Should scientists show emotion while discussing their science? I ask because a professor of ocean geology wept as she discussed with me the impact carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are having on the sea.

She fears we are acidifying and heating the ocean so fast that her young daughters may no longer enjoy coral reefs and shellfish by the end of the century.

And as we pondered the future, her passion for the oceans triggered tears.



The interview came half way through a long day for the professor, who had left her young children in the early hours on a visit to the Marum labs in Bremen.

We had gone to witness ocean sediment cores showing an event known as the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 56m years ago, when the sea bed rapidly heated and became more acidic.

It’s visually dramatic: the cores are chalky white from the fossils of tiny shellfish for millions of years – then they suddenly turn reddish brown as many of the shellfish (foraminifera) are driven to extinction.

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Our CO2 emissions are acidifying the seas at least 10 times faster than at that cataclysmic moment – maybe 100 times faster.

The majority view is that some species will benefit from the changes we are imposing on the ocean, in the short term at least, but most changes are likely to be negative. It is unlikely, for instance, that the spectacular branching corals that embellish reefs will survive the century.

As the professor spoke about the future of the oceans for Radio 4’s World Tonight I noticed the tears in her eyes.

“Stop recording now,” she said. “I can’t be crying on the radio. It’s demeaning to women scientists, especially after Tim Hunt [The UCL Professor who controversially resigned after quipping that women scientists get emotional in the lab].”

I argued that the audience would be moved by her commitment, and the interview continued with tears flowing.

“I love the oceans,” she said. “I feel passionately about what we are doing to them and I’m worried that they will be irreversibly damaged.

“Ocean acidification is very simple. The CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere; the ocean and the atmosphere are exchanging the CO2; the ocean will become more acidic. That’s simple chemistry and much easier to calculate than what is the regional warming effects of the land and the ocean.

“I’m a geologist. In the long term the Earth and Earth system will recover back to a normal state. But humans – we are depending on the services the oceans provide.

“It’s really important for me that the next generation can grow up diving in the ocean, enjoying it and getting pleasure from it. I’d like my girls to see it (as it is now).

“I’m seriously concerned how the ocean will look like in 2100. Because with the current predictions we will not have coral reefs, with the current predictions they will not enjoy eating mussels and oysters. They will not have a lot of things we take for granted.

“This is all about the rate of change – if we can reduce the rate with which we change the CO2 in the atmosphere. How 2100 is looking like is our choice.”

A colleague was moved by her passion: “That was really powerful. She almost had me crying too. That’s the sort of interview that will stay with the audience for some time.”

The professor on the other hand was unhappy. I persuaded her to let me broadcast the tearful radio interview but she truncated a subsequent TV interview when she became overwrought again.

Her fellow acidification scientist Dr Carol Turley from Plymouth Marine Labs supported her emotion: “There’s nothing wrong with passion for your science,” she said. “Women are allowed to be emotional. Men are allowed to be ironic. The Tim Hunt business was absurd.”

It brought to my mind that dramatic moment when the chair of the annual climate change conference Yvo de Boer wept on stage after an attack on his integrity as he worked round the clock to get a deal to protect the Earth from warming.

But how will the audience respond to the professor’s tears for the oceans, and her unambiguous plea for a reduction in CO2 emissions?

Social scientists tell us the way people respond to media messages depends on many factors, including age, life experiences or their attitudes to say, risk or tax. Values are also key, along with prior beliefs – especially in this case about the accuracy of climate science.

So, some may be moved to pay more attention than otherwise because the professor revealed an emotional commitment to her science. They may perhaps be drawn to research further into ocean science themselves. And they will trust the interviewee more because she displayed “honest” emotion rather than just “dry” statistics.

Others may conclude that tears can cloud judgement. These will insist on a more methodical analysis of the certainties and uncertainties of ocean acidification – the sort of thing the professor would provide in a lecture to students. They will trust the interviewee less for revealing emotion behind her science.

Gender can be another factor in receiving media messages. Why not try the ocean tears test with a member of the opposite sex while listening to the interview?

Would you have responded the same way, I wonder, if the interviewee had been a man?



I wonder, too, if the tears would have been more widely-accepted if the interviewee had been passionate about space, rather than the Earth? I suspect many climate scientists downplay their passion for their subject to avoid being labelled environmentalists by those who don’t share their values.

One thing is for sure - your own judgments about the prospects for the long term future of humanity and the planet are unlikely to be influenced only by logic, any more than all scientific breakthroughs stem from intellect alone.

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