The invitation to contribute more to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should not be limited to social-science fields that are immediately relevant to decision-making processes, as David Victor seems to imply (see Nature 520, 27–29; 2015).

A wider mix of social scientists can more effectively contribute valuable knowledge to the often-contentious societal and policy issues around climate change. They will help to retain and strengthen the role of the IPCC in international policy-making and public discourse by using qualitative and quantitative, theoretical and empirical, basic and applied approaches.

This should not be difficult: most international social-science associations have working groups on climate and environmental change, and integrated science platforms such as Future Earth involve hundreds of social scientists worldwide (www.futureearth.org). These social scientists should be equal partners in the IPCC's framing and scoping processes, along with their natural-scientist colleagues and policy-makers.