What happens when scientific research is imbued with politics

Science has served as the gold standard, and more importantly the mode, for finding new information about ourselves and the world we inhabit.

The Scientific Revolution ushered in a new era of modern science and pushed for finding empirical evidence to better understand the world around us.

Since then, science has grown into something we, in many cases, first turn to in order to find the facts and answers to questions.

However, over the years, several topics in science have become political and with that politicization a strong introduction of bias have creeped into the lab. With that the validity and reliability of the results come into question.

While a few topics in science have always been political, few scientific ideas and discourse have been as politicized and reached the same level as global warming.

The politicization of certain scientific and medical fields of study is very much apparent when you look at  the anti-vaccine movement, the evolution vs creationism debate and the ever-continuing abortion discussion.

All of these are hot topics but they pale in comparison to the politicization of global warming.

I think I can outright say that global warming is real and very much a looming threat to our planet, but the issue that is brought up is whether the threat as severe as the research indicates.

Let me start by explaining how global warming works.

You probably learned in your 7th grade science class that global warming is caused by a natural and known process called “the greenhouse effect” where molecules in the air called greenhouse gases catch and hold the heat from the sun in our atmosphere in order to heat the plant. The three most common greenhouse gases are water vapor, CO2, and CH4 (methane).

As the modern world became more industrialized, man has developed bigger and better machines and factories which in turn produce more greenhouse gas emissions.

Due to the increase in greenhouse gases being produced, more of these gases affect our atmosphere. More energy from the sun is trapped within the atmosphere causing  the Earth’s temperature to rise.

The entire process is much more complicated than that but that’s the general gist of it.

The second part of the question regarding the issues around the true severity of global warming focuses on bias.

As politics enters the realm of science so does the idea of bias. The scientific research is no longer about finding truths. It becomes about who provides funding and what does the researcher/financier believe.

According to The Guardian, a prominent climate change denier Willie Soon “received a total of $1.25m from Exxon Mobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a foundation run by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers.” This speaks directly to the power of the financier to imbuing scientific research with bias.

With studies on global warming, as with any other kind of scientific research, money talks. But global warming is different in that  politics is a necessity for actions to be implemented towards stopping it.

How does politics enter the realm of global warming? The discourse surrounding global warming becomes political through diplomacy.

Global warming is an international issue which requires an international solution. This then calls for diplomacy and diplomacy require politics and what lives and breathes in politics – bias.

Once we invite bias into the research process, we begin to jeopardize the internal and external validity and reliability of the science we are studying. We begin to pick sides and become divided on a topic that has been proven.

With one side pushing for the acceptance of the claim and the other calls for pseudoscience, the problem isn’t solved or even discussed since we are too busy debating if we even have a problem.

What we should be doing is accepting the science behind global warming and from that debate the solutions to the problem. It is possible for something to be implemented, and a more permanent solution to be obtained.