Dilemma: Past and Future of Science in Society | Dr. Ricky Rood's Climate Change Blog

"Since I have been a grown up scientist, I have been an advocate for open data and open access to knowledge. For example, if one is involved with a research instrument on a satellite, then I advocated that data from that satellite should be made available to the public as soon as there is high confidence in the quality control and verification that the data are indeed measuring what they were intended to measure. ...

In 2010, I was in a meeting with, for me, some pretty high rollers. The subject of the meeting was climate and climate change and, ultimately, trying to accelerate the exposure and use of climate knowledge in society. I was invited specifically to argue for open, community-based approaches. As the day went on, I was struck at the profound past looking, conservative, predisposition of scientists. There was the predominate concern that the data, knowledge, analyses, and syntheses from the science-based investigation of climate needed to be curated, reviewed, and provided by scientists and scientific organizations. This was how to provide credibility that the knowledge was good. This would contribute to trust.

Another attendee at the meeting, who came from the world of getting things done in political systems, whispered to me, “You have to keep talking or scientists are going to make themselves irrelevant to policy solutions to climate change.” 

To be clear, that statement was not about the availability of data; there are many open data sets. It was a statement about the culture of scientists, and the tensions that come from use of science in society...."