Science Without Skepticism Is Just Politics in a Lab Coat

Charles Rotter

How Conflating Advocacy with Evidence Undermines Science and Self-Government

The perspective paper “Scientists as Policymakers: Greenlighting Restoration and Climate Action” is presented as a sober reflection on how scientists might better “engage” with public decision-making. What it actually offers is something far more radical and far more dangerous: a blueprint for erasing the institutional boundary between science and political power, while insisting that this collapse somehow strengthens objectivity rather than destroying it.

The authors do not hedge their ambitions. After lamenting that elected officials rarely read peer-reviewed literature, they arrive at what they clearly regard as the logical conclusion:

“If we want ecology to help fight climate change, we need to create a direct line of communication between scientists and policymakers. Better yet, we need scientists who are policymakers themselves.”

That sentence should stop any serious reader cold. It is not an argument for better advisory mechanisms or clearer translation of research. It is an argument for scientists to occupy positions of coercive authority while retaining the cultural prestige of scientific neutrality. History suggests this combination rarely ends well.

From the outset, the paper frames political disagreement as a moral and epistemic failure rather than a legitimate feature of democratic governance. The authors describe policy decisions they oppose as “anti-science,” a term they deploy repeatedly but never define with precision. For example, the catalyst for the lead author’s entry into politics is described this way:

“She was becoming more concerned with each new anti-science action, and one event convinced her to act.”

This framing does enormous rhetorical work. Once policy disagreement is labeled “anti-science,” the debate is effectively over. Opponents are no longer citizens weighing costs, risks, and priorities; they are enemies of knowledge itself. Under those conditions, advocacy is not merely permitted—it becomes morally mandatory.

The authors acknowledge that scientists have traditionally worried about exactly this problem. They note that many researchers have argued that political advocacy risks destroying public trust and scientific credibility:

“They argued that scientists’ roles should be limited to communicating objective facts, leaving policy recommendations to others.”

But this concern is quickly dismissed as outdated squeamishness. Urgency replaces restraint. The possibility that advocacy might corrupt scientific judgment is treated as a secondary issue, outweighed by the need for action.

That logic is repeated throughout the paper. Climate change is described as an “existential threat,” a “code red,” and a crisis demanding immediate intervention. Yet nowhere do the authors grapple seriously with uncertainty ranges, competing risk assessments, or the track record of prior large-scale environmental interventions. Urgency becomes a solvent that dissolves skepticism.

The authors formalize this worldview in what they present as a helpful engagement model: research, outreach, and policymaking. They explain:

“Essentially, research provides critical knowledge; outreach communicates the knowledge to officials and the public; and policymaking uses this knowledge to develop laws, allocate funds, perform casework, etc.”

This model assumes that once “the knowledge” exists, policy decisions follow naturally, almost mechanically. Missing entirely is any serious acknowledgment that policy choices involve value judgments, trade-offs, and opportunity costs that cannot be resolved by data alone. Science can inform decisions; it cannot make them. Pretending otherwise is not evidence-based governance—it is technocracy.

The central case study of the paper illustrates this problem in concrete terms. The authors celebrate the allocation of roughly $100 million in public funds for a restoration project justified in part by climate mitigation goals. The language used to support this decision is revealingly speculative:

“Open spaces could potentially be managed to increase soil carbon storage and offset these sources.”

“Could potentially” is doing heavy lifting here. This is a hypothesis, layered atop several others: assumptions about wildfire frequency, carbon permanence, ecological response, and long-term management success. Yet these uncertainties are never quantified in a way that would allow comparison with alternative uses of the funds.

Instead, possibility is quietly converted into justification.

The paper repeatedly relies on conditional claims—“could,” “might,” “can be accelerated”—while treating the resulting policies as self-evidently necessary. This is not how scientific reasoning is supposed to work. Hypotheses are meant to be stress-tested, not fast-tracked into budget line items.

Even more troubling is the paper’s explicit endorsement of emotional persuasion as a scientific communication strategy. The authors argue that traditional scientific modes of explanation are ineffective with the public and should be replaced with storytelling:

“Scientists are trained to focus on data and information… Yet, telling stories can be more successful with members of the public.”

They elaborate approvingly:

“To ask for climate action, a speaker might tell a story about someone evacuating from a wildfire… the focus would be more on emotions than facts.”

This is not a minor stylistic recommendation. It is a wholesale abandonment of the norms that distinguish science from propaganda. Emotional narratives are powerful precisely because they bypass analytical scrutiny. Encouraging scientists to rely on them while retaining the authority of science is an invitation to manipulate trust rather than earn it.

The authors are clearly aware that trust is central to their project. They emphasize that:

“The public tends to trust scientists more than close family, neighbors, coworkers, religious leaders, and the President of the United States.”

This fact is presented not as a reason for caution, but as a strategic advantage. Trust becomes a resource to be leveraged in pursuit of policy goals. Once scientists openly adopt advocacy, however, that trust becomes fragile. It is far easier to spend credibility than to rebuild it.

Throughout the paper, the authors describe “earth stewardship” as the deliberate reshaping of both ecological and social systems:

“Earth stewardship is the deliberate shaping of biological and social systems to sustain important earth system services.”

This is an extraordinary claim, offered with no apparent awareness of its historical baggage. The deliberate reshaping of social systems by credentialed experts has been attempted many times before. The results are rarely as tidy as the models predicted.

The technocratic impulse is unmistakable. Scientists, we are told, should “provide a vision for a sustainable world,” “incentivize sustainable consumption,” and help place “economic value on earth system services.” The public’s role in this vision is largely passive: to be informed, persuaded, and guided toward preferred behaviors by those who “know better.”

The paper’s final sections make explicit what has been implicit all along. The authors openly identify themselves as political actors with defined ideological commitments:

“She identifies as a progressive Democrat, climate change scientist, academic, researcher, and local decision-maker.”

This transparency is commendable, but it fatally undermines the paper’s claim to be offering a general model for science in society. What is being proposed is not “scientists as policymakers” in the abstract, but scientists who share a specific political worldview using scientific authority to advance it.

That is advocacy, not objectivity.

The danger here is not that scientists lack intelligence or good intentions. It is that complex systems do not yield to centralized design, no matter how well credentialed the designers may be. When scientists become politicians, storytellers, and moral advocates, the incentives that safeguard scientific skepticism begin to erode. Dissent becomes denial. Uncertainty becomes obstruction. Alternative priorities become “anti-science.”

A society that values both knowledge and liberty must resist this convergence of expertise and power. Scientists play a vital role in informing public debate. They do not acquire special moral authority to govern simply by virtue of publishing papers. The moment science becomes indistinguishable from political advocacy, it forfeits the very credibility that made it valuable in the first place.

This paper does not defend science. It repurposes it.

And that should concern anyone who still believes that skepticism is a virtue rather than an obstacle.

Addendum: Earth Stewardship is a new journal, and likely to provide endless fodder for posts.

Earth Stewardship serves as a forum for the cultural exchange of diverse knowledge systems and collective understanding on how we can protect our planet. Earth Stewardship calls for a broad spectrum of scientifically and technologically innovative and groundbreaking contributions including cross-cultural perspectives from leading researchers, policymakers, traditional custodians of land and sea and indigenous communities. Earth Stewardship publishes applied and theoretical articles to promote a broad, intercultural, and participatory foundation for earth stewardship.