No more to top? Go for the opposite
Posted by Olive Heffernan on behalf of Gian-Reto Walther
Wasn’t it surprising how the media communicated the findings of the latest IPCC reports? Who would have expected that each of the three reports would produce front-page stories and dominate the public discussion for a considerable while. Whereas for previous issues of IPCC reports, the focus of the reporting media was usually set on the remaining uncertainties of the IPCC statements, this time the (still remaining, though smaller) uncertainties were virtually ignored.
In contrast, a competition among media reports was launched exacerbating the consequences of climate change, one overbidding the other. The logical consequence of this is that sooner or later we end up at a point which cannot be topped. Where to go from there? The answer is what we are just experiencing now. The same media (in part the same journalists) announcing ‘the end of the world’ on the title page (see the article in DER SPIEGEL) a few months later go for the opposite, blaming ‘climate hysteria’ and providing a platform to those who didn’t get their word in the discussion so far. The effect is always the same: The headline is assured, the paid circulation again high, and the public remains confused and can’t really do anything with the progress of scientific knowledge.
The role of scientists is not neutral in this discussion. It is too tempting to provide the media with provocative statements. Only the ‘expert’ with the most spectacular message attracts the attention. For the privilege to appear in public, scientific facts are not clearly separated from expectations, but often intermixed. Minor uncertainties are reported only to avoid describing major ones (BioScience 57(3), 227-236, 2007).
However, it is all unnecessary. The evidence based on facts is certainly striking enough to corroborate the significance of climate change, leaving no need to lean further out of the window. But, the aforementioned phenomenon is not restricted to climate impact research alone. The same tendency is infiltrating several other fields of research. As an example, the terminology used in multi-species experiments often uses ‘biodiversity’ although just a very limited number of species of the same trophic level is assessed. As a consequence, the generalized results from the investigation of one tiny fraction of ‘biodiversity’ contradict the generalized results from another fraction of ‘biodiversity’ used in another study. And yet we got a platform for a debate among experts, which bears the risk to be interpreted by the public and policy makers as scientific dissonance. This might be interesting from a purely academic point of view, but does it really help to make a step forward in tackling the urgent problems that the world population is facing today?
It is certainly a remarkable achievement of the climate change research community that climate change has become a major topic on the political agenda (cf. TREE 20(12), 648-649, 2005). Nonetheless, it is also the responsibility of scientists – not only in the climate change debate – not to interpret more than their results allow. ‘A cobbler should stick to his last’ and the responsible scientist should stick to what her/his findings say, especially with regard to the complexity addressed in the according research. It is tempting also, and especially among ambitious scientists, to distinguish themselves from others by over-interpreting their own findings and/or using exaggerated terminology. But sooner or later, somebody will avail of the opportunity to unveil the overstatements, which at the end of the day goes at the cost of the reputation of the entire scientific community of the relevant field.
Gian-Reto Walther
Dept. Plant Ecology, University of Bayreuth (Germany)