Oreskes is the daughter of Susan Eileen (née Nagin), a teacher,[4] and Irwin Oreskes, a professor of medical laboratory sciences and former dean of the School of Health Sciences at
Hunter College in New York.[5][6][7][8][9] She has three siblings:
Michael Oreskes, a journalist;
Daniel Oreskes, an actor; and Rebecca Oreskes, a writer and former U.S. Forest Service ranger.[7] She is
Jewish.[10]
Oreskes' academic career started in geology, then broadened into history and philosophy of science. Her work was concerned with scientific methods, model validation, consensus, dissent, as in 2 books on the often-misunderstood history of continental drift and plate tectonics. She later focused on climate change science and studied the doubt-creation industry opposing it.
She worked as a mining geologist for WMC (Western Mining Company) in outback South Australia, based in
Adelaide.[14]
Starting in 1984, she returned to academe 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.
The 1992 Hitzman-Oreskes-Einaudi paper on Cu-U-Au-REE ("Olympic Dam") deposits has been cited more than 700 times, according to Google Scholar.
She received a
National Science Foundation's Young Investigator Award in 1994.[15]
During 1991–1996 she was assistant professor of Earth Sciences and Adjunct Asst. Professor of History Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. She spent 1996–1998 as associate professor, History and Philosophy of Science, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University.[16]
As an example of studying scientific methods, she wrote on
model validation in the
Earth sciences,[17] cited more than 3200 times according to Google Scholar.
She moved to
University of California, San Diego in 1998 as associate professor in the Department of History and Program in Science Studies,[16] then as professor in that department 2005–2013, as well as adjunct professor of Geosciences (since 2007). She was named
provost of the
Sixth College 2008–2011.[18]
Since 2013, Oreskes has served as a professor at
Harvard University in the Department of the History of Science and Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences (by courtesy).[20]
Oreskes wrote an essay "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change", published in the
science and society section of the journal Science in December 2004.[23][24][25]
In the essay she reported an analysis of "928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and published in the
ISI database with the keywords 'global climate change'".[23] The essay stated the analysis was to 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 percent of the examined
abstracts either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, while none directly dissented from it. The essay received a great deal of media attention from around the world and has been cited by many prominent persons such as
Al Gore in the movie An Inconvenient Truth.
In 2007, Oreskes expanded her analysis, stating that approximately 20 percent of abstracts explicitly endorsed the consensus on climate change that: "Earth's climate is being affected by human activities". In addition, 55 percent of abstracts "implicitly" endorsed the consensus by engaging in research to characterize the ongoing and/or future
impact of climate change (50 percent of abstracts) or to mitigate predicted changes (5 percent). The remaining 25 percent focused on either
paleoclimate (10%) or developing measurement techniques (15%); Oreskes did not classify these as taking a position on contemporary global climate change.[26]
Merchants of Doubt is a 2010 book by Naomi Oreskes and
Erik M. Conway. Oreskes and Conway, both American historians of science, identify some remarkable parallels between the
climate change debate and earlier controversies over
tobacco smoking,
acid rain, and the
hole in the ozone layer. They argue that spreading doubt and confusion was the basic strategy of those opposing action in each case.[27] In particular,
Fred Seitz,
Fred Singer, and a few other contrarian scientists joined forces with conservative
think tanks and private corporations to challenge the scientific consensus on many contemporary issues.[28]
Most reviewers received it "enthusiastically".[29] One reviewer said that Merchants of Doubt is exhaustively researched and documented and may be one of the most important books of 2010. Another reviewer saw the book as his choice for best science book of the year.[30]
Other film released in 2020 was The Campaign Against the Climate, a
documentary directed by the Danish journalist and filmmaker
Mads Ellesøe.[32]
Controversies
Together with Erik Conway and Matthew Shindell, in 2008, Oreskes wrote the paper "From Chicken Little to Dr. Pangloss: William Nierenberg, Global Warming, and the Social Deconstruction of Scientific Knowledge"[33] which argued that
William Nierenberg as chairman reframed a
National Academy of Sciences committee report on climate change in 1983 into economic terms to avoid action on the topic. Nierenberg died in 2000 but a rebuttal was published in 2010 in the same journal[34] which said the paper contradicted the historical report and there was no evidence that any committee members disagreed with the report; the evidence was that the report reflected the consensus at the time.[35]
In 2015 Oreskes published an opinion piece in The Guardian, titled "There is a New Form of Climate Denialism to Look Out For – So Don't Celebrate Yet",[36] in which she said scientists who call for a continued use of nuclear energy are renewable-energy "deniers" and "myth" makers. She cited an article by four prominent climate scientists (
James Hansen,
Ken Caldeira,
Kerry Emanuel and
Tom Wigley) saying nuclear power must be used to
combat climate change.[37] An opinion piece by
Michael Specter in The New Yorker asserted that she had branded these four scientists as "climate deniers", and that her characterization was absurd, as they were among those who had done the most to push people to combat climate change.[38]
In 2015, news outlets reported that
ExxonMobil scientists had found evidence for climate change, but had nonetheless continued to raise doubts about it, a charge that Oreskes also reported.[39][40] The company criticized Oreskes and invited her and the public to read approximately 187 documents written between 1977 and 2014.[39] She and Geoffrey Supran did so, and reported their findings, which supported the original accounts, in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters in 2017.[39][41]
This section contains a list that has not been properly sorted. Specifically, it does not follow the
Manual of Style for lists of works (often, though not always, due to being in reverse-chronological order). See
MOS:LISTSORT for more information. Please
improve this section if you can.(May 2023)
Perspectives on Geophysics, Special Issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 31B, Oreskes, Naomi and James R. Fleming, eds., 2000.
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, Naomi Oreskes and
Erik M. Conway, Bloomsbury Press, 2010
Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality: On Care for Our Common Home,
Pope Francis, introduction by Naomi Oreskes, (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2015)
ISBN978-1-612-19528-5
This section contains a list that has not been properly sorted. Specifically, it does not follow the
Manual of Style for lists of works (often, though not always, due to being in reverse-chronological order). See
MOS:LISTSORT for more information. Please
improve this section if you can.(May 2023)
This section contains a list that has not been properly sorted. Specifically, it does not follow the
Manual of Style for lists of works (often, though not always, due to being in reverse-chronological order). See
MOS:LISTSORT for more information. Please
improve this section if you can.(May 2023)
Oreskes, Naomi, "Masked Confusion: A trusted source of health information misleads the public by prioritizing rigor over reality", Scientific American, vol. 329, no. 4 (November 2023), pp. 90–91.
Oreskes, Naomi, "Furious about
Firearms: Outrage, not hope, will move us to prevent
gun violence", Scientific American, vol. 329, no. 1 (July/August 2023), p. 96.
Oreskes, Naomi, "Social Security and Science: Attacks on the program rest on false 'facts' similar to ones used against climate change action", Scientific American, vol. 328, no. 5 (May 2023), p. 86.
Oreskes, Naomi, "The Eight-Billion-Person Bomb: A surging population – and the planet – cannot survive without help", Scientific American, vol. 328, no. 3 (March 2023), p. 76.
Oreskes, Naomi, "Breaking the Techno-Promise: We do not have enough time for
nuclear power to save us from the
climate crisis," Scientific American, vol. 326, no. 2 (February 2022), p. 74.
Oreskes, Naomi, "History Matters to Science: It helps to explain how cynical actors undermine the truth", Scientific American, vol. 323, no. 6 (December 2020), p. 81. "In our 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt,
Erik M. Conway and I showed how the same arguments [as those used to cast doubt on the link between
tobacco use and
lung cancer] were used to delay action on
acid rain, the
ozone hole and
climate change – and this year [2020] we saw the spurious "freedom" argument being used to disparage mask wearing [during the
COVID-19 pandemic]."
This section contains a list that has not been properly sorted. Specifically, it does not follow the
Manual of Style for lists of works (often, though not always, due to being in reverse-chronological order). See
MOS:LISTSORT for more information. Please
improve this section if you can.(June 2023)
^Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway (2010). Merchants of Doubt, Bloomsbury Press, p. 6.
^Rohr, Christian (2015). "Die Machiavellis der Wissenschaft. Das Netzwerk des Leugnens". Physik in unserer Zeit. 46 (2): 100.
doi:
10.1002/piuz.201590021.
^Oreskes, Naomi;
Conway, Erik M.; Shindell, Matthew (Winter 2008). "From Chicken Little to Dr. Pangloss: William Nierenberg, Global Warming, and the Social Deconstruction of Scientific Knowledge". Hist Stud Nat Sci. 38 (1): 109–152.
doi:
10.1525/hsns.2008.38.1.109.