Science and Politics

I am inclined to discuss my quick views on science and politics because of a recent text I received from a friend informing me of an article on fracking that has been retracted due to mathematical errors. This post is not meant to discuss this article directly, but I will quickly summarize the main points. The conclusions of this published article showed that air pollution levels increased in locations near gas extraction sites. After the publication was released the authors discovered there were errors in their spreadsheet used to calculate the air pollution concentrations. I have to say that in this case the authors absolutely did the right thing and informed the journal of their errors. A new article will be published that show basically the exact opposite results from the original study.

The topic of science and politics is tricky to discuss because people tend to really dig their feet into the ground when it comes to their political views. Two topics that I know that come up a lot between my friends and the news is fracking of rock in the petroleum industry and climate change. I think a huge problem is people tend to ignore or dismiss facts and instead back their political views. What I am trying to say is that often there are gray areas between the two views. I will give an example of the petroleum industry. One view is that we should extract all fossil fuels in the ground to provide energy to the world. The opposite view is that we should leave all fossil fuels in the ground because they are dirty fuels that are ruining the Earth and should invest completely in renewable energy. One could argue that the facts support that a combination of fossil fuel energy and renewable energy should be used to support our growing demand for energy. Discussions can be made about how much and where we get this energy, but that is beyond the scope of this example. I promise you though that I have friends who believe in either one view completely or the other. The facts are though that using all fossil fuels will not be good, and we currently do not have the capability of switching to renewable energy tomorrow without any use of fossil fuels.

My main point with science and politics is that a good scientist should keep their political views/funding from a certain group out of their conclusions. I am sure to all scientists this suggestion seems like a no-brainer, but I am not so sure it happens. If you asked the question does "air pollution increase due to fracking," and your research suggests otherwise, a good scientist should publish their results no matter what. This is why I am very glad that the paper that is be retracted is being republished with a different conclusion. Perhaps it isn't the conclusion they or their funding agency were hoping for, but it is still a result and should be published regardless. To not publish the new conclusions would be hurting the integrity of science.

There is one other point I wanted to discuss. One phrase that I absolutely despise that everyone has heard regarding climate change is "the science is settled." I am infuriated when my very educated scientist friends use that statement.  Science is never settled, that is the beauty of science! If we always agreed the science was settled nothing new would ever be discovered. Instead, we are constantly testing and retesting similar hypotheses with new methods or new data to see if the original conclusion is still supported.  Instead of using that statement, a phrase that could be used is: "A large majority of scientists agree that an overwhelming amount of data support an increase in global temperatures." In my view the original phrase makes it seem like no changes can be made to this conclusion, which is absolutely not the case.