Naomi Oreskes
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 549136 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Naomi Oreskes |
| PRENOMES | Naomi |
| SOBRENOME | Oreskes |
| ASSINATURA | ORESKES N |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6122-9843 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 70 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 726 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 70 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1991 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 13 |
On Climate Denial and Free Market Fundamentalism
The failure to respond to decades of scientific evidence regarding climate change is examined through the lens of free market fundamentalism and the systematic loathing of government intervention. This analysis explores how the myth of the self-regulating market has historically blocked the governance structures necessary to limit carbon emissions, leading to widespread environmental and social damage. By drawing parallels to historically success…
Misinformation is both a symptom and a cause
In their commentary, Altay and Mercier (2026) frame misinformation as a mere symptom of deeper underlying societal problems. Here, we highlight a more nuanced causal account involving reciprocal effects, where misinformation can act as a cause of societal issues, which in turn can simultaneously act as a cause of misinformation belief. When it comes to the total causal impact of misinformation, we note the importance of taking into account not on…
Gaps in public trust between scientists and climate scientists
This study compares public trust in climate scientists and scientists in general across 68 countries ( N = 69,534). On average, participants reported moderately high levels of trust in climate scientists, with trust levels being slightly lower than trust in scientists in general. Overall, this trust gap was larger among participants who identified as politically conservative or right-leaning, but there was considerable variation across countries
The afterlife of a ghost-written paper
Corporate ghost-writing is a form of scientific fraud: a paper is falsely presented as the work of people other than its actual authors. When such papers circulate, they undermine the integrity of scientific research and policy decisions based wholly or in part on that research. This paper examines the impact of a single ghost-written study, Williams, Kroes, and Munro (2000) (WKM2000), published in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology . The pap…
Public Communication about Science in 68 Countries
This 68-country survey ( n = 71,922) examines science information diets and communication behavior, identifies cross-country differences, and tests how such differences are associated with sociopolitical and economic conditions. We find that social media are the most used sources of science information in most countries, except those with democratic-corporatist media systems where news media tend to be used more widely. People in collectivist soc…
The Impact of Science Denial and Pseudoscience on the Behavioral and Social Sciences
This special volume presents a set of papers on science denial and pseudoscience. I identify three key contributions. One is that social and behavioral scientists are able to able to analyze motivations and states of mind that contribute to the rejection of mainstream science and acceptance of pseudo‐science and false claims. Two, the papers in this volume take a number of informal gleanings and suggestions, and subject them to rigorous and much‐…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
Rivals
The 2024 state of the climate report
Author: Ripple, William J et al.; Genre: Journal Article; Finally published : 2024-12-01; Keywords: climate crisis, vital signs; Title: The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth
Liars know they are lying
Mis- and disinformation pose substantial societal challenges, and have thus become the focus of a substantive field of research. However, the field of misinformation research has recently come under scrutiny on two fronts. First, a political response has emerged, claiming that misinformation research aims to censor conservative voices. Second, some scholars have questioned the utility of misinformation research altogether, arguing that misinforma…
How scientists’ collective climate advocacy affects public trust in scientists and voting behavior
Scientists increasingly engage in policy advocacy, especially on climate change. Does this advocacy undermine—or bolster—public trust in scientists and support for scientists’ recommendations? We leveraged a unique opportunity to answer this question in a real-world setting: the 2023 referendum for the Swiss climate protection law (CPL), which was supported by a public statement of 252 renowned scientists across disciplines. We conducted a pre-re…
What’s an Expert, and Why? A comment on Christian Dayé, Experts, Social Scientists, and Techniques of Prognosis in Cold War America
Why misinformation must not be ignored
Recent academic debate has seen the emergence of the claim that misinformation is not a significant societal problem. We argue that the arguments used to support this minimizing position are flawed, particularly if interpreted (e.g., by policymakers or the public) as suggesting that misinformation can be safely ignored. Here, we rebut the two main claims, namely that misinformation is not of substantive concern (a) due to its low incidence and (b…
Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections
Climate projections by the fossil fuel industry have never been assessed. On the basis of company records, we quantitatively evaluated all available global warming projections documented by—and in many cases modeled by—Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists between 1977 and 2003. We find that most of their projections accurately forecast warming that is consistent with subsequent observations. Their projections were also consistent with, and at lea…
Trends in American scientists’ political donations and implications for trust in science
Scientists in the United States are more politically liberal than the general population. This fact has fed charges of political bias. To learn more about scientists’ political behavior, we analyze publicly available Federal Election Commission data. We find that scientists who donate to federal candidates and parties are far more likely to support Democrats than Republicans, with less than 10 percent of donations going to Republicans in recent y…
Don’t gloss over social science! a response to
Glavovic et al. ([2021]. The tragedy of climate change science. Climate and Development, 1–5.) recently argued that the science-society contract is broken and that – given the urgency of climate change – scientists should agree to a moratorium on climate change research. We are grateful to the authors for their courage to spark this very important discussion, even if we disagree with their proposed solution. They consider three solutions: continu…
The Communication of Value Judgements and its Effects on Climate Scientists’ Perceived Trustworthiness
Scientists are called upon by policymakers to provide recommendations on how to address climate change. It has been argued that as policy advisors, scientists can legitimately make instrumental value judgements (recommendations based on defined policy goals), but not categorical value judgements (challenge and/or redefine established policy goals), and that to do otherwise is to overstep in ways that may threaten their perceived trustworthiness. …
From Anti-Government to Anti-Science
Empirical data do not support the conclusion of a crisis of public trust in science. They do support the conclusion of a crisis of conservative trust in science: polls show that American attitudes toward science are highly polarized along political lines. In this essay, we argue that conservative hostility toward science is rooted in conservative hostility toward government regulation of the marketplace, which has morphed in recent decades into c…
The Bloody Autumn of Butcher's Crossing
A writer in the New Yorker called John Williams the "author of the greatest American novel you've never heard of." They were referring to John Williams's Stoner, but equally if not more important in our era is Butcher's Crossing. Usually classified as a Western, it is a scathing indictment of the toxic masculinity and Emersonian egotism that drove men west to "find themselves" through conquest, in this case the brutal destruction of the American …
Why Trust Science?
Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications
Severe weather event attribution
What Is the Social Responsibility of Climate Scientists
Do scientists have a responsibility to act affirmatively to ensure that our findings are known, understood, and put to use to protect our fellow citizens, even if it means expanding our activities beyond the field and the laboratory? I argue that scientists have a sentinel responsibility to alert society to threats about which ordinary people have no other way of knowing. However, the same expertise that makes a scientist an appropriate sentinel …
Perspectives on global warming
Models all the way down
When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal
The Working Group on the Anthropocene
Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications
Science and public policy
Climate change prediction
Seepage
Vested interests and political agents have long opposed political or regulatory action in response to climate change by appealing to scientific uncertainty. Here we examine the effect of such contrarian talking points on the scientific community itself. We show that although scientists are trained in dealing with uncertainty, there are several psychological reasons why scientists may nevertheless be susceptible to uncertainty-based argumentation,…
Scale and diversity of the physical technosphere
We assess the scale and extent of the physical technosphere, defined here as the summed material output of the contemporary human enterprise. It includes active urban, agricultural and marine components, used to sustain energy and material flow for current human life, and a growing residue layer, currently only in small part recycled back into the active component. Preliminary estimates suggest a technosphere mass of approximately 30 trillion ton…
The rapid disintegration of projections
How and why did the scientific consensus about sea level rise due to the disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), expressed in the third Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment, disintegrate on the road to the fourth? Using ethnographic interviews and analysis of IPCC documents, we trace the abrupt disintegration of the WAIS consensus. First, we provide a brief historical overview of scientific assessments of the…
The Collapse of Western Civilization
Authors' note: Science fiction writers construct an imaginary future; historians attempt to reconstruct the past. Ultimately, both are seeking to understand the present. In this essay, we blend the two genres to imagine a future historian looking back on a past that is our present and (possible) future. The occasion is the tercentenary of the end of Western culture (1540 – 2073); the dilemma being addressed is how we – the children of the Enlight…
A Context of Motivation
In the late 1970s, scientists discovered something new under the sea: sea-floor hydrothermal vents, supporting complex biotic communities under conditions previously thought inimical to life. While the vents themselves were predicted by the theory of plate tectonics, their extent and geochemical significance, and the ecosystems associated with them, were a profound surprise. Perhaps for this reason, their discovery has been portrayed as an exampl…
From Anti-Government to Anti-Science
Empirical data do not support the conclusion of a crisis of public trust in science. They do support the conclusion of a crisis of conservative trust in science: polls show that American attitudes toward science are highly polarized along political lines. In this essay, we argue that conservative hostility toward science is rooted in conservative hostility toward government regulation of the marketplace, which has morphed in recent decades into c…
Objectivity or Heroism? On the Invisibility of Women in Science
Potential emissions of CO2 and methane from proved reserves of fossil fuels
Scientists have argued that no more than 275 GtC (IPCC, 2013) of the world’s reserves of fossil fuels of 746 GtC can be produced in this century if the world is to restrict anthropogenic climate change to ≤2 °C. This has raised concerns about the risk of these reserves becoming “stranded assets” and creating a dangerous “carbon bubble” with serious impacts on global financial markets, leading in turn to discussions of appropriate investor and con…
Scaling Up Our Vision
Historians have been slow to incorporate the ocean as a focus of study, in part because we have viewed it as standing mostly apart from human societies and activities. Whether that was ever truly the case is arguable, but it is certainly no longer true today. Global climate change and ocean acidification point to the now-pervasive impact of humans on the ocean environment and, conversely, the crucial importance of the ocean in the development of …
Why I Am a Presentist
Both geologists and historians study the past, but they have divergent views of the present. Geologists are unambiguously presentist. They believe that the observable present is a crucial resource in understanding the past, because in the observable present we can see and study the processes that have occurred in the unobservable past. For geologists, it is largely uncontroversial that the past not only can but should be interpreted with referenc…
What Is the Social Responsibility of Climate Scientists
Do scientists have a responsibility to act affirmatively to ensure that our findings are known, understood, and put to use to protect our fellow citizens, even if it means expanding our activities beyond the field and the laboratory? I argue that scientists have a sentinel responsibility to alert society to threats about which ordinary people have no other way of knowing. However, the same expertise that makes a scientist an appropriate sentinel …
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
Systematicity is necessary but not sufficient
Adaptation to Global Warming
Scientific experts have confirmed that anthropogenic warming is underway, and some degree of adaptation is now unavoidable. However, the details of impacts on the scale of climate change at which humans would have to prepare for and adjust to them are still the subject of considerable research, inquiry, and debate. Planning for adaptation requires information on the scale over which human organizations and institutions have authority and capacity…
Why misinformation must not be ignored
Recent academic debate has seen the emergence of the claim that misinformation is not a significant societal problem. We argue that the arguments used to support this minimizing position are flawed, particularly if interpreted (e.g., by policymakers or the public) as suggesting that misinformation can be safely ignored. Here, we rebut the two main claims, namely that misinformation is not of substantive concern (a) due to its low incidence and (b…
Characterizing uncertainty in expert assessments
Large‐scale assessments have become an important vehicle for organizing, interpreting, and presenting scientific information relevant to environmental policy. At the same time, identifying and evaluating scientific uncertainty with respect to the very questions these assessments were designed to address has become more difficult, as ever more complex problems involving greater portions of the Earth system and longer timescales have emerged at the…
Severe weather event attribution
History of Science and American Science Policy
Historians of science have participated actively in debates over American science policy in the post-World War II period in a variety of ways, but their impact has been more to elucidate general concepts than to effect specific policy changes. Personal experiences, in the case of the debate over global warming, have demonstrated both the value and the limits of such involvement for the making of public policy. To be effective, historians of scien…
What We Have Learned about Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy
The topic of this session is "What We Have Learned about Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy," and it says we should discuss "how should we proceed and where should lines be drawn?" I'm going to conduct a conversation in which I will focus on this question of limits. The panel is very distinguished, very diverse, and I think we ought to be able to anticipate a diversity of views. All of our speakers are people who promote freedom of information, bu…
Drifting Continents and Colliding Paradigms
Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of Numerical Models in the Earth Sciences
Verification and validation of numerical models of natural systems is impossible. This is because natural systems are never closed and because model results are always nonunique. Models can be confirmed by the demonstration of agreement between observation and prediction, but confirmation is inherently partial. Complete confirmation is logically precluded by the fallacy of affirming the consequent and by incomplete access to natural phenomena. Mo…
Objectivity or Heroism? On the Invisibility of Women in Science
Gender and Scientific Authority. Barbara Laslett , Sally Gregory Kohlstedt , Helen Longino , Evelynn Hammonds
The Rejection of Continental Drift
In the early twentieth century, American earth scientists were united in their opposition to the new--and highly radical--notion of continental drift, even going so far as to label the theory "unscientific." Some fifty years later, however, continental drift was heralded as a major scientific breakthrough and today it is accepted as scientific fact. Why did American geologists reject so adamantly an idea that is now considered a cornerstone of th…
Why Geophysics
Science and Security before the Atomic Bomb
Author’s response
A Context of Motivation
In the late 1970s, scientists discovered something new under the sea: sea-floor hydrothermal vents, supporting complex biotic communities under conditions previously thought inimical to life. While the vents themselves were predicted by the theory of plate tectonics, their extent and geochemical significance, and the ecosystems associated with them, were a profound surprise. Perhaps for this reason, their discovery has been portrayed as an exampl…
The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Policy-makers and the public who are not members of the relevant research community have had to form opinions about the reality of global climate change on the basis of often conflicting descriptions provided by the media regarding the level of scientific certainty attached to studies of climate. In this Essay, Oreskes analyzes the existing scientific literature to show that there is a robust consensus that anthropogenic global climate change is …
Science and public policy
From Scaling to Simulation
History of Science and American Science Policy
Historians of science have participated actively in debates over American science policy in the post-World War II period in a variety of ways, but their impact has been more to elucidate general concepts than to effect specific policy changes. Personal experiences, in the case of the debate over global warming, have demonstrated both the value and the limits of such involvement for the making of public policy. To be effective, historians of scien…
Defeating the merchants of doubt
Adaptation to Global Warming
Scientific experts have confirmed that anthropogenic warming is underway, and some degree of adaptation is now unavoidable. However, the details of impacts on the scale of climate change at which humans would have to prepare for and adjust to them are still the subject of considerable research, inquiry, and debate. Planning for adaptation requires information on the scale over which human organizations and institutions have authority and capacity…
What We Have Learned about Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy
The topic of this session is "What We Have Learned about Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy," and it says we should discuss "how should we proceed and where should lines be drawn?" I'm going to conduct a conversation in which I will focus on this question of limits. The panel is very distinguished, very diverse, and I think we ought to be able to anticipate a diversity of views. All of our speakers are people who promote freedom of information, bu…
Characterizing uncertainty in expert assessments
Large‐scale assessments have become an important vehicle for organizing, interpreting, and presenting scientific information relevant to environmental policy. At the same time, identifying and evaluating scientific uncertainty with respect to the very questions these assessments were designed to address has become more difficult, as ever more complex problems involving greater portions of the Earth system and longer timescales have emerged at the…
Climate change prediction
The rapid disintegration of projections
How and why did the scientific consensus about sea level rise due to the disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), expressed in the third Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment, disintegrate on the road to the fourth? Using ethnographic interviews and analysis of IPCC documents, we trace the abrupt disintegration of the WAIS consensus. First, we provide a brief historical overview of scientific assessments of the…
The Collapse of Western Civilization
Authors' note: Science fiction writers construct an imaginary future; historians attempt to reconstruct the past. Ultimately, both are seeking to understand the present. In this essay, we blend the two genres to imagine a future historian looking back on a past that is our present and (possible) future. The occasion is the tercentenary of the end of Western culture (1540 – 2073); the dilemma being addressed is how we – the children of the Enlight…
Why I Am a Presentist
Both geologists and historians study the past, but they have divergent views of the present. Geologists are unambiguously presentist. They believe that the observable present is a crucial resource in understanding the past, because in the observable present we can see and study the processes that have occurred in the unobservable past. For geologists, it is largely uncontroversial that the past not only can but should be interpreted with referenc…
Science and Technology in the Global Cold War
The Collapse of Western Civilization
Scaling Up Our Vision
Historians have been slow to incorporate the ocean as a focus of study, in part because we have viewed it as standing mostly apart from human societies and activities. Whether that was ever truly the case is arguable, but it is certainly no longer true today. Global climate change and ocean acidification point to the now-pervasive impact of humans on the ocean environment and, conversely, the crucial importance of the ocean in the development of …
Vom Ende der Welt; Chronik eines angekündigten Untergangs
Political science (30 obras) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (24 obras) · Philosophy (23 obras) · Law (20 obras) · Psychology (20 obras) · Climate change (19 obras) · Sociology (19 obras) · Computer Science (17 obras) · Epistemology (17 obras) · Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics (13 obras)