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Naomi Oreskes is a Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego. She has been at UC San Diego since 1998. Recently, she has been appointed the next Provost of Sixth College at UC San Diego.

Background

Oreskes received her Bachelor of Science in Mining Geology from the Royal School of Mines of Imperial College, University of London in 1981, and worked as a Research Assistant in the Geology Department and as a Teaching Assistant in the departments of Geology, Philosophy and Applied Earth Sciences at Stanford University starting in 1984. She received her PhD in the Graduate Special Program in Geological Research and History of Science at Stanford in 1990. She received a National Science Foundation's Young Investigator Award in 1994.

She has worked as a consultant for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S National Academy of Sciences, and has also taught at Dartmouth, Harvard and New York University (NYU). She is also a member of the History of Science Society. She is the author or has contributed to a number of essays and technical reports in economic geology and science history in addition to three books:

• Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth, Edited with Homer Le Grand) (2003) Westview Press, ISBN 0-8133-4132-9
• The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science (1999) Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-511733-6
• Perspectives on Geophysics, Special Issue of Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 31B, Oreskes, Naomi and James R. Fleming, eds. 2000.

Sixth College

On February 5th, it was announced that Naomi Oreskes would become the second Sixth College Provost effective July 1, 2008.

Science and society essay

Oreskes wrote an essay on science and society Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change in the journal Science in December 2004.

In the essay she reported analysis of “928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and published in the ISI database with the keywords ‘climate change’”. . The essay stated the analysis was test the hypothesis that the drafting of reports and statements by societies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, American Association for the Advancement of Science and National Academy of Sciences might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions on anthropogenic climate change. After the analysis, she concluded that 75% of the examined abstracts either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, while none directly dissented from it. Contrary to her published description, however, the keywords Oreskes actually used in the ISI database search were 'global climate change'. This error on her part led to much subsequent confusion when others attempted to replicate her findings. To add to the confusion, her study did not specify that she had limited her search to "articles" rather than "all document types."

Oreskes' conclusions was also challenged by Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist who repeated her search, but specifying "all document types." This led to a different result than obtained by Oreskes; he enumerated the figure of backing the consensus view at closer to only 30% . Peiser's letter to Science on the subject was rejected by the editors, on the grounds that he already had disseminated his results widely on the internet.

The effect of Oreskes error, according to the Majority Fact of the Day from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (July 24, 2006), was that "her supposedly comprehensive research excluded about 11,000 papers" or "more than 90% of the papers" dealing with climate change. It also cited Peiser's view that “Oreskes entire argument is flawed as the whole ISI data set includes just 13 abstracts (less than 2%) that explicitly endorse what she has called the 'consensus view.’”

In 2007 she elaborated on this work, saying that approximately 20% of abstracts explicitly endorsed the consensus on climate change that: "Earth's climate is being affected by human activities". In addition, 55% of abstracts "implicitly" endorsed the consensus by engaging in research to characterize the ongoing and/or future impact of climate change (50% of abstracts) or to mitigate against predicted changes (5%). The remaining 25% of abstracts either focused on paleoclimate (10%) or developing measurement techniques (15%) and Oreskes considered these to be agnostic on the reality of climate change.

Oreskes has responded to some criticisms, including those from Richard Lindzen, with an editorial in The Washington Post.

References

1. Naomi Oreskes (December 3, 2004). "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change". Science. 306 (5702): 1686. doi:10.1126/science.1103618. (see also for an exchange of letters to Science)
2. Benny Peiser’s critique of Oreske’s essay on climate change consensus
3. Oreskes, Naomi (2007). "The scientific consensus on climate change: How do we know we're not wrong?". In Joseph F. DiMento, Pamela Doughman (ed.). Climate Change. MIT Press. ISBN 026204241X.
4. Oreskes, Naomi (December 26, 2004). "Undeniable Global Warming". Washington Post: B07.

External links

• Oreskes page at UCSD
• Naomi Oreskes, 2007, The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong? Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our Grandchildren, edited by Joseph F. C. DiMento and Pamela Doughman, MIT Press, pp. 65-99.

• Women earth scientists
• Living people