Naomi Oreskes

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Naomi Oreskes

Professor of the history of science and affiliated professor of earth and planetary sciences, Harvard University

Naomi Oreskes is a historian of science with a particular interest in understanding scientific consensus and dissent. She joined the Harvard faculty in 2013 after 15 years on the faculty of the University of California, San Diego, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Oreskes’s research focuses on the earth and environmental sciences, which were the focus of her scientific training and early research. In a 2004 essay "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," Oreskes made waves with an analysis of the scientific literature concluding that 75 percent of published abstracts on climate change supported the consensus on anthropogenic climate change. Her 2010 book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco to Global Warming, co-authored with Caltech historian Erik M. Conway, is the basis of the documentary Merchants of Doubt and was awarded the 2011 Watson-Davis Prize by the History of Science Society. Oreskes received her Ph.D. from Stanford's graduate special program in geological research and history of science. Her most recent book, also with Erik Conway, is science-based fiction. The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future imagines a world devastated by climate change. Twitter: @NaomiOreskes

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