HOW should scientists prepare for the rough and tumble of politics? I don’t
mean those who get on the stump and run for office. I’m talking about the
increasing number who volunteer to help elected representatives make decisions
where science is involved. Before leaping into the world of sound bites and spin
doctors, perhaps they should pay heed to one cautionary tale.
Ben Santer is a shy climate modeller at the Lawrence Livermore laboratory in
California. He was also one of the lead authors of a key chapter in an
influential 1995 UN report on climate change. Part of his brief was to answer
the question of whether human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, are a
cause of global warming. Santer and his colleagues concluded that on balance,
the answer is yes.
These are mild, non-controversial words to most of us. But to many in the oil
and automobile industries, the idea that we ought to cut back on cars or
electricity spelt doom. Before long, Santer found himself the target of an
unpleasant campaign. He was accused—wrongly—of doctoring the final
report and removing references to uncertainties about whether humans are warming
the planet.
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The attacks came thick and fast. Frederick Seitz, a former head of the US
National Academy of Sciences, accused him in The Wall Street Journal of the
“most disturbing corruption of the peer-review process” in 60 years. Patrick
Michaels, a climatologist at the University of Virginia, claimed that Santer had
manipulated data to fit his climate models. Someone even wanted to bring Santer
before the International Court in The Hague for “falsifying scientific
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The prize for the most unpleasant use of language, though, goes to the Global
Climate Coalition—a body which represents the interests of American oil
and automobile companies, in the climate debate. It accused Santer of
“scientific cleansing”. Scientific cleansing. So calculatedly redolent of the
newly-coined term for genocide, “ethnic cleansing”. “My grandparents were
subjected to ethnic cleansing,” Santer told me when I interviewed him again five
years after the affair. “They died in a concentration camp in the Second World
War.” Santer spent months frantically trying to protect his reputation, putting
his side of the story to newspapers, television and radio. But the damage was
done. The experience came close to wrecking his personal and professional
life.
Now, I’m no believer in science as a cosy collegiate process. It is a
sometimes harsh world in which theories and egos jostle for ascendancy. Nor do I
believe that UN reports are the only arbiters of truth in the climate change
debate. Even Michaels has raised some interesting questions from time to time. A
couple of years back I spent a week pursuing him and others across the US for a
sympathetic cover feature on their views. I would do it again
(see 91av, 19 July 1997, p38).
But let’s not kid ourselves. There are vested interests out there trying to
subvert that debate. New drafts of the next UN climate report will start to
circulate within the next few weeks, just as the contrarian PR machine cranks
into gear once more. “They’ll try and do to my successors what they did to me,”
worries Santer. I hope his successors are prepared.