1 Cooperating with Nico

My interest in climate change dates back some 20 years when I was conducting a case study on the protection of the ozone layer. At that time climate change was seen as the “next big thing” after the problem of the depletion of the ozone layer had been ‘solved’. My subsequent interest was to explore the differences and similarities between the two cases and to find out what ‘learning’ from one case could mean for the other.

At around that time I met Nico Stehr at a workshop in Bielefeld entitled “Climate Communications as a Research Field for the Social Sciences”. It was held at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Bielefeld in September 1995. In the pub discussions afterwards we discovered that we both had an interest in social theory and environmental sociology, especially in climate change. Ever since, we have co-operated on numerous projects in both fields.

I have greatly benefitted from Nico’s experience and advice over the years as we embarked on different projects. One of the first papers we wrote was about sociological tradition and the natural environment. For this article we explored the relevance of Werner Sombart , an author whom I had not read in detail before. Nico prompted me to do so, and we pursued the work on Sombart with a paper for the Journal of Classical Sociology (Grundmann/Stehr 2001) and an edited volume of his key publications in English, for Transaction Publishers (Stehr/Grundmann 2001). The chairman of the publishing house, the late Irving Horowitz, was keen to publish the book and proud of the result. I still have his letter thanking us for “making accessible the writings of one of Germany’s Giants of thought”.

Quite a few years ago we started a book project called The Power of Knowledge. It was published in 2011 in German, and in 2012 in English (Grundmann/Stehr 2012c). I think it is fair to say that we underestimated the task we were facing. In the book we are dealing with three knowledge intensive policy cases, Keynesianism, “race science”, and climate change . We have a theoretical introductory and a concluding chapter which provides the intellectual framework for our argument. However, the challenge of complexity was truly daunting as we were writing in tandem, on three cases, in two languages—writing simultaneously in German and English is Nico’s preferred way of publishing, but not mine. Eventually we managed to finish both manuscripts at the same time and had them accepted by the publishers without major changes. I think we are both quite pleased with the product.

You may get the impression that co-authorship with Nico is stress. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I just described in terms of challenge was self-imposed through the ambition of the book projects. Cooperating with Nico on manuscripts is uncomplicated. He trusts that the changes you make—both with regard to additions or deletions—are made for a good reason, and he never fights over petty things of style or wording.

Another recent product of our cooperation is a book on Experts, again published at the same time by a German and a British publisher. This book took much less time to complete, also because it is much shorter.

As we embarked on the issue of climate change and its social and sociological significance Nico introduced me to Hans von Storch, a climatologist who had become interested in the social and political issues around climate science. In the meantime, Hans von Storch together with a few other people including myself set up the blog KlimazwiebelFootnote 1 just after the Climategate affair and the Copenhagen summit.

2 Climategate

In what follows I propose to examine the scandal known as Climategate, exploring Merton’s analysis of the scientific ethos. I will draw on previous publications on the matter (especially Grundmann 2012a, b).

In late 2009, several hundred emails from a server hosted by the University of East Anglia were made public. This sparked a public debate known as Climategate (see among many sources Hulme/Ravetz 2009; Pearce 2010; Grundmann 2012a, b; Lahsen 2013; Anderegg/Goldsmith 2014; Garud et al. 2014; Maibach et al. 2014; Ramírez-i-Ollé 2015).

After the release of the emails commentators raised the question of whether or not the exposed behavior was within bounds of ‘normal’ scientific behavior. There were two scientists who drew most attention, Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the university of East Anglia, and Michael Mann, a professor of Earth System Science at Pennsylvania State University.

In one email message, Phil Jones spoke of a ‘trick’ to “hide the decline” of specific temperature records (email, 16 November 1999). This referred to a solution to the problem of representing diverging temperature curves based on different datasets, one from paleoclimate reconstructions obtained through tree rings, the other from thermometer readings. Both had been spliced together, hiding the obvious divergence between the two. Just when the thermometer curve showed a steep rise, the tree ring curve showed a decline.

In their defense, Jones, Mann and their supporters said that the emails had been quoted out of context and that the word ‘trick’ meant something innocent, a technical procedure of representing data. In another email, Jones said he would prevent research papers by competitors from being published, even if he had to redefine what peer review means (email, 8 July 2004). Jones convinced his senior management at East Anglia not to provide data under the Freedom of Information Act because of the type of people who were making the requests. According to the government information commissioner, some refusals to comply with freedom of information requests were in breach of the law but could no longer be prosecuted. Anxiety about freedom of information requests led Jones to suggest that his collaborators delete emails. This would have covered up some of the dubious practices behind the scenes. Also, there is evidence of attempting to keep critical papers out of the peer reviewed literature while at the same time fast-tracking papers from within the circle of the likeminded. The same differential treatment has been suspected in the process of compiling assessment reports for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007 (AR4).

Mann was the main author of a historical temperature reconstruction known as “hockey stick”, suggesting “unrivalled warming” in the late 20th century. The political implications of this claim are suggestive: if record warming occurs after industrialization, it is likely to be due to anthropogenic influences. Before that, skeptics had always pointed to warmer periods in recent history despite the absence of large-scale fossil fuel burning. This was taken as rationale for doing nothing with regard to greenhouse gas emissions. For them, the emails proved that the temperature record in the hockey stick had been manipulated. Such political dynamite was bound to create high levels of attention.

In the meantime, several investigations about this issue have been carried out (see IAC 2010; Muir Russell 2010; Oxburgh 2010). While the general tenor of commentators is that these inquiries vindicated the accused climate scientists, and because no tampering with the data could be detected and many other studies came to the same or similar conclusions, this verdict does not address the question if there was malpractice. It is no surprise that skeptics saw these inquiries as a whitewash. While none put the square blame on any climate researcher it is probably fair to say that the reviews were not probing too deeply. For example, Phil Jones was never asked if he actually deleted potentially incriminating emails (Pearce 2010).

One review pointed out that scientists at CRU seemed to have dismissed critical enquiries all too quickly, which was problematic and counterproductive. They had violated the Freedom of Information legislation in one case although the offence had lapsed and was not brought for prosecution (Pearce 2010: 147). Leaving legal issues aside, climate scientists have been accused of having developed a bunker mentality. Others call it ‘tribalism’, the differential treatment of the insiders and the outsiders of the dominant research paradigm (on the notion of the established and the outsiders as sociological categories, see Elias/Scotson 2008).

One review, led by Sir Muir Russell, came to the conclusion that the visual representation of the hockey stick was problematic:

One of the allegations against CRU is that they have not been sufficiently frank in communicating uncertainties about their reconstructions into the public domain. This is particularly relevant to graphical presentation such as the “hockey stick” which has taken on iconic significance. Images have a great power to persuade, and this is particularly true when complex issues are faced by lay audiences, who may often infer a level of certainty that does not in fact exist. The danger is obviously heightened where an image is being used to support arguments for policy change. Therefore, if images are likely to be used in this way, it is essential that qualifications such as uncertainties are given a closely coupled prominence and explanation. (Muir Russell 2010: 40–1)

This statement from one of the inquiries exemplifies the unease felt with some of the practices of the inner core of climate science with regard to the most powerful, and most contested, symbolic statement of anthropogenic warming.

3 Merton’s Norms of Science and Criticisms

This sketch looks like an invitation to the sociologist of science to apply theories of scientific ethos. Most prominent, but largely forgotten today, is Robert Merton’s framework where he distinguishes between four aspects of scientific norms: universalism , communism, disinterestedness and organized skepticism (later known under the acronym CUDOS).

In a 1978 paper, “The Ethos of Science Revisited”, Nico Stehr gave the following summary of Merton’s norms:

1. Universalism prescribes that knowledge claims in science should be evaluated and accepted or rejected according to impersonal cognitive criteria rather than the ‘personal or social attributes of their protagonist’ and that careers and opportunities in science should be based on achievement and competence only. (The choice of words perhaps is significant; the expression ‘should be’ denotes a prescription aspired to but not necessarily a description of consistent scientific practice.) 2. Communism refers to the interrelated ‘communal’ (public) character of scientific knowledge claims; the corresponding limited ‘rights’ of the originator(s) to recognition and esteem, resulting in the distinctive and anomalous character of intellectual property in science; and the imperative not to withhold knowledge claims —an imperative reinforced by the ‘incentive of recognition, which is, of course, contingent upon publication’. 3. Disinterestedness, the moral imperative at the institutional level of science, is largely self-explanatory; it points to a distinctive structure of control exercised over the individual motives of scientists. 4. Organized Skepticism is ‘both a methodological and an institutional mandate’. Knowledge claims should not be accepted without (socially organized) scrutiny but should be warranted with reference to the technical norms of science. (Stehr 1978: 174)

Nico Stehr follows Merton in that the norms are seen as both moral and cognitive. As Merton (1973: 270) notes, “[t]he mores of science possess a methodologic rationale but they are binding, not only because they are procedurally efficient, but because they are believed right and good. They are moral as well as technical prescriptions.”

Merton suggests two different mechanisms to make the scientific ethos work, one of them functional, the other moral. The German sociologist Luhmann (1968) affirmed the functionalist rationale, postulating social mechanisms to operate as cognitive mechanisms in science. Stehr comments approvingly:

Thus, a definite correlation between moral imperatives and the advancement of scientific knowledge is implied. For instance, ‘objectivity precludes particularism. The circumstance that scientifically verified formulations refer in that specific sense to objective sequences and correlations militates against all efforts to impose particularistic criteria of validity’ (Merton 1973: 270). In other words, the norms do not merely regulate the behavior or the social relations of members of the scientific community ; also, in distinct ways, they enhance the institutional goal of science, which is the continuing extension of certified knowledge claims .’ It is therefore clear that, in Merton’s view, the norms of science derive from the purpose of science: ‘The institutional imperatives (mores) derive from the goal and the methods. The entire structure of technical [cognitive] and moral norms implements the final objective’ (Merton 1973: 270). The normatively prescribed social relations of science therefore complement, if not implement, the development of knowledge in science and vice versa. The dialectics of social and cognitive norms are a part of the institution of science. (Stehr 1978: 175–6)

Merton wrote in the 1940s, and his essay received broad attention in the postwar period, which was partly due to the prospering of structural functionalism at the time. However, with its demise and the rise of the new sociology of science, Merton’s scientific ethos lost visibility and plausibility. Several criticisms have been leveled against Merton’s CUDOS, which I will discuss below. As I will show, Mertonians gave into their critics in one important aspect.

Merton based his analysis on the reading of scientists’ biographies and autobiographies and some anecdotal evidence but never “spent any time in natural scientific or engineering settings” (Shapin 2008: 114). His basic idea was that science is a specific social institution which is governed by specific social and cognitive norms. These norms become binding for the actors operating in this institution, the scientists become socialized into it. The norms are functional for science, but also for society. As society establishes a special sphere for the production of knowledge, it can rely on the knowledge thus created, provided it is subject to the criteria listed in the norms. Science produces reliable knowledge.Footnote 2

At the same time the norms that govern science are a kind of regulative idea for the rest of society because critical views and open and public debates are vital for a democratic society. Thus, a special role can be claimed for science. Science seems less governed by interests, and scientists appear to be less partial compared to other actors.

However, one must not make the mistake to assume that scientists as persons are somehow special, or morally superior. Merton warns that the search for noble motives or moral exceptionalism in scientists is in vain: “A passion for knowledge, idle curiosity, altruistic concern with the benefit to humanity, and a host of other special motives have been attributed to the scientist. The quest for distinctive motives appears to have been misdirected.” (Merton 1973: 276) . In an earlier paper Merton had indicated that “scientists may be most variously motivated—by a disinterested desire to learn, by hope of economic gain, by active (or, as Veblen calls it, by idle) curiosity, by aggression or competition, by egotism or altruism. But the same motives in different institutional settings take different social expressions […]” (Merton 1949: 532) .

What matters for Merton is the institutional setting in which the scientist operates: “It is rather a distinctive pattern of institutional control of a wide range of motives which characterizes the behavior of scientists. For once the institution enjoins disinterested activity, it is to the interest of scientists to conform on pain of sanctions and, insofar as the norm has been internalized, on pain of psychological conflict” (Merton 1973: 276). According to Merton, there are two mechanisms which align the scientist with the scientific ethos, i.e., institutional sanctions and psychological stress. We will bear these in mind and return to them later.

Merton’s norms were subject to criticism from various authors who advanced different arguments. So what did Merton’s critics have to say? And what implications does this have for the evaluation of Climategate?

Again, Nico Stehr’s exposition is a useful starting point. In the above-mentioned article, “The Ethos of Science Revisited,” he provided a summary of critical arguments, distinguishing four types of critical questions: Are the norms of science peculiar to science? Do the norms actually affect the conduct of scientists? Are moral imperatives of scientific practice indeed moral? Is the ethos of science beneficial for the development of scientific knowledge ?

The literature on Merton’s ethos that has emerged in the meantime can be summarized in three hypotheses, running counter to Merton’s framework:

  1. 1.

    Norms and moral rules are universal, not special for scientists

  2. 2.

    Scientists are self-interested like everyone else

  3. 3.

    Communism has been replaced by intellectual property rights.

4 Climategate and Scientific Norms

In this section I will present relevant criticisms of Merton’s CUDOS and relate them to the example of Climategate.

According to the first criticism (Schmaus 1983: 13), scientists’ norms are not different from others. For example, cases of “scientific fraud involve the violation not of a special moral rule applying to scientists but rather a general moral rule requiring that one’s job or role-related responsibilities be fulfilled honestly, whatever they may be. In the case of scientists, this general moral rule entails that they fulfill their obligations as scientists. The responsibilities of scientists, in turn, consist largely in maintaining the highest standards of intellectual rigor.” In other words, there are no special moral norms operating in science. But from the fact that scientists are not different from or ‘better’ than other citizens it does not follow that they are exempt from general moral codes.

Applied to Climategate this would mean that hiding data and giving preferential treatment to allies is in violation of such general norms.

According to the second criticism, scientists always act out of self-interest: They assess the work of others since they depend on their recognition. They invest and accumulate credibility capital which is convertible into other resources (Bourdieu 1975; Latour/Woolgar 1986). Normative statements about scientific practice such as Merton’s are ideological façades for the defense of the autonomy of science (Mulkay 1976).

In this version there would be no basis to judge the Climategate affair as unethical. Scientists get away with whatever others tolerate, and the most successful scientists will write the history of the field.

According to the third criticism, the norm of communism is being or has been replaced by the norm of private intellectual property. Since the creation of national competitiveness policies in the early to mid-1970s, the academic world has been experiencing a period of ‘renormalization’.

As early as in the early 1970s it was observed (e.g. by Sklair 1973: 113) that “much, if not most, contemporary science is carried out under conditions of formal or informal secrecy—necessitated by national security matters and matters of economic interest.”

The message with regard to Climategate would be that as far as data secrecy is concerned, climate scientists were acting in line with an emerging and perhaps broadly shared practice.

Other critics, such as Barry Barnes (Barnes/Dolby 1970) or Mulkay (1976) argued that it is only cognitive rather than social norms that are operative in science. Cognitive norms relate to technical aspects of scientific work and dictate specific methods and practices. Normative standards are little more than ideological façades for defending the autonomy of science.

In addition, scientists’ self-interest was a topic for authors like Barnes (1971) and for French scholars Bourdieu and Latour who made the case for an interest based action theory for the analysis of science. One example is the peer review system for which scientists are not rewarded in financial terms. So what prompts their participation? According to Bourdieu and Latour they profit in various, and mostly intangible, ways. They appropriate new information which they can use to their advantage. Latour (1994) coined the memorable phrase of the “scientist as a wild capitalist” accumulating academic reputation which, then, can be exchanged into other forms of capital, thus climbing the career ladder and gaining social prestige.

Collins (1985) emphasized that career opportunities and influence in science are unequally distributed. This is an empirical argument supposed to undermine Merton’s norms of universalism and disinterestedness. It is above all core groups in science that have special power and influence (see also Crane 1972). They are located in a few prestige institutions and are well connected among themselves. They control access to publications, define the important research agendas and define quality. This social process of status attribution, recognition, and gatekeeping runs like a leitmotiv through the history of science. And it is a more general social mechanism, too.

Unanswered by these criticisms is the question if (and how) one can identify scientific misconduct (assuming it is still something to be worried about) and how it can be minimized.

Another set of empirical studies in the 1970s undermined the norm of communism with the rise of intellectual property regimes. According to Metlay (2006) this has led to a re-normalization of science. The norm of communism is increasingly displaced by the norm of protection of intellectual property. A large proportion of modern science is produced under conditions of secrecy. Military and economic interests dictate these practices. There may be good reasons to justify the secrecy of some knowledge (albeit the rise of global social media makes this less practical). But such arguments come increasingly under close scrutiny. For example, the Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier was initially prevented by the Dutch government from publishing his work on the H5N1 virus for fear that terrorists might use the knowledge in a biological weapon. Here, two motives of Merton’s analysis intertwine, the scientific ethos and the critical public discourse, with the freedom of speech being crucial to both. The case went to the courts, so science lost its autonomy in this instance (Enserink 2015).

One should think that the above comments and criticisms would have led to a substantial disagreement between Mertonians and others. However, Merton did not enter the fray, his wife Zuckerman (1988a, b) and Ben-David (1991) being the most active. Both accepted the framing of the question as an empirical question, i.e. whether scientists in reality behave ethically (in Merton’s sense). Ben-David (1991: 479f) claims that scientists are norm-following (“there is little doubt […] that scientists observe the rules of their professional ethic in the allocation of rewards and punishment of fraud and other kinds of deviance”). Ben-David admits that some studies show that this is not always the case (“The outcome of these is inconclusive: answers to some questions show acceptance of norms, while others suggest rejection”).

However, the following or violating of norms presupposes that such norms exist. Key to the explanation of this difference is the special role of scientific controversies. Whenever scientists are embroiled in scientific controversies ethical norms recede into the background. In such situations scientists “are indeed willing to transgress practically all the norms enumerated by Merton […]: they may withhold findings in order to prevent advantage from competitors, they make judgments on the basis of personal prejudice, interpret results arbitrarily in order to fit theories, and so forth.” Ben-David argues that scientists participating in a scientific controversy are not to be judged according to CUDOS: “scientists at this stage act like litigants concerned more with putting together a convincing case than with ultimate truth. They are not, and are not expected to be, dispassionate” (Ben-David 1991: 480).

This indicates that the email scandal could be seen as within the scientific ethos, as defined by Ben-David. In controversies, passionate scientists use various tactics to further their goals, “like litigants putting together a convincing case”.

However, Merton’s defenders did not develop an argument in terms of “if the norms are not followed, so much the worse for science”, or “norms get violated but we agree that they have been violated and therefore we agree that the norm exists,” or “norms are changing over time”. Instead, they took the norms as empirical descriptions of actual practices. Perhaps this was prompted by Merton’s own emphasis “that there have been comparatively few empirical instances of deviant responses to particular norms of science” (Merton 1973: 321).

This would be supported by a comment Merton made in 2000, to Nico and myself, on a draft paper which would appear much later in print (Grundmann/Stehr 2003). Merton took aim at our somewhat sloppy dismissal of norms as mythical and self-serving. He explained that in the vast majority of cases scientists follow the norms:

As we know, if conforming behavior far outruns deviant behavior, institutional norms are not merely ‘mythic’ or ‘self-serving’. Your ‘of course’ about scientists ‘repeatedly’ deviat[ing] de facto from the norm strongly implies quantitative evidence that deviations occur to such a great extent that the norm is no longer operative. But is that truly the case here? After all, the 1942 paper on science as a social institution is followed (in The Sociology Of Science) by the 1957 paper on the institutionally distinctive reward system of science, a piece that goes on at some length to analyze the institutional roots of deviant behavior (such as faked evidence and plagiary). But it is not suggested that such deviant behavior occurs on a magnitude that renders the norms as merely mythic. (Robert Merton, email to Nico Stehr, 2 August 2000, original emphases).

In the mentioned paper (originally entitled “Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science”), Merton says:

To say that these frequent conflicts over priority are rooted in the egotism of human nature , then, explains next to nothing; to say that they are rooted in the contentious personalities of those recruited by science may explain part, but not enough; to say, however, that these conflicts are largely a consequence of the institutional norms of science itself comes closer, I think, to the truth. For, as I shall suggest, it is these norms that exert pressure upon scientists to assert their claims, and this goes far toward explaining the seeming paradox that even those meek and unaggressive men, ordinarily slow to press their own claims in other spheres of life, will often do so in their scientific work. (Merton 1957: 639)

Merton maintains that CUDOS impels scientists to make a forceful case for their claims and discoveries. It is not their character or personality that explains the conflictual nature of such exchanges but the institutional norm that they should do so.

Merton did not comment on the nature of scientific controversies as such, and he certainly did not say that CUDOS would impel scientists to abandon some elements of it—this would have created a paradox. But critics and supporters of Merton agree that it is unrealistic to expect scientists to behave in disinterested ways when engaged in controversies.Footnote 3 If this is the case, what yardstick remains to identify malpractice in scientific controversies?

Upon reflection it appears that Merton’s defenders have embarked on a flawed strategy in order to diffuse criticism, leaving the matter a hostage to fortune. They may have assumed, or hoped, that controversies would be the exception rather than the norm in scientific research. Others have suggested that we are faced with conditions of uncertainty , scientific controversies, and therefore “post-normal science”.

5 Institutional Responses?

Together with Silvio Funtowicz , Ravetz (1993) has proposed a theory of post-normal science—that is, situations in which facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions urgent. This means that we are dealing with political controversies which are mapped onto scientific controversies.

Ravetz is one of the few social science commentators who are critical of the Climategate scientists under discussion. According to him, some leading climate scientists were induced (by skeptical interest groups) to adopt

a simple, forcefully argued position which then had to be defended, no matter what: once the position was adopted, its proponents became invested in it, and attached to it, in all sorts of ways, institutional and personal. And I suspect that a simplified, even simplistic claim, was more comfortable for these scientists than one where complexity and uncertainty were acknowledged. (Ravetz 2010)

The nature of the political constellation called for support from the like-minded, and Ravetz admits having being lured into such an attitude for some time. But after ‘Climategate’ he exposed the “nature trick” as malpractice. Ravetz speaks of the corruption of climate science in this context, invoking Merton, if not in name, then certainly in spirit, as this quote exemplifies:

We found ourselves in another crusading ‘War’, like those on (non-alcoholic) Drugs and on ‘Terror’. This new War, on Carbon, was equally simplistic, and equally prone to corruption and failure. Global warming science became the core element of this major worldwide campaign to save the planet. Any weakening of the scientific case would have amounted to a betrayal of the good cause, as well as a disruption of the growing research effort. All critics, even those who were full members of the scientific peer community, had to be derided and dismissed. As we learned from the CRU e-mails, they were not considered to be entitled to the normal courtesies of scientific sharing and debate. Requests for information were stalled, and as one witty blogger has put it, ‘peer review’ was replaced by ‘pal review’. (Ravetz 2011: 151)

So the question arises how to avoid morally bankrupt behavior in science. Here Ravetz draws on the distinction between normal and post-normal science and their different regimes of quality control :

In traditional ‘normal’ science, the peer community, performing the functions of quality-assurance and governance , is strictly confined to the researchers who share the paradigm. In the case of ‘professional consultancy’, the clients and/or sponsors also participate in governance. We have argued that in the case of post-normal science, the ‘extended peer community’, including all affected by the policy being implemented, must be fully involved. Its particular contribution will depend on the nature of the core scientific problem, and also on the phase of investigation. Detailed technical work is a task for experts, but quality-control on even that work can be done by those with much broader expertise . (Ravetz 2011: 151)

It has to be noted that Merton, when talking about potential academic misconduct, was thinking of plagiarism and of claims to priority of a discovery. Those who could be harmed and those who had to make judgments about the quality of the science were competing scientists working in the same field. With regard to Climategate we see different actors and problems. The competitors were not only academic colleagues working in the same field (such as Hans von Storch) but outsiders (such as Steve McIntyre). Much controversy was spun around the allegations coming from the latter’s blog Climate Audit.Footnote 4 No priority claims were involved, nor were there charges of plagiarism. Accusations were made about misrepresentation of data and about failing to engage in a proper exchange about the issues raised. As the public dispute escalated, accusations of fraud, political bias, and corruption were added, as well.

Ravetz’s suggestion about quality control indicates that scientists should have realized that there were relevant others who may have been outside of the research community, or core group, but still able to comment on their work in an informed and competent way. The British inquiry led by Alastair Muir Russell came to a similar conclusion:

Arguably the most significant change produced by the blogosphere is a transformation in the degree of openness now required of scientists whose work directly affects policy making. Without such openness, the credibility of their work will suffer because it will always be at risk of allegations of concealment and hence mal-practice. (Muir Russell 2010: 42)

But the review stops short of calling for an “extended peer review”, as envisaged by Ravetz and colleagues. Rather, the problem is seen in terms of a more effective communication of scientific results to the public: “Therefore, the Review would urge all scientists to learn to communicate their work in ways that the public can access and understand; and to be open in providing the information that will enable the debate, wherever it occurs, to be conducted objectively.” (ibid.)

6 Sanctions?

Merton conceived of scientists as morally equivalent to other members of society. No special character or motivation was seen as crucial for the scientific endeavor in society; several contradictory motives that drive scientists were identified. The task was to create the right institutions to put these motivations to work. The scientific ethos works on the individual level only if it has been internalized. Scientific norms can be assumed to be operative only if scientists have accepted them. Merton assumed that internalization would be achieved through socialization, the process by which a novice becomes a full member of the scientific community . He also identified two mechanisms of sanctions, institutional disapproval and psychological stress. Both sanctions would enforce the scientific ethos in practice.

With regard to the Climategate affair, we can perhaps see an interesting contrast between two protagonists. Neither the University of East Anglia (Phil Jones’s employer) nor Pennsylvania State (Michael Mann’s employer) reprimanded their climate scientists. However, Jones is on record as describing his actions to the UK parliamentary inquiry somewhat self-deprecatingly: “I’ve obviously written some really awful emails” (The Guardian, 1 March 2010). He considered committing suicide in the aftermath of the scandal (The Telegraph, 7 February 2010). This could be seen as a manifestation of psychological conflict, as mentioned by Merton. It would indicate that Jones had internalized some relevant norms of science and that the email debates had brought to light something that troubled him.

Michael Mann seems to have reacted differently. To be fair, he was (and still is) involved in various legal battles related to his actions. According to his Wikipedia entry he regretted not objecting to Jones’s request to delete emails because of FOI requests (although the source—“Penn State climate professor: I’m a skeptic”. The Morning Call, 3 January 2010, is no longer traceable). If this may be seen as a tactical ploy, it still would show adherence to some kind of scientific ethos, if only symbolically.

In 2012, Mann published a book entitled The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, with the subtitle: Dispatches from the Front Lines. If you think you are in war, pretty much anything goes. There may be the Geneva Convention, so to speak, but certainly no scientific ethos, no matter how it is defined. There are two parties to a violent conflict and both will blame the other for provoking acts of violence. There is, of course, no real violence but the metaphor is apt as it directs our attention to the suspension of normal procedures, norms and values. This logic leads to an assimilation of the conflicting parties with regard to their repertoire of weaponry.

The war metaphor lends some legitimacy to highly questionable practices. Taking into account that there is polarization and antagonism, the metaphor of an arms race was used by Bruno Latour who wrote, long before Climategate: “In this, the ‘proof race’ is similar to the arms race because the feedback mechanism is the same. Once one competitor starts building up harder facts, the others have to do the same or else submit” (Latour 1986). This captures the virtuality of real conflict, stopping short of exercising violence, and the need on both sides to find more and better resources to vanquish the other side. It still leaves open the question of what means are allowed to reach this end.

7 Conclusion

The first sentence in Merton’s essay A note on Science and Democracy reads: “Science, as any other activity involving social collaboration, is subject to shifting fortunes” (Merton 1942: 115). This is as true today as it was back then. Social reality has changed since the publication of this essay. Does this mean that Merton’s postulated norms of science are an anachronism? And if so, what criteria do we have to evaluate scientific behavior?

Mertonians have granted the suspension of the scientific ethos during scientific controversies. This position seems not warranted. It is by no means unreasonable to expect that scientists involved in such disputes follow some kind of norms. When scientists become advocates (putting together a case) this does not mean that they are beyond any normative expectations.

The email scandal which made headlines in late 2009 cast a spotlight on a small but dedicated community of climate scientists who felt beleaguered by critics. Some of them allegedly reacted by withholding research results and trying to manipulate the peer review process and abort skeptical criticism. All of this happened because skeptics claimed they had adjusted data to make them fit their preconceived ideas and theories. If one takes Ben-David’s position seriously, there would be nothing wrong with this. However, the moral outrage witnessed on the occasion is testament to the fact that the behavior was seen as deeply problematic. The incriminated scientists and their supporters also accepted the premise and tried to justify what they did in moral terms. This seems to indicate that there is a standard after all, according to which malpractice can be identified, even if the standard is not codified anywhere. Several investigations of the affair concluded that this community showed a bunker mentality and too little openness and transparency. This suggests that several, if not all of Merton’s norms were touched by the affair. However, the same investigations also showed appreciation towards the scientists’ behavior, as they had been under immense pressure. Again, we see the argument being made that scientists, after all, are human, all-too-human and may use unethical means to defend themselves.

It is unlikely Merton would have accepted such an argument. His norms do no longer inform debates about scientific behavior. In its place we see a range of reactions, including a justification of the alleged malpractice and an appeal to professional standards and the honesty of the researcher. In a recent study, Bray/von Storch (2014: 1) report the results of an online survey on climate scientists’ attitude toward the norms of science.

The data suggests that while Merton’s CUDOS remain the overall guiding moral principles, they are not fully endorsed or present in the conduct of climate scientists: there is a tendency to withhold results until publication, there is the intention of maintaining property rights, there is external influence defining research and the tendency to assign the significance of authored work according to the status of the author rather than content of the paper. These are contrary to the norms of science as proposed by Robert K. Merton.

Empirical research of this kind faces the problem of the social desirability bias: Scientists might tell you what they think is expected from them. Nevertheless, the authors were able to distinguish between the agreement to the norms in general and the specific attitudes toward individual items of the ethos. It might be useful to compare different research fields and to take into account the degree to which controversies are being fought out.

It is perhaps ironic that the line of defense taken by Mertonians has undermined Merton’s ethos as effectively as the attack launched by his critics. Perhaps it is time to re-conceptualize the ethos of science by aligning it with either professional codes of conduct or moral norms more generally. In recent years, several rules and procedures in science have been opened up for discussion, among them issues such as how to deal with conflicts of interests, how to make peer review more transparent, how to provide access to data and enable sharing of data, and perhaps most importantly, how to provide advice for decision makers. These are the issues around which a debate about the ethos of science needs to be conducted.

Especially the last aspect, the interface between knowledge and decision making (sometimes called science for policy) needs close attention. In knowledge societies, there is an ever-increasing demand for knowledge as justification for action yet the rules for this process are set by political power holders. Individual scientists are enrolled and enticed to play along so that their recommendations can be represented as if the chosen policy was demanded, or at least supported, by ‘science’. But science can never demand any course of action, it is individual scientists who do so in the process of public will formation, which is the central process in democratic societies. Advisory boards need to follow principles of accountability, independence and transparency in order to be trustworthy. All too often scientists forget this simple truth and put a higher value on the policy goals they happen to favor, no matter how transparent or impartial the process which leads to their adoption. If scientists have nothing but an instrumental view of their knowledge they will inevitably diminish its trustworthiness. If they follow the maxim of the ends justifying the means, they should think twice. The contributions of Merton and Stehr remind us of the importance of this consideration.