Abstract
As Justin Biddle and I have argued, climate skepticism can be epistemically problematic when it displays a systematic intolerance of producer risks at the expense of public risks (Biddle and Leuschner in European Journal for Philosophy of Science 5(3): 261–278, 2015). In this paper, I will provide currently available empirical evidence that supports our account, and I discuss the normative consequences of climate skepticism by drawing upon Philip Kitcher’s “Millian argument against the freedom of inquiry.” Finally, I argue that even though concerns regarding inappropriate disqualification of dissent are reasonable, a form of “targeting” dissent—namely revealing manufactured dissent—is required in order to identify epistemically detrimental dissent and, thus, to protect scientific and public discourse.
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Notes
When I refer to “climate skeptics” I do not mean “skeptical climate scientists” who merely “hold a skeptical view of the validity and utility of [climate ...] models.” In Myanna Lahsen and Riley E. Dunlap’s terms I am discussing the case of “dissident” or “contrarian scientists” who “strongly criticize climate science and in many cases participate in the denial machine” (Dunlap 2013, p. 693; cf. also Lahsen 2008).
Thanks go to an anonymous reviewer of this journal for this point.
Again, thanks go to an anonymous reviewer of this journal for this point.
Thanks go, again, to an anonymous referee of this journal for this point.
Note that responding to objections is a scientific core virtue. However, at the same time it is one reason why climate skepticism has epistemically detrimental effects: climate scientists have to respond over and over again to a large number of poorly qualified objections, slowing down scientific progress.
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Acknowledgements
Parts of the paper, particularly in Sect. 4, arose in collaborative work with Justin Biddle. I wish to thank Justin Biddle, Philip Kitcher, Robert Mitchell, and Torsten Wilholt for discussions on diverse points of this paper. Thanks go also to two anonymous reviewers of this journals for their helpful feedback. Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at the MCMP research colloquium in 2014 and at the workshop “The Epistemic Role of Manufactured Dissent in Climate Science” in Karlsruhe in 2015.
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Leuschner, A. Is it appropriate to ‘target’ inappropriate dissent? on the normative consequences of climate skepticism. Synthese 195, 1255–1271 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1267-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1267-x