Why do nomads often change their location?

To find food and resources for survival.

To visit family members regularly.

How did the Plains Indians use buffalo besides food?

They used buffalo for clothing and tools.

They only used buffalo for decoration.

They didn't use buffalo at all.

They only used buffalo for shelter.

What type of payments were the annuities that the Sioux received?

Annual payments from the government

What was the main purpose of reservations for Native American tribes?

To separate tribes and encourage assimilation into dominant culture

To increase economic independence

2-5 Native Americans (CH 2 Test)

2-5 Native Americans (US His Quiz)

The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, is a famous star cluster located in the constellation of Taurus. It is made up of a group of seven bright stars that are visible to the naked eye in the night sky. The stars in the Pleiades cluster are relatively young, being only about 100 million years old, which is young in astronomical terms. The Pleiades cluster has been observed and admired by cultures all around the world for thousands of years. In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were seven sisters who were pursued by the hunter Orion. To protect them, Zeus transformed them into stars, forming the star cluster we see today. Different cultures have their own stories and legends associated with the Pleiades, making it a fascinating object of study for astronomers and a source of inspiration for artists and storytellers. The Pleiades cluster is often used as a test of eyesight, as people are challenged to count how many stars they can see with the naked eye. Most people can see six or seven stars, but those with particularly sharp vision may be able to see more. The Pleiades is also a popular target for amateur astronomers with telescopes, as the cluster reveals even more stars and details when viewed through a telescope. In addition to being a beautiful sight in the night sky, the Pleiades cluster also serves a practical purpose for astronomers. By studying the stars in the Pleiades, scientists can learn more about how stars form and evolve, as well as gain insights into the structure and composition of the Milky Way galaxy. The Pleiades cluster continues to be an important object of study for astronomers, both amateur and professional, and its beauty and significance will continue to capture the imaginations of people for generations to come. Matariki is the Maori name for the Pleiades star cluster. The Pleiades is a group of stars that can be seen in the night sky, and Matariki is a special time of year when the star cluster is visible in the sky. In Maori culture, Matariki is seen as the beginning of the Maori New Year, and it is a time to celebrate and give thanks for the past year and look forward to the year ahead. So basically, Matariki is related to the Pleiades because it is a special time of year when those stars are visible in the sky and it has cultural significance for the Maori people. The Pleiades star cluster is known by different names in various cultures around the world. Here are some of the names by which the Pleiades are referred to in different countries: 1. Maori culture in New Zealand and Polynesia: Matariki 2. Greek mythology: The Seven Sisters 3. Japan: Subaru 4. Native American tribes: The Dancers or The Little Eyes 5. Inca civilization: Collca 6. Ancient Persia: Parvin 7. India: Krittika 8. Aboriginal Australians: The Seven Sisters or Djulpan These different names reflect the diverse cultural significance and interpretations of the Pleiades cluster in various societies throughout history.

RTI 8/18/25 What is the meaning of main/central idea. Figurative Language, Native Americans & More

When Europeans met American Indians in the late 15th century, the people of two continents exchanged many beneficial customs and goods. Europeans received New World crops such as potatoes and corn. American Indians acquired cloth and horses. However, besides the beneficial exchanges, Europeans and American Indians often traded deadly germs–bacteria and viruses–for which they had no immunity. Smallpox and Indians Image 1: Smallpox epidemics helped Europeans conquer the Aztec and Incan Empires of Mexico and South America. North American Indians quickly concluded that contact with Europeans often resulted in devastating diseases that caused widespread death. This drawing, made in the 1500s in Mexico, shows how the disease was passed from a European to an American Indian through simple contact. Many of the diseases that were common in Europe were entirely new to the peoples of North America. Diseases such as tuberculosis and measles could be fatal, but Europeans had developed resistance to the disease, so many people survived. However, when European diseases infected American Indians with no previous exposure, the people suffered terribly. The most devastating of these diseases was smallpox which is caused by a virus (Variola major). Smallpox, like many other diseases, had a latent period of about one week between the time the person was exposed to the disease and the time when signs of the disease became apparent. During this time, the sick person might begin a journey and carry the germs along with him. Anyone the person met would be exposed to smallpox. Anything the victim touched including clothing, bedding, or unwashed dishes carried living germs of smallpox. Cotton Mather Image 2: Cotton Mather was a Boston minister. When smallpox threatened Boston, he remembered reading about how the Turks inoculated people with dried material from smallpox blisters. The inoculation usually gave the person a mild case of the disease and future immunity. The procedure was highly controversial, but it helped save the lives of 274 people who were inoculated during the Boston smallpox epidemic of 1721. Symptoms of the disease began with fever, chills, and aches. The fever might raise a person’s temperature from the normal 98.6o to a dangerous 106o. After four days of misery, the victim entered the second stage when large pustules (fluid-filled bumps) appeared on the body. The rash made the person feel as if their skin were on fire. After suffering with the rash for nine days, the victim entered a new stage-if he or she had survived this long. The pustules opened and dried up. Each pustule formed a scab that turned into a scar that marked the person’s face for the rest of his or her life. Complications of smallpox for those who survived might include loss of vision or damage to the lungs, heart, or liver. Waterhouse Image 3: Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse of Harvard University brought Jenner’s smallpox preventative to the United States. It was called vaccination and used cowpox as the infective material. This much milder form of pox gave immunity to smallpox with fewer complications. Dr. Waterhouse encouraged President-elect Thomas Jefferson to promote vaccination. Jefferson responded, “Every friend of humanity must look with pleasure on this discovery, by which one evil more is withdrawn from the condition of man.” (T. Jefferson 12/25/1800 to Benjamin Waterhouse, December 25, 1800) Historians have found evidence of smallpox as far back as 1157 B.C. when the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses V apparently died of smallpox. From Egypt, where scientists believe smallpox began, the disease spread to Asia. Europeans began to experience periodic epidemics of smallpox in the14th century when Crusaders returning from the Middle East brought smallpox to Europe. People who survived the disease were immune and could not get smallpox again. This fact explains why epidemics struck periodically and the disease was not a constant threat to European societies. Smallpox Vaccination 1803 Image 4: Dr. Edward Jenner’s new smallpox vaccination (from cowpox) was widely accepted. This medical image was published by a Spanish physician to teach colonial doctors how to apply the vaccine to native Mexicans. The scratches were supposed to go through several stages of development as evidence that the vaccine had given the patient immunity. Vaccination was very effective in preventing smallpox epidemics among those who received the vaccine. In 1520, while Cortés was trying to conquer the Aztecs, smallpox broke out among the Spaniards and was transferred to the Aztecs. By 1527, the disease had migrated through Central America to Peru where it helped Pizarro conquer the Incas. (See Image 1.) In 1633, smallpox infected American Indians living near the English colony of Plymouth, Massachusetts. The disease traveled very quickly to tribes living far inland from the English colonies. In 1721, a smallpox epidemic threatened the English colonists of Boston. (See Image 2.) Cotton Mather, a Boston minister, wanted to inoculate people against the disease. He knew that Turkish healers took material from a dried smallpox scab and injected it into the body of a healthy person by scratching the surface of the skin. The patients developed a mild form of the disease from which they recovered. The procedure was highly controversial in Boston where about 280 Bostonians accepted inoculation. The epidemic infected more than half of the people living in Boston at the time. About 15% of those who got sick died of the disease. Among those who were inoculated, only six (2%) died of smallpox. The practice of inoculation spread to other English colonies, but not to the American Indian tribes living near the colonies. Late in the 18th century, British doctor Edward Jenner recognized that people who milked cows never came down with smallpox. They had already been infected with cowpox, a similar, but much milder disease that gave them immunity to smallpox. In 1796, Jenner inoculated a young man with cowpox virus he had collected from a milkmaid. The young man had a mild infection for less than 24 hours and recovered. Jenner’s efforts resulted in a widespread acceptance of vaccination (vaccine comes from Latin words meaning “taken from a cow”). By 1800, many Americans were receiving smallpox vaccinations. (See Image 3.) President Thomas Jefferson supported and encouraged the vaccination program in major American cities. (See Image 4.) By the middle of the 19th century, smallpox was under control, but broke out from time to time among unvaccinated people. Bismarck, Dakota Territory, experienced a small outbreak of smallpox in 1882. American Indians, however, were still subject to the disease in its most dangerous form.

Make a multiple choice quiz for my year 8 science students based on the science in this transcript from a video: 3°C 0:04 It can be the difference between snow and sleet 0:08 Wearing a jacket or not 0:11 In your day-to-day life, it may not seem significant 0:15 But 3°C of global warming would be catastrophic 0:20 Heatwaves, droughts, extreme precipitation, even fire 0:25 3°C of warming is really disastrous 0:28 The scary thing is, the world is well on its way there 0:32 Since the industrial revolution, the Earth has warmed between 1.1°C and 1.3°C 0:40 This is a problem that babies you pass in the street will have to live with 0:46 Children born today... 0:47 ...are up to seven times more likely to face extreme weather than their grandparents 0:52 If global temperatures do rise by 3°C... 0:55 ...what would their world look like? Climate change is already having devastating effects 1:03 Rising sea levels 1:05 Desertification 1:07 Hollywood has always enjoyed imagining the end of the world 1:11 While blockbusters like this are clearly fiction... 1:14 ...this film will show the scenario we all face... 1:17 ...unless more drastic measures are taken to stop burning fossil fuels 1:30 In some parts of the world the effects of inaction are already clear 1:35 The slums of Bangladesh’s capital are filling up with climate migrants 1:41 Minara comes from Bhola District, an area in southern Bangladesh 1:46 There, like many other parts of the country... 1:49 ...rivers swollen by heavier rain and melting Himalayan glaciers... 1:53 ...are washing away people’s homes 1:56 Many, like her, have lost everything 2:00 Our home in Bhola had endless amounts of land 2:03 There was lots of space for farming, we had a spacious house 2:08 There were different types of fruits, vegetation and trees growing at home 2:12 We used to eat the fruit from our own trees 2:18 I can’t eat them now because they don't exist anymore 2:21 Since the river flooded for the third time, I had to flee to Dhaka 2:26 Life was much better back home 2:29 It was unbearable to live through, truly intolerable 2:33 We didn’t have the time to save anything at all 2:38 1.1°C to 1.3°C of global warming has already transformed Minara’s life 2:45 It’s one of the reasons why so many migrants like her... 2:47 ...are moving to the city each year... 2:50 ...nearly 400,000 according to the last estimate 2:53 And climate models show there could be much worse to come How climate modelling works 3:02 Climate scientist Joeri Rogelj... 3:04 ...has spent the last ten years modelling future climate scenarios... 3:08 ...for the United Nations 3:10 The models we use to carry out this exercise... 3:13 ...really represent the state of the art... 3:15 ...of our current knowledge of climate change and where we are heading 3:19 Joeri’s projections use data collected by hundreds of scientists around the world 3:26 Here this is the 3°C level... 3:28 ...and so there is at least a one-in-four chance that under current policies... 3:32 ...we would hit 3°C by the end of the century 3:36 This is just one of the scenarios Joeri looks at 3:40 Another one imagines that all policy promises are kept 3:44 The most optimistic assumes that all promises have been kept... 3:47 ...and net-zero targets are met 3:50 Where our best estimate ends up around 2°C at the end of the century... 3:54 ...there is still a one-in-20 chance that we end up with 3°C instead 3:59 One would not be entering a plane if there is a one-in-20 chance... 4:03 ...that the plane will crash Nowhere is safe from global warming 4:07 A rise of 3°C would affect everyone 4:10 Even wealthy cities in rich countries wouldn’t be immune to the consequences 4:15 European capitals like Paris and Berlin... 4:18 ...would bake under more extreme heatwaves 4:22 Frequent storm-surges in New York could turn parts of the city desolate 4:27 In many ways, cities magnify, intensify climate events 4:33 Cities are hotter than the places around them... 4:36 ...they tend to be more vulnerable to flooding 4:39 And you can get a really bad event in a city in a way that you can’t in the countryside 4:46 And because of their denser populations... 4:49 ...disasters in a city affect far more people 4:52 Some cities might be badly prepared for the changes coming 4:56 But they have the means to adapt 4:59 Cities tend to be wealthier than surrounding places 5:03 They have a lot of amenities 5:05 A city that has taken seriously the risks of a 3°C world... 5:08 …wouldn’t necessarily be a worse place to be in a 3°C world 5:12 But a city that hasn’t prepared for these sort of eventualities... 5:16 ...that might be a really nasty place The impact of prolonged droughts 5:20 So far, many developed cities have got off lightly... 5:24 ...but some rural parts of the world are suffering disproportionately 5:29 Smallholders—small-scale farmers—are particularly vulnerable to climate change 5:35 And there are over 600 million around the world 5:38 Smallholders with farms under two hectares... 5:40 ...produce around a third of the global food supply 5:46 Central America’s “Dry Corridor”... 5:48 ...supports a mix of smallholdings and medium-sized farms 5:53 Sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea... 5:56 ...the area is prone to droughts 6:08 Israel Ramírez Rivera is a smallholder in Guatemala 6:12 Here, climate change is making the dry seasons longer, and more severe 6:18 This is the biggest ear of maize that this plot could deliver 6:23 He depends on his crops of corn and beans 6:26 But they’re getting harder to grow 6:30 The surrounding mountains... 6:32 ...used to provide us with native food... 6:38 ...and now that isn’t an option anymore... 6:41 ...due to climate change and its effects 6:46 Nearly two-thirds of the smallholders in the Dry Corridor now live in poverty 6:52 The impact of all of this for us... 6:59 ...malnutrition among children 7:03 We’ve lost a few 7:07 For my crops especially, the midsummer heat is harder than before 7:16 The plant dries up and can’t provide us... 7:19 ...with the necessary food provision 7:24 Severe droughts in Central America... 7:26 ...are now four times more likely than they were last century 7:30 Many families from here have gone to the States 7:37 The economic despair and debts... 7:44 ...have pushed many people from this community to do this journey 7:53 Migration from Guatemala to the United States has quadrupled since 1990 7:59 Not all of this has been due to climate change 8:02 But longer droughts would force even more to move 8:05 In a 3°C world, annual rainfall in this region... 8:09 ...could drop by up to 14% 8:12 At 3°C, over a quarter of the world’s population... 8:16 ...could endure extreme droughts for at least a month of the year 8:19 Northern Africa could see droughts that last for years at a time Rising sea levels, storm surges and flooding 8:24 But for some, too much water will be the problem 8:29 10% of the world’s population lives on a coastline... 8:32 ...that’s less than 10 metres above sea level 8:35 For these coastal inhabitants, a 3°C world would spell disaster 8:40 By 2100, global sea levels could have climbed by half a metre from 2005 levels 8:46 Low-lying cities like Lagos would be especially vulnerable... 8:49 ...with up to up to a third of the population displaced 8:54 And in Fiji, rising waters are already upending lives 9:04 You can see the graveyard there, it’s all under water now... 9:08 ...due to this rising sea level and climate change 9:15 The village of Togoru in Fiji is being swallowed by the sea 9:19 Barney Dunn, the village headman, has seen over half the village disappear 9:24 Relatives’ houses have been abandoned, and family graves are now under water 9:29 We have been asked by the government to relocate... 9:32 ...but no one wants to relocate... 9:34 ...because we have our great-great-grandparents down there in the sea 9:39 This is the place we’ve been brought up in 9:41 ...it’s not easy to leave 9:44 Past attempts to build a seawall haven’t worked 9:48 But Barney sees building a new one as the village’s only hope 9:52 If they do that, maybe we can save whatever is left 9:56 But if we don’t have the seawall, then it will be keep eroding and time will come... 10:01 ...maybe in ten,15 years, Togoru will be all eroded 10:05 Rising seas also mean storms cause more floods 10:11 And many more countries could suffer 10:14 The Philippines and Myanmar are just two countries... 10:17 ...that will also see an increase in storm surges in a 3°C world 10:21 To escape, many will move… 10:24 …often, to urban areas Extreme heat and wet-bulb temperatures 10:27 Half the world’s population already lives in cities... 10:31 ...almost a third in slums 10:36 For them, a 3°C world could be deadly 10:40 Minara has moved to Dhaka to escape the impact of climate change 10:44 But life could get even worse for her 10:47 I’m struggling a lot nowadays 10:49 The heat during the day is unbearable 10:52 Even late at night it doesn’t cool down 10:57 The heat is getting more intense every day 10:59 I mean, it’s going to get much worse 11:03 I can barely survive it now, how will I live through it in the future? 11:08 Dhaka is getting hotter 11:11 In the last 20 years the average daytime temperature... 11:13 ...has crept up by nearly half a degree 11:17 Days that approach 40°C are now being reported 11:20 And high so-called wet-bulb temperatures are on the rise 11:26 A wet-bulb temperature is a measure of heat and humidity 11:30 Humans cool themselves by sweating… 11:32 But in these conditions, when relative humidity is near 100%... 11:36 ...sweat doesn’t evaporate well 11:38 So people can’t cool down… 11:41 ...even if given unlimited shade and water 11:45 At a high wet-bulb temperature, the body can’t lose heat... 11:49 ...and so it gets hotter and hotter... 11:51 ...and the body is designed to work at a given temperature 11:53 And if it gets too hot inside, you will die 11:58 The human limit for wet-bulb temperatures is 35°C... 12:02 ...around skin temperature 12:04 Dhaka will have a much higher chance... 12:05 ...of reaching dangerous wet-bulb temperatures... 12:07 ...if global warming reaches 3°C 12:12 You can’t really adapt to that 12:14 You have to get out. If the temperature is so high that you can’t work... 12:20 ...can’t do hard manual labour outside for significant parts of the year... 12:25 ...then many places will become functionally no longer part of the economy 12:33 Jacobabad in Pakistan, and Ras al Khaimah, in the United Arab Emirates... 12:37 ...have already recorded deadly wet-bulb temperatures 12:40 More of the tropics and the Persian Gulf... 12:43 ...as well as parts of Mexico and the south-eastern United States... 12:47 ...could all get to this threshold by the end of the century 12:50 Climate modelling might show us the weather Increased migration and conflict 12:52 But it doesn’t show us its other effects on society 12:56 Established migration patterns could change 12:59 Climate disasters may exacerbate reasons people cross borders 13:03 Within countries, more people will move to cities 13:07 In a 3°C world, tens of millions of people a year... 13:10 ...could be displaced by disasters made worse by climate change 13:15 When people are displaced by climate... 13:18 …they may well go to cities... 13:19 ...because cities are the places that attract people from the countryside already 13:25 A lot of people who can get to the developed world... 13:28 ...not least because the developed world tends to be less hot, will give that a go 13:35 As migration around the world increases... 13:38 ...there could be more competition for fewer resources 13:42 Water—already a highly contested resource—will be a focal point 13:47 Turkey’s new Ilisu dam has reduced the flow of water into Iraq 13:53 China lays claim to rivers vital to India and Pakistan 13:57 The prospect of a water-conflict makes people very uneasy 14:03 How national tensions would exacerbate those sorts of reactions... 14:08 ...in a 3°C world... 14:09 ...is the sort of thing that no one should really want to find out 14:14 I think you’d have to be incredibly sanguine... 14:16 ...not to think that the sort of climate extremes that we talk about... 14:19 ...in a 3°C world wouldn’t lead some places... 14:22 ...to the brink of societal collapse 14:25 Those lucky enough to escape unrest... Adaptation and mitigation are crucial 14:28 ...would still have to adapt to a radically different world 14:32 People can adapt to climate change in all sorts of ways, one of the most obvious ones... 14:37 ...is air conditioning 14:39 But other ways to adapt at a local or regional level... 14:42 ...I mean, one of the most obvious is diversifying agriculture 14:47 There are physical things you can do, like seawalls 14:52 The fact that people can adapt and that adaptation will reduce suffering... 14:57 ...doesn’t mean that it will eliminate suffering 15:00 Suffering is built into this whole process of heating up the planet 15:06 Adaptation will only get the world so far 15:09 The best way to deal with a 3°C world... 15:12 ...is not to go to a 3°C world 15:14 And that’s why increasing efforts on mitigation are important 15:17 It’s why working towards negative emissions... 15:20 ...that could bring down the temperature after it peaks are important 15:25 Once you get to a 3°C world, you are in real bad global trouble 15:33 The scale of change needed... 15:35 ...and the slow progress of governments so far... 15:38 ...means 3°C of warming is uncomfortably likely unless more is done 15:44 Despite existing pledges, greenhouse-gas emissions... 15:48 ...are still set to rise by 16% from 2010 levels by 2030 15:54 The need to act has never been clearer 15:57 There’s still time to reduce emissions, so that a 3°C world remains fiction... 16:02 ...rather than becoming fact

“There’s No Such Thing as Sound Science” by By Christie Aschwanden was a lead science writer for FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight, Science, Dec. 6, 2017 Science is being turned against itself. For decades, its twin ideals of transparency and rigor have been weaponized by those who disagree with results produced by the scientific method. Under the Trump administration, that fight has ramped up again. In a move ostensibly meant to reduce conflicts of interest, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has removed a number of scientists from advisory panels and replaced some of them with representatives from industries that the agency regulates. Like many in the Trump administration, Pruitt has also cast doubt on the reliability of climate science. For instance, in an interview with CNBC, Pruitt said that “measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do.” Similarly, Trump’s pick to head NASA, an agency that oversees a large portion the nation’s climate research, has insisted that research into human influence on climate lacks certainty, and he falsely claimed that “global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago.” Kathleen Hartnett White, Trump’s nominee to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a Senate hearing last month that she thinks we “need to have more precise explanations of the human role and the natural role” in climate change. The same entreaties crop up again and again: We need to root out conflicts. We need more precise evidence. What makes these arguments so powerful is that they sound quite similar to the points raised by proponents of a very different call for change that’s coming from within science. This other movement strives to produce more robust, reproducible findings. Despite having dissimilar goals, the two forces espouse principles that look surprisingly alike: Science needs to be transparent. Results and methods should be openly shared so that outside researchers can independently reproduce and validate them. The methods used to collect and analyze data should be rigorous and clear, and conclusions must be supported by evidence. These are the arguments underlying an “open science” reform movement that was created, in part, as a response to a “reproducibility crisis” that has struck some fields of science.1 But they’re also used as talking points by politicians who are working to make it more difficult for the EPA and other federal agencies to use science in their regulatory decision-making, under the guise of basing policy on “sound science.” Science’s virtues are being wielded against it. What distinguishes the two calls for transparency is intent: Whereas the “open science” movement aims to make science more reliable, reproducible and robust, proponents of “sound science” have historically worked to amplify uncertainty, create doubt and undermine scientific discoveries that threaten their interests. “Our criticisms are founded in a confidence in science,” said Steven Goodman, co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford and a proponent of open science. “That’s a fundamental difference — we’re critiquing science to make it better. Others are critiquing it to devalue the approach itself.” Calls to base public policy on “sound science” seem unassailable if you don’t know the term’s history. The phrase was adopted by the tobacco industry in the 1990s to counteract mounting evidence linking secondhand smoke to cancer. A 1992 Environmental Protection Agency report identified secondhand smoke as a human carcinogen, and Philip Morris responded by launching an initiative to promote what it called “sound science.” In an internal memo, Philip Morris vice president of corporate affairs Ellen Merlo wrote that the program was designed to “discredit the EPA report,” “prevent states and cities, as well as businesses from passing smoking bans” and “proactively” pass legislation to help their cause. The sound science tactic exploits a fundamental feature of the scientific process: Science does not produce absolute certainty. Contrary to how it’s sometimes represented to the public, science is not a magic wand that turns everything it touches to truth. Instead, it’s a process of uncertainty reduction, much like a game of 20 Questions. Any given study can rarely answer more than one question at a time, and each study usually raises a bunch of new questions in the process of answering old ones. “Science is a process rather than an answer,” said psychologist Alison Ledgerwood of the University of California, Davis. Every answer is provisional and subject to change in the face of new evidence. It’s not entirely correct to say that “this study proves this fact,” Ledgerwood said. “We should be talking instead about how science increases or decreases our confidence in something.” The tobacco industry’s brilliant tactic was to turn this baked-in uncertainty against the scientific enterprise itself. While insisting that they merely wanted to ensure that public policy was based on sound science, tobacco companies defined the term in a way that ensured that no science could ever be sound enough. The only sound science was certain science, which is an impossible standard to achieve. “Doubt is our product,” wrote one employee of the Brown & Williamson tobacco company in a 1969 internal memo. The note went on to say that doubt “is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’” and “establishing a controversy.” These strategies for undermining inconvenient science were so effective that they’ve served as a sort of playbook for industry interests ever since, said Stanford University science historian Robert Proctor. The sound science push is no longer just Philip Morris sowing doubt about the links between cigarettes and cancer. It’s also a 1998 action plan by the American Petroleum Institute, Chevron and Exxon Mobil to “install uncertainty” about the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. It’s industry-funded groups’ late-1990s effort to question the science the EPA was using to set fine-particle-pollution air-quality standards that the industry didn’t want. And then there was the more recent effort by Dow Chemical to insist on more scientific certainty before banning a pesticide that the EPA’s scientists had deemed risky to children. Now comes a move by the Trump administration’s EPA to repeal a 2015 rule on wetlands protection by disregarding particular studies. (To name just a few examples.) Doubt merchants aren’t pushing for knowledge, they’re practicing what Proctor has dubbed “agnogenesis” — the intentional manufacture of ignorance. This ignorance isn’t simply the absence of knowing something; it’s a lack of comprehension deliberately created by agents who don’t want you to know, Proctor said.2 In the hands of doubt-makers, transparency becomes a rhetorical move. “It’s really difficult as a scientist or policy maker to make a stand against transparency and openness, because well, who would be against it?” said Karen Levy, researcher on information science at Cornell University. But at the same time, “you can couch everything in the language of transparency and it becomes a powerful weapon.” For instance, when the EPA was preparing to set new limits on particulate pollution in the 1990s, industry groups pushed back against the research and demanded access to primary data (including records that researchers had promised participants would remain confidential) and a reanalysis of the evidence. Their calls succeeded and a new analysis was performed. The reanalysis essentially confirmed the original conclusions, but the process of conducting it delayed the implementation of regulations and cost researchers time and money. Delay is a time-tested strategy. “Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has,” said Marc Morano, a prominent critic of global warming research and the executive director of ClimateDepot.com, in the documentary “Merchants of Doubt” (based on the book by the same name). Morano’s site is a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which has received funding from the oil and gas industry. “We’re the negative force. We’re just trying to stop stuff.” Some of these ploys are getting a fresh boost from Congress. The Data Quality Act (also known as the Information Quality Act) was reportedly written by an industry lobbyist and quietly passed as part of an appropriations bill in 2000. The rule mandates that federal agencies ensure the “quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information” that they disseminate, though it does little to define what these terms mean. The law also provides a mechanism for citizens and groups to challenge information that they deem inaccurate, including science that they disagree with. “It was passed in this very quiet way with no explicit debate about it — that should tell you a lot about the real goals,” Levy said. But what’s most telling about the Data Quality Act is how it’s been used, Levy said. A 2004 Washington Post analysis found that in the 20 months following its implementation, the act was repeatedly used by industry groups to push back against proposed regulations and bog down the decision-making process. Instead of deploying transparency as a fundamental principle that applies to all science, these interests have used transparency as a weapon to attack very particular findings that they would like to eradicate. Now Congress is considering another way to legislate how science is used. The Honest Act, a bill sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas,3 is another example of what Levy calls a “Trojan horse” law that uses the language of transparency as a cover to achieve other political goals. Smith’s legislation would severely limit the kind of evidence the EPA could use for decision-making. Only studies whose raw data and computer codes were publicly available would be allowed for consideration. That might sound perfectly reasonable, and in many cases it is, Goodman said. But sometimes there are good reasons why researchers can’t conform to these rules, like when the data contains confidential or sensitive medical information.4 Critics, which include more than a dozen scientific organizations, argue that, in practice, the rules would prevent many studies from being considered in EPA reviews.5 It might seem like an easy task to sort good science from bad, but in reality it’s not so simple. “There’s a misplaced idea that we can definitively distinguish the good from the not-good science, but it’s all a matter of degree,” said Brian Nosek, executive director of the Center for Open Science. “There is no perfect study.” Requiring regulators to wait until they have (nonexistent) perfect evidence is essentially “a way of saying, ‘We don’t want to use evidence for our decision-making,’” Nosek said. Most scientific controversies aren’t about science at all, and once the sides are drawn, more data is unlikely to bring opponents into agreement. Michael Carolan, who researches the sociology of technology and scientific knowledge at Colorado State University, wrote in a 2008 paper about why objective knowledge is not enough to resolve environmental controversies. “While these controversies may appear on the surface to rest on disputed questions of fact, beneath often reside differing positions of value; values that can give shape to differing understandings of what ‘the facts’ are.” What’s needed in these cases isn’t more or better science, but mechanisms to bring those hidden values to the forefront of the discussion so that they can be debated transparently. “As long as we continue down this unabashedly naive road about what science is, and what it is capable of doing, we will continue to fail to reach any sort of meaningful consensus on these matters,” Carolan writes. The dispute over tobacco was never about the science of cigarettes’ link to cancer. It was about whether companies have the right to sell dangerous products and, if so, what obligations they have to the consumers who purchased them. Similarly, the debate over climate change isn’t about whether our planet is heating, but about how much responsibility each country and person bears for stopping it. While researching her book “Merchants of Doubt,” science historian Naomi Oreskes found that some of the same people who were defending the tobacco industry as scientific experts were also receiving industry money to deny the role of human activity in global warming. What these issues had in common, she realized, was that they all involved the need for government action. “None of this is about the science. All of this is a political debate about the role of government,” she said in the documentary. These controversies are really about values, not scientific facts, and acknowledging that would allow us to have more truthful and productive debates. What would that look like in practice? Instead of cherry-picking evidence to support a particular view (and insisting that the science points to a desired action), the various sides could lay out the values they are using to assess the evidence. For instance, in Europe, many decisions are guided by the precautionary principle — a system that values caution in the face of uncertainty and says that when the risks are unclear, it should be up to industries to show that their products and processes are not harmful, rather than requiring the government to prove that they are harmful before they can be regulated. By contrast, U.S. agencies tend to wait for strong evidence of harm before issuing regulations. Both approaches have critics, but the difference between them comes down to priorities: Is it better to exercise caution at the risk of burdening companies and perhaps the economy, or is it more important to avoid potential economic downsides even if it means that sometimes a harmful product or industrial process goes unregulated? In other words, under what circumstances do we agree to act on a risk? How certain do we need to be that the risk is real, and how many people would need to be at risk, and how costly is it to reduce that risk? Those are moral questions, not scientific ones, and openly discussing and identifying these kinds of judgment calls would lead to a more honest debate. Science matters, and we need to do it as rigorously as possible. But science can’t tell us how risky is too risky to allow products like cigarettes or potentially harmful pesticides to be sold — those are value judgements that only humans can make.

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