“I am a big fan of science”, but “climate science misses the mark”: Understanding critique of institutionalised climate science among the scientifically literate in the Netherlands.

This study aims to understand criticism of institutionalised climate science among the scientifically literate in the Netherlands by means of 15 online in-depth interviews. This research finds that most respondents share an ostensibly contradictory position. On the one hand, they ascribe great importance towards the modern scientific method and principles, but, on the other, they adopt a critical stance towards institutionalised climate science. A first element that helps us understand this science confidence gap is their commonly shared individualist epistemology, meaning that most respondents regard the individual as central to obtaining knowledge and determining what is true. This group of scientifically literate climate change critics generally centre this epistemology around the modern scientific method and principles, as illustrated by their gathering and evaluation of information (e.g. triangulation, preferring ‘raw’ data, emphasising methodological transparency). In fact, respondents often regard such an individualist and critical disposition to be part of a ‘good scientific attitude.’ This helps us understand why most respondents think it unwise to blindly accept the ‘general’ conclusions of institutionalised climate science. However, this ‘scientific scepticism’ is not only applied to the information provided by climate science, but also to institutionalised climate science itself, which is in line with theories of reflexive-modernisation. The respondents identify three mechanisms that are perceived to inhibit the scientific freedom of institutionalised climate science, namely (1) the politicisation of the climate change issue, (2) institutional path-dependency and (3) the negativity bias inherent in the scientific endeavour. A fourth critique – the ‘unscientificness’ of climate models – generally pertains to a subset of the respondents, the engineers, and regards the perceived lack of scientific rigour applied in climate modelling. By illustrating what happens when the lens of ‘scientific scepticism’ is projected onto institutionalised science itself, this research empirically substantiates theories of reflexive-modernisation that have thus far remained in the realm of the theoretical. This invites future research focusing on other groups displaying a science confidence gap (e.g. vaccine critics critical of medical science) to see how these different critiques of institutionalised science compare. Doing so will further improve our understanding of critique of scientific institutions among critical groups in contemporary Western societies.