Is supplying future fire science enough?
Thoughts on Naomi Oreskes' critique of the supply-side model of science
While poking around Mastodon recently I came across a new article by science historian Naomi Oreskes called The trouble with the supply-side model of science. Oreskes is well known in climate change communication and policy circles for her work on the well-organised and -funded campaigns to cast doubt on climate science (and tobacco science before it). My first thought was that this was old news, because the supply-side model of science has already been thoroughly discredited. I’m glad I read it though, because she makes some good points, in very clear language, over mercifully few pages.
So what is the supply-side model? Also known as the the loading dock approach, the linear model and referred to by yours truly in my previous post as the courier model, the basic idea is that scientists do science, and then hand it over to decision makers to do what they do, and to the public to understand stuff. In other words, so long as the science is good and is supplied to its ‘users’, the scientist can rest easy. I won’t get into previous critiques of this model, except to say that the supply-side model of science is a bit too simplistic.
Oreskes argues that there are at least three problems - faulty assumptions - with the supply side model. First, we assume that people understand what we are saying. Second, we assume that people want to hear what we’re saying. Finally, we assume that the competition to supply information about science-relevant topics is a level playing field. Let’s take them - and Oreskes’ arguments - in order. Note that I am picking out parts of the article and am not being exhaustive. Interested readers should definitely check it out.
Oreskes points out that science communication has actually come a long way, and that there are many positive signs in terms of the effort and skill put into science communication across the research community these days. Still, Oreskes argues, many scientists have a real issue with reaching anyone who doesn’t have a university education (this is most people, as it turns out). For some scientists it’s because they don’t want to ‘dumb down’ their work. Simplifying it or not conveying all the details and uncertainties feels dishonest. For others, there is an aversion to style [insert joke about scientists’ fashion sense here] because science is fundamentally about substance and the universal, not the cosmetic and personal. Indeed, universality is one of Robert Merton’s four key norms of science, along with communalism, disinterestedness and organised skepticism (four norms, hmm, that gives me an idea for an animation).
Relation is, as Oreskes puts it, ‘an intensely personal sensibility, but as scientists we have been taught to eschew the personal’. The task here is to relate to people, to be likeable, to tell stories and reveal something of ourselves. There is not much instruction along these lines in research training, in my experience.
All of this made me wonder: what are the future fire messages that we can agree on, so we can get on with getting them out to different audiences? I struggle a little, because there are some pretty fundamentally different frames through which people look at the world. I’m not sure what kind of agreement would be reached in a (hopefully well-ventilated) room full of scientists, fire managers, cultural burning practitioners and other interested parties. Without putting too fine a point on it, I might start with things like
‘fire is natural’
‘fire is complex’
‘there are (or were) normal patterns of fire in different parts of the world’
‘humans and fire interact in all kinds of ways and that makes fire even more complex’
‘there are only a handful of key ingredients needed to get a big fire: fuel, dryness, an ignition and fire weather’
‘different parts of the world differ in the patterns and relative importance of these key ingredients of fire’
‘thinking about how climate change will affect the key ingredients of fire in different parts of the world, is a good place to start thinking about how climate change will affect fires themselves‘
‘fire affects all kinds of different things we care about’
‘our efforts to manage the risks of fire have their own effects on some of the things we care about’
Let’s move on to the second assumption, which is that people want to hear what us scientists are saying. Having looked at the readership numbers for this substack, I can’t say I share this assumption. All jokes aside, we are absolutely flooded with information these days, and finding some way to stay afloat amidst the deluge, let alone to maintain the course we’re charting, is really hard. Oreskes doesn’t really talk about the battle to be heard in the first place (although the third assumption goes to this point). Rather, she talks about people who hear our message but mightn’t be so keen on it because it is received as bad news in one way or another.
I have to say, I’m generally greeted at best with interest rather than smiles when I talk to people about climate change and wildfire. Indigenous approaches to fire stand out as an exception in this regard, with positive conversations seemingly the norm. Oreskes’ main point here is that just as scientists may be innately suspicious of personal and stylish framings of their findings, they are not generally trained to navigate the open seas where their little tugboat of freshly minted knowledge meets the headwinds of politics, ideology, economics and religion. And even if there aren’t deep-seated reasons for people to react to the specific message we’re bringing, much of science relates to change in the world, which people may fear and resist.
I found myself nodding in agreement with Oreskes’ final point about the faulty assumption of a level playing field. Another way of putting this is that it is not enough to do good; you must also stop doing bad. Climate change is a stark example here. I believe there has been tremendous progress in the movement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and particularly the burning of fossil fuels. But there is a reason that we have not gone further, and it is not because of a lack of communication or understanding. There are serious forces at play pushing in the opposite direction. Oreskes speaks about the funding, resources and effort that go towards disinformation, which operates very differently to plain vanilla misinformation. These campaigns cast doubt not just on specific fields of science, but on the scientific endeavour as a whole. In that sense they are reminiscent of corrupt politicians that tend to undermine trust in public institutions as a whole.
Happily, Oreskes ends on a positive note, which could be summed up as “don’t forget we’re human!”. We should keep educating, all the while being mindful of audiences and flexibly tailoring our messages. We should consider the political and ideological implications of our science. Perhaps there are more palatable ways to frame our message without distorting it. Perhaps where concerns are more perceived than real, we can address them in a non-condescending way. Disinformation can be countered by exposing it and explaining what it is. And lastly, one I can wholeheartedly agree with from happy experience, us natural scientists should be working a lot more closely with social scientists.