Please join the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Dr. Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado, Boulder presenting a hybrid seminar titled What Happens When Self-Correction in Science Breaks Down? on Tuesday, April 29, 2025, in Golden, CO.  Free lunch will be provided.

A defining characteristic of the scientific method is that research is always subject to replication, reproduction, and challenge. As the late astronomer Carl Sagan once said: “Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.” But what happens when the self-correction process in science breaks down? In this talk Dr. Roger Pielke will share several examples of such self-correction failures in the field of climate science. Climate change is indeed real and serious, and aggressive policies for adaptation and mitigation make good sense. Our best chances for policy success lie in rigorous research and sustaining public trust in the integrity of that research. But recent data suggests that the scientific community does indeed face a crisis of diminishing public trust. He will emphasize the importance of maintaining the highest standard of integrity, especially in hotly contested political issues.

Roger Pielke Jr. is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on science and technology policy, the politicization of science, government science advice, and energy and climate. He is concurrently a professor emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder; a distinguished fellow at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan; a research associate of Risk Frontiers (Sydney, Australia); and an honorary professor of University College London.

Before joining AEI, Dr. Pielke was a professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, a visiting professor at the University of Oslo, a senior fellow at the Breakthrough Institute, and James Martin Fellow of the University of Oxford. He also worked as a scientist for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Dr. Pielke oversees a popular Substack, the Honest Broker. He has been published widely in the popular press, including in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and the Financial Times. Dr. Pielke has testified before the US Congress on many occasions, at the invitation of both Democrats and Republicans.

Additionally, Dr. Pielke has written a number of books, including The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change (2018); The Edge: The War Against Cheating and Corruption in the Cutthroat World of Elite Sports (2016); Presidential Science Advisers: Reflections on Science, Policy and Politics (2011), with R. Klein; and The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming (2010).

Dr. Pielke has a PhD in political science, a MA in public policy, and a BA in mathematics, all from the University of Colorado Boulder.