Naomi Oreskes facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Naomi Oreskes
Oreskes at the 2015 2nd European TA conference in Berlin
Born	(1958-11-25) November 25, 1958 (age 66)
Education	Stuyvesant High School Imperial College London (BS) Stanford University (PhD)
Relatives	Daniel Oreskes (brother) Michael Oreskes (brother)
Scientific career
Fields	History of science, Economic geology
Institutions	Stanford University U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Dartmouth College Harvard University New York University University of California, San Diego

Naomi Oreskes (/əˈrɛskəs/; born November 25, 1958) is a well-known American historian of science. She studies how science has developed over time. She is a professor at Harvard University, where she teaches about the history of science and Earth sciences. Before joining Harvard in 2013, she taught at the University of California, San Diego for 15 years.

Naomi Oreskes has researched many topics, including geophysics (the study of Earth's physical processes) and environmental issues like global warming. She also focuses on the history of science. In 2010, she co-wrote a famous book called Merchants of Doubt. This book showed how some groups tried to create confusion about scientific facts, similar to how the tobacco industry tried to hide the dangers of smoking.

Early Life and Education

Naomi Oreskes grew up in a family of educators. Her mother, Susan Eileen, was a teacher, and her father, Irwin Oreskes, was a professor and dean at Hunter College in New York. She has three siblings: Michael Oreskes, a journalist; Daniel Oreskes, an actor; and Rebecca Oreskes, a writer. Her family is Jewish.

She attended Stuyvesant High School in New York. In 1981, she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in mining geology from the Royal School of Mines at Imperial College London. Later, she continued her studies at Stanford University, where she earned her PhD. Her doctoral research combined geological studies with the history of science.

Career Highlights

Naomi Oreskes has worked as a consultant for important organizations like the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the United States National Academy of Sciences. She has also taught at several universities, including Dartmouth College, New York University, UCSD, and Harvard University. She has written many essays, reports, and books on economic geology and the history of science.

Academic Journey

Naomi Oreskes began her academic career studying geology. Over time, her work expanded to include the history and philosophy of science. She explored how scientific methods work, how models are tested, and how scientists reach agreements or disagreements. For example, she wrote two books about the history of continental drift and plate tectonics, which were often misunderstood ideas. Later, she focused on climate change science and how some groups tried to create doubt about it.

Early in her career, she worked as a mining geologist in South Australia. In 1984, she returned to university as a research and teaching assistant at Stanford University. She also taught at Dartmouth College and New York University.

From 1998, she was a professor at the University of California, San Diego. She also served as the provost of Sixth College from 2008 to 2011. Since 2013, she has been a professor at Harvard University.

She is also on the board of directors for the National Center for Science Education and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. These groups work to support science education and defend climate scientists.

Understanding Climate Change Consensus

In December 2004, Naomi Oreskes wrote an important essay titled "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change." It was published in the journal Science. In this essay, she looked at 928 summaries (called abstracts) of scientific papers published between 1993 and 2003. These papers were about "global climate change."

She wanted to see if major scientific groups like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the United States National Academy of Sciences were ignoring different opinions on anthropogenic climate change (climate change caused by humans). After her study, she found that 75 percent of the papers either clearly or indirectly supported the idea that humans are affecting Earth's climate. None of the papers directly disagreed with this view.

Her essay received a lot of attention worldwide. Many important people, including Al Gore in his movie An Inconvenient Truth, mentioned her findings. In 2007, she further explained her analysis, noting that 20 percent of the papers directly supported the consensus, while 55 percent supported it indirectly by researching the effects or solutions for climate change. The remaining papers focused on past climates or measurement techniques.

Merchants of Doubt Book

Merchants of Doubt is a book published in 2010 by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. Both are American historians of science. In the book, they show how similar strategies were used to create doubt in several public debates. These included debates about tobacco smoking, acid rain, and the ozone hole.

Oreskes and Conway explain that the main strategy was to spread doubt and confusion. This was done by people who did not want action to be taken on these issues. They found that some scientists, like Fred Seitz and Fred Singer, worked with conservative groups and companies. These groups challenged the scientific agreement on many important topics.

Many reviewers praised the book. Some called it "exhaustively researched" and one of the most important books of 2010. A movie with the same name, inspired by the book, was released in 2015. Another film, The Campaign Against the Climate, was released in 2020.

Writings by Naomi Oreskes

Books

• Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don't Know about the Ocean, University of Chicago Press, 2020, ISBN: 9780226732381
• Why Trust Science?, Princeton University Press, 2019, Edited by Stephen Macedo, ISBN: 9780691179001
• The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science, Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN: 0-19-511733-6
• Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth, Edited with Homer Le Grand, Westview Press, 2003, ISBN: 0-8133-4132-9
• 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
• The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Columbia University Press, 2014
• Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis, introduction by Naomi Oreskes, (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2015) ISBN: 978-1-612-19528-5
• Discerning Experts: The Practices of Scientific Assessment for Environmental Policy. Michael Oppenheimer, N. Oreskes, D. Jamieson, K. Brysse, J. O’Reilly & M. Shindell, University of Chicago Press, 2019, ISBN: 978-0-226-60201-1
• The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023. ISBN: 978-1-635-57357-2

Selected Articles and Editorials

• 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, "Fusion's False Promise: Despite a recent advance, nuclear fusion is not the solution to the climate crisis", Scientific American, vol. 328, no. 6 (June 2023), p. 86.
• 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]."

Awards and Honors

Naomi Oreskes has received many awards and honors for her important work:

• Honorary degree from Bard College (2024)
• Honorary degree, Université libre de Bruxelles, 2023.
• Honorary degree ETH Zurich, 2018.
• The British Academy Medal, 2019
• Mary C. Rabbit Award (History and Philosophy of Geology Division), Geological Society of America, 2019
• Elected Member of the American Philosophical Society, 2019
• Guggenheim Fellow, 2018-2019, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation,
• Elected Member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2017
• Plenary Speaker, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2017
• Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication, Climate One, 2016
• Ambassador and Fellow, American Geophysical Union, 2016
• Frederick Anderson Climate Change Award, Center for International Environmental Law, 2016
• Public Service Award, Geological Society of America, 2015
• Elected a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, 2015
• Herbert Feis Prize for Public History, American Historical Association 2014
• Presidential Citation for Science and Society American Geophysical Union 2014
• Climate Change Communicator of the Year, George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, 2011
• Francis Bacon Award in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Caltech 2008
• National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, 1994–1999
• Society of Economic Geologists Lindgren Prize for outstanding work by a young scientist, 1993

See also

• Naomi Oreskes § Notes
• Logology (science of science)