Presenting: Dr. Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University

Title: Diversity Isn’t just the Right Thing to Do; Diversity Helps Us Get the Right Answers

Abstract: Science has lagged behind other professions in working to purposefully create opportunities to expand diversity in its workforce. Critics of such efforts have framed diversity as antithetical to the pursuit of excellent in scientific inquiry, but this framing has the problem backwards. In this talk, I argue that we cannot have scientific excellence without diversity.

Short bio: Naomi Oreskes is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She is an internationally renowned geologist, science historian, and author of both scholarly and popular books and articles on the history of earth and environmental science.  Her authored or co-authored books include The Rejection of Continental Drift (1999), Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth (2001), Merchants of Doubt (2010), the Collapse of Western Civilization (2014), Discerning Experts (2019), Why Trust Science? (2019), and Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean (2021).

For many years, Oreskes has been a leading voice on the science and politics of anthropogenic climate change.  Her 2004 essay “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” (Science 306: 1686)--the first peer-reviewed paper to document the scientific consensus on this crucial issue--has  been cited more than 2500 times. It was featured in the landmark Royal Society publication, “A Guide to Facts and Fictions about Climate Change," and in the Academy-award winning film, An Inconvenient Truth.   Her 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt, (co-authored with Erik M. Conway) has been translated into nine languages and made into a documentary film produced by Participant Media and distributed by SONY Pictures Classics.

In 2018 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow for a new book project with Erik M. Conway, The Magic of the Marketplace: The True History of a False Idea, which will be published by Bloomsbury Press as soon as it is finished.

Zoom link: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/98884783575?pwd=ais5ek9MaGRQYy9ScEh3Zm5YdTRwQT09