Out of the labs and into the streets: Effects of climate protests by environmental scientists

Abstract

There have been increasing calls for scientists to 'get out of the labs and into the streets' and become more involved in climate change advocacy and protest, including civil disobedience. A growing number of scientists are heeding these calls, but the potential impact of such engagement on the public and the credibility of science remains critically understudied. In this registered report, we used a vignette approach to examine the potential effects of scientists' engagement in two types of protest in a large representative sample (in terms of age and gender; n = 2856) of people in the United States, taking into account political affiliation. Contrary to our predictions, we found that an environmental scientist's endorsement of or involvement in a protest did not reduce public support for oil and gas drilling, increase support for activists or alter perceptions of protest radicalness. As predicted, we found that scientists' participation in protests did not reduce the public's reported level of credibility of the participating scientists or of environmental scientists more broadly. These findings suggest that scientists can engage in public protest without compromising their credibility, but that such actions alone may have less impact than one would like to believe.