Is A. Gelman trying to provoke me, or is that just my narcissism speaking?

Update on Saturday, February 23, 2013 at 9:55AM by Dan Kahan

In response to understandably mystified commentators:

The post, in addition to being poorly executed, is ... 

• 1 part self-deprecation: Obviously,  Stats Legend Andrew Gelman isn't talking to or thinking about me at all. (BTW, subscribe to his blog if you don't already; he is proof of Dewey's point that science consists neither in an inventory of facts nor in the application of specialized techniques but in the acquisition & use of distinctive habits of mind.) 

• 1 part genuine introspective confusion: AG seems to be talking about what I study & think about all the time -- the distinction between doing and communicating science -- but, well, is he really or do I just see what I study and think about all the time even when it isn't there?

• 1 part serious: Actually, I'm pretty sure AG is talking about what I'm interested in -- or rather reacting to what I'm interested in, & in a way that reflects an assumption the falsity of which is one of my main motivations for studying and thinking all the time about this same thng. He is reacting to a debate between other blog writers addressing the "doing" vs. "communicating" distinction (both of whom take weird, extreme positions: one that because doing & communicating are distinct, no one--not scientists or journalists--should communicate; and the other who says, "scientists must communicate b/c we need to know what they know!") Andrew responds, "hey-- the dichotomy is overstated; all science is science communicating."  That response occurs, I think, only because res ipsa locquitur ("the thing speaks for itself")--the cousin of  nullius in verba ("take no one's word")--is an entrenched, idealized understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge. Whenever I observe it, I am impeled to the point of mania to shout:

No, no, no, no! Valid science does not communicate its own validity. It needs certification of its validity from forms of authority that are connected to the lives of everday people, whose wellbeing depends on their accepting as known by science more things than they can possible understand for themselves. Creating and coordinating those systems of certifcation is extremely challenging in a liberal demcoratic society. We must therefore use an appropriately directed science -- a science of science communication -- to overcome the challenges or else we risk dissipating the value of all the knowledge that science gives us.

So my reaction isn't really narcissitic. But it certainly is evidence of an impending nervous breakdown of some kind.

The false and tedious "defective brain" meme

I know expressing exasperation doesn't really accomplish much but:

Please stop the nonsense on our “defective brains.”

Frankly, I don’t know why journalists write, much less why newspapers and newsmagazines continue to publish, the same breathless, “OMG! Scientists have determined we’re stupid!!!” story over & over & over. 

Maybe it is because they assume readers are stupid and will find the same the same simplistic rendering of social psychology research entertaining over & over & over.

Or maybe the writers who keep recycling this comic book account of decision science can't grasp the grownup version of why people become culturally polarized on risk and related facts—although, honestly, it’s really not that complicated!

Look: the source of persistent controversy over risks and related facts of policy significance is our polluted science communication environment, not any defects in our rationality.

People need to (and do) accept as known by science much much much more than they could possibly understand through personal observation and study.  They do this by integrating themselves into social networks—groups of people linked by cultural affinity—that reliably orient their members toward collective knowledge of consequence to their personal and collective well-being.

The networks we rely on are numerous and diverse—because we live in a pluralistic society (as a result, in fact, of the same norms and institutions that make a liberal market society the political regime most congenial to the flourishing of scientific inquiry).  But ordinarily those networks converge on what’s collectively known; cultural affinity groups that failed to reliably steer their members toward the best available evidence on how to survive and live well would themselves die out.  

Polarization occurs only when risks or other facts that admit of scientific inquiry become entangled in antagonistic cultural meanings. In that situation, positions on these issues will come to be understood as markers of loyalty to opposing groups.  The psychic pressure to protect their standing in groups that confer immense material and emotional benefits on them will then motivate individuals to persist in beliefs that signify their group commitments.

They'll do that in part by dismissing as noncredible or otherwise rationalizing away evidence that threatens to drive a wedge between them and their peers. Indeed, the most scientifically literate and analytically adept members of these groups will do this with the greatest consistency and success.  

Once factual issues come to bear antagonistic cultural meanings, it is perfectly rational for an individual to use his or her intelligence this way: being "wrong" on the science of a societal risk like climate change or nuclear power won't affect the level of risk that person (or anyone else that person cares about): nothing that person does as consumer, voter, public-discussion participant, etc., will be consequential enough to matter. Being on the wrong side of the issue within his or her cultural group, in contrast, could spell disaster for that person in everday life.

So, in that unfortunate situation, the better our "brains" work, the more polarized we'll be. (BTW, what does it add to these boring, formulaic "boy, are humans dumb!" stories to say "scientists have discovered that our brains  are responsible for our inability to agree on facts!!"? Where else could cognition be occurring? Our feet?!)

The number of issues that have that character, though, is miniscule in comparison to the number that don’t. What side one is on on pasteurized milk, fluoridated water, high-power transmission lines, “mad cow disease,” use of microwave ovens, exposure to Freon gas from refrigerators, treatment of bacterial diseases with antibiotics, the inoculation of children against Hepatitis B, etc. et. etc., isn't viewed as a a badge of group loyalty and commitment for the affinity groups most people belong to. Hence, there's not meaningful amount of cultural polarization on these issues--at least in the US (meaning pathologies are local; in Europe there might be cultural dispute on some of these issues & not on some of the ones that divide people here).

The entanglement of facts that admit of scientific investigation—e.g., “carbon emissions are heating the planet”; “deep geologic isolation of nuclear wastes is safe”—with antagonistic meanings occurs by a mixture of influences, including strategic behavior, poor institutional design, and sheer misadventure. In no such case was the problem inevitable; indeed, in most, such entanglement could easily have been avoided.

These antagonistic meanings, then, are a kind of pollution in the science communication environment.  They disable the normal and normally reliable faculties of rational discernment by which ordinary individuals recognize what is collectively known.

One of the central missions of the science of science communication in a liberal democratic state is to protect the science communication environment from such contamination, and to develop means for detoxifying that environment when preventive or protective measures fail.

This is the account that is best supported by decision science. 

And if you can’t figure out how to make that into an interesting story, then you are falling short in relation to the craft norms of science journalism, the skilled practitioners of which continuously enrich human experience by figuring out how to make the wonder of what's known to science known by ordinary, intelligent, curious people.

Local adaptation & field testing the science of science communication

from Making Climate-Science Communication Evidence-based—All the Way Down:

Consider this paradox. If one is trying to be elected to Congress in either Florida or Arizona, it is not a good idea to make “combating global climate change” the centerpiece of one’s campaign. Yet both of these states are hotbeds of local political activity focusing on climate adaptation. A bill passed by Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature in 2011 and signed into law by its tea-party Governor has initiated city- and county-level proceedings to formulate measures for protecting the state from the impact of projected sea-level rises, which are expected to be aggravated by the increased incidence of hurricanes.

Arizona is the site of similar initiatives. Overseen by that state’s conservative Governor (who once punched a reporter for asking her whether she believed in global warming), the Arizona proceedings are aimed at anticipating expected stresses on regional water supplies.

Climate science—of the highest quality, and supplied by expert governmental and academic sources—is playing a key role in the deliberations of both states.  Florida officials, for example, have insisted that new nuclear power generation facilities being constructed offshore at Turkey Point be raised to a level higher than contemplated by the original design in order to reflect new seal-level rise and storm-activity projections associated with climate change. The basis of these Florida officials’ projections are the same scientific models that Florida Senator Marco Rubio, now considered a likely 2016 presidential candidate, says he still finds insufficiently convincing to justify national regulation of carbon emissions.

The influences that trigger cultural cognition when climate change is addressed at the national level are much weaker at the local one. When they are considering adaptation, citizens engage the issue of climate change not as members of warring cultural factions but as property owners, resource consumers, insurance policy holders, and tax payers—identities they all share. The people who are furnishing them with pertinent scientific evidence about the risks they face and how to abate them are not the national representatives of competing political brands but rather their municipal representatives, their neighbors, and even their local utility companies.

What’s more, the sorts of issues they are addressing—damage to property and infrastructure from flooding, reduced access to scarce water supplies, diminished farming yields as a result of drought—are matters they deal with all the time. They are the issues they have always dealt with as members of the regions in which they live; they have a natural shared vocabulary for thinking and talking about these issues, the use of which reinforces their sense of linked fate and reassures them they are working with others whose interests are aligned with theirs. Because they are, in effect, all on the same team, citizens at the local level are less likely to react to scientific evidence in defensive, partisan way that sports fans do to contentious officiating calls.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to assume that local engagement with adaptation is impervious to polarizing forms of motivated reasoning. The antagonistic cultural meanings that have contaminated the national science communication environment could easily spill over into local one as well. Something like this happened—or came close to it—in North Carolina, where the state legislature enacted a law that restricts use of anything but “historical data” on sea-level in state planning. The provision got enacted because proponents of adaptation planning legislation there failed to do what those in the neighboring state of Virginia did in creating a rhetorical separation between the issue of local flood planning and “global climate change.” Polarizing forms of engagement have bogged down municipal planning in some parts of Florida—at the same time as progress is being made elsewhere in the state.

The issue of local adaptation, then, presents a unique but precarious opportunity to promote constructive public engagement with climate science. The prospects for success will turn on how science is communicated—by scientists addressing local officials and the public, certainly, but also by local officials addressing their constituents and by myriad civic entities (chambers of commerce, property owner associations, utility companies) addressing the individuals whom they serve. These climate-science communicators face myriad challenges that admit of informed, evidence­-based guidance, and they are eager to get guidance of that kind. Making their needs the focus of field-based science-communication experiments would confer an immense benefit on them.

The social science researchers conducting such experiments would receive an immense benefit in return. Collaborating with these communicators to help them protect their science communication environment from degradation, and to effectively deliver consequential scientific information within it, would generate a wealth of knowledge on how to adapt insights from lab models to the real world.

There are lots of places to do science communication field experiments, of course, because there are lots of settings in which people are making decisions that should be informed by the best available climate science. There is no incompatibility between carrying out programs in support of adaptation-science communication simultaneously with ones focused on communicating relevant to climate policymaking at the national level.

On the contrary, there are likely to be numerous synergies. For one thing, the knowledge that adaptation-focused field experimentation will likely generate about how to convert laboratory models to field-based strategies will be relevant to science communication in all domains. In addition, by widening the positive exposure to climate science, adaptation-focused communication is likely to create greater public receptivity to open-minded engagement with this science in all contexts in which it is relevant. Finally, by uniting on a local level all manner of groups and interests that currently occupy an adversarial relation on the climate change issue nationally, the experience of constructive public engagement with climate science at the local level has the potential to clear the air of the toxic meanings that have been poisoning climate discourse in our democracy for decades.

On science communication & the job of the scientist: a thoughtful response from a scientist

Below is an extremely thoughtful comment relating to my 2d post on my experience in giving a presentation to a group of public-spirited citizen scientists at the  North American Carbon Program a couple of weeks ago.

Just by way of context: I stressed that it is a mistake to think that the job of the scientist is to communicate as opposed to doing science -- not because scientists shouldn't communicate with the public (the ones who take that on that added demand are heroes in my book) but because a democratic society that expects or relies on its scientists to bear the responsibility for making what's known to science known to citizens necessarily doesn't get the central tenets of the science of science communication: (1)  that there is distinction between "doing" and "communicating" valid science; and (2)  that the latter demands its own science, its own professional training, and its own reliable implementing institutions and practices. Not getting (1) & (2) is the source of the persistent public conflict on climate science & risks squandering in general what is arguably our society's greatest asset -- the knowledge that science confers on how to secure collective health, safety, and prosperity.

But the one thing I am more confident is correct than this argument is that the surest means for remedying the deficit in our society's science-communication intelligence is through the process of conjecture and refutation that is the signature of science. Let's articulate as many experience-informed hypotheses as we can; and let's test them by doing and modeling them within our universities and within all the other settings in which science and science-informed policymaking are practiced.

So consider this inspired account of what's to be done. If it weren't an "n of 1," I myself would accept that it in itself refutes my claim that it's a mistake to think that we shouldn't conflate excellence in doing and communicating science.

from Paul Shepson:

Dan - you said in your revised post, that "Their job is not to communicate their science to non-experts or members of the public." This did strike me as a weird thing to say. When I am doing science, I try to do it in a scientifically defensible way. When I am communicating to the public about science, I try to do it in a way in which they learn something, and hopefully laugh a few times. But what my job is, that's for me and my employer to negotiate, and hopefully, for me to be creative about. My job is to feel good about what I do, and at the same time hopefully help people, and get to eat. But, as I said in my email to you, it is indeed our responsibility to do exactly this (communicate to members of the public), as I said, especially when the scientific results have large social, ethical, economic, human and ecosystem health impacts. And, it is the case that Federal agencies, e.g. NSF, that fund the scientific community REQUIRE that we communicate our science outside of the scientific community.

For me, doing this is an integral part of who I am as a scientist. I have learned, from a variety of personal experiences, like marriage counseling, and communicating about climate change to Rotarians, etc., that it is very important to "get into the heads of" the members of the audience. But, until your presentation at the NACP meeting, I didn't fully have the jargon about, and the better informed ideas about, the importance and impact of cultural cognition. This has helped me a great deal, and I am sure it will in future presentations; I am already implementing changes (in my head) as a result of your blogs and your presentation. But I don't typically expect scientists to communicate, as you have said, the "validity of valid science". Scientists more often are communicating about the process of science, which can be far more interesting and entertaining, than trying to hammer home the idea that some set of climate science-related conclusions are valid. For me, a quantitative scientist, to discuss the "validity" of my work requires the use of error analysis, and thus, for a general audience, might require them to use stimulants of some sort. People sometimes use the word valid or validate when referring to one of the most important tools of science, the model. But, models are almost never valid, they are a representation and most often simply a test of our understanding of a natural system, such as the Earth. It is hard for me to imagine an Earth System model as ever being valid. But what is fun to tell people about is the process of finding things out, to use a Feynman-ian-like term, since you have referred to Feynman in your blog. People will listen to stories about how hypotheses are developed, e.g. about warming in the Arctic, and then about how you went there to test it, and observed a similar warming, and a similar loss of sea ice, but how that loss of sea ice is occurring faster than the models predicted, and then how that comparison led you to think harder about what is wrong with a model. Models aren't ever valid, they are wrong, and it is learning about the wrongness that leads to scientific progress. The finding things out, and the wrongness is the excitement of science. People love to hear stories about what an Inupiat Eskimo taught you about ice that you never learned from other scientists, and how that helped you rethink your model. Science is a process, not a bunch of end results that are either valid, or not. Ah, but enough ranting.

Regarding making my University bear its share of the burden, I can't really make my University do much of anything. I have tried! But, I can motivate myself to try to inspire young people about the process of science, and to tweak peoples minds to think about things in a different way, and hopefully, in a positive, constructive way. So, when I asked you about taking a renewable energy engineer with me to the Rotary Club, I was suggesting that it might be effective for people who value individualism and a hierarchical world to see the unprecedented investment opportunities in renewable energy, which everyone on the planet will likely eventually need. Its a darn big market! And that pursuit of such investment opportunities might "symbolize human resourcefulness", in a way that is fully consistent with the values of the cultural group with which they identify. Shouldn't we try to take Warren Buffet with us to the Rotary Club? I think the climate science community should be communicating that everyone can win, and that includes the cultural groups with which they strongly identify, in the pursuit of the solutions to climate change.

While you might not think that I am, I will take the liberty of saying thank you for helping me to think more clearly.

The two-channel strategy/model for satisfying the public's appetite to know what is known by science

Below is a summary of my remarks (or what I can remember of them!) at the AAAS panel I participated in on Friday on Engaging Lay Publics in Museums on Provocative Societal Questions Related to Science. My slides are here.  It is part 1 of a 2-part series; in the 2d part, I'll summarize the presentations of co-panelists Lucy Kirschner and Elizabeth Kunz Kollman on a truly astonishing exploratory field-experiment that the Boston Museum of Science conducted in the form of an exhibit designed to promote reflection on the dynamics of public engagement with science relevant to controversial policy issues. 

A two-channel strategy (model!) for enlarging satisfaction of the public appetite to know what’s known

 1. There are two situations in which professional science communicators get into trouble. The first is when they rely entirely on their intuitions unfortified with evidence. The second is when they ask social scientists what to do based on the evidence and social scientists actually purport to tell them. 

The problem with the evidence-free approach is not that professional communicators don’t have any sound intuitions about what to do; it’s that they have too many of them. Their experience-informed insights are always plausible, but here, as elsewhere with complicated social matters, more things are plausible than are true. Hypothesis, observation, and measurement are needed to cull the latter from the former.

The problem with communicators relying on the social scientists to tell them what to do is that the social scientists don’t have practical, experience-based insights into communication. They have models. The models, if they are well-designed, identify the mechanisms of consequence in particular communication settings. Those mechanisms are important for determining which of the communicators’ plausible intuitions are most likely to work. But turning the models that produced the mechanisms are not themselves communication materials. Communicators need to turn those models into materials that till produce those effects in the real-world. Social scientists can’t do it for them: they don’t have evidence on that, and if they just try to guess what will work, they will say many implausible (also empty, self-contradictory) things because they lack local knowledge.

I certainly don’t have reliable intuitions on how to communicate science in a manner that satisfies the appetite of the public (or the appetite of that portion of it that has one) to enjoy the thrill and wonder of knowing what’s known. I am part of that public, and recognize with admiration and gratitude the special craft sense of those who feed the curiosity of me and others who share my interest. 

Those who have this special professional skill are intent all the same on improving their art.  I have through empirical study acquired knowledge of some of the mechanisms that shape public engagement with science.  Is what I know something that will help these communicators? Once they’ve heard what I said, they should tell me.

2.  The science of science communication can help communicators only through evidence-based experiments based on social scientist/practitioners collaboration.  Based on what the social scientist knows about mechanisms, the communicator will be filled with ideas about how to fashion communication strategies that successfully reproduce the effects of the social scientists’ models in the world. So social scientists shouldn’t tell communicators what to do; communicators should tell social scientists what they think will work. Because here too the communicators will have more plausible intuitions than can be true, their proposals should be regarded as hypotheses. The social scientists can then help the communicators to structure their programs as experiments, ones that generate observations that can be measured and that support valid inferences about what does and doesn’t work.  They can use that information. But they should also share it, so others can learn too.

3.  A two-channel strategy. The two channel-strategy is a model of communicating science. It tests a hypothesis about how mechanisms associated with science communication conflicts can be neutralized.  The basic idea is that ordinary members of the public receive science information along two channels. One transmits content. The other transmits meaning: what is the significance, if any, for my standing in my cultural group associated with crediting or discrediting this information?  Conflicts over climate change reflect a conflict between the signals being transmitted along the content channel and the meaning channel; many citizens “push back”—they don’t engage the communication attentively and with an open-mind—because the information conveys meanings that threaten their cultural identity.  The CCP experiment on “geoengineering and the science communication environment” is a model of how conscious regulation of the information on the meaning channel can improve engagement with content transmitted along the content channel.

4.  The two-channels model and satisfying the public appetite to know what’s known.  Some professional science communicators—including science documentary producers and science museum directors—subscribe e to what might be called the “missing science audience thesis” (MAT): that the number of people who enjoy their materials is smaller than the total who possess an appetite to know what’s known and who would find it satisfied (amply and exhilaratingly) by the work these communicators do.  Could the two channel-model be of value in overcoming MAT?

The reason to surmise it might be is that the demographic characteristics of these communicators’ current audience suggest the underrepresentation of people of the same cultural style who react dismissively to climate science. These individuals—many of whom have hierarchical and individualistic worldviews—are not anti-science (no significant portion of the American public actually is): they are science literate and share in the prevailing positive view of scientists in American society; they have admiration for technological innovation, including nuclear power, nanotechnology and geoengineering; and like everyone else, they favor making use of science in public policymaking—indeed, like their opponents in culturally factionalized debates over policy-relevant science believe (sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly) that the positions that predominate in their group are consistent with scientific consensus.  The two-channel strategy suggests that communicators can tap into the latent receptivity of these citizens to the content of scientific information on climate change by combining that information with cultural meanings that are congenial rather than hostile to their worldviews.

Could MAT originate in an unintended conflict between the information being conveyed along the content and meaning channels? If so, what elements of the information being communicated generate the hostile meanings? How might those be modified to make the signal transmitted along the meaning channel more congenial without changing the one being conveyed along the content channel—since, indeed, the supposition is that the content of these communicators’ materials are exactly what would satisfy the appetite of these citizens to know what’s known?

The communicators at the Boston Museum of science aren’t asking me those questions; they are showing me and others their own answers, which are the animating conjectures of practical field experiments conducted as part of their own work.  They are also sharing with others in their extraordinary profession the valuable knowledge that their efforts have generated.

To me, the results bear all the signatures of the scientific advancement of knowledge.

And not surprisingly, given that these field experimenters are also expert communicators, their results inspire in me the same thrill and awe that I experience whenever I cross the bridge that their craft supplies between my curiosity and the wondrous discoveries of science.

Is it plausible that higher cognitive reflection (system 2) increases polarization

This is from correspondence with @Joshua, who says:

I"m having difficulty understanding [your claim that "in a polluted science communication environment, there will be the equivalent of a psychic incentive to form group-congruent beliefs. People who are higher in science comprehesnion will be even better at doing that."]

When you say "better at doing that," doesn't it mean, essentially, better at being polarized and hence, more polarized? If someone is driven to acquire more data by virtue of a system 2 orientation, and accordingly is better at filtering those increased data to confirm bias, doesn't that necessarily translate into being more polarized?

That doesn't quite fit with my non-empirical assessment of human nature. My guess is that scientific literacy probably has little effect on one's tendency towards polarization (not zero effect - I assume that "literacy" as a general characteristic on a macro-scale is associated with less antagonistic behavior) , but someone who is more unequivocal in their viewpoint is more likely to seek out information to confirm their bias (because their identity is more closely associated with that viewpoint and they have more to lose if they're wrong) - and even more so if they happen to have a system 2 orientation.

My response:

I think you've got it -- "it" being my claim: (1) that in an environment in which positions on risk or facts of policy-significance become suffused with identity-signifying meanings, there will be cultural polarization b/c of the pressure members of diverse communities experience to protect their standing in the group; and (2) such polarization will be greater among individuals who are most disposed and able to engage in conscious, effortful information processing (system 2), because people who are better in general at making use of information to advance their interests will, in this polluted envirionment, use those abilities to attain a tighter fit between their beliefs and their identities (through motivated search for information, through closer scrutiny of messages that might contain meanings threatening to or affirming of group identity, & through formulation of innovative counterarguments).

You say you have trouble with this claim b/c it doesn’t fit your own observation & sense of human nature?

My guess would be that this position both fits many impressions most people have about how things work, and is at odds with many impressions they have formed that suggest something else could be going on. I certainly feel this way.

This is the situation we are in usually -- possessed of more plausible conjectures about what is going on than can really be (helpfully) true. That's why we should hypothesize, measure, observe, & report; it is why we shouldn't tell stories, that is, confidently present what is imaginative conjecture embroidered w/ bits of psychological research as "scientifically established" accounts that disguise uncertainty and stifle continued investigation.

So I don't offer my account as any sort of "conclusively proven!" show stopper. I offer it as my hypothesis.

And I offer both the "science comprehension & polarization" study and the "cognitive reflection, motivated reasoning, and ideology" experiment as evidence that I think gives us reason to treat this hypothesis as more likely true (or closer to useful truth) than alternatives. Then I wait for others to produce more evidence that we can use to adjust further. But if I have to act in the meantime, I do what seems sensible based on my best current understanding of what's true.

So I am content if people start with the idea, "this expressive rationality thesis (ERT) you keep talking about-sure, it's plausible, but what's the evidence that that rather than [9 other plausible conjectures] is the source of the problem?"

If someone says, "ERT is not plausible," I'm puzzled; most of us have enough common material in our registers of casual observation to be able to recognize how people could believe one or another of the things that any one of us finds plausible.

But if that person finds ERT implausible, I will simply say to her, "well, still consider my evidence, please. I imagine after you do you will still not be convinced ERT is the source of disputes over climate change & nuclear power & the like, since you are starting w/ prior odds so long against this being so. But my hope is that you'll conclude that the evidence I have collected is sound and supplies a likelihood ratio > 1 in support of ERT, and that you will then at least have posterior odds that are less long against it."

If the person then accepts the invitation, considers the evidence open-mindedly, and gives it the weight that it is due under appropriate criteria for judging the validity of empirical proof, that will make me happy, too.

As long as we both keep iterating & updating, we'll converge eventually. 

Terrorism, climate change, and surprise

In one of the enlightening "drunkard's walks" that the internet enables, I bumped into this fascinating blog post at the site Grow this City. Shouldn't one show one's gratitude for the gratuitous conferral of this sort of benefit by making an effort to enable others to enjoy it too?  So I repost; and then offer a conversational response.

At a recent meeting of a class on climate change policy, my professor led a discussion on the psychology of climate change and why it is so difficult to motivate people to act on the dire warnings published by climate scientists.

The basis of our discussion was a set of three articles published by psychologists on the topic. Two were by Elke U. Weber: “Public Understanding of Climate Change in the United States” and “Why Global Warming Does Not Scare Us (Yet)”. A third was by Dan M. Kahan titled “The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change”. A couple lines from the abstract of one of Weber’s article’s sums up the conclusion that both she and Kahan reach:

“When people fail to be alarmed about a risk or hazard, they do not take precautions… The time-delayed, abstract, and often statistical nature of the risks of global warming does not evoke strong visceral reactions.”

Basically, people do not take action to prevent or prepare for climate change because climate change is not scary enough.

Reading those findings got me thinking – is there a phenomenon similar to climate change that does scare people?

Eureka! There is such a thing! It’s called Terrorism. And, unlike climate change, it scares the shit out of people.

The analogy between climate change and Terrorism holds up for these three reasons:

1. They are diffuse in their causes and in their harms.

2. Preventing them requires large-scale social coercion and massive diversions of resources.

3. They cannot be prevented with total certainty even if we employ all the coercion and resources we can muster.

I brought this idea up in class and might as well have detonated a flash-bang grenade. My peers were shell-shocked. Their ethical circuitry shorted out. A business major blurted, “Terrorism isn’t like climate change. It’s a big danger that we have to fight to defend our country.”

To this I said, “The chances of being injured or killed in an act of terror is very low. You have a better chance being struck by lightning.”

The business major countered, “Look at Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center, the Shoe Bomber. Terrorism happens all the time.”

I then suggested that it may be the case that the US government has acted more decisively and with more resources to the threat of terrorism than to the threat of climate change because the United States is a fossil fuel-based regime. The reason that there was such a thorough (and effective) propaganda campaign to justify the “War on Terror” was that it generated support for the invasion and decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those wars, I said, secured Middle Eastern oil for the United States, strengthening its fossil fuel-based regime. On the other hand, preventing climate change is not as strategically important to the USA, so our government has devoted more resources to fighting Terrorism than to addressing the problem of climate change.

My classmates went pale. My professor stayed silent. And the business major came at me again.

“The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were about terrorism. They had nothing to do with oil. They made us more safe from terrorism.”

I said, “Come on, the idea that we invaded those countries because of oil is not a crazy one. It’s obvious.”

But my classmates looked at me like I was insane, like I had jumped on the big oval table in the middle of the room and defecated before them.

But the normally quiet girl to my right spoke up. “It might also have something to do with class. 9/11 blew up a skyscraper in Manhattan. Climate change hurts poor people first.”

But my professor, who has a JD from Stanford and an aversion to talking about class or speaking ill of the US government, intervened. He changed the subject, and ‘terrorism’ didn’t enter into the same sentence as ‘climate change’ from then on.

Bonus fact: the Iraq War has been more expensive than the anticipated cost of the Kyoto Protocol to the US.

1. This is a really compelling & cool anecdote that powerfully illustrates how intriguingly & oddly selective perceptions of risk are. Obviously, an element of the phenomenon is how unaware people (we!) normally are of how oddly selective our perceptions are — they just seem so given, obvious, we don’t notice.  The failure of people (like your classmates but everyone else, including you and me at one time or another)  to “get” how oddly selective risk perceptions are — to react in fact w/ incomprehension mixed with irritation — when this is pointed out is obviously bound up with whatever it is in us that makes us form such strange schedules of risk perception in the first place.

Two other cool things in the story: at least for a curious person, the surprise at discovering instances of the odd selectively & realizing that they beg for explanation are pleasurable; and for the curious person the disappointment of finding out that other people actually resist being made to confront the puzzle is offset by what that teaches her about shape of the pieces she needs to solve the puzzle.

2. The thesis — we overestimate terrorism risks relative to climate change ones because of the vivid an immediate character of the former and the less emotionally sensational, more remote character of the latter — is very plausible, because it's rooted, as you point out, in real dynamics of risk perception. For a wonderful essay that elaborates on this hypothesis (without presenting it as a hypothesis, unfortunately; conjecture is beautiful, and supplies the motivation for investigation, unless it is disguised as a “scientific, empirical fact,” in which case is risks stifling scientific, emprical engagement; you aren’t doing that, btw!), see Sunstein, C.R. On the Divergent American Reactions to Terrorism and Climate Change. Columbia Law Rev 107, 503-557 (2007).

3. I want to reciprocate the friendly gesture reflected in your sharing this genuinely engaging and thoughtful insight (and the infectious nature of the excitement of your discovery of it) by suggesting that I think that explanatioin is not quite right!

The paper of mine that you cite — “Tragedy of the Risk Perceptions Commons,” a working paper version of Kahan, D.M., Peters, E., Wittlin, M., Slovic, P., Ouellette, L.L., Braman, D. & Mandel, G., The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks, Nature Climate Change 2, 732-735 (2012) — is actually meant to pit that hypothesis against a rival one.

You surmise — again, quite plausibly, in light of mechanisms of cognition that we know are very imporant for risk perception— that the public's relative ranking of terrorism and climate change risks is a consequence of the tendency of people to process information about risk heuristically, intuitively, emotionally (Kahneman’s “fast” system 1), as opposed to consciously, deliberately, analytically (“slow” system 2).

Our study presents evidence, though, that the disposition to think consciously, deliberately, analytically (to use system 2) doesn’t uniformly predict more concern about climate change. In fact, it predicts greater cultural polarization over climate change  risks and a whole bunch of other ones too! We treat this as evidence that public conflict or confusion over climate change risks is a consequence of “cultural cognition,” a dynamic that unconsciously motivates people to attend selectively to information about risk in patterns that reinforce their commitment to opposing groups. Those who see climate changes as higher in risk actually see terrorism risks as less of a concern for society. (Take a look, e.g., at the group variation reflected in this chaotic graphic. The effect only gets stronger as people's ability to engage in reflective, dispassionate analytical reasoning increases.

4. As I said, this observation is meant to reciprocate the spirit of your post. My aim is not to “set you straight,” but to deepen if I can your sense of wonder over things that are, as you recognize, filled with surprise!

If you in turn surprise me back by showing me that my solution to this tiny patch of the puzzle is also incomplete — I will be shocked (but not surprised again to find myself surprised), and once again grateful to you.

What a strange world!

But also what a sad situation the citizens of our democracy are in — to be in disagreement over such consequential things, and to feel motivated to react with resentment toward others who see things differently from them.

Maybe by indulging our curiosity, you and I and others will learn things that can be used to help the members of our culturally pluralistic society converge in their understandings of the best available evidence of the dangers we face and how to abate them.

Evidence-based Climate Science Communication (new paper!)

Here's a new paper. Comments welcome!

There are 2 primary motivations for this essay.

The first might be pretty obvious to people who have been able to observe organized planning and execution of climate-science communication first hand. If not, read between the lines in  the first few pages & you will get a sense.  

Frankly, it frustrates me to see how ad hoc the practice of climate-science communication is.  There's a weird disconnect here. People who are appropriately concerned to make public-policy deliberations reflect the best available scientific evicence don't pursue that goal scientifically.

The implicit philosophy that seems to animate planning and executing climate-science communication is "all opinions are created equal."

Well, sorry, no. All opinions are hypotheses or priors. And they can't all be equally valid. So figure out empirically how to identify the ones that are.

Indeed, take a look & see what's already been tested. It's progress to recognize that yesterday's plausible conjecture is today's deadend or false start. Perpetually recycling imaginative conjectures instead of updating based on evidence condemns the enterprise of informed communcation to perpetual wheelspinning.

My second motivation is to call attention to local adaptation as one of the field "laboroatories" in which informed conjectures should be tested.  Engagement with valid science there can help promote engagement with it generally.  Moreover, the need for engagement at the local level is urgent and will be no matter what else happens anyplace else.  We could end carbon emissions today, and people in vulnerable regions in the U.S. would still be facing significant adverse climate impacts for over 100 yrs.  The failure to act now, moreover, will magnify the cost-- in pain & in dollars -- that people in these regions will be needlessly forced to endure.

So let's get the empirical toolkits out, & go local (and national and international, too, just don't leave adaptation out).

The declining authority of science? (Science of Science Communication course, Session 3)

This semester I'm teaching a course entitled the Science of Science Communication. I have posted general information on the course and will be posting the reading list at regular intervals. I will also post syntheses of the readings and the (provisional, as always) impressions I have formed based on them and on class discussion. This is this third such synthesis. I eagerly invite others to offer their own views, particularly if they are at variance with my own, and to call attention to additional sources that can inform understanding of the particular topic in question and of the scientific study of science communication in general. 

In Session 3, we finished off “science literacy and public attitudes” by looking at “public attitudes” toward science.  The theory for investigating the literature here is that one if one wants to understand the mechanisms by which scientific knowledge is transmitted in various settings, it likely is pretty important to consider how much value people attach to being informed of what science knows. 

1.  So what are we talking about here? I’m going to refer to the “authority of science” to mean assent to its distinctive understanding of “knowing” as valid and as superior to competing understandings (e.g., a religious one that treats as known matters revealed by the word of God, etc.). The relevant literature on “attitudes toward science” tries to assess the extent of the authority of science, including variation in it among different groups and over time.

Indeed, a dominant theme in this literature is the declining or contested status of the authority of science. “Many scholars and policy makers fear that public trust in organized science has declined or remains inadequate,” summarizes Gauchat, a leading researcher in this field. What accounts for that?

2. Well, what are they talking about? But before examining the explanations for the growing resistance to the authority of science, it’s useful to interrogate the premise: why exactly would anyone worry that the authority of science is seriously in doubt in American society? 

Pew did an amazingly thorough and informative survey in 2009 and concluded “Americans like science.” They “believe overwhelmingly that science has benefited society and has helped make life easier for most people.”

This sentiment, moreover, is pretty widespread. “Partisans largely agree on the beneficial effects of science,” the Pew Report continues, “with 88% of Republicans, 84% of independents and 83% of Democrats saying the impact is mostly positive. There are differences—though not large—tied to race, education, and income.”

“[L]arge percentages,” too, “think that government investments in basic scientific research (73%) and engineering and technology (74%) pay off in the long run.” Again, this is not something that generates meaningful political divisions.

Data collected over three decades' time by the NSF suggests that this 2009 picture from Pew is a but a frame in a thirty-year moving picture that shows -- well, a stationary object. Americans love science for all the wonderful things it does for them, want government to keep funding it, and have for decades.

Amusingly, the Pew Report seems to feel compelled to pay respect to the “declining authority” perception, even in the course of casting immense doubt on it.  The subtitle of the Report is “Scientific Achievements Less Prominent Than a Decade Ago.” The basis of this representation turns out to be a question that asked subjects to select the “Nation’s greatest achievement” from a specified list.  Whereas 47% picked “Science/medicine/technology” in 1999, only 27% did in 2009.  Most of the difference, though, was reflected in the 12 percentage point increase in “Civil rights/Equal rights,” and nearly all the rest in “Nothing/Don’t Know,” the only option chosen more often than Science/medicine/technology.”

A better subtitle, then, would have been “After Election of America’s First African-American President, Recognition of Gains in Civil Rights Eats Away at American’s Awe of Science.”

3.  Uncritically examined assumptions tend to multiply.... I keep mentioning the bipartisan or nonpartisan aspect of the public’s warm feeling toward science because my guess is that the premise that the authority of science is in “decline” is an inference from the sad spectacle of political polarization on climate change. If so, then this would be a case where the uncritical acceptance of one assumption--that conflict over climate change reflects a decline in the authority of science-- has bred uncritical acceptance of another--that the authority of science is declining.

I could sort of understand why someone might hypothesize that people who are skeptical about climate change don’t accept science’s way of knowing, but not why anyone would persist in this view after examining any reasonable amount of evidence. 

The people who are skeptical about climate change, just like those who believe in it, believe by an overwhelming margin that “scientists contribute to the well-being of society.”  The reason that there is public division on climate change is not that one side rejects scientific consensus but that the two disagree about what the “consensus” on climate change is, a conclusion supported by numerous studies including the Pew Report.

A related mistake is to treat the partisan divide on climate as evidence that “Republicans” are “anti-science.”  Not only do the vast majority of such individuals who identify as Republican view science and its impact on society positively. They also, as the Pew Report notes, hold views on nuclear power more in keeping with those of scientists (who are themselves overwhelmingly Democratic) than the vast majority of ordinary members of the public who call themselves “Democrats.”

Another probable basis for the ill-supported premise that science’s authority is low or in decline etc. is the high proportion of the U.S. population—close to 50%--who say they believe in divine creation.  In fact, the vast majority of those who say they don’t believe in evolution also have highly positive views about the value of science.

I suppose one could treat the failure to “accept” evolution (or to “believe” in climate change)  as “rejection” of the authority of science by definition. But that would be a boring thing to do, and also invite error.

It would be boring because it would foreclose investigation of the extremely interesting question of how people who hold one position they know is rejected by science can nevertheless persist in an extremely positive view of science in general -- and simply live in a manner that so pervasively assumes science’s way of knowing is the best one (I don’t know for sure but am pretty confident that people who believe in evolution are not likely to refuse to rely on a GPS system because its operation reflects Einstein’s theories on relativity, e.g.).

The error that's invited by equating rejection of evolution or climate change with “rejection of the authority of science” is the conclusion that the rejection of the authority of science causes those two beliefs.  Definitions, of course, don’t cause anything. So if we make the awkward choice to analytically equate rejection of evolution or of climate change with rejection of the authority of science, we will have to keep reminding ourselves that “rejection of the authority of science” would then be a fallacious answer to the question what really does cause differences in public beliefs about evolution and about climate change?

4.  But then what are the “public attitude” measures measuring? The public attitude scholars, and in particular Gauchat, report lots of interesting data on the influences on attitudes toward science.  The amount of variance they find, moreover, seems too large to be understood as an account for the difference between the 85% of Americans who seem to think science is great and the 15% or so who seem to have a different view. The question thus becomes, what exactly are they measuring and what’s its relationship to peoples’ disposition to be guided by science’s way of knowing on matters of consequences to their decisionmaking?

Literally what these scholars are measuring is variance in a composite scale of attitudinal Likert items that appear in the GSS and the NSF Science Indicators. The items consist of statements (with which respondents indicate their level of disagreement or agreement on a 5- or 7-point scale) like these 

1. Because of science and technology, there will be more opportunities for the next generation.
2. We depend too much on science and not enough on faith.
3. Scientific research these days doesn’t pay enough attention to the moral values of society.
4. Science makes our way of life change too fast.

I think these items are measuring something interesting, because Gauchat has found that they correlate in interesting ways with other individual characteristics.  One of these is an attitudinal dispositions that Gauchat calls “institutional alienation,” which measures trust in major institutions of government and civil society. They also correlate highly with science literacy.

But in truth, I’m not really sure what the disposition being measured by this type of “public science attitude” scale is. Because we know that in fact the public reports having high regard for science, a composite “science attitude” scale presumably is picking up something more general than that. I am unaware (maybe a reader of this blog will direct me to relevant literature) that attempts to validate the “science attitude” scale in relation to whether people are willing to rely on science in their lives—for example, in seeking medical treatment from physicians, or making use of safety-related technologies in their work, etc.  I would be surprised if that were so, given how unusual it is the US & other modern, liberal democratic socieites to see behavior that reflects genuine distrust for science’s authority. My guess is that the “public science attitudes” scales are measuring something akin to “anti-materialism” or “spiritualism.” Or maybe this is the elusive “fatalism” that haunts Douglas’s group-grid!

Indeed, I think Gauchat is interested in something more general than the “authority of science,” at least if we understand that to mean acceptance of science’s way of knowing as the best one.  He is looking for and likely finding pockets of American society that are unsatisfied with the meaning (or available meanings) of a life in which science’s authority is happily taken for granted by seemingly all cultural communities, even those for whom religion continues to furnish an important sentimental bond. 

For his purpose, though, he probably needs better measures than the ones that figure in the GSS and NSF batteries. I bet he’ll devise them. I suspect when he does, too, he’ll find they explain things that are more general than (& likely wholly unrelated to) partisan political disputes over issues like climate change.

Finally, in a very interesting paper, Gauchat examines variance in a GSS item that asks respondents to indicate how much “confidence” they have “in the people running . . . the Scientific Community”—“a great deal,” “only some,” or “hardly any.”  Gauchat reports finding that the correlation between identifying themselves as politically “conservative” and selecting “great deal” in response to this item has declined in the last 15 years. It’s interesting to note, though, that only about 50% of liberals have over time reported “a great deal” of confidence in “the people running . . . the Scientific Community,” and the individuals historically least likely to have a “great deal of trust” identify themselves as “moderates.”

I have blogged previously on this paper. I think the finding bears a number of possible interpretations. One is that Republicans have become genuinely less “confident” in the “people running the Scientific Community” during the period in which climate change has become more politically salient and divisive. Another is that climate skepticism is exactly what the GSS “confidence” item—or at least variance in it—is really measuring; it seems reasonable that conservatives might understand the (odd!) notion of “people running the Scientific Community” to be an allusion to climate scientists.  Gauchat’s finding thus points the way for additional interesting investigations.

But whatever this item is measuring, it is not plausibly understood as a measure of a general acceptance of the authority of science, at least if that concept is understood as assent to the superiority of science’s way of knowing over alternative ones.

Republicans continue to go to doctors and use microwave ovens—and continue to say, as they have for decades, that they admire scientists and science, no doubt because it furnishes them with benefits both vital and mundane. 

They don’t (for the most part) believe in climate change, and if they are religious they probably don’t believe in evolution (same for religious Democrats).

But that’s something that needs another, more more edifying explanation than “decline in the authority of science.”

Reading list

Yet another installment of: "I only *study* science communication ..."

Man, I suck at communicating!

I’ve now received 913 messages (in addition to many many comments) from scientists saying  “I attended your recent presentation, and you did fine—everyone loved you. Seriously. Don’t jump – here’s a number to call for help.  Okay? Okay?”

I see exactly what happened, of course. Despite my intentions, I came across like whining, self-pitying baby, because I wrote something that made me sound like a whining, self-pitying baby!

Actually, the potential miscommunication I am most anxious to fix is any intimation that I felt the audience at the  North American Carbon Program meeting made me feel I wasn't playing a constructive role in the discussion.  Definitely no one did in Q&A.  And after, the comments from the many people who lingered to discuss consisted of "very interesting!" (n = 3)  "thanks for giving us something to think about," (n = 2)  & "[really interesting observation/question relating to the data & issues]” (n = 7). (Like I said in the talk, it is essential to collect data, and not just go on introspection, when assessing the impact of science communication strategies.)

The source of the disappointment was wholly internal.  Also—but please don’t take this as reason to console me; I’m fine!—I remain convinced it was warranted.  I have proof: interrogating the feeling has enabled me to learn something.

So let me try this again . . . .

Something astonishing and important happened on  Monday.

I got the opportunity to address a room full of scientists who, by showing up (& not leaving for 2 hrs!), by listening intently, by asking thoughtful questions, by sharing relevant experiences, and by offering reasonable proposals proved that they, like me, see fixing the science communication problem as one of the most pressing and urgent tasks facing our society.

Of course, I stand by my position (subject, forever, to revision in light of new evidence) on what the source of the problem is. Also, I am happy, but hardly surprised, to learn that members of the audience didn’t at all resent my registering disagreement when I felt doing so would serve the goal of steering them—us—clear of what I genuinely believe to be false starts and deadends.

What disappoints me is not that I felt obliged to say “no,” "I don't think so," and “not that.”

It is that I failed to come fully prepared to identify, for an audience of citizen scientists who afforded me the honor of asking for my views, what I believe they can do as scientists to help create a science communication environment in which diverse citizens can be expected to converge on the best available scientific evidence as they deliberate over how best to secure their common ends.

I said (in my last post), “the scientist’s job is to do science, not communicate it.”  I didn’t convey my meaning as clearly as I wish I had (because, you see, science communication is only a hobby for me; my job is to contribute to scientific understanding of it).

Of course, scientists “communicate” as part of their job in being scientists.  But that communication is professional; it is with other scientists. Their job is not to communicate  their science to nonexperts or members of the public.

This is a very critical point to get clear on so I will risk going on a bit. 

The mistake of thinking that doing valid science is the same as communicating the validity of valid science is what got us into the mess we are in! Communicating and doing are different; and the former is something that admits of and demands its own independent scientific investigation.

In addition, the expert use of the scientific knowledge that the study of science communication creates is something that requires professional training and skill suited to communicating science, not doing science. Expecting the scientist to communicate the validity of her science because she had the professional skill needed to generate it is like expecting the players in a major league baseball game to do radio play-by-play at the same time, and then write up sportspage accounts for the fans who couldn’t tune in.

Yes, yes, there’s Carl Sagan; he’s the Tim McCarver of science communication. For sure be Carl Sagan or better still Richard Feynman if you possibly can be, b/c as I said, if you can help me and other curious citizens to participate in the wonder of knowing what is known to science, you will be conferring an exquisite benefit of immeasureable intrinsic value on us! Still, that won’t solve the climate change impasse either.

But neglecting to add this was my real mistake: just because what you say in or about your job as a scientist won’t dispel controversy over climate change does not mean that it isn’t your duty as a citizen scientist to contribute to something only scientists are in a position to do and that is essential not only to dispelling controversy over climate science but to addressing what caused that controversy and numerous others (nuclear power . . . HPV vaccine), and that will continue to cause us to experience even more of the same (GM foods . . . synthetic biology) if not corrected.

The cause of the science communication problem is the disjunction between the science of science communication and the practice of science and science-informed policymaking.  We must integrate them—so that we can learn as much as we can about how to communicate science, and never fail to use as much as we know about how to make what’s known to science known by those whose well-being it can serve.

Coordinated, purposeful effort by the institutional and individual members of the scientific community are necessary to achieve this integration (not sufficient; but I’ll address what others must do in part 5,922 of this series of posts). That was the message—the meaning—of the National Academy of Science’s “Science of Science Communication” Sackler Colloquium last spring.

Universities are where both science and professional training of those whose skills are informed by science take place. Universities—individually and together—must organize themselves to assure that they contribute, then, to the production of knowledge and skill that our society needs here.

What does that mean? Not necessarily one thing (such as, say, a formal “science of science communication” program or whathaveou). But any of a large number of efforts that a university can make, if it proceeds in a considered and deliberate way, to make sure that its constituent parts (its various social science graduate departments, its professional schools, its interdisciplinary centers and whatnot) predictably, systematically interact in a manner that advances the integration of the forms of knowledge that must be combined.

So make this happen. 

Combine with others within your university and petition, administer, or agitate as necessary to get your institution both to understand and make its contribution to this mission in whatever way intelligent deliberation recommends.

Model it yourself by teaching—or better yet co-teaching with someone in another discipline that also should be integrated—a course called the “Science of Science Communication” that’s cross-listed in multiple relevant programs.

Infect a brilliant student or two or fifty with excitement and passion for contributing to the creation of the knowledge that we need—and do what you can to demonstrate that should they choose this path their scholarly excellence will be conferred the recognition it deserves (or at least won’t compromise their eligibility for tenure!).

Is that it? No other things that scientists can do? 

I’m sure there are others (to be taken up in later posts, certainly, I promise). But making their universities bear their share of the burden to contributing to the collective project of melding science and science-informed policymaking with the science of science communication is the single most important thing you can do as a scientist to solve the science communication problem.

But don’t stop doing your science, and just keep up the great work (no need to change how you talk) in that regard.

Okay. Next question?