Roger A. Pielke Jr. and Dan Sarewitz

The dawn of the twenty-first century has pundits racing to predict changes in societal conditions and in people’s lives. Recent technological advances, some argue, promise further economic growth and herald the potential for robots and cloned humans. Others claim that variables such as natural phenomena and human nature make accurate predictions of the future impossible. In the following viewpoint, Roger A. Pielke Jr. and Dan Sarewitz contend that predictions about the future must be regarded with skepticism, as most scientific experiments cannot be replicated in reality. Pielke is a scientist at the Environment and Social Impacts Group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and Sarewitz works as a researcher at the Center for Policy Outcomes at Columbia University and Georgia Tech...