Recent years have seen a notable increase in the production of scientific expertise by large multidisciplinary groups. The issue we address is how reports may be written by such groups in spite of ...their size and of formidable obstacles: complexity of subject matter, uncertainty, and scientific disagreement. Our focus is on the International Panel on Climate Change (henceforth IPCC), unquestionably the best-known case of such collective scientific expertise. What we show is that the organization of work within the IPCC aims to make it possible to produce documents that are indeed expert reports. To do so, we first put forward the epistemic norms that apply to expert reports in general, that is, the properties that reports should have in order to be useful and to help decision-making. Section
2
claims that these properties are: intelligibility, relevance and accuracy. Based on this analysis, section
3
points to the difficulties of having IPCC reports indeed satisfying these norms. We then show how the organization of work within the IPCC aims at and to a large extent secures intelligibility, relevance and accuracy, with the result that IPCC reports can be relied on for decision-making. Section
4
focuses on the fundamentals of IPCC’s work organization—that is, division of labour within the IPCC—while section
5
investigates three frameworks that were introduced over the course of the functioning of the IPCC: the reviewing procedure of IPCC reports, the language that IPCC authors use to express uncertainty and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). Concluding remarks are offered in section
6
.
This essay argues that the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is an example of an argument actor that makes assemblage arguments to perpetuate doubt and skepticism on the ...climate change thesis. The concept of assemblage arguments challenges dialectical approaches to argument because it rejects the assumption that argument subjects are reasonable actors that strive to settle disputes through critical-rational argument exchange. To determine how this assemblage functions as a pragmatic argument actor, this paper offers an assemblage criticism of the NIPCC's argument expressions. We argue that this assemblage operates within a post-dialectical framework because networks, not reasons, drive the force of arguments.
In a recent paper, Gregor Betz has defended the value-free ideal: “the justification of scientific findings should not be based on non-epistemic (e.g. moral or political) values”against the ...methodological critique, by reference to the work of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This paper argues that Betz’s defence is unsuccessful. First, Betz’s argument is sketched, and it is shown that the IPCC does not avoid the need to “translate” claims. In Section
2
, it is argued that Betz mischaracterises the force of the methodological critique. Section
3
shows why the methodological critique still applies to the work of the IPCC even on a refined version of Betz’s argument. Section
4
then considers an alternative way of defending the work of the IPCC which is in-line with, but does not clearly vindicate, the value-free ideal.
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