Good science always questions and critically examines assumptions and attempts to induct a paradigm change (Kuhn 1962). It is the noble task of scientists to advance science by discovering new knowledge in honest ways and through honest processes (Pielke 2007). Scientists as honest knowledge brokers should communicate the strengths but also the constraints and limits of scientific modeling and of applying it in reality.
This may induce unsustainable environmental action.
#INTEGRITY PLUS DEWEY DRIVERS#
We show that phosphorus scarcity claims are based on integrating basic geoeconomic knowledge and discuss cognitive and epistemological barriers and motivational and sociopolitical drivers promoting the scarcity fallacy, which affects high-level public media. We then discuss the phosphorus scarcity fallacy, which is of particular interest as phosphorus is non-substitutable and half of all current food production depends on fertilizers (and thus phosphorus). We present the main mineral scarcity models and their fallacious assumptions.
Herein, we exemplarily elaborate how the integrity of science is endangered by normative solutionist and sociopolitically driven transition management and present mineral scarcity claims that ignore that reserves or resources are dynamic geotechnological-socioeconomic entities. This becomes critical if the consistency and validation of the findings are questionable and scientific models underlying science activists’ actions are doubtful, oversimplified, or incorrect. Scientific findings are simplified and communicated in such a way that they acquire a status as unfalsifiable and absolutely true (truth to power). When doing this, they may insufficiently differentiate between scientific and political modes of reasoning and validation (de-differentiationism), which is sometimes linked to questionable forms of utilizing the force of facts (German: Faktengewalt). Thereby, scientists may become normative activists for solving certain problems (advocacy). There is increasing demand for science to contribute to solving societal problems (solutionism).
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