Debunking skeptical propaganda, Book review of Oreskes/Conway, Merchants of Doubt (original) (raw)

The Sensationalist Discourse of Science Diplomacy: A Critical Reflection

The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 2020

For almost twenty years, the concept of science diplomacy has gained momentum in a public discourse that brings together science policy and international affairs. While some policy actions were newly established and others got into the stride of science diplomacy, the public discourse kept proliferating and has greatly enlarged the concept’s meaning. Reviewing one of its most common definitions, this contribution critically reflects on the sensational promises made by advocates and endorsers of science diplomacy. Their framing bears on a popular and romantic image of science that would hold salutary capacities to solve problems no matter how complex and that goes into rhapsodies about scientists as cosmopolitans who would eagerly collaborate with kindred spirits regardless of national and cultural contexts. Apart from the fact that science tends to get instrumentalised for particularistic purposes, these reveries are problematic, as they overbook expectations about science and foreign politics that can hardly be fulfilled.

The scientification of climate politics

2010

The present chapter offers a historical perspective on the political discussion surrounding climate change. We describe the way in which the political debate has developed in the last 40 years, taking a closer look at the role of science within the political debate. How have politics dealt with scientific uncertainties and dissident voices? We also looked at the international context. Certainly from the late 1980s, the political discussion in the Netherlands was strongly focused on the international discussion. From the late 1980s ...

Who speaks for nature? On the politics of science

Contemporary Political Theory

The natural sciences have a peculiar prominence in arguments about environmental issues, including climate change. Climatology, glaciology, field botany, conservation biology, and others possess seemingly unrivalled authority to frame public understandings of anthropogenic climate change. But where does that authority originate and how is it sustained and justified? Here, climate science and political theory can intersect. Of course, most practicing scientists would vehemently reject any suggestion that natural science is or should be inherently 'political.' Rather, politics 'interferes' with, prevents, or otherwise 'contaminates' science, which is 'above' politics. Accordingly, good policy based on good science will be 'non-political.' Laura Ephraim contests the conventional view. Science, she argues, is, or must be viewed as, an inherently political enterprise. Acknowledging this reality need not debunk the authority of science (p. 3), but rather strengthens it. Lay citizens and science do (and should) mutually support each other in a political way. This support, along with epistemological validity, generates the authority of science. To the question that entitles her book, 'Who speaks for nature?' Ephraim replies that scientists rightly do, yet their authority is established, sustained, eroded, and challenged-in part-by processes outside science proper. These processes are political. The familiar worry about the 'politicization of science' is, then, mistaken and misleading. Ephraim's position is a welcome corrective to the 'linear' conception of science, i.e. 'science proposes, policy makers implement'. Although her contention that scientific practice can be strengthened through constructive relations with citizens and policy elites is not unique (Brown, 2009; Fischer, 2017; Moore, 2017), her focus on the problem of authority is distinctive and raises significant questions about the sources and justification for trust in science, and perhaps also for distrust of science.

Rebalancing the Encounter between Science Diplomacy and International Relations Theory

Global Policy, 2018

Whether it is in climate change negotiations, pandemic scares, security threats or sustainable development agendas, science and technology are today at the heart of international affairs. Yet there is still limited academic work that deals with the complex relationships between international diplomatic and scientific endeavours. How can we bridge this divide and possibly 're-balance' the encounter between the practice of science diplomacy, its practitioner-driven literature, and the discussions of international relations theory (IR) that underpin the study of world politics? Here we propose that this move could start from a more explicit placing of science diplomacy discussions across the IR spectrum. We pose that taking seriously science 'diplo-macy', whilst undoing conventions around the hitherto limited 'IR' reading of science in its literature, would do well in establishing this reality not just as a domain of reflective practitioners, but as an effective launchpad for international theorizing as much as more academically-driven practice. Policy Implications • Recast from international relations theory, current appreciations of 'science diplomacy' might fall short of offering effective readings of world politics • Recognising the value of diplomatic studies and practice, science diplomacy can do better at appreciating the dynamics of negotiation between, and within, science and global policy • Within IR and diplomacy, practice theory offers a chance to go beyond conventional understandings of what scientific communities do in and for world politics