December 15, 2025 • 45 mins
The intersection of science, politics, and environmental discourse is full of puzzles: why has nuance gone missing from the conversation? Why are heterodox or balanced views often sidelined? And how do echo chambers, alarmist rhetoric, and the erosion of trust hinder lasting progress in conservation?
To explore these questions, I spoke with Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist well-known for his work on contested science in contentious policy areas, from climate and extreme weather to COVID origins and sports governance.
Links to resources
- The Honest Broker - Roger's website and blog, with lots of free content and even more in the paid version.
- What Happened on Deliberation Day? 2007 paper mentioned by Roger in which the researchers found that like-minded deliberation led to stronger, more extreme post-discussion views, while mixed groups became more open and less certain.
- The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change - Book by Roger, emphasizing evidence-based nuance over alarmism.
- Messaging Should Reflect the Nuanced Relationship between Land Change and Zoonotic Disease Risk - BioScience paper that we discussed, on the links between land change and zoonotic spillover risk.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
That theory of change that you can't be too
alarmist on a particular issuebecause it's directionally
correct, I understand it.
I hear it a lot, and I thinkempirically it's fundamentally
wrong.
It's not an effective theory ofchange.
I actually think calling thingsstraight disempowers denialists
(00:23):
and you know opponents ofmainstream science much more
than circling the wagons andsaying we're infallible and
anyone who challenges a corefinding and an assessment is
kicked out of the club.
SPEAKER_01 (00:42):
Welcome to the Case for Conservation Podcast, the
show where we make the case forconserving nature and its
biodiversity by building arobust, credible argument, one
that requires us sometimes tore-examine conventional wisdom.
I'm your host, Andre Mardo.
The intersection of science,politics, and environmental
(01:02):
policy is full of puzzles.
Why does public concern aboutissues like climate change surge
and then fade?
Why does alarmist messagingsometimes backfire?
And how do echo chambers andbreakdowns in trust affect our
ability to make lasting progressin conservation?
To explore these questions, Ispoke with Roger Pilke Jr., a
(01:22):
political scientist well knownfor his work on contested
science in contentious policyareas, from climate and extreme
weather to COVID origins andsports governance.
I began by asking Roger abouthis broad experience in these
politicized fields.
SPEAKER_00 (01:53):
And that spans a lot of issues these days.
It's it's a growth area.
But I've worked on areas such asenergy and climate change,
obviously.
But also I do work oneligibility standards for
transgender and intersexathletes.
Um, and I've dabbled a bit inCOVID science advice, including
uh discussions of COVID origins.
(02:14):
Um and the core feature of allthese issues is that it's very
difficult for institutions tomaintain scientific integrity
given the push and pull ofpolitics, including the politics
uh among us experts.
SPEAKER_01 (02:28):
Yeah, the politics has sort of different realms,
doesn't it?
You know, it happens in themedia, it happens in the public,
and it happens in the science.
And actually, the very lastquestion I wanted to ask you was
about that sort of pipeline ofknowledge production and where
you think the leakage might be,but I'll leave that for later.
Um something I've oftenwondered, and I'm curious as to
(02:48):
your opinion on this, is at whatpoint in time the environment,
and I mean, I know climate isalways kind of the poster child
of environment, but you couldspeak about environmental issues
more broadly.
At what point in time didenvironmental and climate issues
become as culturally andpolitically prominent as they
are today?
SPEAKER_00 (03:07):
Yeah, I mean, to take the long view and a very
US-centric view, you know, themodern environmental movement
really emerged in the 60s andcertainly into the early 70s.
Um, the first Earth Day was morethan 50 years ago in the US.
Um, the major congressionallegislation uh passed, Clean Air
(03:29):
Act, Clean Water Act, um,establishment of the
Environmental Protection Agency,uh, NOAA National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration inthe 1970s.
Um, so the early years of theenvironmental movement in the
U.S.
were kind of a reflexiveopposition to what many people
were seeing as um theuncontrolled advance of
(03:51):
technology, uh, themilitary-industrial complex.
It was wrapped up with studentconcerns about the Vietnam War
at the time, and the legitimateconcerns about issues like
pollution.
Um, at the time, concern aboutglobal overpopulation and
resource depletion were in theether, um, certainly, and people
talked about and so that thatreally was the the modern
(04:13):
origins.
I would say, you know, to buildon one of your comments, climate
change has to some large degreesupplanted the the legacy
environmental movement.
It's uh if you ask what is thethe 2025 environmental movement
in the US, it's not exactly theclimate movement, but boy,
there's an awful lot of overlapthese days.
(04:33):
So it it has really transformedfrom its its origins in the in
the 70s.
SPEAKER_01 (04:37):
Right.
And you can see that that's thedomination of climate.
You can see just you know, oneof the indicators is is the
amount of funding that goes toclimate versus other
environmental issues.
But what I meant was rather notsort of when the movement
started, but when it really hitthe mainstream, you know,
because my impression is that asa kid and a and a young student,
and quite far into my career, Ialways felt like I was the only
(04:59):
person in the room, you know,arguing for environmental
issues.
And this is sort of at leastwell into the 20 teens.
Yeah.
Uh and then something, I guess,in that decade happened to sort
of really bring it to theforefront and it became one of
the key political issues.
And I guess maybe maybe that'sactually a better question, is
kind of when did enter thepolitical realm so strongly.
I know it's always been there,but it feels tell me if I'm
(05:21):
wrong, but it feels to me likesomething changed, you know,
sometime in the past uh 10 yearsor so.
SPEAKER_00 (05:26):
Yeah, I mean it's a good question.
There there is an ebb and flowof political issues, but you
know, really in the UnitedStates, the you know, you could
argue that the most significantlegislation, policy action
happened in the 70s, 80s, and90s.
Um over the last decade, therehas been a very concerted push
by climate advocates to raisethe salience of the climate
(05:48):
issue.
That's to be sure.
Um I mean, certainly, I mean, ifyou go back to 1992, uh George
H.
W.
Bush promised to counter thegreenhouse effect with the White
House effect.
So it was, you know, it waspresent in presidential
politics, but it becamepoliticized in kind of a very
intense partisan way, I wouldsay, in the early 2000s.
I think the Bush administration,you know, wrapped up with the
(06:11):
decision to go to war in Iraqand failures of intelligence.
Um, there was this growingnarrative in the United States
that Republicans were againstscience, Democrats were for
science, and climate change waskind of the poster child.
Um, Al Gore's movie in 2006, Ithink, was a pretty important
point.
Um, so I do think things pickedup from there.
(06:32):
Uh, it is really interesting.
In 2025, I just saw an opinionpoll out of Germany that if you
go back five years, 64% ofGermans said climate change was
the most important issue for thecountry.
And that same poll in 2025, it's14%.
SPEAKER_01 (06:47):
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (06:48):
So uh public opinion has been fickle on environmental
issues.
And so environmental politicshas always, I mean, for me, it's
it's always been part of thebackdrop of important policy
issues.
It almost never is it issuenumber one, two, three, four.
I mean, that's you know, theeconomy and what we're hearing
about affordability.
(07:08):
Um, and environmentalists oftenwould like their issues,
including climate change, to benumber one.
Um, I would caution against thatbecause you know, the number one
issue is usually the mostpoliticized issue.
Um, and you know, if you lookback to the 1980s and public
opinion on ozone depletion atthe time, it was not
particularly high-ranked, notmany people knew about it.
(07:29):
Um, but also that was uh adecade characterized by
significant progress on ozonepolicy.
So intense public attention umand and concern about the
environment doesn't alwaystranslate into effective policy.
SPEAKER_01 (07:44):
Right.
A bit of a sidestep, but um,just to get back to, you know,
and I won't ask you about thedetails, I'll sort of outline
those in the in theintroduction, but you know, in
the past you've clearly fallenvictim to some of the more
dogmatic elements, I guess youcould say, in the climate
discussion.
How much of the extremistrhetoric, if I can call it that,
I think on both sides of thepolitical spectrum, do you
(08:07):
attribute to a genuine lack ofgood information on the one hand
versus value-basedinterpretations of that
information?
Like where do you think thesplit is there?
SPEAKER_00 (08:18):
Yeah, I think, I mean, the climate issue has has
evolved in such a way that thepublic interpretations of
science among the most committedon the far right and the far
left become very flat.
Uh climate science isfascinating, it's wonderful,
it's complex, and um, you know,the future is a very fuzzy place
that we, you know, we can't getperfect information about the
(08:41):
future.
Um, one thing that characterizedthe most political among us and
all of us to some degree is thatwe'd really love to have
evidence and and facts supportwhat we already believe or our
our preconceived politics.
That's why I'm a big supporterof assessment processes in
science, um, where you gathertogether, you know, disparate
voices with different views toget a sense of the lay of the
(09:04):
land, to know where things sit.
And, you know, I've gone fromseeing um I'm gonna just tell
you, uh, when I first startedgetting invited to testify
before the U.S.
Congress, it was about 25 yearsago, um, I was always invited by
Democrats.
And I talked about my work onextreme weather and how it's
consistent with the IPCC.
Around 2013, that flipped, and Istarted getting invited by
(09:25):
Republicans.
But the funny thing is, is mytestimony was pretty much the
same and you know, in support ofthe IPCC.
And so I do think it is veryeasy and convenient for people
to cherry pick and you know,selectively pick that science
that supports their case andmake the best case possible.
I I don't think it's it'snecessarily an information
(09:47):
deficit or you know, they don'tknow the right information.
It's that people assemble bitsand pieces of information in
ways that makes their uharguments sound the best.
And you know, if you're in apolitical situation, that's kind
of business as usual.
But if you're you know writingan insurance contract or
building a bridge or you know,doing something that has
(10:08):
real-world impacts and you needto understand what the science
says, that's where I get moreconcerned about scientific
integrity.
Um in politics, you'll never geteveryone to agree on
quote-unquote the facts in theexact same way.
SPEAKER_01 (10:21):
There's also this interesting phenomenon in which
an expert uh in a particulartopic can sometimes be more
likely to be dogmatic about thattopic because of their their own
perception that they knoweverything that there is to know
or most of what there is toknow.
Whereas a generalist or even amember of the public might be
more inclined to look morebroadly and be more skeptical
(10:42):
about their own views.
SPEAKER_00 (10:44):
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean on the climateissue, it's I mean, it's
fascinating because none of usare experts on everything
climate.
SPEAKER_01 (10:51):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (10:51):
It spans everything from economics to you know
ecosystems to oceans toglaciology to you know
technologies of energyconsumption and production.
So um, all of us have to dependon other experts.
And so the the most importantskill, I think, in being an
expert in the climate area isknowing how to draw on other
(11:12):
experts in the area to assemblewhat you know.
Because I I have a certaindegree of expertise, but it's
very narrow and very deep, andthe issue is actually very
broad.
So so that's that's a hugechallenge in the climate issue.
SPEAKER_01 (11:27):
That's why these assessment processes that you
refer to are somultidisciplinary, right?
I'm more familiar with IPES thanwith uh PCC.
Um but I know there's especiallyrecently there's been a real
effort to have a diverse groupof uh including practitioners,
so not only scientists, but youknow, people with the field
experience as well.
SPEAKER_00 (11:46):
Yeah, I think IPES is a great example of a
scientific assessment that earlyon kind of pivoted towards more
regional and local focus becausethat's where ecosystems are
found.
And you know, I think at somepoints, such as talking about
extinction extinction rates andso on, it's tried to go the
route of the IPCC, but I thinkit's most successful, and it's
(12:08):
far less politicized, obviously,than the IPCC in public
discourse that that it's done anice job learning some of those
lessons.
SPEAKER_01 (12:16):
Right.
But it is interesting how Ithink maybe what you're
referring to there is the onemillion species at risk of
extinction figure, uh, whichcame out a few years ago.
I think it was from 2019 fromthe global assessment.
But it's interesting how thatone-liner, you know, to many
people that is IPIS.
You know, it's uh that's howmedia attention works, right?
You grab all the thousands andthousands of pages of research
(12:39):
that sort of all boil down tothat one slightly contentious uh
one-liner.
SPEAKER_00 (12:43):
Yeah, all the all the wonderful science and
nuanced information kind of getslost in that headline.
SPEAKER_01 (12:50):
Yeah, and I guess that's sort of one of our
biggest challenges is how do youdeal with that?
How do you kind of get themessage across without
distorting it in that way?
Right.
I mentioned sort of in the introthis frustration of mine at the
way that people in my field tendto, and I'm have been guilty of
of it myself for most of mycareer, regurgitating existing
(13:10):
information.
So talking points.
And you know, I I guess for mostof my career, my aim was to
figure out how do I best getthis message across.
Right.
There was no critique of themessage itself.
It was just sort of how do weconvince others, how do we
change behavior.
Right.
And I think that, you know,looking around me over the the
decades, it seems that a lot ofcommitted environmentalists,
(13:32):
including the real experts thatI mentioned just now,
reflexively repeat talkingpoints and slogans.
Right.
What's your take on why that'sthe case?
I mean, is it just a is thatjust human behavior, or have you
got anything else to say aboutthat?
SPEAKER_00 (13:46):
Yeah, I mean, I think in areas where where
science encounters policy andpolitics, there is this idea,
and it's you know, it's beenaround a long time among experts
that if only they could convincesomeone else of the facts, then
they would come to share myvalues and my policy
preferences.
And you know, I hear this a lotthat, well, we can't talk about
(14:08):
policy until we have a sharedunderstanding of facts.
And so a lot of verywell-meaning experts in the
sciences, whether you know,across the sciences, think that
the first job is to communicatescience and get people on board
and have a shared understanding.
And it turns out that for betteror worse, um, that's that's not
(14:30):
going to happen.
We are not going to convince thepublic or the publics to have a
shared understanding of prettymuch anything.
Um, and yet the challenge ofpolitics is, and this is, you
know, to paraphrase WalterLippmann, is to get people who
think differently to act alike.
And so the important thing, ifyou're, if you're interested in
(14:51):
policy advocacy or you have acertain set of goals you want to
achieve, is to work backwardsfrom a shared commitment to
action, which involves a lot ofthings.
And for us experts, and I thinkwe've learned this, you know,
unfortunately, very much sincethe pandemic, um, is to build a
(15:11):
sense of trust among the publicin the institutions that we
inhabit.
Um, and you know, I'll go backto scientific assessments.
Scientific assessments areimportant not because they get
everything right or because allexperts agree or that people
have to agree with them.
They're important because theyprovide an opportunity for
building trust with people whohave to rely on them.
(15:34):
And so I'm a big fan of engagingwith stakeholders, talking with
people, but also letting themknow that um the experts, you
know, if we do our jobs, we'regonna call things like we see
them.
And, you know, they can believeit or not believe it.
But uh when it comes to action,you know, we have to start
focusing on a core set of youknow alternative forks in the
(15:55):
road that we could go down.
And there's a lot of room forpeople to agree on action
without agreeing on facts.
SPEAKER_01 (16:02):
You're talking about policy being more of a, it would
needing to be more of a goalfocused rather than a process
focused, right?
Is that is that sort of acorrect interpretation?
SPEAKER_00 (16:10):
Yeah, I mean, I think both are important because
the the processes you put inplace to achieve your goals, you
know, for example, you know, tohave a good assessment, you need
processes that elicit views frompeople who disagree.
If the ticket to entry to IPESor IPCC is you already have to
believe X, Y, and Z, then it'snot really doing its job as an
(16:31):
assessment.
It's just filtering out viewsthat may be uncomfortable or
challenging or simply wrong.
So I do think there, you know,process is important.
But in order for politicalaction to happen, people have to
have some agreement on sharedgoals.
And so when we talk aboutclimate change, um reducing
emissions is not a goal.
(16:52):
Reducing emissions is a means.
It's a means of some other goal.
SPEAKER_01 (16:56):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (16:56):
And for some people, if they don't believe, you know,
in the core findings of climatescience, which I think are very
strong, um, there are stillpaths for those people to get on
board with a set of policiesfocused on reducing emissions.
Maybe they like you know moreefficient vehicles.
Uh, maybe their communitybenefits by having a nuclear
power plant built there or oryou know, so so the shared goal
(17:21):
that most people have, and youknow, I talk about this a lot,
um, is economic in nature.
People would prefer to be betteroff than worse off.
And you know, if you look atopinion polls and how people
actually behave, that spans awide range of politics.
I mean, there are there's a fewdegrowthers out there, but you
know, when degrowthers startwinning elections based on a
(17:42):
campaign of making people lesswell off, um, I'll I'll think
harder about that.
But for the, I mean, in theUnited States, right now,
there's a huge debate going onabout affordability.
And that's across the politicalspectrum because of inflation,
high costs.
And, you know, if if I'minterested in advancing
decarbonization, um, I wouldfigure out how to craft a set of
(18:05):
policies that addressaffordability and have the side
benefit of reducing emissionsrather than trying to convince
people of the science of climatechange and why that means they
must reduce emissions withoutever talking about economics and
affordability.
SPEAKER_01 (18:18):
Right.
And I would say even if thatdoesn't achieve as much emission
reduction as uh, you know, asother policies might, because
it's that it's that importantfor you know the sustainability
of the policy.
SPEAKER_00 (18:28):
Yeah.
I mean, well, the theoreticalideal is always the enemy of
the, you know, the practicalgood enough.
And so uh, you know, it nothingmatters if you can't get it
implemented in practice.
SPEAKER_01 (18:39):
But that issue of trust that you mentioned as
well, you know, trust andcredibility, I guess, sort of
goes go so closely together.
I wasn't planning to ask this,but and it's a very general
question.
But do you think that COVID andthe way, especially in the US
but also many other countries,the way that the government
responded, not just sort ofpublic health related, but also
COVID origins-related uhresponses, do you think that
(19:00):
that has sort of really setscience back?
I mean, uh uh uh how big of apart do you think that's played?
And then maybe just along withthat, how big a part do you
think that some of the extremerhetoric around climate and
environment has also gone toaffect public trust in science?
SPEAKER_00 (19:17):
Yeah, I was fortunate.
I I was able to lead a smallproject uh funded by the U.S.
National Science Foundation,doing a comparative assessment
of science advice across about10 different countries
worldwide.
Um the project started soonafter the pandemic started, so
spring of 2020, and most of ourevaluations were the first year
(19:40):
or the first and second year ofthe pandemic.
And the United States standsout.
The United States did not have ahigh level science advisory
mechanism at all for the COVIDpandemic.
Um, interestingly, um the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences andthe White House Office of
Science and Technology Policy,they they started.
(20:00):
That sort of an effort, but itwas derailed and and didn't do
much.
But if there are questions likewhat are the trade-offs involved
with closing schools or howeffective are masks or the sit
six foot two-meter distancing,it would be nice, not because
they're right, but to have abaseline of experts saying
(20:20):
here's what we know, here's whatwe don't know.
It turns out in the fullness oftime, we learned that a lot of
decisions were made without anyscientific basis.
And that's a a recipe for reallycompromising public trust across
the board.
The COVID origins issue, um, youknow, it's it is remarkable to
(20:41):
me that the the world hasn'tbeen able to get its act
together to do, you know, thethe example I use in the United
States after 9-11, there was a9-11 commission inquiry.
You know, what do we know?
What happened?
It was bipartisan.
Um, and you know, the the factthat the world can't get
together to say, all right,let's do a true independent
(21:01):
investigation of origins um isshocking given the magnitude of
of the event.
If you take a look at opinionpolls, um there are some places,
and you know, I think Japanmight be one of them, where
public trust didn't take inpublic health didn't take as big
a hit.
Um we did have a Japanese casestudy, and uh, you know, one of
(21:22):
the arguments there was that thethe real loss of trust after
Fukushima provided some lessonsto both policymakers and
scientists that were appreciatedduring the pandemic in ways that
maybe were not appreciatedelsewhere.
SPEAKER_01 (21:36):
By Fukushima, you're talking about the sort of social
response, right?
The sort of moving moving peoplearound and that kind of thing
rather than the the technicalside of things.
SPEAKER_00 (21:44):
Right.
Yeah, which in which expertiseyou know lost a lot of
credibility.
SPEAKER_01 (21:50):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (21:50):
Um the the the UK is a great example of of what can
go wrong because you had the theSAGE, so it was the science uh
advisory group for emergency,it's a great acronym.
Um, but then a group ofscientists created uh something
that they called the independentSAGE.
And so you had dueling advisorybodies, and even members of
parliament were confused as towhich one was the government
(22:12):
body and which one was not.
So, you know, there's a lot oflessons to learn from that.
Um, and you know, the mostimportant might be that science
and public health come with alot of willingness in the public
to give trust.
Um, but at the same time, it'seasily lost.
Right.
And so taking care of theinstitutions of expertise has to
be a uh very high priority.
SPEAKER_01 (22:34):
Right.
Just um a couple of years intoCOVID, I was noticing the the
headlines um which wereessentially kind of blaming the
pandemic on deforestation, sovery, very shortly put.
Yes.
Um and so with a few co-authors,we started investigating this.
And we also looked into thepeer-reviewed literature, and
basically what we found was thatin the um well, first of all,
(22:57):
the the primary literature doesnot support that assertion.
So the headlines are all wrong,or they're they're all they're
just highlighting one set thing.
But the most shocking thing wasthat commentary within the
peer-reviewed literature wassaying almost almost as biased
as the media was in thatdirection.
Um and we got this published inbioscience, but it's only had a
handful of citations, so thereseems to be a lack of uh
(23:19):
willingness to kind of engagewith this.
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (23:22):
I mean, that's a perfect example of um you know a
public narrative that getsestablished and then rigorous
research is done that doesn'tnecessarily support that
narrative, but then all of asudden the scientists who are
doing that research areperceived or targeted as you
know undercutting you knowsomething that's virtuous and
(23:43):
good.
Um and and this is you know,when I say scientific integrity
has to be just as important asbiodiversity or climate change
or public health, um, you meanwe have to be able to do both at
the same time.
And I I have seen a lot ofexamples of you know what you've
just described uh in the climatespace as well.
SPEAKER_01 (24:02):
Actually, that kind of leads into, I'll skip one
question and get back to itbecause it leads into uh to into
another one, which is this whatyou could call the heterox
dilemma, I guess.
I think that you know, one ofthe biggest anxieties that
people have when when taking aheterox or nuance approach, like
the one that we are taking, or Isee us as taking, is that um uh
(24:23):
you know alarmist messaging,even when it overshoots, is at
least pointing in the rightdirection.
The idea is that criticizing theerrors in alarmist rhetoric is
it's just arming the denialistside of things and you know,
let's polluters pollute uh moreand and all the rest of it.
So how do you respond to thatconcern?
And maybe I can just sort ofremind you of something that you
(24:44):
mentioned in another podcastwhere you said that a I think a
supervisor or a mentor of yourshad said that his analogy was,
you know, when you want to turna battleship, you don't kick it,
you lean on it.
SPEAKER_00 (24:54):
Right.
Yeah, I mean, so you know, thattheory of change that you can't
be too alarmist on a particularissue because it's directionally
correct.
I understand it, I hear it alot, and I think empirically
it's fundamentally wrong.
It's not an effective theory ofchange.
The example that I've used for along time, um, and this is a
(25:16):
chapter in my book, The HonestBroker, was about the decision
to go to war in Iraq.
And, you know, Tony Blair andyou know, Condoleezza Rice and
the Bush administration um wouldsay that, you know, we think
there's weapons of massdestruction.
Condoleezza Rice famously said,you know, the evidence for that
might be a nuclear blast in anAmerican city.
Um and if you wanted to invadeIraq, then directionally correct
(25:41):
was to be as alarmist aspossible.
Um but what we saw would happenwas number one, when the real
evidence came out that you knowthe intelligence had been
corrupted and politiciansweren't playing it straight, um,
the intelligence community losta lot of trust and support.
Um also, you know, people candebate this, but the actual
(26:03):
invasion of Iraq and follow-ondidn't go so well.
And so the the policy justifiedby the alarmist rhetoric hadn't
been thoroughly thought through,in part because you know, we had
to act because it was everythingwas so important.
So if we if we translate that toenvironmental issues, an issue
like you know, conservingbiodiversity or decarbonizing
(26:27):
the economy, these are issuesthat will evolve over decades,
in the best of all sorts, manydecades.
And public support needs tosustain, political support needs
to sustain over that time, overdifferent governments
conservatives, liberals,republicans, democrats, you
know, labor, whoever.
(26:49):
Um, and so the scientificcommunity has to ensure that
that trust is is maintained.
One way to have that trust is tocall things straight.
And I actually think callingthings straight disempowers
denialists and you knowopponents of mainstream science
(27:09):
much more than circling thewagons and saying we're
infallible and anyone whochallenges a core finding and an
assessment is kicked out of theclub.
And so I, you know, I have achance to talk to people across
the political spectrum in theUS, and um there's a lot of
trust of science, but there'sit's also easily lost when
scientists are perceived asbeing um overtly political or
(27:33):
overtly committed to a partyline.
So I I think in all cases,whether you're in the
intelligence, whether you're inthe media, whether you're in
science, calling things straightmay not always be comfortable,
especially for your politicalallies, but it is the best
strategy for science to sustainas a trusted enterprise because
we need science.
(27:53):
It's important.
SPEAKER_01 (27:54):
Yeah, I guess that you know, an underlying issue
there is, you know, you spoke,and I agree with you, you spoke
about solving theseenvironmental issues as being a
decades-long process.
But I guess this is the keything is that extreme
environmentalists don't believethat.
They they believe that there is12 years left or whatever AOC
said a while ago, or you know,less than that.
(28:16):
So maybe that's the key issue isto just actually get that
message across.
And it's not the only message,but you know, to get this
message across you know, that wedo have a fairly big problem
here, but it's not going todestroy the earth in the next 10
years.
SPEAKER_00 (28:30):
Yeah, I mean, the examples I use, and you know, I
wish climate change wasapproached more like these
issues, but um are agriculturalproductivity and the extension
of human lifespans.
If you go back a hundred yearsand you ask, let's say, public
health experts, how are we goingto double the human lifespan
from you know 39 to 78 yearsover the next century?
(28:52):
The only proper answer would bewe don't know.
Um, we're not sure.
I mean, that's before you hadantibiotics and you know modern
technologies of medicine.
Um, and the way you did it wasincrementally.
Well, we want to we want to bebetter next year than we are
this year.
Same with agriculturalproductivity.
If you asked, you know, if youif you asked uh you know farmers
in the 1930s, how's the worldgonna feed nine billion people
(29:16):
in the 2020s?
Um, the answer is we don't know.
And that's okay, becausedirectionally we knew how to
make improvements in crop yieldsand and so on.
Uh and if you ask how are wegonna decarbonize the global
economy, we don't know how it'sgonna end up, but we know how to
get started.
So I I very much think that theclimate issue has been misframed
(29:37):
with the idea that if you pass alaw or we sign a treaty, um, or
you know, you go to this year'sCOP, um, we can solve this
problem.
And it's it's it's not like thatuh from the start.
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (29:50):
I guess this is also, you know, I mentioned
transformative change earlier,and I think this is sort of what
fuels my interest in that topicand my caution toward that topic
is you know, this idea thatpeople behave differently when
they think that there's anurgency to the situation.
So transformative change is iscalling for rapid and radical
change and not the incrementalchange that you're talking
(30:12):
about.
SPEAKER_00 (30:14):
Yeah.
You know, I've I've watched asthe notion of transformative
change has emerged in this spaceand you know taken over by
international assessments andthe international community.
I think it's a bad move by thecommunity because most people
don't want transformativechange.
They don't they don't wanteverything to change.
(30:35):
Um, and the people who do wanttransformative change are people
who don't have access toelectricity um or don't have a
job.
SPEAKER_01 (30:42):
Um the same transformative change that the
others are talking about.
SPEAKER_00 (30:46):
Right, right.
Generally, it's talking abouthow do we make the rich world
greener and you know moreenvironmentally sustainable or
some vision along those lines.
And I can tell you, I I bet yougo into a community in in Tokyo
or New York or Boulder,Colorado, and you say, hey,
we're gonna change everything.
(31:07):
I think it's it's not a winningpolitical message.
Um if you say, well, you livehow you want to live, but we're
gonna help you um, you know,we're gonna implement some
policies that that makes yourlives better in the way that you
want it to be better, you know,that's a different sort of
message.
SPEAKER_01 (31:21):
But generally the transformative change message is
a very, I mean, it there'snothing new about it in a sense.
It's very utopian, right?
And that goes back a very longtime.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Roger, I also want to talk toyou about echo chambers.
Um, this is something which I'mI have been fascinated about for
a long time.
And I actually looked into it awhile ago.
I wanted to do a podcast episodeentirely dedicated to echo
(31:43):
chambers and sort of how theyare shaping the environmental
debate and and you know extremerhetoric.
And and the the research that Icame up with sort of led me to
believe that there's kind ofnothing to see here.
Well, that that's what theresearchers were saying, but I I
don't believe that.
So I'm just curious to know whatyou think.
How big a role do echo chambers,particularly in social media but
(32:04):
also legacy media, how big arole do they play in amplifying
and uh I guess entrenchingextreme environmental rhetoric?
SPEAKER_00 (32:12):
Yeah, there's there's a real fascinating study
done by um cognitivepsychologists.
I think one of them was at theUniversity of Colorado, but it's
it's titled What Happened onDeliberation Day?
And I used it in my classes fora long time.
But what they did is theyassembled basically a group of
Democrats to talk about issues,and then they measured what they
(32:35):
believed about the issues beforethey deliberated together, and
they measured what they believedafter.
And they did this with a groupof Democrats, a group of
Republicans, and then a mixedgroup of Democrats and
Republicans.
And what they found is that thelike-minded groups, when they
deliberated together, emergedfrom the discussion holding the
(32:58):
same beliefs they had when theywent in, but much stronger.
And the groups that had adiversity of political views,
um, they emerged being more opento other views and less certain
about their own.
So I do think there's, andthere's a lot of studies along
these lines, but I do thinkthere's good empirical evidence
(33:18):
that diversity of engagementleads to more robust knowledge,
better understanding of yourfellow citizens, and you know,
more ability to um livetogether.
Um, so I think that social mediahas been particularly
pernicious, uh, particularly forthe scientific community.
Uh and you know, for the climatecommunity, I've seen this you
(33:40):
know now for several decades.
A big a big mistake the climatecommunity has made is this idea
that they need to throw out ofthe camp anyone who has a slight
disagreement.
And so the whole idea of climatedeniers, which is a slur, is is
a signal that this person'sviews are not acceptable in our
(34:00):
discourse.
And you know, I've seen the termclimate denier go from people
who think the earth is flat totoday people who support nuclear
energy, for example.
Um, and so the climate communityhas actually built a smaller and
smaller tent.
Um, and partly it's you know,it's to preserve the echo
chamber nature of thediscussion.
(34:22):
And it also reflects amisunderstanding of how politics
actually works.
Politics works because peoplewho you may violently disagree
with come together and makedecisions.
Uh I was lucky I got to work inthe U.S.
Congress uh early in my career.
And, you know, in a bigsprawling country, you know,
today of 330 million, peoplehave all sorts of views and
(34:44):
beliefs.
And if you're gonna get peopleto come together and make
decisions, then you know, youthrow people out of the tent at
your own peril because you'regonna become a more of a niche
issue.
Um, there's also, I mean,there's another phrase that I
think is important here.
It's not just echo chambers, butbut epistemic bubbles is another
term that I like, where peoplefrom a shared, let's say,
(35:06):
intellectual community or have ashared intellectual
understanding of issues, youknow, only talk to each other.
And they don't recognize thatthere's a lot of different ways
to get at the truth.
And, you know, we have to be, Iguess, ecumenical in our
epistemology and understandthat, you know, it's it's I
guess the analogy is like thethe blind men and the elephant.
(35:27):
Um, you know, we're all tryingto get a sense of the real
world, and none of us get it,but together we're a lot
stronger than you know, justwith the people who think like
we do.
SPEAKER_01 (35:36):
Yeah.
At the risk of treading onpolitically sensitive ground, I
think, you know, a lot of whatyou said now is is about
ideological diversity, right?
And my impression is that youknow, a lot of the conversation,
I guess, in in various politicalspheres is kind of a replacement
of ideological diversity withother kinds of identity-related
(35:59):
diversity.
It's sort of like a placeholderfor something which is much more
important, I guess.
And especially in discussionslike this, as you that that
lovely example you gave at thebeginning is such a good
illustration of that.
It doesn't matter what you know,what people's sort of racial or
gender-related or whatever itis, background is, what matters
is ideas.
And um that's that's kind ofwhat's what's missed, I think.
SPEAKER_00 (36:21):
No, you know, I think, I mean, particularly in
in big democracies that have adiversity of folks, you you want
to have a wide engagement ofpeople from different
backgrounds.
And, you know, one of thechallenges that academia and
science faces in the US, publichealth historically has had this
problem, is that when peoplefrom black communities or
(36:44):
Hispanic communities look at theyou know, the expert bodies that
are advising them, um, theydon't see themselves or they see
themselves very little.
And that's we have to understandthat's an important component of
trust.
I mean, and so the the wholeproblem with uh it's not the
whole problem, but a big problemwith with DEI in the US was the
(37:05):
impression that people were wereadvancing, not based on merit.
And this country is big enough,there's so many universities,
there's such there there is anincredible diversity of people
who participate that that youknow, if you have your COVID
advisory committee and it's justwhite men over 60, then you're
doing that by choice.
(37:26):
You you don't have to do that.
So I do think all types ofdiversity matter, but you you
you don't you don't have tocompromise on merit to have you
know great diversity on yourexpert advisory bodies, for
example.
SPEAKER_01 (37:38):
Yeah, no point well taken.
Um so this is to to go back tosomething that I mentioned at
the beginning of the discussion,this kind of knowledge pipeline.
I'm curious to hear your opinionon this.
So the way I see it, there aremultiple points where accurate
scientific understanding can getdistorted, you know, on its way
to the public and topolicymakers.
(38:00):
So could you walk through thischain?
And I can sort of tell you whatI think the chain looks like,
and tell us where you think thebiggest distortions typically
occur.
So the way I see it is it startswith, I guess, the education and
training of scientists atuniversities and maybe even
earlier than that.
And then the second step wouldbe um their production of
peer-reviewed papers, so youknow, getting their ideas into
(38:22):
the public realm, but thespecialized public realm.
And then the synthesis of thesepapers, which doesn't this
doesn't always happen, but thesynthesis of these papers into
assessment reports like theIPCC's and IPS's reports, and
then the drafting, especiallythe government-approved uh
summary of policymakers.
So you get this full thousand,two thousand-page reports, which
nobody ever reads, and then youget the SPM, which uh five
(38:44):
people read, right?
And then finally, um the themedia interpretation and
coverage of these reports, whichis you know, that's where it
kind of explodes onto the scene.
But at each of these points,there's potential for
distortion.
Um so I'm curious to know, andmaybe this is sort of deviating
a little bit from what we werejust talking about, but I think
it relates a lot to some of theearlier discussion.
(39:06):
Uh, what's your view on kind ofwhere things can go wrong here
and and maybe any sort ofrecommendations you might have?
SPEAKER_00 (39:14):
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question.
And I guess I'll I'll I'll startby taking issue with the notion
of a pipeline, um, which for meis far too linear in its
conception.
I I I tend to think think, andit depends also, is you know,
are we talking about publicunderstanding of expert
knowledge?
Are we talking about policymakerunderstanding, or are we talking
about how expert knowledge isrepresented in actual decision
(39:39):
documents and so on?
So those details matter, but butI would think of it more like
cooking a stew.
And you know, some people, youknow, you you're cutting up your
potatoes and you know,somebody's cutting the carrots,
and you get the broth and youput the seasoning in.
And and to cook a good stew, um,once once you serve the stew,
it's very hard to say, well, youknow, this element came.
(40:00):
From the potato or and sounderstandings of expert
knowledge are shaped in a lot ofimportant ways.
And you know, the media is a bigpart, obviously, and the the
fracturing of the media over youknow recent decades is a big
part of the story.
I mean, I have to tell you, oneof my daily moments of panic is,
(40:21):
you know, I'll read, let's say,the New York Times, which I read
every day, and I'll readsomething in the climate space
where I'm an expert, and I'llsay, oh my gosh, that is
completely wrong.
So I wrote a piece earlier thisweek about insurance and climate
change.
Um, New York Times has been verywrong on that issue for a while.
Um, but then I read somethingabout Venezuela or, you know,
(40:43):
foreign policy or public healthwhere I'm not an expert.
And I think, so is it possible,likely, that the reporting here
is just as bad as you know whatI just read in my area?
And and I don't have good advicefor people.
You know, how do you how do youknow what's what is really
difficult because things breakdown?
I I as you know, have I saidmany times, I am a big supporter
(41:06):
of institutionalizing expertise.
And that could be a newspaper,um, could be an assessment
process, um, it could be aNational Academy of Sciences of
the sort, uh, could be a formalgovernment advisory body.
But if we can set up formalmechanisms for trying to allow
expert, you know, relevantexperts, and that's a diversity
(41:27):
of experts, to call things likethey see them, that to me offers
a much more effective, moreefficient route to at least
getting some baseline knowledgethan reading the Financial
Times, the New York Times,whatever, you know, all the
newspapers and try totriangulate knowledge, or
picking your favorite expertthat's out there or politician
(41:48):
and saying, well, you know, ifif RFK Jr.
in the United States doesn'tlike vaccines, then well, it
must be true.
That's not a good way to goabout getting knowledge.
So um, and things can break downat every step of the way.
You know, I write a lot aboutfailures of peer review, um,
about how bad data gets intoactual science, about how
(42:09):
assessment processes break down.
The key to that is not paperingit over or pretending like it
doesn't exist.
The key to that is uh havinginstitutions with the commitment
to get things right.
And so um we just saw, you know,just in the in the last week or
so, Nature retracted a climateeconomics paper.
(42:31):
Really impactful.
Yeah, but you know, the thescandal isn't that the paper was
retracted or it was flawed.
That happens a lot in science.
The scandal is it took 18months.
And in the meantime, you know,governments and uh NGOs have
have relied heavily on thatpaper.
So institutions need acommitment to continuous
improvement, I think, is is thekey to avoid those breakdowns.
SPEAKER_01 (42:54):
Right.
And there does seem to be, youknow, I'm thinking particularly
of certain journals, there doesseem to have been a
politicization of journals whichI haven't noticed in the past,
which seems to have happenedrecently.
And maybe COVID has also kind ofjust pushed things in that
direction.
I'm not sure if we can blame iton that as well.
But um that's uh that's veryworrying, you know, when when
(43:14):
sort of major, major journalswere you know, and and when I
mention, just for the for thelisteners who aren't aware of I
didn't mention that you know,that step from peer-reviewed
journal uh research toassessments, um the the
assessors in the IPIS and IPCCassessments are using only
what's already there.
They're not creating any newscience.
It's uh basically a giantliterature review, although they
(43:36):
prefer they don't like thatwording, but it's essentially
what it is.
Um so when you know when thatscience is is faulty um or or
skewed one way or another, thenthen we've got a pretty serious
problem.
Right.
And that this always because ofall these leakages, I'm
sometimes kind of amazed that wecan get anything done.
You know, it's kind of it seemslike um and yeah, we do.
So perhaps it's not quite as badas we think it is, you know.
SPEAKER_00 (43:57):
Well, yeah, my view very much, and I you know, I
always have to remind myself totell people this, that that the
connections of science andpolicy across the board
generally work fantastic aroundthe world.
Um and you know look at theaviation and you know, air
airline safety, how it'simproved.
Science works, and um, you know,that's not a particularly
(44:18):
politicized issue.
There are these these issues andyou know, vaccination in the
United States, climate changeworldwide, energy policy,
transgender athletes, wherewhere issues of science do
become highly politicized.
And those are the ones I thinkthat we have to take care of um
because they are exceptional.
They they are not like howthings normally work across the
(44:38):
board, where you know, for mostpeople it's boring.
You know, I just want the lightsto come on, I want the subway to
pick me up on time.
And you know, science does greatin most settings.
It's it's the ones where it's itbreaks down that you know I
think we need to focus on.
SPEAKER_01 (44:59):
Join me again next time when I speak to Salim Ali
about the relative costs ofrenewable energy and other forms
of energy, especially fossilfuel energy, and their impacts
on the environment.
That theory of change that you can't be too
alarmist on a particular issuebecause it's directionally
correct, I understand it.
I hear it a lot, and I thinkempirically it's fundamentally
wrong.
It's not an effective theory ofchange.
I actually think calling thingsstraight disempowers denialists
(00:23):
and you know opponents ofmainstream science much more
than circling the wagons andsaying we're infallible and
anyone who challenges a corefinding and an assessment is
kicked out of the club.
SPEAKER_01 (00:42):
Welcome to the Case for Conservation Podcast, the
show where we make the case forconserving nature and its
biodiversity by building arobust, credible argument, one
that requires us sometimes tore-examine conventional wisdom.
I'm your host, Andre Mardo.
The intersection of science,politics, and environmental
(01:02):
policy is full of puzzles.
Why does public concern aboutissues like climate change surge
and then fade?
Why does alarmist messagingsometimes backfire?
And how do echo chambers andbreakdowns in trust affect our
ability to make lasting progressin conservation?
To explore these questions, Ispoke with Roger Pilke Jr., a
(01:22):
political scientist well knownfor his work on contested
science in contentious policyareas, from climate and extreme
weather to COVID origins andsports governance.
I began by asking Roger abouthis broad experience in these
politicized fields.
SPEAKER_00 (01:53):
And that spans a lot of issues these days.
It's it's a growth area.
But I've worked on areas such asenergy and climate change,
obviously.
But also I do work oneligibility standards for
transgender and intersexathletes.
Um, and I've dabbled a bit inCOVID science advice, including
uh discussions of COVID origins.
(02:14):
Um and the core feature of allthese issues is that it's very
difficult for institutions tomaintain scientific integrity
given the push and pull ofpolitics, including the politics
uh among us experts.
SPEAKER_01 (02:28):
Yeah, the politics has sort of different realms,
doesn't it?
You know, it happens in themedia, it happens in the public,
and it happens in the science.
And actually, the very lastquestion I wanted to ask you was
about that sort of pipeline ofknowledge production and where
you think the leakage might be,but I'll leave that for later.
Um something I've oftenwondered, and I'm curious as to
(02:48):
your opinion on this, is at whatpoint in time the environment,
and I mean, I know climate isalways kind of the poster child
of environment, but you couldspeak about environmental issues
more broadly.
At what point in time didenvironmental and climate issues
become as culturally andpolitically prominent as they
are today?
SPEAKER_00 (03:07):
Yeah, I mean, to take the long view and a very
US-centric view, you know, themodern environmental movement
really emerged in the 60s andcertainly into the early 70s.
Um, the first Earth Day was morethan 50 years ago in the US.
Um, the major congressionallegislation uh passed, Clean Air
(03:29):
Act, Clean Water Act, um,establishment of the
Environmental Protection Agency,uh, NOAA National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration inthe 1970s.
Um, so the early years of theenvironmental movement in the
U.S.
were kind of a reflexiveopposition to what many people
were seeing as um theuncontrolled advance of
(03:51):
technology, uh, themilitary-industrial complex.
It was wrapped up with studentconcerns about the Vietnam War
at the time, and the legitimateconcerns about issues like
pollution.
Um, at the time, concern aboutglobal overpopulation and
resource depletion were in theether, um, certainly, and people
talked about and so that thatreally was the the modern
(04:13):
origins.
I would say, you know, to buildon one of your comments, climate
change has to some large degreesupplanted the the legacy
environmental movement.
It's uh if you ask what is thethe 2025 environmental movement
in the US, it's not exactly theclimate movement, but boy,
there's an awful lot of overlapthese days.
(04:33):
So it it has really transformedfrom its its origins in the in
the 70s.
SPEAKER_01 (04:37):
Right.
And you can see that that's thedomination of climate.
You can see just you know, oneof the indicators is is the
amount of funding that goes toclimate versus other
environmental issues.
But what I meant was rather notsort of when the movement
started, but when it really hitthe mainstream, you know,
because my impression is that asa kid and a and a young student,
and quite far into my career, Ialways felt like I was the only
(04:59):
person in the room, you know,arguing for environmental
issues.
And this is sort of at leastwell into the 20 teens.
Yeah.
Uh and then something, I guess,in that decade happened to sort
of really bring it to theforefront and it became one of
the key political issues.
And I guess maybe maybe that'sactually a better question, is
kind of when did enter thepolitical realm so strongly.
I know it's always been there,but it feels tell me if I'm
(05:21):
wrong, but it feels to me likesomething changed, you know,
sometime in the past uh 10 yearsor so.
SPEAKER_00 (05:26):
Yeah, I mean it's a good question.
There there is an ebb and flowof political issues, but you
know, really in the UnitedStates, the you know, you could
argue that the most significantlegislation, policy action
happened in the 70s, 80s, and90s.
Um over the last decade, therehas been a very concerted push
by climate advocates to raisethe salience of the climate
(05:48):
issue.
That's to be sure.
Um I mean, certainly, I mean, ifyou go back to 1992, uh George
H.
W.
Bush promised to counter thegreenhouse effect with the White
House effect.
So it was, you know, it waspresent in presidential
politics, but it becamepoliticized in kind of a very
intense partisan way, I wouldsay, in the early 2000s.
I think the Bush administration,you know, wrapped up with the
(06:11):
decision to go to war in Iraqand failures of intelligence.
Um, there was this growingnarrative in the United States
that Republicans were againstscience, Democrats were for
science, and climate change waskind of the poster child.
Um, Al Gore's movie in 2006, Ithink, was a pretty important
point.
Um, so I do think things pickedup from there.
(06:32):
Uh, it is really interesting.
In 2025, I just saw an opinionpoll out of Germany that if you
go back five years, 64% ofGermans said climate change was
the most important issue for thecountry.
And that same poll in 2025, it's14%.
SPEAKER_01 (06:47):
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (06:48):
So uh public opinion has been fickle on environmental
issues.
And so environmental politicshas always, I mean, for me, it's
it's always been part of thebackdrop of important policy
issues.
It almost never is it issuenumber one, two, three, four.
I mean, that's you know, theeconomy and what we're hearing
about affordability.
(07:08):
Um, and environmentalists oftenwould like their issues,
including climate change, to benumber one.
Um, I would caution against thatbecause you know, the number one
issue is usually the mostpoliticized issue.
Um, and you know, if you lookback to the 1980s and public
opinion on ozone depletion atthe time, it was not
particularly high-ranked, notmany people knew about it.
(07:29):
Um, but also that was uh adecade characterized by
significant progress on ozonepolicy.
So intense public attention umand and concern about the
environment doesn't alwaystranslate into effective policy.
SPEAKER_01 (07:44):
Right.
A bit of a sidestep, but um,just to get back to, you know,
and I won't ask you about thedetails, I'll sort of outline
those in the in theintroduction, but you know, in
the past you've clearly fallenvictim to some of the more
dogmatic elements, I guess youcould say, in the climate
discussion.
How much of the extremistrhetoric, if I can call it that,
I think on both sides of thepolitical spectrum, do you
(08:07):
attribute to a genuine lack ofgood information on the one hand
versus value-basedinterpretations of that
information?
Like where do you think thesplit is there?
SPEAKER_00 (08:18):
Yeah, I think, I mean, the climate issue has has
evolved in such a way that thepublic interpretations of
science among the most committedon the far right and the far
left become very flat.
Uh climate science isfascinating, it's wonderful,
it's complex, and um, you know,the future is a very fuzzy place
that we, you know, we can't getperfect information about the
(08:41):
future.
Um, one thing that characterizedthe most political among us and
all of us to some degree is thatwe'd really love to have
evidence and and facts supportwhat we already believe or our
our preconceived politics.
That's why I'm a big supporterof assessment processes in
science, um, where you gathertogether, you know, disparate
voices with different views toget a sense of the lay of the
(09:04):
land, to know where things sit.
And, you know, I've gone fromseeing um I'm gonna just tell
you, uh, when I first startedgetting invited to testify
before the U.S.
Congress, it was about 25 yearsago, um, I was always invited by
Democrats.
And I talked about my work onextreme weather and how it's
consistent with the IPCC.
Around 2013, that flipped, and Istarted getting invited by
(09:25):
Republicans.
But the funny thing is, is mytestimony was pretty much the
same and you know, in support ofthe IPCC.
And so I do think it is veryeasy and convenient for people
to cherry pick and you know,selectively pick that science
that supports their case andmake the best case possible.
I I don't think it's it'snecessarily an information
(09:47):
deficit or you know, they don'tknow the right information.
It's that people assemble bitsand pieces of information in
ways that makes their uharguments sound the best.
And you know, if you're in apolitical situation, that's kind
of business as usual.
But if you're you know writingan insurance contract or
building a bridge or you know,doing something that has
(10:08):
real-world impacts and you needto understand what the science
says, that's where I get moreconcerned about scientific
integrity.
Um in politics, you'll never geteveryone to agree on
quote-unquote the facts in theexact same way.
SPEAKER_01 (10:21):
There's also this interesting phenomenon in which
an expert uh in a particulartopic can sometimes be more
likely to be dogmatic about thattopic because of their their own
perception that they knoweverything that there is to know
or most of what there is toknow.
Whereas a generalist or even amember of the public might be
more inclined to look morebroadly and be more skeptical
(10:42):
about their own views.
SPEAKER_00 (10:44):
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean on the climateissue, it's I mean, it's
fascinating because none of usare experts on everything
climate.
SPEAKER_01 (10:51):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (10:51):
It spans everything from economics to you know
ecosystems to oceans toglaciology to you know
technologies of energyconsumption and production.
So um, all of us have to dependon other experts.
And so the the most importantskill, I think, in being an
expert in the climate area isknowing how to draw on other
(11:12):
experts in the area to assemblewhat you know.
Because I I have a certaindegree of expertise, but it's
very narrow and very deep, andthe issue is actually very
broad.
So so that's that's a hugechallenge in the climate issue.
SPEAKER_01 (11:27):
That's why these assessment processes that you
refer to are somultidisciplinary, right?
I'm more familiar with IPES thanwith uh PCC.
Um but I know there's especiallyrecently there's been a real
effort to have a diverse groupof uh including practitioners,
so not only scientists, but youknow, people with the field
experience as well.
SPEAKER_00 (11:46):
Yeah, I think IPES is a great example of a
scientific assessment that earlyon kind of pivoted towards more
regional and local focus becausethat's where ecosystems are
found.
And you know, I think at somepoints, such as talking about
extinction extinction rates andso on, it's tried to go the
route of the IPCC, but I thinkit's most successful, and it's
(12:08):
far less politicized, obviously,than the IPCC in public
discourse that that it's done anice job learning some of those
lessons.
SPEAKER_01 (12:16):
Right.
But it is interesting how Ithink maybe what you're
referring to there is the onemillion species at risk of
extinction figure, uh, whichcame out a few years ago.
I think it was from 2019 fromthe global assessment.
But it's interesting how thatone-liner, you know, to many
people that is IPIS.
You know, it's uh that's howmedia attention works, right?
You grab all the thousands andthousands of pages of research
(12:39):
that sort of all boil down tothat one slightly contentious uh
one-liner.
SPEAKER_00 (12:43):
Yeah, all the all the wonderful science and
nuanced information kind of getslost in that headline.
SPEAKER_01 (12:50):
Yeah, and I guess that's sort of one of our
biggest challenges is how do youdeal with that?
How do you kind of get themessage across without
distorting it in that way?
Right.
I mentioned sort of in the introthis frustration of mine at the
way that people in my field tendto, and I'm have been guilty of
of it myself for most of mycareer, regurgitating existing
(13:10):
information.
So talking points.
And you know, I I guess for mostof my career, my aim was to
figure out how do I best getthis message across.
Right.
There was no critique of themessage itself.
It was just sort of how do weconvince others, how do we
change behavior.
Right.
And I think that, you know,looking around me over the the
decades, it seems that a lot ofcommitted environmentalists,
(13:32):
including the real experts thatI mentioned just now,
reflexively repeat talkingpoints and slogans.
Right.
What's your take on why that'sthe case?
I mean, is it just a is thatjust human behavior, or have you
got anything else to say aboutthat?
SPEAKER_00 (13:46):
Yeah, I mean, I think in areas where where
science encounters policy andpolitics, there is this idea,
and it's you know, it's beenaround a long time among experts
that if only they could convincesomeone else of the facts, then
they would come to share myvalues and my policy
preferences.
And you know, I hear this a lotthat, well, we can't talk about
(14:08):
policy until we have a sharedunderstanding of facts.
And so a lot of verywell-meaning experts in the
sciences, whether you know,across the sciences, think that
the first job is to communicatescience and get people on board
and have a shared understanding.
And it turns out that for betteror worse, um, that's that's not
(14:30):
going to happen.
We are not going to convince thepublic or the publics to have a
shared understanding of prettymuch anything.
Um, and yet the challenge ofpolitics is, and this is, you
know, to paraphrase WalterLippmann, is to get people who
think differently to act alike.
And so the important thing, ifyou're, if you're interested in
(14:51):
policy advocacy or you have acertain set of goals you want to
achieve, is to work backwardsfrom a shared commitment to
action, which involves a lot ofthings.
And for us experts, and I thinkwe've learned this, you know,
unfortunately, very much sincethe pandemic, um, is to build a
(15:11):
sense of trust among the publicin the institutions that we
inhabit.
Um, and you know, I'll go backto scientific assessments.
Scientific assessments areimportant not because they get
everything right or because allexperts agree or that people
have to agree with them.
They're important because theyprovide an opportunity for
building trust with people whohave to rely on them.
(15:34):
And so I'm a big fan of engagingwith stakeholders, talking with
people, but also letting themknow that um the experts, you
know, if we do our jobs, we'regonna call things like we see
them.
And, you know, they can believeit or not believe it.
But uh when it comes to action,you know, we have to start
focusing on a core set of youknow alternative forks in the
(15:55):
road that we could go down.
And there's a lot of room forpeople to agree on action
without agreeing on facts.
SPEAKER_01 (16:02):
You're talking about policy being more of a, it would
needing to be more of a goalfocused rather than a process
focused, right?
Is that is that sort of acorrect interpretation?
SPEAKER_00 (16:10):
Yeah, I mean, I think both are important because
the the processes you put inplace to achieve your goals, you
know, for example, you know, tohave a good assessment, you need
processes that elicit views frompeople who disagree.
If the ticket to entry to IPESor IPCC is you already have to
believe X, Y, and Z, then it'snot really doing its job as an
(16:31):
assessment.
It's just filtering out viewsthat may be uncomfortable or
challenging or simply wrong.
So I do think there, you know,process is important.
But in order for politicalaction to happen, people have to
have some agreement on sharedgoals.
And so when we talk aboutclimate change, um reducing
emissions is not a goal.
(16:52):
Reducing emissions is a means.
It's a means of some other goal.
SPEAKER_01 (16:56):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (16:56):
And for some people, if they don't believe, you know,
in the core findings of climatescience, which I think are very
strong, um, there are stillpaths for those people to get on
board with a set of policiesfocused on reducing emissions.
Maybe they like you know moreefficient vehicles.
Uh, maybe their communitybenefits by having a nuclear
power plant built there or oryou know, so so the shared goal
(17:21):
that most people have, and youknow, I talk about this a lot,
um, is economic in nature.
People would prefer to be betteroff than worse off.
And you know, if you look atopinion polls and how people
actually behave, that spans awide range of politics.
I mean, there are there's a fewdegrowthers out there, but you
know, when degrowthers startwinning elections based on a
(17:42):
campaign of making people lesswell off, um, I'll I'll think
harder about that.
But for the, I mean, in theUnited States, right now,
there's a huge debate going onabout affordability.
And that's across the politicalspectrum because of inflation,
high costs.
And, you know, if if I'minterested in advancing
decarbonization, um, I wouldfigure out how to craft a set of
(18:05):
policies that addressaffordability and have the side
benefit of reducing emissionsrather than trying to convince
people of the science of climatechange and why that means they
must reduce emissions withoutever talking about economics and
affordability.
SPEAKER_01 (18:18):
Right.
And I would say even if thatdoesn't achieve as much emission
reduction as uh, you know, asother policies might, because
it's that it's that importantfor you know the sustainability
of the policy.
SPEAKER_00 (18:28):
Yeah.
I mean, well, the theoreticalideal is always the enemy of
the, you know, the practicalgood enough.
And so uh, you know, it nothingmatters if you can't get it
implemented in practice.
SPEAKER_01 (18:39):
But that issue of trust that you mentioned as
well, you know, trust andcredibility, I guess, sort of
goes go so closely together.
I wasn't planning to ask this,but and it's a very general
question.
But do you think that COVID andthe way, especially in the US
but also many other countries,the way that the government
responded, not just sort ofpublic health related, but also
COVID origins-related uhresponses, do you think that
(19:00):
that has sort of really setscience back?
I mean, uh uh uh how big of apart do you think that's played?
And then maybe just along withthat, how big a part do you
think that some of the extremerhetoric around climate and
environment has also gone toaffect public trust in science?
SPEAKER_00 (19:17):
Yeah, I was fortunate.
I I was able to lead a smallproject uh funded by the U.S.
National Science Foundation,doing a comparative assessment
of science advice across about10 different countries
worldwide.
Um the project started soonafter the pandemic started, so
spring of 2020, and most of ourevaluations were the first year
(19:40):
or the first and second year ofthe pandemic.
And the United States standsout.
The United States did not have ahigh level science advisory
mechanism at all for the COVIDpandemic.
Um, interestingly, um the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences andthe White House Office of
Science and Technology Policy,they they started.
(20:00):
That sort of an effort, but itwas derailed and and didn't do
much.
But if there are questions likewhat are the trade-offs involved
with closing schools or howeffective are masks or the sit
six foot two-meter distancing,it would be nice, not because
they're right, but to have abaseline of experts saying
(20:20):
here's what we know, here's whatwe don't know.
It turns out in the fullness oftime, we learned that a lot of
decisions were made without anyscientific basis.
And that's a a recipe for reallycompromising public trust across
the board.
The COVID origins issue, um, youknow, it's it is remarkable to
(20:41):
me that the the world hasn'tbeen able to get its act
together to do, you know, thethe example I use in the United
States after 9-11, there was a9-11 commission inquiry.
You know, what do we know?
What happened?
It was bipartisan.
Um, and you know, the the factthat the world can't get
together to say, all right,let's do a true independent
(21:01):
investigation of origins um isshocking given the magnitude of
of the event.
If you take a look at opinionpolls, um there are some places,
and you know, I think Japanmight be one of them, where
public trust didn't take inpublic health didn't take as big
a hit.
Um we did have a Japanese casestudy, and uh, you know, one of
(21:22):
the arguments there was that thethe real loss of trust after
Fukushima provided some lessonsto both policymakers and
scientists that were appreciatedduring the pandemic in ways that
maybe were not appreciatedelsewhere.
SPEAKER_01 (21:36):
By Fukushima, you're talking about the sort of social
response, right?
The sort of moving moving peoplearound and that kind of thing
rather than the the technicalside of things.
SPEAKER_00 (21:44):
Right.
Yeah, which in which expertiseyou know lost a lot of
credibility.
SPEAKER_01 (21:50):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (21:50):
Um the the the UK is a great example of of what can
go wrong because you had the theSAGE, so it was the science uh
advisory group for emergency,it's a great acronym.
Um, but then a group ofscientists created uh something
that they called the independentSAGE.
And so you had dueling advisorybodies, and even members of
parliament were confused as towhich one was the government
(22:12):
body and which one was not.
So, you know, there's a lot oflessons to learn from that.
Um, and you know, the mostimportant might be that science
and public health come with alot of willingness in the public
to give trust.
Um, but at the same time, it'seasily lost.
Right.
And so taking care of theinstitutions of expertise has to
be a uh very high priority.
SPEAKER_01 (22:34):
Right.
Just um a couple of years intoCOVID, I was noticing the the
headlines um which wereessentially kind of blaming the
pandemic on deforestation, sovery, very shortly put.
Yes.
Um and so with a few co-authors,we started investigating this.
And we also looked into thepeer-reviewed literature, and
basically what we found was thatin the um well, first of all,
(22:57):
the the primary literature doesnot support that assertion.
So the headlines are all wrong,or they're they're all they're
just highlighting one set thing.
But the most shocking thing wasthat commentary within the
peer-reviewed literature wassaying almost almost as biased
as the media was in thatdirection.
Um and we got this published inbioscience, but it's only had a
handful of citations, so thereseems to be a lack of uh
(23:19):
willingness to kind of engagewith this.
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (23:22):
I mean, that's a perfect example of um you know a
public narrative that getsestablished and then rigorous
research is done that doesn'tnecessarily support that
narrative, but then all of asudden the scientists who are
doing that research areperceived or targeted as you
know undercutting you knowsomething that's virtuous and
(23:43):
good.
Um and and this is you know,when I say scientific integrity
has to be just as important asbiodiversity or climate change
or public health, um, you meanwe have to be able to do both at
the same time.
And I I have seen a lot ofexamples of you know what you've
just described uh in the climatespace as well.
SPEAKER_01 (24:02):
Actually, that kind of leads into, I'll skip one
question and get back to itbecause it leads into uh to into
another one, which is this whatyou could call the heterox
dilemma, I guess.
I think that you know, one ofthe biggest anxieties that
people have when when taking aheterox or nuance approach, like
the one that we are taking, or Isee us as taking, is that um uh
(24:23):
you know alarmist messaging,even when it overshoots, is at
least pointing in the rightdirection.
The idea is that criticizing theerrors in alarmist rhetoric is
it's just arming the denialistside of things and you know,
let's polluters pollute uh moreand and all the rest of it.
So how do you respond to thatconcern?
And maybe I can just sort ofremind you of something that you
(24:44):
mentioned in another podcastwhere you said that a I think a
supervisor or a mentor of yourshad said that his analogy was,
you know, when you want to turna battleship, you don't kick it,
you lean on it.
SPEAKER_00 (24:54):
Right.
Yeah, I mean, so you know, thattheory of change that you can't
be too alarmist on a particularissue because it's directionally
correct.
I understand it, I hear it alot, and I think empirically
it's fundamentally wrong.
It's not an effective theory ofchange.
The example that I've used for along time, um, and this is a
(25:16):
chapter in my book, The HonestBroker, was about the decision
to go to war in Iraq.
And, you know, Tony Blair andyou know, Condoleezza Rice and
the Bush administration um wouldsay that, you know, we think
there's weapons of massdestruction.
Condoleezza Rice famously said,you know, the evidence for that
might be a nuclear blast in anAmerican city.
Um and if you wanted to invadeIraq, then directionally correct
(25:41):
was to be as alarmist aspossible.
Um but what we saw would happenwas number one, when the real
evidence came out that you knowthe intelligence had been
corrupted and politiciansweren't playing it straight, um,
the intelligence community losta lot of trust and support.
Um also, you know, people candebate this, but the actual
(26:03):
invasion of Iraq and follow-ondidn't go so well.
And so the the policy justifiedby the alarmist rhetoric hadn't
been thoroughly thought through,in part because you know, we had
to act because it was everythingwas so important.
So if we if we translate that toenvironmental issues, an issue
like you know, conservingbiodiversity or decarbonizing
(26:27):
the economy, these are issuesthat will evolve over decades,
in the best of all sorts, manydecades.
And public support needs tosustain, political support needs
to sustain over that time, overdifferent governments
conservatives, liberals,republicans, democrats, you
know, labor, whoever.
(26:49):
Um, and so the scientificcommunity has to ensure that
that trust is is maintained.
One way to have that trust is tocall things straight.
And I actually think callingthings straight disempowers
denialists and you knowopponents of mainstream science
(27:09):
much more than circling thewagons and saying we're
infallible and anyone whochallenges a core finding and an
assessment is kicked out of theclub.
And so I, you know, I have achance to talk to people across
the political spectrum in theUS, and um there's a lot of
trust of science, but there'sit's also easily lost when
scientists are perceived asbeing um overtly political or
(27:33):
overtly committed to a partyline.
So I I think in all cases,whether you're in the
intelligence, whether you're inthe media, whether you're in
science, calling things straightmay not always be comfortable,
especially for your politicalallies, but it is the best
strategy for science to sustainas a trusted enterprise because
we need science.
(27:53):
It's important.
SPEAKER_01 (27:54):
Yeah, I guess that you know, an underlying issue
there is, you know, you spoke,and I agree with you, you spoke
about solving theseenvironmental issues as being a
decades-long process.
But I guess this is the keything is that extreme
environmentalists don't believethat.
They they believe that there is12 years left or whatever AOC
said a while ago, or you know,less than that.
(28:16):
So maybe that's the key issue isto just actually get that
message across.
And it's not the only message,but you know, to get this
message across you know, that wedo have a fairly big problem
here, but it's not going todestroy the earth in the next 10
years.
SPEAKER_00 (28:30):
Yeah, I mean, the examples I use, and you know, I
wish climate change wasapproached more like these
issues, but um are agriculturalproductivity and the extension
of human lifespans.
If you go back a hundred yearsand you ask, let's say, public
health experts, how are we goingto double the human lifespan
from you know 39 to 78 yearsover the next century?
(28:52):
The only proper answer would bewe don't know.
Um, we're not sure.
I mean, that's before you hadantibiotics and you know modern
technologies of medicine.
Um, and the way you did it wasincrementally.
Well, we want to we want to bebetter next year than we are
this year.
Same with agriculturalproductivity.
If you asked, you know, if youif you asked uh you know farmers
in the 1930s, how's the worldgonna feed nine billion people
(29:16):
in the 2020s?
Um, the answer is we don't know.
And that's okay, becausedirectionally we knew how to
make improvements in crop yieldsand and so on.
Uh and if you ask how are wegonna decarbonize the global
economy, we don't know how it'sgonna end up, but we know how to
get started.
So I I very much think that theclimate issue has been misframed
(29:37):
with the idea that if you pass alaw or we sign a treaty, um, or
you know, you go to this year'sCOP, um, we can solve this
problem.
And it's it's it's not like thatuh from the start.
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (29:50):
I guess this is also, you know, I mentioned
transformative change earlier,and I think this is sort of what
fuels my interest in that topicand my caution toward that topic
is you know, this idea thatpeople behave differently when
they think that there's anurgency to the situation.
So transformative change is iscalling for rapid and radical
change and not the incrementalchange that you're talking
(30:12):
about.
SPEAKER_00 (30:14):
Yeah.
You know, I've I've watched asthe notion of transformative
change has emerged in this spaceand you know taken over by
international assessments andthe international community.
I think it's a bad move by thecommunity because most people
don't want transformativechange.
They don't they don't wanteverything to change.
(30:35):
Um, and the people who do wanttransformative change are people
who don't have access toelectricity um or don't have a
job.
SPEAKER_01 (30:42):
Um the same transformative change that the
others are talking about.
SPEAKER_00 (30:46):
Right, right.
Generally, it's talking abouthow do we make the rich world
greener and you know moreenvironmentally sustainable or
some vision along those lines.
And I can tell you, I I bet yougo into a community in in Tokyo
or New York or Boulder,Colorado, and you say, hey,
we're gonna change everything.
(31:07):
I think it's it's not a winningpolitical message.
Um if you say, well, you livehow you want to live, but we're
gonna help you um, you know,we're gonna implement some
policies that that makes yourlives better in the way that you
want it to be better, you know,that's a different sort of
message.
SPEAKER_01 (31:21):
But generally the transformative change message is
a very, I mean, it there'snothing new about it in a sense.
It's very utopian, right?
And that goes back a very longtime.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Roger, I also want to talk toyou about echo chambers.
Um, this is something which I'mI have been fascinated about for
a long time.
And I actually looked into it awhile ago.
I wanted to do a podcast episodeentirely dedicated to echo
(31:43):
chambers and sort of how theyare shaping the environmental
debate and and you know extremerhetoric.
And and the the research that Icame up with sort of led me to
believe that there's kind ofnothing to see here.
Well, that that's what theresearchers were saying, but I I
don't believe that.
So I'm just curious to know whatyou think.
How big a role do echo chambers,particularly in social media but
(32:04):
also legacy media, how big arole do they play in amplifying
and uh I guess entrenchingextreme environmental rhetoric?
SPEAKER_00 (32:12):
Yeah, there's there's a real fascinating study
done by um cognitivepsychologists.
I think one of them was at theUniversity of Colorado, but it's
it's titled What Happened onDeliberation Day?
And I used it in my classes fora long time.
But what they did is theyassembled basically a group of
Democrats to talk about issues,and then they measured what they
(32:35):
believed about the issues beforethey deliberated together, and
they measured what they believedafter.
And they did this with a groupof Democrats, a group of
Republicans, and then a mixedgroup of Democrats and
Republicans.
And what they found is that thelike-minded groups, when they
deliberated together, emergedfrom the discussion holding the
(32:58):
same beliefs they had when theywent in, but much stronger.
And the groups that had adiversity of political views,
um, they emerged being more opento other views and less certain
about their own.
So I do think there's, andthere's a lot of studies along
these lines, but I do thinkthere's good empirical evidence
(33:18):
that diversity of engagementleads to more robust knowledge,
better understanding of yourfellow citizens, and you know,
more ability to um livetogether.
Um, so I think that social mediahas been particularly
pernicious, uh, particularly forthe scientific community.
Uh and you know, for the climatecommunity, I've seen this you
(33:40):
know now for several decades.
A big a big mistake the climatecommunity has made is this idea
that they need to throw out ofthe camp anyone who has a slight
disagreement.
And so the whole idea of climatedeniers, which is a slur, is is
a signal that this person'sviews are not acceptable in our
(34:00):
discourse.
And you know, I've seen the termclimate denier go from people
who think the earth is flat totoday people who support nuclear
energy, for example.
Um, and so the climate communityhas actually built a smaller and
smaller tent.
Um, and partly it's you know,it's to preserve the echo
chamber nature of thediscussion.
(34:22):
And it also reflects amisunderstanding of how politics
actually works.
Politics works because peoplewho you may violently disagree
with come together and makedecisions.
Uh I was lucky I got to work inthe U.S.
Congress uh early in my career.
And, you know, in a bigsprawling country, you know,
today of 330 million, peoplehave all sorts of views and
(34:44):
beliefs.
And if you're gonna get peopleto come together and make
decisions, then you know, youthrow people out of the tent at
your own peril because you'regonna become a more of a niche
issue.
Um, there's also, I mean,there's another phrase that I
think is important here.
It's not just echo chambers, butbut epistemic bubbles is another
term that I like, where peoplefrom a shared, let's say,
(35:06):
intellectual community or have ashared intellectual
understanding of issues, youknow, only talk to each other.
And they don't recognize thatthere's a lot of different ways
to get at the truth.
And, you know, we have to be, Iguess, ecumenical in our
epistemology and understandthat, you know, it's it's I
guess the analogy is like thethe blind men and the elephant.
(35:27):
Um, you know, we're all tryingto get a sense of the real
world, and none of us get it,but together we're a lot
stronger than you know, justwith the people who think like
we do.
SPEAKER_01 (35:36):
Yeah.
At the risk of treading onpolitically sensitive ground, I
think, you know, a lot of whatyou said now is is about
ideological diversity, right?
And my impression is that youknow, a lot of the conversation,
I guess, in in various politicalspheres is kind of a replacement
of ideological diversity withother kinds of identity-related
(35:59):
diversity.
It's sort of like a placeholderfor something which is much more
important, I guess.
And especially in discussionslike this, as you that that
lovely example you gave at thebeginning is such a good
illustration of that.
It doesn't matter what you know,what people's sort of racial or
gender-related or whatever itis, background is, what matters
is ideas.
And um that's that's kind ofwhat's what's missed, I think.
SPEAKER_00 (36:21):
No, you know, I think, I mean, particularly in
in big democracies that have adiversity of folks, you you want
to have a wide engagement ofpeople from different
backgrounds.
And, you know, one of thechallenges that academia and
science faces in the US, publichealth historically has had this
problem, is that when peoplefrom black communities or
(36:44):
Hispanic communities look at theyou know, the expert bodies that
are advising them, um, theydon't see themselves or they see
themselves very little.
And that's we have to understandthat's an important component of
trust.
I mean, and so the the wholeproblem with uh it's not the
whole problem, but a big problemwith with DEI in the US was the
(37:05):
impression that people were wereadvancing, not based on merit.
And this country is big enough,there's so many universities,
there's such there there is anincredible diversity of people
who participate that that youknow, if you have your COVID
advisory committee and it's justwhite men over 60, then you're
doing that by choice.
(37:26):
You you don't have to do that.
So I do think all types ofdiversity matter, but you you
you don't you don't have tocompromise on merit to have you
know great diversity on yourexpert advisory bodies, for
example.
SPEAKER_01 (37:38):
Yeah, no point well taken.
Um so this is to to go back tosomething that I mentioned at
the beginning of the discussion,this kind of knowledge pipeline.
I'm curious to hear your opinionon this.
So the way I see it, there aremultiple points where accurate
scientific understanding can getdistorted, you know, on its way
to the public and topolicymakers.
(38:00):
So could you walk through thischain?
And I can sort of tell you whatI think the chain looks like,
and tell us where you think thebiggest distortions typically
occur.
So the way I see it is it startswith, I guess, the education and
training of scientists atuniversities and maybe even
earlier than that.
And then the second step wouldbe um their production of
peer-reviewed papers, so youknow, getting their ideas into
(38:22):
the public realm, but thespecialized public realm.
And then the synthesis of thesepapers, which doesn't this
doesn't always happen, but thesynthesis of these papers into
assessment reports like theIPCC's and IPS's reports, and
then the drafting, especiallythe government-approved uh
summary of policymakers.
So you get this full thousand,two thousand-page reports, which
nobody ever reads, and then youget the SPM, which uh five
(38:44):
people read, right?
And then finally, um the themedia interpretation and
coverage of these reports, whichis you know, that's where it
kind of explodes onto the scene.
But at each of these points,there's potential for
distortion.
Um so I'm curious to know, andmaybe this is sort of deviating
a little bit from what we werejust talking about, but I think
it relates a lot to some of theearlier discussion.
(39:06):
Uh, what's your view on kind ofwhere things can go wrong here
and and maybe any sort ofrecommendations you might have?
SPEAKER_00 (39:14):
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question.
And I guess I'll I'll I'll startby taking issue with the notion
of a pipeline, um, which for meis far too linear in its
conception.
I I I tend to think think, andit depends also, is you know,
are we talking about publicunderstanding of expert
knowledge?
Are we talking about policymakerunderstanding, or are we talking
about how expert knowledge isrepresented in actual decision
(39:39):
documents and so on?
So those details matter, but butI would think of it more like
cooking a stew.
And you know, some people, youknow, you you're cutting up your
potatoes and you know,somebody's cutting the carrots,
and you get the broth and youput the seasoning in.
And and to cook a good stew, um,once once you serve the stew,
it's very hard to say, well, youknow, this element came.
(40:00):
From the potato or and sounderstandings of expert
knowledge are shaped in a lot ofimportant ways.
And you know, the media is a bigpart, obviously, and the the
fracturing of the media over youknow recent decades is a big
part of the story.
I mean, I have to tell you, oneof my daily moments of panic is,
(40:21):
you know, I'll read, let's say,the New York Times, which I read
every day, and I'll readsomething in the climate space
where I'm an expert, and I'llsay, oh my gosh, that is
completely wrong.
So I wrote a piece earlier thisweek about insurance and climate
change.
Um, New York Times has been verywrong on that issue for a while.
Um, but then I read somethingabout Venezuela or, you know,
(40:43):
foreign policy or public healthwhere I'm not an expert.
And I think, so is it possible,likely, that the reporting here
is just as bad as you know whatI just read in my area?
And and I don't have good advicefor people.
You know, how do you how do youknow what's what is really
difficult because things breakdown?
I I as you know, have I saidmany times, I am a big supporter
(41:06):
of institutionalizing expertise.
And that could be a newspaper,um, could be an assessment
process, um, it could be aNational Academy of Sciences of
the sort, uh, could be a formalgovernment advisory body.
But if we can set up formalmechanisms for trying to allow
expert, you know, relevantexperts, and that's a diversity
(41:27):
of experts, to call things likethey see them, that to me offers
a much more effective, moreefficient route to at least
getting some baseline knowledgethan reading the Financial
Times, the New York Times,whatever, you know, all the
newspapers and try totriangulate knowledge, or
picking your favorite expertthat's out there or politician
(41:48):
and saying, well, you know, ifif RFK Jr.
in the United States doesn'tlike vaccines, then well, it
must be true.
That's not a good way to goabout getting knowledge.
So um, and things can break downat every step of the way.
You know, I write a lot aboutfailures of peer review, um,
about how bad data gets intoactual science, about how
(42:09):
assessment processes break down.
The key to that is not paperingit over or pretending like it
doesn't exist.
The key to that is uh havinginstitutions with the commitment
to get things right.
And so um we just saw, you know,just in the in the last week or
so, Nature retracted a climateeconomics paper.
(42:31):
Really impactful.
Yeah, but you know, the thescandal isn't that the paper was
retracted or it was flawed.
That happens a lot in science.
The scandal is it took 18months.
And in the meantime, you know,governments and uh NGOs have
have relied heavily on thatpaper.
So institutions need acommitment to continuous
improvement, I think, is is thekey to avoid those breakdowns.
SPEAKER_01 (42:54):
Right.
And there does seem to be, youknow, I'm thinking particularly
of certain journals, there doesseem to have been a
politicization of journals whichI haven't noticed in the past,
which seems to have happenedrecently.
And maybe COVID has also kind ofjust pushed things in that
direction.
I'm not sure if we can blame iton that as well.
But um that's uh that's veryworrying, you know, when when
(43:14):
sort of major, major journalswere you know, and and when I
mention, just for the for thelisteners who aren't aware of I
didn't mention that you know,that step from peer-reviewed
journal uh research toassessments, um the the
assessors in the IPIS and IPCCassessments are using only
what's already there.
They're not creating any newscience.
It's uh basically a giantliterature review, although they
(43:36):
prefer they don't like thatwording, but it's essentially
what it is.
Um so when you know when thatscience is is faulty um or or
skewed one way or another, thenthen we've got a pretty serious
problem.
Right.
And that this always because ofall these leakages, I'm
sometimes kind of amazed that wecan get anything done.
You know, it's kind of it seemslike um and yeah, we do.
So perhaps it's not quite as badas we think it is, you know.
SPEAKER_00 (43:57):
Well, yeah, my view very much, and I you know, I
always have to remind myself totell people this, that that the
connections of science andpolicy across the board
generally work fantastic aroundthe world.
Um and you know look at theaviation and you know, air
airline safety, how it'simproved.
Science works, and um, you know,that's not a particularly
(44:18):
politicized issue.
There are these these issues andyou know, vaccination in the
United States, climate changeworldwide, energy policy,
transgender athletes, wherewhere issues of science do
become highly politicized.
And those are the ones I thinkthat we have to take care of um
because they are exceptional.
They they are not like howthings normally work across the
(44:38):
board, where you know, for mostpeople it's boring.
You know, I just want the lightsto come on, I want the subway to
pick me up on time.
And you know, science does greatin most settings.
It's it's the ones where it's itbreaks down that you know I
think we need to focus on.
SPEAKER_01 (44:59):
Join me again next time when I speak to Salim Ali
about the relative costs ofrenewable energy and other forms
of energy, especially fossilfuel energy, and their impacts
on the environment.
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