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Naomi Oreskes.
Plate Tectonics: an insider's history of the modern theory of the Earth.
CRC. 2003

Can anyone today imagine the earth without its puzzle-piece construction of plate tectonics? The very term, “plate tectonics,” coined only thirty-five years ago, is now part of the vernacular, part of everyone’s understanding of the way the earth works. The theory, research, data collection, and analysis that came together in the late 1960s to constitute plate tectonics is one of the great scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century. Scholarly books have been written about tectonics, but none by the key scientists-players themselves. In Plate Tectonics, editor Naomi Oreskes has assembled scientists who played key roles in developing the theory to tell—for the first time and in their own words—the stories of their involvement in the extraordinary evolution of the theory. The book opens with an overview of the history of plate tectonics, including in-context definitions of the key terms that are discussed throughout the book. Oreskes explains how the forerunners of the theory, Wegener and du Toit, raised the questions that were finally answered thirty years later, and how scientists working at the key academic institutions—Cambridge and Princeton Universities, Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory, and the University of California-San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography—competed and collaborated until the theory coalesced.

Naomi Oreskes.
Why Trust Science?.
Princeton University Press. 2019

Are doctors right when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us about the perils of global warming? Why should we trust science when so many of our political leaders don’t? Naomi Oreskes offers a bold and compelling defense of science, revealing why the social character of scientific knowledge is its greatest strength—and the greatest reason we can trust it. Tracing the history and philosophy of science from the late nineteenth century to today, this timely and provocative book features a new preface by Oreskes and critical responses by climate experts Ottmar Edenhofer and Martin Kowarsch, political scientist Jon Krosnick, philosopher of science Marc Lange, and science historian Susan Lindee, as well as a foreword by political theorist Stephen Macedo.

Naomi Oreskes.
Science on a Mission: how military funding shaped what we do and don't know about the ocean.
University of Chicago Press. 2021

A vivid portrait of how naval oversight shaped American oceanography, revealing what difference it makes who pays for science

What difference does it make who pays for science? Some might say none. If scientists seek to discover fundamental truths about the world, and they do so in an objective manner using well-established methods, then how could it matter who’s footing the bill? History, however, suggests otherwise. In science, as elsewhere, money is power. Tracing the recent history of oceanography, Naomi Oreskes discloses dramatic changes in American ocean science since the Cold War, uncovering how and why it changed. Much of it has to do with who pays.