(Un)Divide and Conquer

A few weeks back, I bet the Seed magazine editors pounded their desks when they saw this sunday New York Times article on climate change and social scientists.

Not to worry guys, your piece in the June issue, while covering much the same ground, examines one important obstacle to climate action the Times ignored: the division within the sciences:

Social science may be able to save the world from climate change, but only if there’s a change of heart”‰”””‰not just among the public, but among natural scientists and engineers.

In the Seed story, Baruch Fischhoff, of Carnegie Mellon, asserts that many natural scientists

do not believe in the social sciences. They grudgingly see that people matter, but they are not willing to share power with social sciences, or to entertain the thought that their own message is not the right one and that you need to include the social scientists in a strategic way.”

That message, it seems, is starting to gain some traction.