Media in Germany – Panorama

Among the profiteers of climate change are its prophets. Today whoever occupies himself professionally with the weather and its negative effects can count on receiving the greatest attention. A temptation and balancing act for not a few scientists. Here an interview with an expert in science communication, the Bielefeld sociologist Peter Weingart.

Professor Weingart, do you fear the climate catastrophe?

I believe in it, but I’m not afraid of it. It won’t affect me during my lifetime, except that summers will become pleasanter.

Could your equanimity have something to do with the lesson learned from the debates over forest dieback? 

You’re alluding to the fact that the prognoses have proved false ....

I’m thinking of the scientists that allegedly played up and artificially dramatised the problem.

In such cases you can’t know beforehand whether they have played it up or whether they’re right. The problem is that you can’t know that when scientific discussion, in which opinions sway back and forth, is carried out before the eyes of the public. But climate change is, in my opinion, evident.

Yet precisely the discourse on climate change furnishes, in your view, good grounds for mistrust. You once described it as “a morality play about the fragility of trust in science”.

Yes, because its manner of communication is suited to undermine this trust. I don’t mean the thesis of climate change itself, but how it’s treated and how science thereby presents itself. Traditionally, the public was confronted only with the verified results of internal scientific debates, with very few exceptions such as the theories of Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. The new kind of public controversy can badly harm the public trust that science still enjoys.

Proneness to catastrophism

You have repeatedly spoken of an alarming medialisation of science and even imputed that scientists are prone to catastrophism so as to increase their research funding, their fame and not least their fortune. Strong stuff! Do you really see a connection between media prominence and scientific reputation?

That is indeed strong stuff, and was formulated with a certain polemical intention. But studies have now confirmed that, for example, certain scientific media have started, sometimes in violation of their due diligence, to popularise sensational reports so as to raise their circulation. And this, by the way, not only about catastrophes but also in other areas of great public interest such as the stem cell discussion. The growing number of frauds in biomedicine and articles in professional journals that have to be revoked or corrected speak for themselves.

Everything from the university administration to science policy encourages the scientists to make statements to the public for the sake of their reputations. That profit is also a motive in individual cases is no secret. Take Craig Venter, who admits it quite openly. Nor should we forget that certain news reports – and this pertains mainly to the pharmaceutical industry – can have an immediate effect on stock prices. There were already communities of scientists in the 1960s that aimed at warming politicians to their cause with big announcements. That’s fairly obvious.

In political discourse other rules revail

In your opinion, “catastrophe communication” threatens to lose science its neutrality and to squander its credibility. Why?

In public communication, science must inevitably take a position, that is, conduct itself politically. Take only the warnings of several prominent climate researchers that were expressly connected with political appeals. I’m by no means sure that I should think ill of this. When scientists foresee a threatening danger, they are duty-bound to bring this to the attention of the public and politicians. But they should be aware that they’re then entering into political discourse – and that other rules, interests and value judgements prevail there than do in science. That may not be so clear to some scientists. There’s no other explanation for the surprised and indignant reactions with which they greet doubt and contradiction in this area.

Blessed is he who in times like these is professionally concerned with meteorology or oceanography! Researchers today often mutate into best-selling authors. Unlike them, you show considerable sympathy for the sensationalism of the mass media. Why do you?

Because the media have another task to fulfil than the scientist has and are, in contrast to him, subject to practical economic constraints. When a scientist succeeds in writing a lucrative bestseller, we can only congratulate him, as long as he’s retained his trustworthiness and integrity. Precisely the scientific community follows very critically any excursions into popular science aimed purely at garnering applause.

Malicious critics might of course interpret your own scolding of science as a calculated catastrophism. Have these heretical theses, which you have presented very effectively before the public, benefited your reputation?

No, I don’t believe that. At most they have earned me the one-sided reputation of an expert in just these questions. That hasn’t enhanced my scholarly standing. And my theses have remained largely unknown.