America Needs To Mend Its Relationship With Science

The recent revelation that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change included some iffy science in its global warming reports has been a major blow to climate change belief and efforts to fight it.

On the surface, this seems odd, since the incident doesn't undermine the IPCC's basic premise or affect the findings of the numerous other scientific organizations. But the fervor goes beyond this incident. In fact, the public has been losing faith in science for years.

Last year, the Pew Research Center released a study that revealed growing discontent with U.S. scientists. Only 17 percent of the public said they thought this country's scientists were the best. More distressingly, only 27 percent said they viewed science as the nation's greatest achievement—down 20 percent from just a decade before.

There are several explanations for this. In the study, the scientists lay much of the blame on the media, for oversimplifying findings and failing to distinguish between well-founded and unfounded discoveries.

Politics has also played a key role. Under the Bush administration, science became a deeply partisan issue, routinely pitted against conservatism and religion—never mind that many scientists are conservative and religious, or that their breakthroughs do not affect people along ideological lines. The so-called "Republican War on Science" reached its peak during the stem cell research debate, and has remained a divisive issue.

But the biggest culprits in the trust breach may be the public and scientists themselves. We have not done nearly enough in this country to understand scientific principles, a failure that begins with a subpar education system and continues through willful ignorance. In their book Unscientific America, journalist Chris Mooney and scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum call the problem "scientific illiteracy," an issue that makes it far too easy to misconstrue facts and use them to serve preexisting ideas.

At the same time, incidents like Climategate and the IPCC scandal prove scientists have not always done everything they should to keep the public's trust. Their descent is similar to journalists': Both directly serve the public and demand their trust, but have recently floundered due to very public failings.

It's incredibly disheartening to think that the IPCC episode could further erode the already fragile relationship between the public and scientists. If we want to progress as a society, we need to believe our scientists when they tell us something. Conservatives would be the first to say that our economic future depends on it. And, in this case, our environmental future depends on it, too.