Divergent Perspectives on Expert Disagreement: Preliminary Evidence from Climate Science,Climate Policy,Astrophysics, and Public Opinion

We report the results of an exploratory study that examines the judgments of climate scientists, climate policy experts, astrophysicists, and non-experts (N?=?3367) about the factors that contribute to the creation and persistence of disagreement within climate science and astrophysics and about how one should respond to expert disagreement. We found that, as compared to non-experts, climate experts believe that within climate science (i) there is less disagreement about climate change, (ii) methodological factors play less of a role in generating disagreements, (iii) fewer personal or institutional biases influence climate research, and (iv) there is more agreement about which methods should be used to examine relevant phenomena we also observed that the uniquely American political context predicted experts’ judgments about some of these factors. We also found that, in regard to disagreements concerning cosmic ray physics, and commensurate with the greater inherent uncertainty and data lacunae in their field, astrophysicists working on cosmic rays were generally more willing to acknowledge expert disagreement, more open to the idea that a set of data can have multiple valid interpretations, and generally less quick to dismiss someone articulating a non-standard view as non-expert, than climate scientists were in regard to climate science.     

Frequent but Accurate: A Closer Look at Uncertainty and Opinion Divergence in Climate Change Print News

The prevalence of uncertainty and opinion divergence frames in climate change news reporting has generated concerns about the misrepresentation of scientific consensus. We first develop reliable, valid, and more nuanced measures of often-conflated types of uncertainty and opinion divergence frames. Then we analyse the co-occurrence combinations of those distinct types of opinions, sources, and topics in mainstream climate change news stories between 2005 and 2015. Results indicate that while uncertainty and opinion divergence frames are indeed frequent, once clearly distinguished, they in general accurately reference non-scientist sources (e.g. government officials) and topics that do not have a scientific consensus (e.g. the severity of climate change effects).