Posted on November 21, 2020 by curryja |
by Judith Curry
“Avoid unwarranted certainty, neat narratives and partisan presentation; strive to inform, not persuade.”
I just spotted this Comment in Nature: Five rules for evidence communication. Once I spotted co-author David Spiegenhalter, I knew this would be good. I have definitely been in need of an antidote to the Covid-19 and global warming propaganda that I’ve come across lately. I’m also working on a new climate change presentation; this provides an excellent check list.
Here is a [link] to the article (freely accessible). Excerpts:
<begin quote>
There are myriad examples from the current pandemic of which we might ask: have experts always been explicit in acknowledging unknowns? Complexity? Conflicts of interest? Inconvenient data? And, importantly, their own values?
Our small, interdisciplinary group at the University of Cambridge, UK, collects empirical data on issues such as how to communicate uncertainty, how audiences decide what evidence to trust, and how narratives affect people’s decision-making. Our aim is to design communications that do not lead people to a particular decision, but help them to understand what is known about a topic and to make up their own minds on the basis of that evidence. In our view, it is important to be clear about motivations, present data fully and clearly, and share sources.
We recognize that the world is in an ‘infodemic’, with false information spreading virally on social media. Therefore, many scientists feel they are in an arms race of communication techniques. But consider the replication crisis, which has been blamed in part on researchers being incentivized to sell their work and focus on a story rather than on full and neutral reporting of what they have done. We worry that the urge to persuade or to tell a simple story can damage credibility and trustworthiness.
So how do we demonstrate good intentions? We have to be open about our motivations, conflicts and limitations. Scientists whose objectives are perceived as prioritizing persuasion risk losing trust.
- Inform, not persuade
- Offer balance, not false balance
- Disclose uncertainties
- State evidence quality
- Inoculate against misinformation
When zoologist John Krebs became chair of the UK Food Standards Agency in the 2000s, he faced a deluge of crises, including dioxins in milk and the infectious cattle disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy. He adopted the following strategy:
- say what you know;
- what you don’t know;
- what you are doing to find out;
- what people can do in the meantime to be on the safe side; and
- that advice will change.
Quick tips for sharing evidence
The aim is to ‘inform but not persuade’, and — as the philosopher of trust Onora O’Neill says — “to be accessible, comprehensible, usable and assessable”.
- Address all the questions and concerns of the target audience.
- Anticipate misunderstandings; pre-emptively debunk or explain them.
- Don’t cherry-pick findings.
- Present potential benefits and possible harms in the same way so that they can be compared fairly.
- Avoid the biases inherent in any presentation format (for example, use both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ framing together).
- Use numbers alone, or both words and numbers.
- Demonstrate ‘unapologetic uncertainty’: be open about a range of possible outcomes.
- When you don’t know, say so; say what you are going to do to find out, and by when.
- Highlight the quality and relevance of the underlying evidence (for example, describe the data set).
- Use a carefully designed layout in a clear order, and include sources.
Trust is crucial. Always aiming to ‘sell the science’ doesn’t help the scientific process or the scientific community in the long run, just as it doesn’t help people (patients, the public or policymakers) to make informed decisions in the short term. That requires good evidence communication. Ironically, we hope we’ve persuaded you of that.
<end quote>
The Supplementary Information is a longer version of this, well worth reading also.
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“Our small, interdisciplinary group at the University of Cambridge, UK, collects empirical data on issues such as how to communicate uncertainty, how audiences decide what evidence to trust, and how narratives affect people’s decision-making.”
This work has been pioneered almost a century ago by Dr. Joseph Goebbels in Germany. He then became a Minister of Propaganda in the Third Reich.
From the article: “Highlight the quality and relevance of the underlying evidence”.
This is not being done with regard to Climate Science and CO2. To date, there is no evidence that CO2 is causing any problems in the Earth’s atmosphere. There is no underlying evidence to highlight. Yet we spend Trillions of dollars on it.
On a related topic, I notice that “fighting misinformation” is getting a lot of things written about it in such places as Scientific American and even Consumer Reports magazine.
Now, all we need is a neutral arbiter of what is and what is not misinformation.
It’s like the effort to stop hate speech, first someone has to define what is meant by hate speech. Some people would claim anything is hate speech, if it allowed them to control what others were allowed to say
Like hate speech, the only way to handle misinformation is using freedom of speech to debunk hate speech and misinformation.
Debunk, don’t ban.
Banning speech gives unscrupulous people the opportunity to shut you up if they don’t like what you are saying. If they can shut you up, they can take all your freedoms away. Don’t let them shut you up.
[try acceptable language, fyi, I agree with you. -mod]
“Scissor November 22, 2020 at 8:03 am
Stephen Schneider set the gold standard as far as climate bullshit is concerned when he said, “Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
————————————————————————————————-
That’s a very revealing quote from Stephen Schneider. Here’s the full quote:
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well.
And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination.
That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.
This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
The above quote clearly explains what’s happening and why. Don’t we all want the world to be a better place? Isn’t it clear that human populations in the past and the present have been reluctant to do things simply on the grounds that it is sensible, correct, ethical, and of over-all benefit to society.
Did China and India create massive amounts of unhealthy smog from cheap coal-fired power stations, and cheap Internal Combustion Engine vehicles with inadequate emission controls, because they were not aware that a lack of emission controls would have bad health consequences?
Were China and India not aware of the scientific evidence that indicated (with high confidence) that particulate carbon and toxic chemicals from coal and oil combustion, released into the atmosphere, are harmful to the environment and to human health?
Despite this indisputable scientific evidence, their priority was to create cheap energy in order to advance economic development. Polluting the atmosphere, which has indisputable health consequences, was considered to be less of a concern than the benefits of economic development.
Unfortunately, the atmospheric pollution created in China, is not confined to China. The atmosphere has no borders, and the pollution blows over to other countries such as Japan, just as the haze from seasonal burn-off in Indonesia blows over to Singapore and Malaysia.
The problem, as Stephen Schneider appears to have understood, is that the drive towards economic development will usually tend to downplay any consequent harm to the environment and human health. All countries have some degree of corruption in their organizations, whether business or political organizations.
Individuals, groups, and societies, tend to be biased towards their own prosperity and dominance. This has always been the case, hence all the wars and social conflicts throughout history.
Now, I should mention that I’m not a ‘Climate Change Alarmist’. I think the benefits of increased CO2 levels outweigh any slight and uncertain disadvantages. I’m also an Atheist/Agnostic, but I still recognize the potential benefits of religions which promote an everlasting hell for those who misbehave in this life.
Climate Change Alarmism is a type of religion which ‘perhaps’ does have some benefits, such as making people more aware of the general damage our economic activities do to the environment. In order to encourage a change to a ‘less toxic’ environment and atmosphere, it is perhaps necessary to exaggerate the future consequences of a catastrophic tipping point which will affect everyone, if we don’t move to renewables.
Consider the alternative strategy of promoting the use of fossil fuel power-plants and vehicles with ‘state-of-the-art’ emission controls. Surely we all know that adding the best quality emission controls to coal-fired power plants and diesel and petrol driven vehicles, adds to the cost. Even the renowned Volkswagen car manufacturer cheated on this.
Ultra-Supercritical coal-fired power stations are very efficient and have lower over-all emissions per unit of coal burned. However, to be really clean, they still need ‘state-of-the-art’ emissions controls, which also adds to the initial increased cost. Not all Ultra-Supercritical power plants have added emission controls, for economic reasons, since the initial construction cost was so high.
The development of alternative energy supplies is a mark of progress. Efficient and durable solar panels which can cover unused space, such as all roof tops, is a remarkable advancement in technology with potential benefits for all of humanity. Likewise, an efficient and durable battery which would make electric vehicles less expensive and more attractive, as well as reducing the indisputable pollution in cities due to the exhaust emissions of millions of ICE vehicles, would be a welcome progress.
I hope this post is not censored.
>>> The development of alternative energy supplies is a mark of progress. Efficient and durable solar panels which can cover unused space, such as all roof tops, is a remarkable advancement in technology with potential benefits for all of humanity. <<<
If you don’t mind a little strip mining, get off on killing birds, and aren’t one of the poor suckers digging cobalt with their bare hands….
I don’t approve of windmills which kill birds, and which are an eyesore on the landscape, and sometimes involve cutting down trees. I also don’t approve of solar farms built on arable land which could be used for growing crops or planting trees.
Mining of minerals of one type or another, has always been an essential part of industrialization, and will continue regardless of the drive towards renewables. Likewise, inhumane working conditions and child labour are a separate issue, and were a problem in undeveloped countries before the demand for Lithium, Cobalt, and rare-earth metals increased.
“The development of alternative energy supplies is a mark of progress.”
This is where you lost me. PV solar panels and windmills are not efficient. They are low-density, expensive, unreliable, grid destabilizing power sources. If we had a variable-voltage DC grid, then they might be a little more useful, but we don’t.
Paul,
You’ve presented the usual argument of the anti-renewables. For me it’s not an ‘all or nothing’ situation. Technology progresses, and if we’re sensible, we use the best technology to fit the particular circumstances.
You must have noticed that the cost of solar panels has been continually falling during the past few decades, and will presumably continue to fall into the future as research and the manufacturing processes progress.
It’s true that the efficiency of solar panels, in converting sunlight into electricity, is not as high as the efficiency of coal-fired power plants in converting the energy from the burning of coal into electricity. The old coal power plants have an efficiency of around 30% whereas the latest Ultra-Supercritical (or HELE types) have an efficiency of around 45%.
The latest solar panels have an efficiency of around 20%. However, one should not ignore the fact that the energy source for solar panels, the sunlight, is totally free, whereas the energy source for fossil fuel plants requires lots of mining and transportation, which is a significant added expense.
Imagine how wonderful it would be if free particles of coal or droplets of oil were to fall from the sky.
The greatest obstacle to the over all efficiency of solar power is the intermittency problem. However, there are solutions in progress, such as the development of more affordable and more durable batteries. Tesla is currently working on a battery which is described as the ‘1 Million Mile’ or even ‘2 Million Mile’ battery. In other words, such a battery could outlast the vehicle which it propels and still be used after the vehicle is sent to the scrap heap.
Now, you probably think this is just a pipe dream that will never happen. Did you also think that sending a man to the moon was also a pipe dream?
hmm:
Offer balance, not false balance
I can see that being used as a reason to not share certain criticisms or alternative views.
Inoculate against misinformation
Make sure people don’t go to alternative sources?
re: evidence communication?
As in, all white papers describing, detailing various lab tests indicating Hydrino presence, characteristics, energy yield and so forth, followed up more recently with devices producing kilowatt plus power levels?
“Avoid unwarranted certainty, neat narratives and partisan presentation; strive to inform, not persuade.”
Analytical Presentation –
pptx – https://brilliantlightpower.com/presentations/Analytical_Presentation.pptx
pdf – https://brilliantlightpower.com/presentations/Analytical_Presentation.pdf