By Karen Kovaka, Gavel Writer -

Several weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an article called “Climate Change and Open Science,” which advocated greater transparency on the part of scientific researchers as a means of securing public trust in the wake of climategate. The author, L Gordon Crovitz, said, “Science is having its Walter Cronkite moment,” meaning that statements of scientific consensus possess the same kind of authority that enabled Cronkite to end CBS Evening News with the pronouncement “And that’s the way it is.”

The ‘Climategate scandal’ refers to the November 2009 release of hacked e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Some of these emails include conversations among climate scientists about using statistical ‘tricks’ to defend themselves against global warming skeptics. As a result, many people are questioning the trustworthiness of climate science’s claims regarding anthropogenic global warming.

It’s not quite so simple. The non-scientific public has a far more ambiguous relation to scientific conclusions than trust, respect, and acceptance, even in the absence of climategate-like incidents. The Climate Research Unit hacking just serves to illustrate this ambiguity by demonstrating how great a polarization exists between scientists and non-scientists, and by showing how seriously in need of attention this polarization is.

There has been a curious sort of schadenfreude (pleasure at the misfortune of others) at what has been perceived as the discrediting of climate science. What does this gleefulness reveal if not a pre-existing suspicion about the methods and conclusions of the scientific community on the part of the non-scientific public? I think there would not be so much delight in a perceived “downfall” if there already wasn’t some bad blood, if a lot of us weren’t already awaiting the opportunity to say that science does not have the right to tell us “that’s the way it is” with such authority and frequency.

While climategate makes clear a certain amount of suspicion and distrust, many still buy into the authority of science. Practically speaking, the simple use of a kitchen appliance, computer, or ATM machine is a demonstration of great faith in scientific research and its applications. We owe a lot to science, so much that it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that for many of us, science sets the rhythm of our lives. We like it that way, most of the time.

The genesis of this ambiguity, this Faustian “two souls within one breast” may be our simultaneous awareness of our dependence on and ignorance of science. Being so dependent on a force that we know so little about makes us uneasy, because all of a sudden we are cast in a relation to science in which we have very little power.

This dependence/ignorance dynamic is, of course, troubling. Speaking on this topic in a 1959 lecture, the British physicist and novelist CP Snow said of “the industrial society of electronics, atomic energy and automation” that it “is the material basis of our lives: or, more exactly, the social plasma of which we are a part. And we know almost nothing about it.” Snow goes on to explain why he sees this ignorance as a matter of concern:

“In our society (that is, advanced western society) we have lost even the pretense of a common culture. Persons educated with the greatest intensity we know can no longer communicate with each other on the plane of their major intellectual concern. This is serious for our creative, intellectual and, above all, our normal life. It is leading us to interpret the past wrongly, to misjudge the present, and to deny our hopes of the future. It is making it difficult or impossible to take good action.”

Applied to the Climate Research Unit, these words ring true. As important as the issue of climate change is, we can’t really afford to misjudge the present or be incapacitated when it comes to taking good action. There are various reasons for our slow response to the concerns raised by climate science, and many of these reasons have more to do with economics than ignorance. However, because of the polarization between the scientific and non-scientific community, it is much easier for economic considerations to outweigh the scientific ones that may, in the long run, be more important.

Given this polarization, what kind of response is needed? The WSJ’s comparison of science to Cronkite on this issue is a very useful one, because by invoking the words “and that’s the way it is,” Crovitz makes clear that this whole issue can be framed as a question of epistemology. When scientists make an assertion, non-scientists naturally ask the question, “But how do you know?” Somehow or other, we have to figure out a way to answer that question that is meaningful and convincing for people who are not scientific experts of any kind. Otherwise, we will continue to see this same level of distrust and suspicion that has the power to “deny our hopes of the future.”