Naomi Oreskes

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Naomi Oreskes (2015)

Naomi Oreskes (born November 25, 1958 in New York City ) is an American professor of the history of science at Harvard University ; previously she was a professor of History and Science Studies (History and Science Studies) at the University of California, San Diego .

She became publicly known, among other things, through her research into the denial of science , in particular the denial of man-made global warming and its consequences.

Live and act

family

Naomi Oreskes is the daughter of the teacher Susan Oreskes (née Nagin) and the former New York professor Irwin Oreskes (1926-2013), who taught laboratory medicine at Hunter College and was temporarily dean of the college's School of Health Sciences . Naomi Oreskes has three siblings. Her brother Michael Oreskes is a journalist, Daniel Oreskes is an actor and her sister Rebecca Oreskes is a former US Forest Service employee who has mainly been a writer since 2013.

Naomi Oreskes has been married to hydrogeologist Kenneth Belitz since 1986 and has two daughters.

Education and career

Naomi Oreskes received a Bachelor of Science in Geology of Mining with First Class Honors from Imperial College London in 1981 . She then worked as a geologist at Western Mining Corporation in Australia until 1984 . This was followed by research stays and teaching activities at Stanford University (1984–1989) and Dartmouth College (1990–1996). She received her PhD in geology and the history of science in 1990 from Stanford University. From 1996 to 1998 she was Associate Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at New York University, with a visiting professorship in the fall of 2001 in the History of Science Department at Harvard University . Since 2005 she has been Professor of History of Science at the University of California at San Diego, and since 2014 at Harvard University.

research

Oreskes initially worked primarily in geology, but is now mainly active in the history department with a focus on the history of science. She deals intensively with climate research, especially its research history .

Research history of climate research

Her most important works in this area include the essay Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, which was published in December 2004 in the journal Science . In it she deals with the question of how clearly a scientific consensus can be identified on questions of human-induced global warming .

In an evaluation of the abstracts of 928 publications in scientific journals in the period 1993-2003, which contained the keyword “global climate change”, Oreskes did not find any article that openly questioned that “climate change is taking place and at least some of the human activity is taking place contributes ". Those who doubt this hypothesis in specialist circles should, according to their weight in the scientific debate, also be found in the abstracts of the specialist publications. Just over 20% of the abstracts were of the opinion that humans are one of the causes of climate change, and a little more than half of the abstracts dealt with the consequences of climate change without addressing the question of the causes. Approximately 25% of the abstracts covered methods or paleoclimatological studies. She interpreted this result as an indication that there is a consensus in climate research on this question. In addition, she argues that the most important scientific associations and institutions on this issue also published corresponding positions.

ExxonMobil

Oreskes worked with Geoffrey Supran to investigate whether ExxonMobil had misled the public about climate change. Based on a content analysis of numerous ExxonMobil communications on climate change, including peer-reviewed and unreviewed publications, in-house documents, and paid editorial-style advertisements in the New York Times, they concluded that there was a discrepancy between advertorials and all other documents there. ExxonMobil contributed to the further development of climate science through the scientific publications of its scientists, but in advertorials deliberately sowed doubts about the existence of climate change. Given this contradiction, Supran and Oreskes concluded that ExxonMobil was deliberately misleading the public.

Merchants of Doubt

Her book Merchants of Doubt , published in 2010 together with Erik M. Conway , also had a very large impact by examining organized science denial in a historical context. According to the research of the authors, the method of publicly spreading doubts about scientific results in order to prevent political measures is already in relation to the dangers of tobacco smoking, the ozone hole or acid rain, among other things , before denying human-made global warming been used. The dissemination of relevant information was partly planned strategically and financed by neoliberal and anti-communist lobby groups and industry (e.g. tobacco industry, oil industry). In part, the same protagonists (especially Fred Seitz and Fred Singer ) and lobby groups (such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute ) were involved.

The reviews of "Merchants of Doubt" were mostly "enthusiastic"; the book is now considered to be the standard work on the denial of man-made global warming by industry lobbyists. For David Wallace-Wells , Oreskes is the "world's leading chronicler of climate denial and disinformation", largely because of Merchants of Doubt.

Honourings and prices

Fonts (selection)

Books

  • Naomi Oreskes: Why Trust Science? Princeton University Press 2019, ISBN 978-0-691-17900-1 .
  • Naomi Oreskes, Michael Oppenheimer, Dale Jamieson : Discerning Experts: The Practices of Assessment for Environmental Policy. The University of Chicago Press 2019, ISBN 978-0-22-6602-0-11 .
  • Naomi Oreskes, John Krige: Science and technology in the global cold war , MIT Press 2014, ISBN 978-0-262-52653-1 .
  • Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway : The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. Columbia University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-231-16954-7 .
    • German translation: From the end of the world: Chronicle of a heralded doom. Oekom, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-86581-747-1 .
  • Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway: Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-59691-610-4 .
  • Naomi Oreskes: The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science. Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-19-511733-6 .

Scientific journals

Web links

Commons : Naomi Oreskes  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Phys.org: "Oreskes, professor at NYC's Hunter College, dies" by Meghan Barr March 2, 2013
  2. ^ Who's who in the West: A Biographical Dictionary of Noteworthy Men and Women . AN Marquis Company ,, 2004, ISBN 083790935X (Retrieved April 19, 2015).
  3. ↑ Naomi Oreskes Is Wed To Dr. Kenneth Belitz , nytimes.com, September 29, 1986
  4. ↑ City University of New York: "Irwin Oreskes, Professor Emeritus at NYC's Hunter College who Taught Lab Science Dies at 86" ( Memento December 2, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), cuny.edu, March 4, 2013: "Besides Michael Oreskes , Irwin Oreskes also is survived by his wife, Susan Oreskes; his other children, Naomi Oreskes, a science historian, Daniel Oreskes, an actor, and Rebecca Oreskes, a writer and former ranger with the US Forest Service, and five grandchildren. "
  5. ↑ Naomi Oreskes Is Wed To Dr. Kenneth Belitz , nytimes.com, September 29, 1986
  6. ^ Adam Morton: Secrets behind weird science . In: The Age . November 13, 2010
  7. ^ Naomi Oreskes: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. In: Science . Vol. 306, December 4, 2004, corrected January 21, 2005, PDF doi: 10.1126 / science.1103618
  8. ↑ Naomi Oreskes: The scientific consensus on climate change: How do we know we're not wrong? In: Joseph F. DiMento, Pamela Doughman (Eds.): Climate Change . MIT Press, 2007, ISBN 0-262-04241-X ( [1] [PDF; 234 kB ]).
  9. ↑ Geoffrey Supran & Naomi Oreskes (2017). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f
  10. ↑ Mike Steketee: Some skeptics make it a habit to be wrong , The Australian. November 20, 2010. Retrieved May 12, 2015. 
  11. ^ Robin McKie: Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway , The Guardian. August 8, 2010. Retrieved May 12, 2015. 
  12. ^ Christian Rohr , The Machiavellis of Science. The network of denial. In: Physics in our time 46, Issue 2, 2015, p. 100, doi: 10.1002 / piuz.201590021 .
  13. ^ Klaus-Dieter Müller : Science in the digital revolution. Climate communication 21.0 . Wiesbaden 2013, p. 46.
  14. ^ David Wallace-Wells : Naomi Oreskes: 'The House Is Burning Down and We're Just Sitting Around Discussing It' . In: New York Magazine , September 26, 2019. Retrieved September 26, 2019.
  15. ↑ NCSE board member Naomi Oreskes awarded the British Academy Medal . National Center for Science Education. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
  16. ↑ Naomi Oreskes Named 2016 Recipient of Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication . Harvard University. Retrieved August 23, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Oreskes, Naomi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geologist and science historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City