because vaccines are a very clear case. Twenty years ago, almost all Americans accepted vaccines for their children; there was no real anti-vaccine movement. Even 10 years ago, anti-vaccines were a hodgepodge of homeschoolers, evangelical Christians... There was no coherent political structure.

However, now we do see a political structure that connects anti-vaccines with the political right. And in the U.S., this is promoted under the concept of medical freedom, and that’s an extension of things we’ve already talked about, because when the tobacco industry tried to promote its product, it did so in the name of people having the right to decide: “We don’t want the government telling us whether you can or cannot smoke.” And now the same argument is being made about vaccines. In both cases, however, it’s a flawed argument, because when you smoke, you don’t just put yourself in danger, you put the people around you in danger. And if you don’t get vaccinated, you’re not just at risk, you’re also putting the people around you in danger.

Years ago, anti-vaxxers didn’t have a coherent political structure; now we see a connection with the political right.

Q. What kind of people distrust science? It’s very simplistic to think they’re all foolish or ignorant.

A. People who reject science aren’t necessarily foolish or ignorant. That’s one of the main arguments we made in Merchants of Doubt: the leading climate deniers were famous scientists, brilliant men. The question we asked was why did highly educated men reject climate science, and clearly, the answer wasn’t ignorance. Most people assumed the answer was money, and there was money changing hands, but it was generally political. What motivated them was ideology and market fundamentalism: the ideology that if you trust markets, people’s self-interest will sort everything out and everything will be fine.

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