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 (born November 25, 1958) is an American historian of science. She studies how science has changed over time. Since 2013, she has been a professor at Harvard University. Before that, she taught at the University of California, San Diego for 15 years.

Professor Oreskes has researched many topics. These include geophysics (the physics of Earth), environmental issues like global warming, and the history of science itself. 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.

Early Life and Education

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

She attended Stuyvesant High School in New York. In 1981, she earned her first degree in mining geology from Imperial College London. Later, she received her PhD from Stanford University. Her PhD focused on both geological research and the history of science.

Career Highlights

Naomi Oreskes has had a varied career. She has worked as a consultant for important organizations. These include the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the United States National Academy of Sciences. She has also taught at several universities, such as Dartmouth College, New York University, and Harvard University.

She has written many essays and reports. These works cover topics in economic geology and the history of science. She has also written several books.

Academic Journey

Professor Oreskes started her academic journey in geology. Over time, her work expanded into the history and philosophy of science. She studied how scientists use different methods. She also looked at how scientific ideas are proven or debated.

For example, she wrote two books about the history of continental drift and plate tectonics. These are important ideas about how Earth's continents move. Later, she focused on climate change science. She studied how some industries tried to create doubt about climate science.

Before returning to school, she worked as a mining geologist. She was based in Adelaide, South Australia. In 1984, she became a research assistant at Stanford University. She also helped teach geology and philosophy there.

One of her papers from 1992, about certain mineral deposits, has been cited many times by other scientists. In 1994, she received a Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation.

From 1991 to 1996, she was a professor at Dartmouth College. She then taught at New York University from 1996 to 1998.

She moved to the University of California, San Diego in 1998. She became a full professor there in 2005. She also served as the provost of Sixth College from 2008 to 2011.

In 1999, she advised the US Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. She helped them plan how to safely store nuclear waste. Since 2013, she has been a professor at Harvard University. She teaches in the history of science and Earth sciences departments.

She is also on the board of directors for the National Center for Science Education. This group helps teach about science. She is also on the board of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund.

Understanding Climate Change Science

In 2004, Professor Oreskes wrote an important essay. It was called "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change." It was published in the journal Science.

In her essay, she looked at 928 scientific papers published between 1993 and 2003. She wanted to see if scientists agreed on climate change. She found that 75 percent of the papers supported the idea that humans are affecting Earth's climate. None of the papers directly disagreed with this idea.

Her essay received a lot of attention. Many people, including Al Gore in his movie An Inconvenient Truth, mentioned her work. In 2007, she explained her findings further. She said that about 20 percent of the papers directly supported the idea that human activities are changing Earth's climate. Another 55 percent supported it indirectly by studying its effects or how to fix it.

Merchants of Doubt Book

Merchants of Doubt is a book Naomi Oreskes wrote with Erik M. Conway in 2010. Both are historians of science. In the book, they show how similar tactics were used to create doubt about different scientific issues.

They found connections between the climate change debate and earlier arguments. These included debates about tobacco smoking, acid rain, and the ozone hole. The authors argue that spreading doubt and confusion was a main strategy. This strategy was used by those who did not want action taken on these issues.

The book explains how some scientists and groups worked together. They challenged scientific agreement on many topics. Many reviewers praised Merchants of Doubt. Some called it one of the most important books of 2010.

A movie with the same name was made in 2015. It was inspired by the book. Another film, The Campaign Against the Climate, was released in 2020.

Writings

Books

• Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don't Know about the Ocean, University of Chicago Press, 2020.
• Why Trust Science?, Princeton University Press, 2019.
• The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science, Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth, Edited with Homer Le Grand, Westview Press, 2003.
• 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).
• 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.
• 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.

Editorials and Opinion Articles

• 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.

Awards and Honors

Naomi Oreskes has received many awards for her work. Here are some of them:

• 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.
• Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication, Climate One, 2016.
• Ambassador and Fellow, American Geophysical Union, 2016.
• Public Service Award, Geological Society of America, 2015.
• Herbert Feis Prize for Public History, American Historical Association 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.
• Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize, 2000.
• National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, 1994–1999.

Images for kids

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  Naomi Oreskes at a conference in Berlin in 2015.

See also

In Spanish: Naomi Oreskes para niños