Climate activism by scientists should be encouraged, but please stop with the pseudo-social science

In a recent article in Nature, Ulf Büntgen expressed his concerns about climate scientists engaging in climate activism.  The introduction reads:

“While this Comment is not a critique of climate activism per se, I am foremost concerned by an increasing number of climate scientists becoming climate activists, because scholars should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies.”

To an economic scientist like myself, such concerns seem rather quaint.  No-one ever supposed that Milton Friedman was not motivated by his conception of freedom and liberty when formulating his groundbreaking critique of Keynesianism.  His public pronouncements on the subject were clearly designed to affect public policy.  Likewise, few would criticize Esther Duflo’s research because it was intended to alleviate global poverty, an issue she is clearly very passionate about.

There are key differences between economics and the “hard” sciences. Economic science is fuzzier, so economists can only ever aspire to scientific purity.  At the end of the day, it will always be possible for two economists, trying really hard to be data-driven in their approach toward a given issue, to fundamentally disagree on the conclusions. 

After all, economics is the only field in which people can share a Nobel Prize for saying polar opposite things.