On science and activism: can we be truly objective as scientists?
I reflect on a recent paper that has gone viral on twitter about distinguishing science from activism.
As scientists, it’s fundamentally important that we retain credibility. This requires transparency in the way in which we do research and to perform our science in an objective manner. This objectivity and integrity really is central to our role. If we cannot be objective in our work, we’re not doing our job properly and the public lose faith in what we do. This is not good for anyone.
Activism, by definition, is a social movement for bringing about social or political change.
At first, these two endeavours—science and activism—seem at odds with one another. However, I don’t believe it is necessarily that clear cut for reasons I will touch on below.
But before I get into sharing my perspective on this, let’s get to the reason I’m writing this post: a recent paper published in npj Climate Action that blew up on twitter with a pretty divided set of perspectives.
The paper in question (it’s free to access here), written by Ulf Büntgen, raises concerns with climate scientists becoming climate activists.
Büntgen is “concerned by climate scientists becoming climate activists, because scholars should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies.” He is also concerned about activists who pretend to be scientists. (To me, the latter of these is more of a legitimate concern, but I’m more interested in his first concern — that we should not have a priori interests in our studies.)
He concludes by stating:
“In conclusion, and as a way forward, I recommend that a neutral science should remain unbiased and avoid any form of selection, overattribution and reductionism that would reflect a type of activism.”
It’s been interesting to see the twitter response to this paper. The Altmetric score is in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric. Altmetrics are basically another way of tracking the impacts of research papers beyond citations from within the research community. So the score suggests the attention from outside the academic literature has been very high. Most of this has been via twitter with more than two thousand tweets over a short space of time. In short, there is both outrage and glowing support.
There is a lot I could say on this short perspective, but I’ll stick to a few brief thoughts. And I’m keen to hear your thoughts on this topic.
To be fair, some of his concerns are valid, we as scientists should be avoiding the sorts of issues he is raising (e.g. over-attribution). However, from my perspective, I also think he confuses activism with scientific misconduct or bad practice.
“While I have no problem with scholars taking public positions on climate issues, I see potential conflicts when scholars use information selectively or over-attribute problems to anthropogenic warming, and thus politicise climate and environmental change. Without self-critique and a diversity of viewpoints, scientists will ultimately harm the credibility of their research and possibly cause a wider public, political and economic backlash.”
My main point though is that he is being unrealistic in assuming we can be truly disconnected from the outcomes of our research. Yes, we should be objective, particularly in cases where we provide evidence for or against something in a legal setting. But I’d argue that it is impossible to be truly 100% disconnected from the outcomes of our research much of the time. We don’t become researchers because we’re dispassionate robots. We do it because we’re inherently interested in the topics we’re researching.
And we must be free as scientists to lean on scientific evidence, even with high rates of uncertainty, to express concerns about the potential consequences of things like climate change or the state of biodiversity. We are typically in positions to use our expertise to communicate to the public, helping to avoid potentially problematic misinterpretations of science. But it certainly helps if we can communicate well at the same time.
Either way, we must maintain our credibility as scientists, that’s for certain. But that doesn’t mean shutting down all communication and continuing to simply publish peer-reviewed science, 95% of which never reaches the public.
In an ideal world, the scientists provide the evidence, the policymakers act on the evidence and put it into practice. But that hasn’t gotten us very far in the climate or biodiversity loss or pollution (pick your topic) debate so far.
The fact of the matter is there really is no such thing as a truly neutral scientist. We’re all in this game because we love what we do. We work with species we’re passionate about protecting, in landscapes we love, or on math we can’t stop thinking about. And our choice in topics is the result of a range of political, social and environmental factors.
Michael Mann shared some particularly eloquent and useful snippets on twitter. The first was from "If You See Something, Say Something" (an op-ed he published in the New York Times, 2014):
"If scientists choose not to engage in the public debate, we leave a vacuum that will be filled by those whose agenda is one of short-term self-interest. There is a great cost to society if scientists fail to participate in the larger conversation — if we do not do all we can to ensure that the policy debate is informed by an honest assessment of the risks. In fact, it would be an abrogation of our responsibility to society if we remained quiet in the face of such a grave threat.
The second from his a recent speech he gave ("The Fragility of Truth in the Existential Crisis"):
"Our mission as scientists, academics, thought leaders—indeed, as humanists—has literally never been more important than it is right now. We must step up and do battle in what is a genuinely Tolkienesque assault on science, reason, and fact-based discourse. Truth has never been more fragile. Nor has our planet. It is up to all of us to defend both before it is truly too late."
So, where does this leave us?
When it comes down to it, we consistently fail to make progress on any of the major goals towards climate change and biodiversity loss. Personally, I’m committed to doing objective, robust science at this interface, but I am also committed to communicating the science more broadly now. I’m not communicating this because I’m completely disconnected from the outcome, I made the jump to writing a newsletter and communicating more broadly because I’m deeply deeply concerned about the state of the world. I don’t think i’ve lost my credibility as a scientist by saying that but perhaps to Büntgen, I have.
Nonetheless, although I may not agree with everything Büntgen says, I am glad he has said it. It’s a good thing that perspectives like this are published. In fact, it’s important that there continues to be lively academic debate on social and political issues, including perspectives on how science and activism can or cannot work together. When we start to silence critics from either side, science itself loses credibility. The world is becoming more divided by the minute and part of that division is driven by the inability of people to hear different perspectives. As I wrote a few weeks back, it’s important we are able to share and hear diverse perspectives on important topics like climate science.
So, are science and activism really at odds? To me, so long as science is performed in a robust manner, then there’s no problem. Adhering to good scientific practice means we keep our scientific credibility when doing things like publicly communicating science or giving policy advice.
Scientists are humans after all. We will always be interested in what we do, and should enjoy the freedoms of being able to express our views. But at the same time, we must maintain our credibility as researchers. If we do that, then our communication holds weight. If you want anyone communicating about these issues, it should be those armed with the most knowledge.
I’d love to hear your thoughts — tell me what you think in the comments! Feel free to click the ❤️ button to help more people discover it, and share it with your friends.
As a social scientist, I often take issues of activism as the start point of my research. I'm interested in doing work that supports the research needs of activists trying to address wicked problems. The main thing for me is that objectivity itself is a social construct (an idea that we use to explain a set of practices and beliefs), and objectivity as a value is culturally situated (emerges from a particular set of historical circumstances -- in this case the development of scientific method as an arbiter of knowledge production). I value scientific method for the knowledge it has helped us produce -- but I also want to recognise it's limits.
In my book, I look at how scientific knowledge about bodies is irrevocably culturally produced -- and how when scientists don't recognise this, they miss opportunities to do things differently. The main example is infant toileting -- which despite being widespread in many parts of the world, until recently was not supported by scientific research which had found the sphincter muscle did not develop until age 2, therefore infant toileting was 'impossible'. Of course, the population studied was a cultural population that already believed children could not control their sphincter muscle into age 2, so did not carry out any practices that challenged that.
A different example from climate change -- but the point remains: when we recognise how culture and society (including activism and values and ethics) shapes our scientific research, it gets BETTER.
A great article, and for a non academic like myself, I feel it is vitally important for scientists and other academics to communicate their field more broadly so that information does reach the general public. We all need to have lively debate and listen to different perspectives and it is absolutely vital that the data behind those perspectives is robust. Without the correct data behind a public communication it is so easy for people to travel down that rabbit hole. Keep these articles flowing!