I'm Flora Lichtenen, and you're listening to Science Friday.

We keep hearing that these are unprecedented times for science.

We have science skeptics running federal agencies, growing distrust of vaccines, and messaging from the highest levels of government that scientists are in the pocket of industry.

But is it really a unique time for science? And what can we learn from history? We have just the

person to answer those questions, a science historian who has gone deep studying skepticism and

science. Naomi Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University. Welcome back, Naomi.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you. Okay, I've heard that science comes under attack when it threatens authority. Is that a true statement? Is that true generally? Well, I hope is true because I'm sure I've said that myself.

Perhaps I heard it from you, Naomi. Yeah, could be.

I've definitely written that in a book.

So there's no question that one of the reasons science can be vulnerable is that sometimes

scientists discover things that threaten powerful people, powerful interests, or threaten

cherished beliefs, widely held values.

And so two examples that I've written about

are evolutionary theory and acid rain, so quite different examples, and I think they're useful in that

way. So we all know that pretty much for as long as there's been a scientific debate about

evolution, there has been resistance to the scientific findings that human beings

have probably evolved just the same as frogs and snakes and aspen trees and all the rest.

And that's an idea that has always threatened people, partly because it's been interpreted by

some people as challenging the idea that God made man in his image.

And part of it because a lot of people just don't like the idea that in some deep way

were not very different than the slugs that you find in your garden.

I don't know why.

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