By Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, March 23, 2020
Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science at Harvard, has focussed much of her career on examining distrust of science in the United States. In 2010, she and the historian Erik M. Conway published “Merchants of Doubt,” which examined the ways in which politics and big business have helped sow doubt about the scientific consensus. Her most recent book, “Why Trust Science?,” examines how our idea of the scientific method has changed over time, and how different societies went about verifying its accuracy. Her work often addresses climate change and why Americans have rejected climate-change science more than people in other countries have.
I recently spoke with Oreskes by phone. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the Trump Administration’s slow response to the pandemic, the Republican Party’s anti-scientific propaganda, and strategies for convincing Americans that the threat of the coronavirus is real.
When you see the way people have responded to the new coronavirus, both in government and average people, do you think the response reflects what you’ve studied regarding the distrust of science?
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