Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new study suggests that if people are psychologically “inoculated” with deliberately “weakened” versions of climate skeptic arguments, they are more likely to reject real skeptic positions.
The Press Release;
Psychological ‘vaccine’ could help immunize public against ‘fake news’ on climate change
Sander van der Linden, Anthony Leiserowitz,Seth Rosenthal, Edward Maibach
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
In medicine, vaccinating against a virus involves exposing a body to a weakened version of the threat, enough to build a tolerance.
Social psychologists believe that a similar logic can be applied to help “inoculate” the public against misinformation, including the damaging influence of ‘fake news’ websites propagating myths about climate change.
A new study compared reactions to a well-known climate change fact with those to a popular misinformation campaign. When presented consecutively, the false material completely cancelled out the accurate statement in people’s minds – opinions ended up back where they started.
Researchers then added a small dose of misinformation to delivery of the climate change fact, by briefly introducing people to distortion tactics used by certain groups. This “inoculation” helped shift and hold opinions closer to the truth – despite the follow-up exposure to ‘fake news’.
The study on US attitudes found the inoculation technique shifted the climate change opinions of Republicans, Independents and Democrats alike.
Published in the journal Global Challenges, the study was conducted by researchers from the universities of Cambridge, UK, Yale and George Mason, US. It is one of the first on ‘inoculation theory’ to try and replicate a ‘real world’ scenario of conflicting information on a highly politicised subject.
“Misinformation can be sticky, spreading and replicating like a virus,” says lead author Dr Sander van der Linden, a social psychologist from the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab.
“We wanted to see if we could find a ‘vaccine’ by pre-emptively exposing people to a small amount of the type of misinformation they might experience. A warning that helps preserve the facts.
“The idea is to provide a cognitive repertoire that helps build up resistance to misinformation, so the next time people come across it they are less susceptible.”
To find the most compelling climate change falsehood currently influencing public opinion, van der Linden and colleagues tested popular statements from corners of the internet on a nationally representative sample of US citizens, with each one rated for familiarity and persuasiveness.
The winner: the assertion that there is no consensus among scientists, apparently supported by the Oregon Global Warming Petition Project. This website claims to hold a petition signed by “over 31,000 American scientists” stating there is no evidence that human CO2 release will cause climate change.
The study also used the accurate statement that “97% of scientists agree on manmade climate change”. Prior work by van der Linden has shown this fact about scientific consensus is an effective ‘gateway’ for public acceptance of climate change.
In a disguised experiment, researchers tested the opposing statements on over 2,000 participants across the US spectrum of age, education, gender and politics using the online platform Amazon Mechanical Turk.
In order to gauge shifts in opinion, each participant was asked to estimate current levels of scientific agreement on climate change throughout the study.
Those shown only the fact about climate change consensus (in pie chart form) reported a large increase in perceived scientific agreement – an average of 20 percentage points. Those shown only misinformation (a screenshot of the Oregon petition website) dropped their belief in a scientific consensus by 9 percentage points.
Some participants were shown the accurate pie chart followed by the erroneous Oregon petition. The researchers were surprised to find the two neutralised each other (a tiny difference of 0.5 percentage points).
“It’s uncomfortable to think that misinformation is so potent in our society,” says van der Linden. “A lot of people’s attitudes toward climate change aren’t very firm. They are aware there is a debate going on, but aren’t necessarily sure what to believe. Conflicting messages can leave them feeling back at square one.”
Alongside the consensus fact, two groups in the study were randomly given ‘vaccines’:
A general inoculation, consisting of a warning that “some politically-motivated groups use misleading tactics to try and convince the public that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists”.
A detailed inoculation that picks apart the Oregon petition specifically. For example, by highlighting some of the signatories are fraudulent, such as Charles Darwin and members of the Spice Girls, and less than 1% of signatories have backgrounds in climate science.
For those ‘inoculated’ with this extra data, the misinformation that followed did not cancel out the accurate message.
The general inoculation saw an average opinion shift of 6.5 percentage points towards acceptance of the climate science consensus, despite exposure to fake news.
When the detailed inoculation was added to the general, it was almost 13 percentage points – two-thirds of the effect seen when participants were just given the consensus fact.
The research team point out that tobacco and fossil fuel companies have used psychological inoculation in the past to sow seeds of doubt, and to undermine scientific consensus in the public consciousness.
They say the latest study demonstrates that such techniques can be partially “reversed” to promote scientific consensus, and work in favour of the public good.
The researchers also analysed the results in terms of political parties. Before inoculation, the fake negated the factual for both Democrats and Independents. For Republicans, the fake actually overrode the facts by 9 percentage points.
However, following inoculation, the positive effects of the accurate information were preserved across all parties to match the average findings (around a third with just general inoculation; two-thirds with detailed).
“We found that inoculation messages were equally effective in shifting the opinions of Republicans, Independents and Democrats in a direction consistent with the conclusions of climate science,” says van der Linden.
“What’s striking is that, on average, we found no backfire effect to inoculation messages among groups predisposed to reject climate science, they didn’t seem to retreat into conspiracy theories.
“There will always be people completely resistant to change, but we tend to find there is room for most people to change their minds, even just a little.”
Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-01/uoc-pc011917.php
The Abstract of the study;
Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change
Effectively addressing climate change requires significant changes in individual and collective human behavior and decision-making. Yet, in light of the increasing politicization of (climate) science, and the attempts of vested-interest groups to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change through organized “disinformation campaigns,” identifying ways to effectively engage with the public about the issue across the political spectrum has proven difficult. A growing body of research suggests that one promising way to counteract the politicization of science is to convey the high level of normative agreement (“consensus”) among experts about the reality of human-caused climate change. Yet, much prior research examining public opinion dynamics in the context of climate change has done so under conditions with limited external validity. Moreover, no research to date has examined how to protect the public from the spread of influential misinformation about climate change. The current research bridges this divide by exploring how people evaluate and process consensus cues in a polarized information environment. Furthermore, evidence is provided that it is possible to pre-emptively protect (“inoculate”) public attitudes about climate change against real-world misinformation.
Read more: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gch2.201600008/full
I was curious about exactly how the inoculation is performed, the following from the full study is revealing;
… The rate of cultural transmission, or infection, may be slowed through a process known as attitudinal inoculation. In medicine, resistance to a virus can be conferred by exposing someone to a weakened version of the virus (a vaccine)—strong enough to trigger a response (i.e., the production of antibodies), but not so strong as to overwhelm the body’s immune system. The social–psychological theory of attitudinal inoculation[56] follows a similar logic: A threat is introduced by forewarning people that they may be exposed to information that challenges their existing beliefs or behaviors. Then, one or more (weakened) examples of that information are presented and directly refuted in a process called “refutational pre-emption” or “prebunking.”[14] In short, attitudinal resistance is conferred by pre-emptively highlighting false claims and refuting potential counterarguments. …
Read more: Same link as above
In the supplemental information document, the study authors provide an example of inoculation. They authors present the Oregon Petition claim “31,487 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs“, along with an image of Physics Giant Edward Teller’s Oregon Petition signature (see image at the top of this post), followed by the following “counterargument”.
General (In1) and Detailed (In2) Inoculation Messages
General: Nearly all climate scientists—97%—have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening. Some politically-motivated groups use misleading tactics to try to convince the public that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists. However, scientific research has found that among climate scientists “there is virtually no disagreement that humans are causing climate change”.
Detailed: One such politically motivated group claims to have collected signatures from over 31,000 “scientists” (including over 9,000 who hold Ph.D.’s) on a petition urging the U.S. government to reject any limits on greenhouse gas emissions because; “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of Earth’s climate.” They claim that these signatures prove that there is no scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.
This may sound convincing at first. However, several independent investigations have concluded that the “Petition Project” is extremely misleading. For instance, many of the signatures on the petition are fake (for example, past signatories have included the long- deceased Charles Darwin, members of the Spice Girls, and fictional characters from Star Wars). Also, although 31,000 may seem like a large number, it actually represents less than 0.3% of all US science graduates (a tiny fraction). Further, nearly all of the legitimate signers have no expertise in climate science at all. In fact, less than 1% of those who signed the petition claim to have any background in Climate or Atmospheric Science. Simply calling yourself a “scientist” does not make someone an expert in climate science. By contrast, 97% of actual climate scientists, agree that human-caused climate change is happening.
In my opinion this counter argument is deeply misleading.
- There is no mention that the 97% consensus claim is based on a disputed study.
- There is no mention of who Edward Teller is. As a skeptic I don’t defer to anyone’s authority, even Edward Teller doesn’t get a free pass. But having someone like Teller onboard surely means that the position he supports is worthy of closer examination.
- Suggesting that people from fields related to climate science have no right to criticise how climate science is conducted is ridiculous. For example, excluding input from non-climate scientists would exclude criticism from statisticians, who frequently object to the sloppy use of statistics by non-statisticians. Statistics matters – in scientific studies which rely on statistical analysis, sloppy use of statistics can lead to erroneous conclusions.
Are the authors aware of these flaws in their counterargument? Quite possibly – but their intention with their study was to test the impact of deliberately weakened skeptic positions, to test their “inoculation” theory, not to educate people about climate change.
The moral premise of this study is my most serious concern – it is not OK to play increasingly devious psychological tricks on people to win support. Of course it is possible to convince more people by providing them with a distorted, “weakened” version of your opponent’s position, which is what “inoculation” theory seems to be about – but that doesn’t make it right.
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AKA “attacking a straw-man”; misrepresent your opponents position to then attack the phony position. The whole concept of “climate change” (as a substitute for the “global warming moniker) was advanced as a straw-man argument to discredit skeptics, as if skeptics were arguing that the climate never changes, but that’s the implication. I’ve never seen this whole issue boiled down to just one sentence in the American media: How sensitive is the climate to increases in CO2? NOooooooooo, it’s far to complex for a mere layman to understand.
From the Article: “Social psychologists believe that a similar logic can be applied to help “inoculate” the public against misinformation, including the damaging influence of ‘fake news’ websites propagating myths about climate change.”
What fake news sites would they be? Probably those that do not agree with CAGW. If you don’t agree with me, then you are fake news.
From the Article: “The study also used the accurate statement that “97% of scientists agree on manmade climate change”. Prior work by van der Linden has shown this fact about scientific consensus is an effective ‘gateway’ for public acceptance of climate change.”
Calling the “97 percent” lie “accurate” is a Big Lie in itself.
From the Article: “Those shown only the fact about climate change consensus [the 97 percent] (in pie chart form) reported a large increase in perceived scientific agreement – an average of 20 percentage points.”
Appeals to authority *are* effective with those who do not have much background or knowledge in a particular scientific field. That’s why the “97 percent” lie is so insidious and needs to be debunked at every opportunity. The alarmists are getting a lot of mileage out of this lie, as is demonstrated here in this study.
From the Article: “A detailed inoculation that picks apart the Oregon petition specifically. For example, by highlighting some of the signatories are fraudulent, such as Charles Darwin and members of the Spice Girls, and less than 1% of signatories have backgrounds in climate science.”
We need an “inoculation of the “97 percent” lie.
Psychological ‘vaccine’ = how to fashion the propaganda properly
inoculation technique = brainwashing
Yes, fellow skeptics, the CAGW alarmists are studying how to brainwash the population into believing their lies. They can’t get it done on the facts, so they have to psychologically manipulate people to reach their goal.
I find it interesting that warmists feel the need to try to convert skeptics to their view. I don’t know if my experience is unique. I have never met a skeptic who has become a warmists but I have met many warmists that have become skeptic or at the very least ambivalent. There is only one side of this discussion that distorts and lies constantly and it isn’t the skeptics.
And here we see the rot of civilisation – just one tiny example but how many more can you recognise?
Why.
Have we now got a system/society/civilisation where (these) folks have been brought up in a perfect liberal world. They were and are constantly praised, constantly told how clever and bright they were (as children) and now in an environment that continues that belief. They’ve probably never played competitive sports (basically= had to learn what losing is) or even been in a playground fight and probably never done any sort of real practical work/problem solving.
As a result, they are utterly convinced the they are right about everything.
So, if someone disagrees with them, they can only conclude that said person is dysfunctional and/or has some sort of mental abnormality.
Further, this precludes them from seeing that the very solution they believe would work is exactly what is causing their perceived problem. (Cause and effect go through the blender *yet* again)
People are being immunised by the climate alarm message. They’ve run out of superlatives to describe the 10 year storm, the 100/500/1000 year storm is now a weekly occurrence. Likewise, the *unprecedented* droughts, hurricanes, rainfall, floods etc etc etc are on the evening news at 6 o’clock or on tyhe rolling 24 hour news channel.
So, like the old sooth-sayer paddling up and down the side-walk every day proclaiming ‘The End Is Nigh’ (do you still get them?) – at first he’s a peculiarity, slightly interesting but eventually some day, somebody is gonna say to him:
“Look Busta, your end will be nigh in 60 seconds from now if you don’t get outta my way, I’ve got work to do, bills to pay, groceries to buy and then take the kids to school. Go Forth And Multiply”
And Civilisational Rot happens because fewer and fewer people have the guts, self-confidence or lack of political correctness to say that. The Cancer is allowed to grow.
Hello Donald, got a scalpel with you by any chance?
Only Liberals would say that a little lie is OK to cover their bigger truth, which is a lie. And put it in a journal! This is beyond sad. AND, they have entire programs dedicated to how to best lie. It’s called climate communication!!!!
From the CAGW dictionary – “communication” (noun) – propaganda
It is scary that a journal actually chose to publish this how-to on brain washing.
The Climatists’ desperation is showing in these tactics, which are simply more devious ways of lying to people. But without 100% control over all avenues of information, including the internet, lies can only hold sway for a while. The jig is up, but that doesn’t stop the Gravy-Trainers from attempting to keep things going for just a little while longer.
This uses the common tactic of claiming that being skeptical about ‘catastrophic climate change’ is equivalent to being skeptical about ‘climate change’.
The academics I have met who actually work in the field dodge characterizing “climate change” as catastrophic. And refuse to discuss it. Now that their wild claims are under actual critical review, One wonders if they might regret the arrogant snti-science position they took.
Many are. Many are changing to actually point out limited impact. Many aren’t.
Having delved into the Guardian’s report on this ‘study’ it’s fair to say it’s yet another contrived piece of AGW-promoting activist fluff and entirely in-keeping with their tactic of releasing a stream of propaganda designed to cover as many bases as possible. In this case it’s just another thinly-veiled ad hom attack to undermine sceptical voices. Balance? Counter-views? Nowhere to be seen. Without an agenda to promote or a pay cheque in the post who the heck would write up this sort of stuff?
Perhaps an academic could raise a stink with the journal and demand the article be withdrawn for ethical reasons. After all encouraging scientists to lie has been traditionally frowned down upon.
The professor of this study about ‘inoculating people so they will believe in global warming’ is this man: Professor van der Linden is from Europe and teaches psychology at Princeton in NJ. He runs the Center For Climate Change Communication’ which means he is the Pravda truth guy for the commies. And yes, he comes from Germany. This ‘professor’ is young enough to be my kid. He obviously has no memories of the Ice Age 1970’s. I had to shovel a ton of snow back then and won’t forget that!
This young puppy has no degrees in climate and grew up in a 30 year warming cycle. He cannot imagine a cooling cycle ever happening again. But lo and behold, it is beginning its grip. The sun spot activity is dropping. We will rediscover the 1970’s Ice Age scares again.
This stupid fake scientist should know to never use biased information to study something, if he wanted to prove his point about ‘propaganda’ he shouldn’t use his favorite propaganda materials. He would have to pick something ‘neutral’ and then craft it well to see how it works.
We all know how propaganda works. It works only so long as it has a connection to reality. I note this last year that anti-warm demonstrations are fading fast, it is hard even for true believers to yell about roasting to death while buried in deep snow!
2017 will become the year that a plurality will figure out that atmospheric carbon dioxide is a RESOURCE, not a problem. If you take a look at the amount of CO2 pulled out of the atmosphere by Russ George’s iron seeding experiment in a very small area of ocean off the west coast Canada, and the greening of the planet (two continental US areas of additional leaves), if others industrialize Mr. George’s method, there could be a net loss of CO2 annually. At that point, the globalist elite will set up a different kind of carbon exchange, where you have to buy it on a market they set up and control.
“Suggesting that people from fields related to climate science have no right to criticise how climate science is conducted is ridiculous.” It does not seem to me that this is suggested anywhere in the paper, which would make it a straw man. Can someone show me where this is suggested?
seaice1, These social scientists have no basis to judge the truth of climate science, according to the common believer argument….which I am pretty certain you or one of your troll clones has used on multiple occasions. I tossed the argument out there as a throw away, however, to demonstrate how putrid I find their call to lie for the climatocracy really is.
The disgusting aspect of this paper is that they call on people to lie to advance cliamte science belief. But I will be surprised if you don’t defend it and even more surprised if you condemn it openly as it deserves.
hunter, do you want to address my point? It seems amid accusations of straw men that abound in this thread it was quite reasonable to point them out. But I am open to argument.
seaice, your (lack) of reading comprehension is not my problem. Their lie was specific regarding the way they seek to deceitfully manipulate people by discrediting the entire Oregon petition. Yet they are explicitly making decisions on climate without any more expertise- and in many cases much less- qualifications.
seaice1. It is reported in the article. Read the last quotation box.
So I think you can see that you made a bit of a mistake there.
The paper explicitly says that only climate scientists can critique climate science.
Other scientists are dismissed.
So what they uncovered in this study is the way a used car salesman works.
They would in fact be used car salesmen if academic standards had held up. This is a testament to institutional decay.
The exact opposite is true as well. When the IPCC reduced their expectations of warming in successive assessment reports, they make people less willing to believe the catastrophic prophesies. They helped people become more skeptical of their position simply by adding a bit of reality into their assessments. — John M Reynolds
jmrsudbury So if I got this right…, lie to make people more believing of alarmism, tell the truth to make people more skeptical of alarmism. Sounds about right!
Propaganda still reigns. Tell lies. Tell lots of them. Tell them loud. Never respond to the truth.
The paper presented is like virtually all research in the social sciences. On most of its topics it is impossible to do valid research because human variability is so high one cannot ever get solid evidence. 2000 people is an hysterically small sample for what they are trying to do and the possibilities of contamination of the sample from factoids and bits of stories on the internet is very high. They completely neglect all the possible biases, including their own, that affected the results.
Psychology, neurology, and sociology have managed to tease out some useful results over the years- psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, and a few others. But the best practitioners of psychology, politicians, have never formalized what they do. Perhaps because they don’t study what they do but just do it.
The worrying thing here is not that people are ‘innoculated’ against genuinely fake news, or specifically climate sceptisism, but that those in control of ‘innoculation’ get to determine what news they want you to believe. Need to cover something up? Then just innoculate people against it
And this is a job? No self respecting academic institution would allow axe grinding on this scale to go out under its flag. That is the point of climate communications though isn’t it. Faux science funded by special interests under a fancy letterhead.
Nomination for Climate Ghoul of the month: Google
Funding climate extemism at the behest of Special Advisor Al Gore Google opens an electricity intensive data center in the corpse of a former coal fired TVA generation plant at Widows Creek Alabama.
TVA ratepayers (without thier knowledge) agree to a seceret subsidized price for the massive amount of electricity needed to heat and cool the servers. They also agree to buy expensive wind power from the Midwest to offset Google’s usage.
The local community lost 300 plus good jobs in return for about 30 lesser subsidized positions. Many of those being security jobs.
Sounds like science fiction but quite true.
Classic ‘straw man’ argument: If you can’t beat your opponents directly, create a facsimile that you CAN beat. The problem occurs when the REAL adversary shows up.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive! “.
Global Warming “Science” uses just about every known logical fallacy. Here again we have The Straw Man – misrepresent the skeptics position then attack it.
And this was published in a peer-reviewed manner. No shame. NONE Liberals are actually SCAREY!
When it comes to science, everyone should understand that it only takes one scientist to prove all the others wrong. As an example, in 1905, it was Albert Einstein who stood against the entire classical physics world with his idea on relativity.
I also think that when Einstein said, “We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us”, his words are 100% relevant to today’s science on climate change.
+10
Social “science” is so far from science as to be running joke in informed circles. Here we see a group of prominent social psychologists testing a truth from the climate skeptic side against a falsehood from the consensus side — yet in their own minds, having the true/false designations reversed!
Incredible.
We see the phenomena of otherwise very smart guys and gals fail at the most basic level — they fail to check to see if their own per-conceived ideas are in fact correct — the use the assumption of the 97% as fact. To be fair-ish, the 97% is a particular type of truth as viewed by Social Psychologists and other social scientists — social science has no way to show if things are really true — almost all of it is untestable in a pragmatic way. So things that most social scientists believe are true to them. That’s their only test. Read Kahan, he is the same way — never questions “accepted beliefs” propagated by other fields — just grants them the big T Truth without inspection.
Their study is a demonstration of the use of propaganda. It is a time tested technique. You find out something that the people know that you don’t want them to know. You find what authority they base their idea on — then attack that authority with MISinformation — intentionally slanted, slightly shifted, negative — to erode the value of the source. We see this is CliSci — a perfectly good study with a counter-IPCC conclusion, attacked without mercy because an image caption was in error.
Podesta engaged Romm to do this to Pielke Jr. very effectively drove him out of writing about climate altogether, to protect his career.
Remember, Social Psychology is the basis of all Propaganda — it is the tool created to control the minds of society — is has most often been used for evil purposes (I cna’t think of a single instance in which it has been used for good…).
If the inoculation process involves a steady deluge of crap, it might spark an auto-immune response from the test subjects. Remember the part about Do No Harm.
In a rather ironic way, he is a victim of “climate change”.
Apologies – wrong forum.
/frown
lol. These guys just missed their best opportunity in decades. I read that the Clinton cause just spent ~$1.3 Billion on a marketing campaign, and still lost.
Many people here have scientific / engineering minds that come to conclusions based on data, facts, logic and common sense.
That is to be celebrated.
Rational people are also very reluctant to use character attacks and ridicule to put the warmunists on defense.
That’s normally good behavior, but is counterproductive when dealing with the global warming cult.
If President Trump has taught us one thing, it should be that you can only fight leftist character attacks on you … by simultaneously making character attacks on them.
You can not win a debate with a leftist by being calm, polite, and rational … and that’s assuming they would be willing to debate you — debating their positions is something they avoid.
Unfortunately, few skeptics seem to realize the global warming scare is a false boogeyman with the goal of increased political power … and has almost nothing to do with real science.
Even fewer skeptics seem to realize leftists can not be reasoned out of their global warming beliefs because they were never reasoned into them in the first place.
The leftists (aka warmunists) that created the global warming scare are different than scientists and engineers.
They start with a conclusion, and then cherry pick random facts and data that superficially appear to support their conclusion.
If they can’t find data, they create it out of thin air:
— The 97% Consensus, the Mann Hockey Stick Chart, the wild guess climate model predictions (actually, they are simple personal opinions of a small subset of scientists (modelers) disguised as science, by the use of complicated math and computer processing).
If a skeptic wants to debate the global warming cult, he is ridiculed and character attacked — allowing a debate would imply the skeptic was actually worthy to debate (read Saul Alinsky’s books to understand that tactic)
I can not recall any political positions where leftists have been convinced to join conservatives or Republicans (leftists will change their positions, but only to move further left).
Skeptics will get nowhere with weak arguments or strong arguments.
Skeptics need to character attack the climate scaremongers to get attention.
And those skeptics on the attack must include lots of high level people, such as President Trump and Vice President Pence, who are willing to take a tremendous amount of abuse in response.
Trump is a tough guy and I hope he has the __alls to do this (the leftists are going to hate him whether he condemns the climate change scaremongers or not — so what does he have to lose?)
This is all Trump has to say:
(1) Today’s climate is wonderful
(2) The average temperature barely changed in the past 150 years.
(3) The average temperature did not change from 1998 to 2015.
(4) CO2 has never been the climate “controller”
(5) Real pollution is important — CO2 is not pollution.
(6) I am not taking any questions today
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