Scientists must earn and maintain public’s trust
We must admit that value of facts sometimes is oversold
By proposing draconian cuts to medical research, the Trump administration threatens a large — and growing — pillar of the Houston-area regional economy. Worse, those cuts are part of a larger assault on science. Today, federal scientists are threatened with limits on what they can research, publish and even what they can post on Twitter. And then there is the movement that elected President Trump, which has been widely characterized as a revolt against “elites” — a group to which scientists arguably belong.
In response, Houston’s scientific community is planning a March for Science on April 22 — Earth Day — in concert with marches around the country. Organizers of the march say it is time for people who support scientific research and evidence-based policies to take a public stand and be counted.
Fellow scientists, we are right to feel threatened. At the same time, if we are honest with ourselves, we must accept some responsibility for this state of affairs. We have not created “alternative facts,” but we have taken some steps down this slippery slope, allowing subjective interpretations to masquerade as objective facts. If even scientists are willing to step onto this slope, is it surprising that some members of our society end up at the bottom?
We must admit that we sometimes oversell the value of facts. Irrefutable facts are rare; most science is awash in uncertainty. And, even where empirical evidence is strong, facts do not translate into
neat policy prescriptions. That is because there isn’t a single significant challenge facing our society that can be decided on facts alone. Instead, we are always selecting among competing values. When we assert the science alone can tell us what to do, we take a step down that slippery slope.
Take climate change, for example. Science tells us that the climate is changing and that human activity is to blame. Beyond these facts, we quickly enter the realm of interpretation — about what the impacts will be, and about the actions we must take. We simply cannot take such projections and analyses as “facts.” There is uncertainty surrounding our projections; not everything that will influence global economies and local livelihoods has been accounted for in our models.
Furthermore, policy choices on climate require weighing various public goods — environmental protection, economic growth, public health, jobs in various sectors — that are sometimes in conflict. There is no single, inarguable “best pathway” into the future. And yet scientists often have asserted that we know exactly what must be done to address climate change.
As scientists, we must be scrupulously honest about the limitations of empirical evidence. This requires a certain amount of humility, an admission of what we do not know. We must be careful to delineate where facts end and values begin. And we must recognize that value judgments invariably involve tradeoffs, with real-life winners and losers.
In the heat of a War on Science, admitting the limits of empirical evidence may seem like unilateral disarmament. Our opponents do not admit uncertainty, and they rarely play fair. But now — especially now — it is critical to earn and maintain the public’s trust. So yes, we scientists should take to the streets on April 22. But in the long run, honesty and transparency is the best way to preserve the integrity of science — and its future.