An apparently universal cornerstone of human cultures rests on our ability to engage with each other through the stories we tell. Because well told stories are creative leaps that ignite imaginations and illuminate the unexplored recesses of possibility in others, communicating our internal thoughts and ideas with the people around us is prone to misunderstanding and controversy. Even when the underlying structural components of fact, accuracy, and narrative arc are sound, the social impact of some stories can be unpredictable, threatening, and irreversibly disruptive. In these highly motivated times of activism and ill-considered beliefs, the stories being told across the commons, within and between organizations and the people they serve, are being shaped by the limits of organizational charters and bounded by the social contracts governing the communities within which they operate. This uniquely human social construct demands that we the people work hard to hone our grasp of the issues and our redouble our commitment to listening to the differing storylines voiced in a chaotic but essential civic discourse taking place near the very foundation of our collective human progress. Consider this case in point, the front-runners for the post of science advisor to the new administration are not comfortable with the state of climate science. William Happer, an eminent physicist at Princeton University who as I write this is considered the leading candidate for the post, was quoted by the Guardian newspaper as saying: “There’s a whole area of climate so-called science that is really more like a cult.” Reading on, it becomes clear that Happer is not saying that climate change isn’t real, but that, in his opinion, the work isn’t as solid as it needs to be. His concern appears to be that making definitive claims before they can be justified by the data risks the credibility of the scientific community as a whole. Deeper into the article Happer is quoted as saying: “There is this special need for government science to be especially clean and without fault, … It’s OK to have press conferences, but before you do that you should have the findings carefully vetted.” The reality is that careful vetting the crux of the scientific method. It’s behind the FDA’s approval process and its hesitance when it comes to fast tracking the process. This direct quote from the Guardian story reveals Happer’s abiding mistrust of the climate scientists themselves: (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/15/trump-science-adviser-william-happer-climate-change-cult) Happer said he began to question the emerging consensus view on climate change while working as director of research at the Department of Energy as part of the George W Bush administration. Climate scientists would “grudgingly” present their work to administrators, he claims, while those in other fields would share their results with enthusiasm. “I would ask questions but they were evasive and wouldn’t answer,” he said. “This experience really soured me on the community. I started reading up and I realised why they weren’t answering the questions: because they didn’t have good answers. It was really at that point that I began to get seriously worried about climate as a science.” The main theme of story is clearly about a collective concern about a potentially disruptive and repressive change to our national dialogue with the scientific community. As it is being told it weaves the question of trust into the narrative as a subordinate voice that comes in toward the end of the piece. All things considered, it seems to me that we the people should be asking Happer how he intends to address his concern with the quality of our Nation’s climate science without sequestering the datasets and peer reviewed publications. After all, wouldn’t it be bad science to destroy over 4 decades of research and legitimate inquiry
