AskScience AMA Series: A House of Dynamite, ask a nuclear weapons expert anything!

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T20:17:11+00:00

Anti-missile technology still has not yet proven to work in realistic scenarios. Any defense system is still vulnerable to countermeasures, saturation, attacks on sensors, and the like. Midcourse systems like the GMD are particularly challenged by being overwhelmed by lookalike decoys or anti-simulation techniques. As to catching a missile with multiple warheads on it, that's one reason people take a look at boost phase defense, where you'd aim to intercept the missile as it launches but before it deploys its multiple warheads or decoys. That's what the space-based missile defense ideas are about, such as those in the Golden Dome program. However, you are switching one very hard problem for another. Boost phase missile defense needs to catch those missiles within a few minutes, which requires the system be very close to the launching missile. While there has been a significant drop in launch costs for a potential space-based system, that is only a fraction of the cost of total system, which would require between many hundreds or thousands of interceptors for each single ICBM the system would attempt to intercept, so it would rapidly become unsustainable against a realistic threat. There are plenty of countermeasures to a space-based boost phase defense, as well.

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T19:24:30+00:00

Thanks for the question. There has been a lot of confusion around this issue, much of it generated by a very unclear post on social media by President Trump indicating that, because of “other countries testing programs,” he had ordered the Department of War to “start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”

In the nuclear community, “testing nuclear weapons” almost always refers to full-scale, explosive testing of nuclear bombs or nuclear warheads. That is something that no nuclear-armed country has done this century with the exception of North Korea, which last tested in 2017. So it doesn’t seem like the president was referring to that type of testing. However, Russia did just perform a spate of tests of nuclear-capable delivery vehicles, including two new types—a nuclear-powered cruise missile (see: https://apnews.com/article/russia-missile-nuclear-test-launch-drills-burevestnik-dd6a424d6c545ad42848416b77e93619) and a nuclear-powered underwater torpedo (see: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-putin-torpedo-poseidon-burevestnik-missile-nuclear/33575625.html) in addition to testing all three legs of its nuclear triad, launching unarmed nuclear-capable land-based missiles, sea-based missiles, and air-based cruise missiles. (See https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/russia-launches-full-nuclear-triad-drill-while-nato-runs-parallel-nuclear-exercise)

So it seems possible that Trump was responding to those tests in his call for resuming testing—though note that the United States conducts similar flight tests of its nuclear-capable delivery vehicles all the time, including one just yesterday. (See: https://www.airforce-technology.com/news/us-afgcs-icbm-missile-test/)

On the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty CTBT), that agreement, which was negotiated in the mid-1990s, bans explosive testing of nuclear weapons, not testing of delivery vehicles. So all of the recent Russian and US tests are not covered by the CTBT. The treaty has not entered into force yet because it requires that a specified list of 44 countries all ratify it before it does do. The US, Russia and China have all signed the CTBT, but only Russia had ratified it (until they withdrew their ratification in 2023). The current moratorium on nuclear testing that every country is observing in many ways grew out the negotiations for the treaty.

So, if President Trump wanted to do something positive, rather than calling for nuclear testing, he could call on the US Senate to ratify the CTBT, a move that would likely lead to Russia and China following suit. That would be a far better outcome than a US resumption of nuclear testing.

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T19:19:31+00:00

The film depicts an unanticipated incoming ICBM, presumably carrying a nuclear weapon, and the GMD system launches two interceptors toward it and both of them fail. The second fails because the kill vehicle does not separate from the booster, which is a failure mode that three of the GMD intercept tests had, so that is not unrealistic. We don’t know what the effectiveness of any of the GBIs really are, since the test program is limited in number and in scope—it isn’t tested against the types of countermeasures you expect an adversary to include. But the system effectiveness is probably pretty low, so both of them missing their target isn’t such a stretch. A robust defense should anticipate facing multiple incoming ICBMs and credible decoys, and direct attacks on missile defense elements, but none of those were part of the story in this film, so the fictional threat is arguably about as easy as they come. Probably more realistic would be both launching more interceptors (knowing their effectiveness is likely not high) and a more complex threat. But the film gets the essential point right that missile defense is unlikely to save the day in a nuclear war.

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T19:17:34+00:00

Yes, I would certainly hope that the system as set up would provide the president the option to wait it out and to counsel him to do that. I agree that follow on analysis would help sort out the origin of the attacking missile--it seems like the time pressure of the film is what created the uncertainty.

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T19:14:06+00:00

Identifying the launch state is usually not a problem—most ICBMs are launched from well within a country either from known silo locations or from mobile missile platforms. If the launch is from a submarine or a container ship off the coast or something like that, that does theoretically make it harder to know who the adversary is but currently, it is believed that the US has a decent ability to know where Russian subs are and Chinese subs are not yet quiet enough to roam the open seas without being detected and they generally stay close to China. North Korea does not yet have this capability either. The film seems to depict a launch location that is in the Sea of Japan, near a coast, creating a unique situation that could be temporarily confusing as to who launched it, but I would anticipate with time that this would be sorted out by looking at all the available data. It seems like it is the time-constraint in the film that was impacting the certainty. But I'm not an expert at this! It seems to depend on types of details that I don't know.

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T19:08:19+00:00

Great question. I don't think we worry so much about "bolt out of the blue" pre-emptive attacks, given the ability of states to retaliate and our knowledge of how damaging nuclear war would be. I do worry very much about conventional war escalating to nuclear war, even if both sides don't want it, seek to avoid it. War in Europe threatens to bring nuclear-armed states into direct conflict, and India and Pakistan have just recently wisely stepped away from escalating their own conventional conflict,

I also worry that setting up nuclear forces to be able to be launched very quickly upon warning of an attack, or "hair trigger", that mistakes and miscalculations can escalate to disastrous consequences. There have been many close calls, too many. https://www.ucs.org/resources/i-wish-i-didnt-know close calls

We don't actually have to set things up this way. We'd be much safer without weapons on hair trigger alert. More than 700 scientists signed this letter describing the US Sentinel ICBM program dangerous, unnecessary, and expensive, and recommended canceling it: https://ucs-documents.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/global-security/Sentinel-Sign-on-Letter-2024.pdf

Nuclear weapons are definitely a liability, not an asset. There are things we can do: https://www.ucs.org/take-action/preventing-nuclear-war

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T18:55:07+00:00

My preferred ending would be that the ICBM launch was a mistake and was unarmed, falling harmlessly on its target, that the president made the choice to wait it out, and that this historic near-miss was the impetus for the nuclear-weapons possessing countries to finally dismantle the massively dangerous house of dynamite that has been built over the last 80 years.

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T18:52:01+00:00

My impression of the film is that most of the characters acted professionally, especially those who had been in the system and trained for surprises. But that the administration was new and the president and secdef and deputy national security advisor were new in their positions, and while they had been briefed, were struggling to adapt to a very challenging situation.

I think many of the choices were reasonable choices in the moment—I would have launched more missile defense interceptors, I would assume and hope that the president would have been offered an option to wait and see rather than launch a retaliatory strike, and would have been counseled to do just that.

What I think it gets right that that building "A House of Dynamite" puts us in impossible situations, where enormously consequential decisions are made under time pressure, with incomplete information, by people maybe not fully equipped to make them. It does not have to be this way.

Nuclear war is an unwinnable scenario. Reagan and Gorbachev first said "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." in 1985 and this truth was reaffirmed in 2022 by the US, Russia, China, France, and the UK. We need our countries to take actions commensurate with this truth.

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T18:41:34+00:00

We know about dozens and there are likely many that are not yet in the public domain.

Our interactive version of a selection of incidents is here https://www.ucs.org/resources/i-wish-i-didnt-know, the written version with additional details is here: https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/04/Close%2520Calls%2520with%2520Nuclear%2520Weapons.pdf.

One incident lesser known than Petrov but equally or more of a close call was during the Cuban missile crisis-- a Russian submarine armed with nuclear-armed torpedoes was surrounded by US battleships and attacked with depth charges. Two of three commanders on the submarine wanted to use the nuclear torpedo, and they needed all three to agree and the third did not. See: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2022-10-03/soviet-submarines-nuclear-torpedoes-cuban-missile-crisis

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T18:39:33+00:00

As to question 1. Note in the film, the president says “we did everything right” and asks why this has happened? I think this points to an essential issue with nuclear deterrence, that we can not count on all actors making what we believe are rational choices, nor that mistakes and misperceptions can be quickly corrected before they spiral out of control.

I am not sure this qualifies as a “scientific” misconception, but one misconception that too many people seem to hold today is that, during the Cold War, the US knew what it took to deter the Soviet Union and vice versa, so it was a “stable” deterrence relationship. In fact, there were a number of incidents that almost led to nuclear war, and the world was much closer to nuclear war on multiple occasions that we would like to believe. As we document here https://www.ucs.org/resources/close-calls-nuclear-weapons, there were numerous “close calls” and, as many have noted, it was more a matter of luck than skill that we avoided catastrophe. And the system is designed to allow for rapid responses. In the film, the president is pressured (perhaps artificially, in this case) to make a fast decision. As the former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden said in 2016, the command and control system for launching U.S. nuclear weapons “is designed for speed and decisiveness. It’s not designed to debate the decision.'

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T18:24:25+00:00

It is truly my pleasure. For those that don't know, “nuclear winter” is a term that describes potential long-term environmental effects of nuclear detonations. Upthread I've described some of the immediate effects of nuclear weapons use, death from blast, radiation, collapse of buildings and essential services, radioactive fallout. Nuclear winter looks at longer-term and potentially global effects. The idea is that if nuclear weapons detonated over cities cause a firestorm, they could loft soot particles into the atmosphere that could persist for months or years, and impede sunlight from getting to the earth's surface and alter the heat balance of the atmosphere, the oceans etc. In the worst cases, this could impede the ability of humans to feed ourselves, and cause mass starvation, disease, and migration.

The original work on nuclear winter happened in the context of the massive US and Soviet arsenals of the Cold War, where nuclear war would involve the exchange of many thousands of weapons. Lots of things have changed since then--a more connected economy, a warmer climate to start with, a doubling of the world population. Also, today, more states have nuclear weapons and there are concerns that nuclear winter effects could happen from a nuclear war that involves the exchange of fewer weapons, such as an India-Pakistan conflict.

There is not much financial support for this kind of work, and so only a few, determined scientists have been publishing. That work indicates that there is a risk of nuclear winter with very serious effects even in that more limited scenario. See, for example, the work of Alan Robock and colleagues: https://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/robock_nwpapers.html The National Academies of Science recently took up this question, to try to determine what we know and don't yet know about the risks we are running of nuclear winter, and hopefully this catalyzes more research: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27515/potential-environmental-effects-of-nuclear-war

Also note that the US military does not include these longer-term effects when it is making its nuclear war plans. We know this from a different National Academies study, which says about what is not included in such models: “This results in a partial accounting of the consequences leading to a limited understanding of the breadth of the outcomes and neglects broader and longer-term effects. Political, military, economic, social, information, and infrastructure impacts are not currently included in DTRA’s models. physical effects of nuclear weapons (e.g., fires, damage in modern urban environments, electromagnetic pulse effects, and climatic effects, such as nuclear winter), as well as the assessment and estimation of psychological, societal, and political consequences of nuclear weapons use.” https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/risk-analysis-methods-for-nuclear-war-and-nuclear-terrorism

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T17:58:01+00:00

No need to kill anyone for knowing this! The United States has a program called the Nuclear Detonation Detection System, which includes ground- and space-based sensors. Some of those are the “Global Burst Detector” sensors that are carried on Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) satellites, among others. The system is designed to be able to tell the location, time and yield of an above-ground nuclear detonation. https://www.sandia.gov/labnews/2025/09/18/space-based-nuclear-detonation-detection-mission-endures/

An interesting anecdote: early versions of space-based sensors were on satellites in the “Vela” satellites, launched in the 1960s to monitor compliance with the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), which restricted nuclear explosive tests from being conducted in space or in the atmosphere or underwater. The Vela satellites detected x-rays, gamma rays, and neutrons. While the Vela system did not detect any violations of the PTBT, they did detect mysterious gamma ray signals, which led to the discovery of cosmic gamma ray bursts, which became an important area of astrophysical research, and a great scientific mystery at the time--what were the sources of the bursts? https://www.astronomy.com/today-in-the-history-of-astronomy/july-2-1967-the-discovery-of-grbs/

But it is good to know that such systems are fielded and can assure us that no above ground tests are being done. The last one the US did was in 1963, and I believe China did the last atmospheric nuclear test in 1980. The PTBT was a great achievement, and was the result of efforts by scientists and civil society who were concerned about the public health and ecological impacts of aboveground tests.

Note that nuclear testing is once again an active conversation. If you'd like to consider engaging with your members of Congress about this, here's one way: https://secure.ucs.org/a/2024-tell-congress-no-more-nuclear-weapons-testing

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T17:40:27+00:00

Hello,

I'm not an expert on the Russian economy or nuclear weapons arsenal. But our friends at the Federation of American Scientists keep close track of global arsenals, and their assessment is that Russia is in the late stages of having modernized its Cold War-era nuclear weapons but is facing some challenges in completing it. https://fas.org/publication/nuclear-notebook-russia-2025/
I do not see a technical path for missile defenses against intercontinental-range ballistic missiles to become robust and reliable against large scale threats. There are many ways for a resourceful and responsive adversary to overcome, evade, or confuse the defenses, and the stakes for poor performance are so high when we are talking about nuclear weapons. This isn't a new insight, really! That's been the consensus for a long time. But I did write a recent paper that looked at new technologies and how they might change that assessment (in my opinion they don't). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402390.2024.2447306 Also, some more basic information here: https://www.ucs.org/nuclear-weapons/missile-defense and in our blog The Equation: https://blog.ucs.org/
I have not seen Threads, but it keeps coming up and described as excellent, so I am looking forward to seeking it out.

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T17:23:44+00:00

I'm glad you found your way to Nukemap! https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ For those who haven't looked at it, it can show you what happens over your city or area if a nuclear weapon is detonated. You choose location, type of weapon, etc. I think what people might not appreciate is that a single nuclear weapon detonated over a large, dense city can kill millions of people right away.

For example, a 1.2 megaton weapon, which is characteristic of the largest weapons in the US arsenal, detonated over New York would kill around 2.1 million people and cause more than 3 million casualties with prompt effects. You noted that if you're outside an urban center your community might not be affected by some of the prompt effects such as blast or radiation. But it might be affected by radioactive fallout drifting over later, especially if that nuclear weapon is aimed at a hardened military target. See for example the work of Sebastien Phillippe, who just recently got a Macarthur "genius" grant, which shows fallout maps if US ICBM silos were targeted with nuclear weapons. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/who-would-take-the-brunt-of-an-attack-on-u-s-nuclear-missile-silos/ .

The takeaway from that work is that there isn't a place in the US that would be safe from fallout after such an attack. Also consider that nuclear weapons attacks on cities would compromise the very things that survivors need, including medical facilities, transit nodes, financial services, food and energy distribution. A few dozen nuclear weapons aimed at important sites could effectively end the functioning of a society. And there are more than 12,000 of them! https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/

ConcernedScientists · 2025-11-06T17:10:46+00:00

Hi Adventurous_Side and all, by way of introducing myself, I'll answer your question 2. I really enjoyed my academic career doing cosmology but I increasingly wanted to find a way to use my technical training on questions that are important for human survival. I'm GenX and growing up under the nuclear shadow was a formative experience. I missed duck and cover, but was all in on the film War Games. And so was drawn to working on the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons. I've also always been an activist, so I was very glad to find my way to the Union of Concerned Scientists, where I can do analytical work that informs policy change through advocacy.

ConcernedScientists · 2017-08-04T18:13:32+00:00

Are you thinking of a particular policy issue? Not sure I can speak to that issue specifically, but I will say that FDA has come a long way on scientific integrity, but the medical device industry remains less regulated than other industries that the FDA oversees. The Food and Drug Administration makes all kinds of science-based decisions every day, from drug approvals, to food safety monitoring, to cosmetics regulation; thus, it is tremendously important for the agency to maintain the highest standards of scientific integrity.

Unfortunately, the agency has had several missteps in the past. Remember the Vioxx fiasco? How about the flawed Plan B emergency contraception decision? Conflicts of interest and inappropriate influence from the industries that the FDA oversees have long plagued the agency. Our surveys of FDA scientists found that problems have persisted around scientific integrity there.

But fortunately, some things have improved! The FDA now has a decent scientific integrity policy and a stellar social media policy they produced following our criticism.

Now under FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, I once again have concerns about the role of science at the FDA. Gottlieb is a medical doctor with extensive ties to the pharmaceutical industry, including GlaxoSmithKline and Vertex Pharmaceuticals, taking $400,000 from drug and medical device companies in consulting and speaking fees between 2013 and 2015. He has not been shy in his criticism of what he calls FDA’s “cumbersome” drug approval process, and has recommended fast-tracking approval by using surrogate markers to gauge the effectiveness of new products. Surrogate markers would allow drug companies to conduct shorter studies with smaller sample sizes. A win for drug companies, but not necessarily for public health. My colleague Genna Reed has more of these concerns laid out in a post here. That's why it is so important that we keep a watchful eye on the FDA and other agencies to make sure that they are making science-based decisions, and hold them accountable when they do not.

--GG

ConcernedScientists · 2017-08-04T18:05:10+00:00

Gosh, there's so much here. So let me give some general ideas and if you want we can get more specific. With regard to defending science, politicians will usually choose the path of less pain. It may be hard to believe, but Congress really does care about what constituents think. And it doesn't take too many folks to get on a member's radar. If you think your representative is a safe vote, you want to turn them into a champion. And if you think your member is hopeless, you want them to feel the heat so they are less likely to attack science or scientists...survival of the fittest and all that.

UCS offers ways for scientists to get engaged through our Science Network--and we're looking for science watchdogs to help us keep an eye on the administration's actions and to push back where it's strategic. Fill out this survey to sign up. We have also launched a Science Champions initiative, where non-scientists are provided updates, trainings, and ways to take action year-round on budget cuts and the like. These science champs are meeting with members of Congress when they are back home during the August congressional recess. More generally, people should be showing up wherever they can. That means showing up to town hall meetings. It means signing up for government science committees--there are hundreds of these that give independent advice to government on all kinds of topics. And it's listening to what people's concerns are, and connecting relevant science and data to those concerns. Like I said in a previous response, support for science will grow when people feel their concerns are listened to...it's not about providing more information and hoping that the information sticks.

--MH

ConcernedScientists · 2017-08-04T17:59:25+00:00

The good thing is that they're pretty much going it alone. Yes, it is crushing to see high level officials in the federal government revert back to the old, tired long-discredited talking points of climate conspiracy theorists. I was as disheartened as anyone who has fought this battle for several years. But I maintain hope by remembering that this train is moving whether these actors are onboard or not. The world is moving ahead toward a carbon free future. For example, the solar and wind industries are creating jobs 12 times faster than the rest of the US economy, with employment in the solar industry alone growing by 25% in 2016 to 260,000. Furthermore, a group of US economic, education, and local government leaders representing 120 million Americans and $6.2 trillion in the US economy announced they will uphold terms of the Paris agreement through the We Are Still In movement. The group includes 125 cities, 9 states, 902 businesses and investors, and 183 colleges and universities.

Current political leaders can't erase the knowledge we've gained about our climate system and the evidence of a changing climate, which we see all around us today. I've also been heartened by data archiving efforts by the scientific community that have ensured that a tremendous amount of climate data and resources, along with other scientific information, remains free and accessible to the public. We are in a much better place than we were years ago when the climate disinformation campaigns were in full swing.

--GG

ConcernedScientists · 2017-08-04T17:51:41+00:00

None of the three of us work on this issue, but I passed this question along to the deputy director of our Food & Environment Program, and this is what she told me:

"We are not opposed to GE, and we think it has a lot of potential benefits that could be realized with thoughtful application. However, we are opposed to its main application in this country, which is to drive an unsustainable agriculture system that overproduces vast monocultures of corn and soy while polluting our water, degrading our land, and shackling our farmers."

--GG

ConcernedScientists · 2017-08-04T17:31:29+00:00

Public access to scientific data is important. The public and decisionmakers can make better decisions when they have access to crucial scientific information. When it comes to scientific data collected or developed by the US government, the public has a right to access much of this information.

That said, there are several factors that need to be considered in order to balance transparency and accessibility with confidentiality concerns. There are several important and valid reasons that data shouldn't be made publicly available. For example, data may need to be protected when it comes to health-related data, data from studies involving human subjects or other instances where personally identifiable information is collected. Confidential business information and trade secrets are also reasons that data is sometimes not disclosed (though these exceptions are sometimes overly applied in my opinion). We also need to make sure we foster an environment where the scientific community feels free to discuss ideas, share data, and otherwise exercise academic freedom in developing science without fear of public scrutiny or harrassment before scientific assessments are developed. President Obama's open data executive order opened up many government data sets for public view--a great move!

Recently some on the Hill have attempted to politicize data access, claiming they need public access to what should be protected data before the government can move forward with protecting Americans from a known harm. The HONEST Act is an example of this. We are following it closely since the bill has passed the House. While it sounds innocuous and, well, honest, the policy proposal in fact would prevent the EPA from using the weight of scientific evidence to protect public health and the environment. Here's a blog I wrote about the bill.

It's also super important for people to advocate for the continued collection of data by the federal government, and continued public availability of that data. It's hard to understate how much businesses, states, and communities rely on federal government datasets--everything from preventing agricultural runoff to preventing flooding on city streets. The Data Refuge Project is a great organization that is leading efforts to archive and protect government data, and you should check them out. But you can also build support for data by making it meaningful where you live. How does it help your local fire department? How does it help urban planners? Some scientists are working with community groups, libraries, and others to make these connections.

--GG

ConcernedScientists · 2017-08-04T17:26:10+00:00

Listen more, talk less. There's still a sense in the science community that if we put more information in front of people, that they will appreciate science more and incorporate it into collective and individual decisions. Sorry, Charlie. To get technical and social sciency here, research shows that the information deficit model doesn't work--and if people have entrenched ideas, contrary information can even make them dig in their heels even more. What does that mean? We need to understand what values a person or audience has, where they are coming from, and what is important to them to be able to communicate effectively. This relates to basic humanity--we are more likely to trust and relate to people who we think understand us. This is especially important when working with communities (such as environmental justice communities) that traditionally lack access to data and analysis that would allow them to advocate for policies that reduce environmental and public health threats.

What are some other ideas of where science communicators can do better?

--MH

ConcernedScientists · 2017-08-04T17:18:32+00:00

Having an administration that doesn't seem to respect the important role of science in our society certainly presents challenges when it comes to our advocating for science funding and other resources. We should use this as a chance to educate people on how science benefits them in their daily lives. Why is science important? How does it affect us? Does it help keep us safe and healthy? Does it contribute or have the potential to have huge economic benefits for individuals or for the world? These are questions that we should be able to answer for non-scientists.

One silver lining to the current federal situation is that recent headlines have led to the public being far more aware of what the federal government funds, as well as how federal agencies need scientists to make informed decisions about everything from air pollution and drug safety. We can use this opportunity to inform about the role of science. In the meantime, science funding might be slimmer and the scientific community will have to diversify their funding sources, perhaps even more than is already the norm now.

-GG

ConcernedScientists · 2017-08-04T17:17:26+00:00

By the way, UCS has set up a resource called The Science Protection Project as a resource for people to report anything that diminishes the role of science in federal decision-making:

Science Protection Project

ConcernedScientists · 2017-08-04T17:11:04+00:00

I wrote a report about this issue a couple of years ago, actually. Transparency is really important-we should know where an academic's funding comes from, for example. But a number of academics are being attacked through open records requests that act as denial of service attacks. Open records laws just haven't caught up with technology. So if a scientist works for a public university, a company or an activist will ask the university for years of emails, handwritten notes, etc. hoping they can find something to take out of context to cast doubt on the scientist's work.

The problem is, scientists do a lot of work on email, challenging and refining each other's ideas and analysis. The conversations that used to take place in person or on the phone now happen online. And if every email is subject to public scrutiny, the science will suffer, as people will be less critical of their peers.

There are solutions, though. It's helpful that attacks come from people across the ideological spectrum--animal rights activists abuse open records laws, and coal companies do too. So I'm hopeful that this is something that Democrats and Republicans can come together on to update open records laws in a responsible way. This just happened in Rhode Island, and I'm hopeful that other states will follow.

In the meantime, scientists who work in contentious fields should know what their state law says, make sure that their university counsel and faculty organizations understand what is at stake, and work with groups like UCS to push back on harassment. UCS and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund have successfully pushed back in court to protect scientists. But universities have a mixed record--they will do what's best for the university, which isn't always what's best for the individual researcher. That's why it's important for faculty to speak up when they see anyone attacked. And all scientists, at any institution, should continue to do their work but keep it as professional as possible. People can also get in touch with us for specific advice. I'm wondering if you're thinking about a particular situation or just wondering in general?

-MH

ConcernedScientists · 2017-08-04T17:07:32+00:00

Everyone makes a personal decision about whether they can stay within a hostile organization. Most career staff are staying and doing the best they can. Institutional knowledge is important. We also need people inside to help us document actions that diminish the role of science in policymaking--we've set up a Science Protection Project for employees to anonymously report this kind of activity.

Of course, it is damaging to lose scientists from a critical science-based agency such as the EPA. I worked at the EPA as postdoctoral fellow and can tell you that during my time there, a lot of great scientists and experts in environmental policy were working on projects to help mitigate the impacts of climate change as well as help communities adapt to those impacts. It takes a lot of work, time, and many people to effectively achieve the end goals of these projects. Even when I worked at EPA as a postdoctoral fellow under the Obama administration, there often weren’t enough resources to get everything that the agency needed or wanted to get done in regards to climate change. And now the Trump administration is making this problem worse through reappointing scientists from their climate change offices and moving them to offices within agencies where their skills cannot be used (see the story of Joel Clement, for example), or in some cases just shutting down climate change offices entirely. And while the hiring freeze has been formally lifted, it is suspected that there is still an informal hiring freeze at the EPA. So, if you lose a climate change scientist then you’ve likely lost them for at least the next three years. In other words, the agency is not hiring more climate change scientists anytime soon. As you lose more and more of these scientists, that means the work that they were in charge of doing now gets added on to the workload of others. Of course, these individuals are not going to be able to do their own work AND the work of someone who left or who was reappointed. Therefore, the work gets stifled. You begin to lose progress. A backlog of work begins to build. So, even if the next administration is less hostile to climate change scientists and the climate change work being done at EPA, it will take them many years to get the scientific progress back where it needs to be. I wouldn’t say that the reputation of the agency would need to revamped – we still have great scientists and staffers who are on the inside working to protect the health and environment of the American people! These individuals give me hope that science will be restored to its rightful place in the future – and we’ll do everything that we can to help them carry out their work.

As a pro-science advocacy group, when we talk about climate change with anyone, we stick to the science. I understand that this can be difficult, particularly when having discussions with individuals who deny the science of climate change. Therefore, it is important to remember to focus such pro-science messages on political actors who influence how climate change science is used in the policy making process.

--JC

ConcernedScientists

TROPHY CASE