If you are in science media and I mention names like Bill McKibben or Naomi Oreskes, how you react to hearing those names tells me how you probably vote.
Some things are that clear. And because they are so clear, it is instructive to discuss how choosing an umbrella on one issue can actually undermine acceptance among the public by others. Climate change is the only science that Oreskes and McKibben seem to accept; most other fields are dismissed as corporate conspiracies. Chemicals are bad, GMOs are bad, it's all bad. Only the doomsday prophecy that the engine of business needs to stop right now is a consensus they accept.
Even if you are the Godfather of Global Warming, Dr. James Hansen, you will be lumped in as a global warming denier if you deviate from their anti-science mentality about nuclear power or clean coal, both of which Hansen has endorsed as being solutions to the carbon dioxide problem. They have done just that, and even more strangely than calling James Hansen a global warming denier have endorsed computer scientist Mark Jacobson, whose claims in a paper were so soundly debunked by actual experts that he is a laughingstock who sued because NOAA ruined his consulting gigs by showing he doesn't know what he is talking about.
But he said what activists like Oreskes and McKibben wanted to hear, and they exist in a partisan bubble where anyone who asks awkward questions about methodology is reviled as a corporate shill. (1)
And unfortunately for the public they are the face of scientific discussion for a lot of media. They shouldn't be, because they use consensus as a weapon against their perceived enemies, and that smacks of zealotry.
I can't find a single person with even layman knowledge of the climate issue who doesn't accept that we are warmer now than we were in 1850. And you know what? That is common ground. But instead of establishing first principles to build upon, they are told by global warming mullahs that we must also accept any claim or estimate that makes its way into a paper or we are apostates who must be cast out.
I am the opposite of Oreskes and McKibben (2), I like when people tell me I am wrong. I joke on social media that I forget (3) that even my tweets are peer-reviewed. If someone tells me I am wrong in a meaningful way it means I didn't make my argument well enough, so I have to hone it, or I need to change my mind.
But if we just shout "denier" at everyone, people are not going to ask questions. And if no one is asking questions, no one is going to be willing to care enough to take a stand.
That kind of "political bullying", as Dr. Matt Nisbet phrased it, by zealots creates the icy chill that scientists should be worried about. Today, if you respond to even the most outrageous claims about your field, a New York University Journalism department employee is going to start harassing you with Freedom of Information Act requests, which for many academics is the scholarly equivalent of being called child abusers; by accusation you are deemed guilty. Then when the industry trade group behind the University of California Industry Docs site gets your emails, they will take snippets out of context and publish them to try to ruin your career.
If you are a tenured academic, okay, you will be fine, but if you are an early stage researcher, or a woman, or a minority, and these people turn their culture war on you, your career is over before it starts. Potential employers are going to look at a Google or social media search and they will think 'where there is smoke there must be fire' and never look farther to see that the smoke was intentionally created to keep scientists from standing up for reason.
There is a wider problem that was once predicted and has since come to pass. In 2007, on our Scienceblogs site, Nisbet detailed reactions to a Science column he and journalist Chris Mooney wrote on framing. One concern was from Eric Berger at the Houston Chronicle:
The bottom line is that the public view of scientists -- which is pretty good right now -- will be compromised if scientists start looking and presenting evidence that only supports their preconceived notions, or are widely perceived as doing such. At that point science starts looking like something less than science. Perhaps this is the only way to go in an increasingly fractured media world, but it is not somewhere I would tread lightly.
Look where we are now. While arguably scientists have always framed their work - it's not easy to explain to people why work on fruit flies is important if you don't frame it in ways that make sense - it's become a part of the methodology. Epidemiology and mouse claims get arguably more coverage than anything in science, and that's all due to framing: it's a cause of cancer, or it's a cure for cancer.
In 2011's Science Left Behind I wrote that improper framing, which was already being done, meant the Sistine Chapel could end up being a naked guy pointing his finger rather than the whole story of the Bible.
(1) See also: environmental trial lawyers, discredited former journalists now collaborating with organic trade groups, the New York University journalism department, and many more.
(2) I don't need to single them out, Fred Vom Saal, Linda Birnbaum, Andrew Kolodny, there are people in lots of fields who got attention for being evangelists for one thing, even if they are wrong, and like the focus being on them so they begin to believe their own hype.
(3) I don't read all of them. Organic industry trade groups and their allies in the Kremlin have fake autobot accounts that smear me all of the time and some wacko who wrote on Scienceblogs 10 years ago calls me an anti-Semite for no reason I can figure out. So those people are ignored. But real people with constructive comments, yeah, I will read and reply.
