Why Don’t People Trust Climate Scientists?

Don’t be fooled — ignorance of the scientific method and how scientific research is conducted causes misinformation.

m an ecologist and paleontologist who has dedicated much of my research to climate change science. I’ve worked both on modern ecosystems and with the fossil record. This means that I have a good understanding of what caused past climate events and the consequences of such climatic events (spoiler: they were not good and always caused by an external factor).

However, that is a story for another day. Today, I want to address a common issue I encounter when I talk to the non-scientific community: scepticism.

It breaks my heart that, after so much work was put into our research, some responded that they didn’t trust our results. That they don’t trust what we say our data says.

I have been thinking about this issue a lot and have come to the following conclusion: people don’t trust Climate Change science because they ultimately don’t understand the scientific method or how scientific research is conducted.

How does the Scientific method work?

After years in grad school, scientists choose a research topic that they are interested in and do extensive research on the topic. Most scientists do this while working towards earning their PhD.

Together with their advisors and/or peers, we collect data on a particular topic. For example, let’s say that you are interested in understanding how climate has changed over time. What do you do? Scientists don’t just start writing our thoughts. The first thing we do is read, and read, and read some more. And when you think you have read everything ever written on a topic, you find out there’s more to read.

We read as many scientific articles from other scientists as we can. We always do this. Every single day in our lives. Why?

Well, because this helps us understand 1) what we know about a particular topic; 2) what remains to be done; and 3) what are the best methods to perform our research.

Once we have this information, we write it down, and we are ready to start our science.

Our ultimate goal is to get our results published in a scientific journal. However, getting the necessary data to write and publish our work can take months, and sometimes even years. It is a long, exhaustive, and meticulous process.

This particular nugget of information hits everyone (outside of science) by surprise: when you publish for a magazine or a publication, they pay you to publish. But you publish your work in a scientific journal, you need to pay them. Sometimes thousands of dollars. Usually, at least, $500.

And even more surprising, no matter how many people pay to read your paper, or how many other scientists cite your work on their papers, we never get paid back. That money is gone.

Why? We are still trying to understand this too. This is another story for another day. But yes, we pay to publish our science.

Does this mean that, if you pay, your science gets published no matter what so you can say whatever you want as long as you have the money?

NO.

Even considering that you have to pay to publish, your research will be closely evaluated before publication. And by closely I mean CLOSELY.

Why do scientists accept this system?

Publishing in a scientific journal improves your chances of gaining tenure, and recognition. Sometimes, if you work hard for it and you are very very lucky, you get grants to help you with your research. Sometimes these grants may help pay a living-wage salary for one of your Ph.D. students. That’s it.

On top of that, as I mentioned before, getting your papers published in a journal requires an exhaustive process.

Not only your work is reviewed by an (unpaid) editor, but also by 2 to 5 other (unpaid) scientists who are experts in your field. What we call the peer-reviewed process.

These reviewer scientists are competing with you for grants and recognition. And they can’t review your work if they have collaborated with you in the past 10 years. So let me tell you, they will scrutinize your work.

To get a paper published, we also need to provide the data that we used, and the exact method we used to collect such data. If we wrote some code for data collection or analysis, that is required too (see an example of a well-known scientific journal here).

We’ve had reviewers replicate all our steps to make sure they got similar results. We’ve had them re-analyze our data.

Because of this required transparency and replicability, it is very easy to spot if someone is falsifying data.

Let me tell you, everyone wants to have the recognition they need to make a reasonable salary and get tenure. So if they find out you are cheating, they’ll prevent you from ever publishing again. EVER.

Competition is so fierce that if you provide data that is ambiguous in any way, you will be turned down. If your methods are not solid, you will be turned down. Even if the reviewer just doesn’t like your writing style, you may be turned down.

Can we then trust the scientific method?

Anything that gets published in a scientific journal is based on the above reality and can be trusted accordingly.

If you can’t prove something with tons of empirical data (and I’m talking about hundreds of thousands of data points, if not millions, at a time), it won’t be published.

If a scientist gets a paper published saying that humans have caused a current climatic event, that’s what the data is saying. If multiple scientists reach the same conclusion (which is the case), it is because that’s what the data is saying.

Of course, there are some scientific questions that we still don’t have answers for, and sometimes we find out that we have been looking at a question from the wrong angle.

But that seldom happens anymore for huge, hot topics like evolution or climate change. Finding something new and revolutionary about any of these topics will, very likely, land you a Nobel Prize.

So if you want to truly know what’s known about a particular scientific question, read the peer-reviewed literature. You can find out whether a journal is peer-reviewed on their website. Libraries will give you access. Or google them.

What about climate change science, then?

Considering what we’ve been talking about, what does the peer-reviewed literature have to say about climate change? What have thousands of peer-reviewed research papers found out about whether we are experiencing climate change and what’s causing it?

Well, all research points to the same answer: Human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are causing the current climate change.

Wrapping up…

The understanding of how science and scientists works is therefore crucial. Don’t you think finding empirical evidence against the common understanding of a scientific topic would benefit a particular scientist? Yes, of course it would. If a scientist could probe that modern climate change hasn’t been induced by humans, they’d get all the recognition in the world.

But none has been able to. All the data says the same. So they can only report on the same finding over and over again: We are causing climate change.

For what is worth, we’d love to be the ones proving the opposite. Do you know how much recognition we’d get if we could prove something so important?

But we don’t have any data to make that point. We just have plenty to say that climate change is happening. And that humans are to blame this time.