Bret Stephens made his debut in the pages of The New York Times opinion section today with a column defending climate change skepticism in the face of scientific surety, a take that didn’t sit well with many of his colleagues in the newsroom.
Stephens, a 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winner who joined The Times earlier this year after critiquing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section, argued in his first column that the kind of overwhelming certainty that caused Hillary Clinton to overestimate her chances of electoral victory has crept into conventional wisdom surrounding climate science:
Claiming total certainty about the science traduces the spirit of science and creates openings for doubt whenever a climate claim proves wrong. Demanding abrupt and expensive changes in public policy raises fair questions about ideological intentions. Censoriously asserting one’s moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts.
None of this is to deny climate change or the possible severity of its consequences. But ordinary citizens also have a right to be skeptical of an overweening scientism. They know — as all environmentalists should — that history is littered with the human wreckage of scientific errors married to political power.
After the column was published Friday afternoon (readers were alerted with a push notification), New York Times journalists began responding on Twitter:
In our NYT comments section, we offer a more direct and efficient way to yell at @bretstephensnyt https://t.co/y7bhtA69Bh
— Bassey Etim (@BasseyE) April 28, 2017
cc @liamstack https://t.co/m1MKB6W3MB
— katephillips (@katephillips) April 28, 2017
<starts stress eating> https://t.co/V790Re8mmy
— Michael Roston (@michaelroston) April 28, 2017
Meanwhile https://t.co/aDe8mBO1jX
— Michael Roston (@michaelroston) April 28, 2017
Congrats to all the tweet aggregators who will make very viral content out of all this.
— Michael Roston (@michaelroston) April 28, 2017
“The New York Times newsroom and the New York Times opinion section are totally separate things!” he shouted into the void
— Tom Wright-Piersanti (@tomwp) April 28, 2017
If Opinion wants more ideological diversity, well, my “King’s Things”-style column still needs a home…
— willy (@willystaley) April 28, 2017
Astonishing how much the waters have been muddied on this issue pic.twitter.com/05vKCwS7lM
— Zach Johnk (@zachjohnk) April 28, 2017
Page A1, Jan. 19: https://t.co/OEsSSmVJiL pic.twitter.com/w2xGA2Y5Dr
— Todd Gregory (@ToddGregory) April 28, 2017
CC @BillNyehttps://t.co/zKsvYJXLvr pic.twitter.com/UaU3uckrB3
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) April 28, 2017
Apropos of, well, something, let’s never forget “Eppur si muove”.
— Benjamin Hoffman (@BenHoffmanNYT) April 28, 2017
A January tradition for the front page of The New York Times pic.twitter.com/F0uaLFpSRX
— Tom Wright-Piersanti (@tomwp) April 28, 2017
*bangs gavel* both sides heard
— Greg Howard (@greghoward88) April 28, 2017
Stephens faced criticism from his new colleagues before he started at the Times. Declan Walsh, the Times’ Cairo bureau chief, objected on Twitter to the columnist’s use of the phrase “disease of the Arab mind” in a column about anti-semitic views held by Arabs.
Not cool: new NYT columnist @BretStephensNYT once wrote about the “disease of the Arab mind”. https://t.co/duylYvCQSd (h/t @hahellyer)
— Declan Walsh (@declanwalsh) April 15, 2017
Max Fisher, an editor and writer at The New York Times, also took issue with the phrase.
@declanwalsh @BretStephensNYT I initially assumed it was just a sloppy rhetorical flourish, but the digging in suggests the line was intended to mean exactly what it said
— Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) April 16, 2017
Stephens defended the line on Twitter. Today, he noted that he has experienced bullying from critics on the left.
After 20 months of being harangued by bullying Trump supporters, I’m reminded that the nasty left is no different. Perhaps worse. https://t.co/uQ2L5lox6e
— Bret Stephens (@BretStephensNYT) April 28, 2017
James Bennett, the editorial page editor of The New York Times and the former editor of The Atlantic, heralded Stephens’ debut in a note on the Times’ website celebrating the added diversity of opinion Stephens represents.
But, particularly during this turbulent and searching time in America and around the world, we should have the humility to recognize we may not be right about everything and the courage to test our own assumptions and arguments.
