Is Environmental Science Less Objective?

An interesting paper, “Science versus Subjectivity in Environmental Research,” by Dominic Parker and Ngoc Ha Do at the University of Madison. Here is the abstract:

Objective science aims to uncover truths about environmental conditions, including those related to emission trends, biodiversity loss, climate change, and their economic costs. When and why do scientists use subjective language to describe these conditions with bias, emotion, or advocacy? To shed light, we study determinants and trends in subjective language within the abstracts, introductions, and conclusions of over 170,000 peer-reviewed articles published during 1990-2023 in top economics and science journals. Using machine learning to label and score text by subjectivity, we find that subjective language is more prevalent in articles focused on environmental topics relative to non-environmental topics: by 12% in economics and by 42% in science. After accounting for factors such as article age, author experience, number of authors, and journal quality, higher subjectivity scores associate positively with future academic citations in both science and economics, especially if the article is focused on an environmental topic. These findings, which imply subjective language has been rewarded in the academy, are consistent with informal theory suggesting subjective language will be used more frequently by scientists when expected rewards are high and risks are low.

The obvious question is whether this is just a finding about the use of language, or whether it indicates something about the underlying work.