The Australian sustainable business market will grow to $2.9bn in 2014 from $1.6bn in 2010, according to a new report from independent analyst firm Verdantix. Their report, issued on 19 April 2011, goes on to quote author Susan Clarke that “… carbon regulations, rising energy prices and natural resource scarcity also create new market opportunities. Innovative firms … already benefit from the market for energy efficiency and carbon management.”

The report was built from “… publically disclosed revenue data from 139 firms with Australian revenues of more than US$1 billion in 2009/10.” Between 2009 and 2014, Australian sustainable business expenditure are projected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 13%.

Now, this sounds like good news.

Doesn’t it?

At the very least, it sounds like interesting news and worthy of discussion and further examination.

So let’s examine this further. Let us examine the vibrant discussion in the Australian media of a report that points to future market opportunities.

Err…. curiously, the discussion of this in Australia has been a little short of vibrant to date.

Google Web returns 151 hits since 19 April (until 15/12/2011) in response to “Verdantix.” And Google News returns 31 Australian hits for the same date range. For some unknown reason, most of those hits are in Spanish, Chinese, or German. 

In fact, there are only 11 Australian news hits in English in response to “Verdantix.”

That’s the good news; the bad news is that this goes down to 1 hit (that number again: one) when you add “carbon tax” to the search query.

That’s right, one news hit in Australia according to Google for a report that forecast an annual growth rate of 13% for sustainable business spend in response to introduction of the carbon tax.

One.

And the winner is here.

Where are the losers? Well, all of us are the losers if the media hide future opportunities from us.

So here is my challenge to you: In the comments, leave a link to an Australian media story that discusses the opportunities that arise from the price on carbon and the shift to clean energies. Like rare stamps, those links may become a trophy item for future analysts of the curious avoidance of  future opportunities that seems to have beset segments of the Australian media.

The climate talks in Durban have drawn to a close at around 5AM local time after a marathon all-night session.

It is too early to tell what exactly was achieved during these negotiations, although it is clear that the talks were not a complete failure.

Based on preliminary reports, my understanding is that the Kyoto agreement will continue in place, though minus Japan, Russia, New Zealand, and Canada, and that the parties are committed negotiating a new treaty by 2015. This new treaty is to be put in place by 2020 and it will, for the first time, also include developing countries in legally binding commitments. (There is, however, some ambiguity in the wording of how “legally binding” all this is.)

In addition, it appears that future decisions will no longer be based on the scientific advice of the IPCC but instead the process is only to be informed by the science. It remains to be seen whether being “informed” by the science is a meaningful concept.

The bottom-line, then, appears to be that some countries, the EU foremost among them but now fortunately also Australia, will continue to seek cuts to their emissions, whereas the largest emitters (China and the U.S.) will continue to pollute at a growing rate. On balance, it thus appears that no major global emission cuts are on the horizon until a decade from now, although this view may be slightly too pessimistic given that the U.N. process appears to have survived Durban.

What does this mean?

Assuming that no major emission cuts will take place for another decade or so, what are the consequences of this decision?

To answer the question, let us set aside politics entirely.

Let us assume (or pretend) that the leaders who congregated in Durban all had our best interests in mind, and let us just examine the cognitive issues underlying climate change.

In other words, politics aside, what kind of thinking drives climate negotiators, and how does this thinking relate to physical reality?

Cognition of Climate: Accumulation vs. Simplistic Thinking

Revealingly, at the beginning of the Durban climate talks, U.S. climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing stated that there are “essentially an infinite number of pathways” that allow stronger cuts starting in 2020 to “stay below 2 degrees.” In other words, delay doesn’t matter, we can deal with the problem later. 

Technically, but only technically, Pershing’s statement is true. However, it is only true in a meaningless abstract sense, because the moment we consider technological reality his statement reflects a deep cognitive failure.

Pershing’s statement betrays the well known cognitive failure to understand accumulation processes. This failure, widely shared among most people who are not intimately familiar with dynamical systems, ignores the fact that to stabilize total CO2 in the atmosphere—which is what is required to arrest further warming—we need to eventually reduce emissions to zero (or nearly so).

This is because CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere in the same way as the water level in a bathtub rises while the tap is on. Absent any leakage, the only way to stabilize the water level is to shut off the tap completely.

And the longer we delay before starting to turn the tap, the more rapidly we have to close it—if we delay emission cuts to 2020, then the required cuts are around 9% a year (which means every single year from 2020 on). Those cuts may not be technologically achievable. If we started in 2011, we could achieve the same outcome with cuts of only 3.7%, probably well within technological reach.

The figure below illustrates this problem by comparing the global emissions paths required to have any chance to limit warming to 2C, depending on when emissions peak. The longer we wait, the harsher the cuts.

The apparent failure of climate negotiators to understand the underlying physics is costing all of us dearly. (Remember, for the sake of this argument I am ignoring politics.)

Collectively, the climate negotiators have been acting like corporate fleet managers who run their cars without oil changes or maintenance, just to improve the bottom line for a year or two. Some twenty years ago, we could have dealt with climate change for the price of an oil change. Ten years ago, the price had gone up and it would have cost us a new engine. Right now, we are in for the cost of a new car. And if we do nothing for another 10 years, our planet may remodel itself with us no longer in the driver’s seat because 9% annual emissions cuts may be unachievable.

Cognition of Climate: Here and Now vs. the Relevant Past

There is another cognitive trap into which climate negotiators appear to have fallen which arises from the same fundamental failure to understand the physics and mathematics of accumulation.

This cognitive trap involves the inability to recognize historical responsibilities.

Let us continue with the bathtub analogy.

Because Western countries have been filling the bathtub for far longer than developing countries, more of the water in the tub is “ours,” rather than China’s or India’s. Not surprisingly, therefore, those countries expect us to start closing the tap before they shut theirs.

However, Western commentators and politicians often seemingly fail to understand our historical responsibilities, pointing instead to the fact that China is now emitting more than the U.S., or that India is growing too fast or whatever.

Yes, China now emits more than the U.S., but its total accumulation is less than a third of the American responsibility. And because accumulation is what matters, Australia has a greater historical responsibility than 94% of all other countries in the world.

This is shown in the figure below which plots the (logarithm of) historical emissions of all countries against the rank position of each country (in other words, we order the countries from most-emitting on the left to least-emitting on the right). Australia is the big red dot towards the top:

The figure clarifies that despite us being a relatively small country, we have contributed mor to the CO2 in the atmosphere–or water in the bathtub in our analogy–than most other countries in the world. (Further details of this analysis are here.)

So before we even consider politics, the cognitive challenges of climate change present a bleak picture. People do not readily understand the nature of accumulation, and that means they do not understand the relationship between emissions and atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. It also means they do not understand the distinction between present emissions and historical responsibilities.

It is important to add that those cognitive failures are not willful: They simply reveal the limitations of a cognitive apparatus that evolved at a time when it was simply inconceivable that our species would one day affect the overall geophysics of our planet.

Fortunately, those cognitive limitations do not prevent us from understanding them: It may sound paradoxical, but the tools of cognitive science allow us to understand our own thinking even if it is sometimes flawed.

This realization, in turn, empowers us to correct our thinking.

But of course, so far we have just considered human cognition, ignoring all the political factors that contribute to decision making in the climate context.

Add politics and vested interests and you likely get the de facto decision to let our children do the cleaning up and suffering at a far greater price than we were willing to pay.

It remains to be seen how exactly Durban fits into this picture. The fact that an agreement was achieved can only be positive. The fact that serious action has been delayed for another decade or so may come to haunt us.

An abridged version of this post was published on The Conversation 

There is a climate conference on in Durban, South Africa. This event has been difficult to miss because it has been accompanied by the usual distractions: First, we had another release of stolen personal correspondence among climate scientists (the two-year old rejects from the “climategate” non-scandal), presumably in the hope that this would torpedo the climate negotiations. No one has shown much interest in this very transparent attempt to malign scientists.

Then parts of the media went into overdrive to misrepresent climate science and attack real journalists whose reporting is based on the scientific literature rather than ideology. Those frenetic attempts at distraction are likely to continue for as long as the negotiations in Durban, only to disappear from the public arena shortly thereafter. (Until the next UN climate meeting, that is, although by then the stolen emails will be very stale indeed although the media will surely find new things to invent or distort.)

But for now, because it may be difficult to find any reliable information about Durban and the relevant data in segments of the Australian media, it is useful to draw attention to our collection of links to data, which may help overcome this deficit. For example, those data tell us about our historical responsibility and the data tell us how badly polluting Australia is compared to all but a handful of other countries in the world.

The list of links below is a rich resource for anyone interested in economic and environmental data (though not climate data—they can be found here or here). Those links are always just a click away under the “Links to data” button at the top of this site:

World Economic Data

• Trading Economics. A privately owned resource dedicated to providing economic and trade data.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

• UN Greenhouse data. Downloadable spreadsheets for worldwide emissions.
• IEA Greenhouse data. Another lengthy source (in PDF) about worldwide emissions.
• U.S. Greenhouse inventory. Detailed source about U.S. emissions by the EPA.
• U.S. Energy Information Administration. Very nicely laid out source of emissions data.
• Global carbon flow. Trade separates consumption from production: Where are the goods consumed that were produced with emissions elsewhere?
• CDIAC. The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) is the primary climate-change data and information analysis center of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
• Data on CO2 “export” via the supply chain from Stanford University.

World Bank, Human Development and Climate Change

• Worldbank open data. A compendium of global data on everything ranging from human development to health and economic activity.
• Human development reports. Accessible via Google Public Data Explorer and also as e-book
• World Bank on Climate Change. This portal is a central hub of information, data and reports about climate change around the world.

OECD

• The OECD provides statistics on pretty much everything. An amazing resource.

Green Facts

• Greenfacts.org. Provides a compendium of literature and data relevant to environmental and energy issues.

Disasters

• Annual disaster data base. Published by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. which is located within the School of Public Health of the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Brussels.

Renewable Energy Investment

• The Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative, which is supported by the UNEP and co-published with Bloomberg, provides data on global investment trends in renewable energy.

Energy Data

• European Energy Commission. Statistics and energy plans.

General Data Archive

• Gapminder provides access to a host of interesting data.

Professor Wendy Bacon and a team of researchers have published a report on the coverage of climate change in the Australian media.

The research is based on a comprehensive review of 3971 media articles which were published in ten Australian newspapers on the topic of climate change policy, during the period February 2011 and July 2011. 

Key Findings of the research are at the front of the report. They include:

• Overall coverage: Negative coverage of the government’s carbon pricing proposal outweighed positive coverage by 73% to 27%. Negative coverage across News Ltd newspapers far outweighed positive coverage by 82% to 18%.

• Headlines were less balanced than the actual content of articles, with neutral articles more likely to be headlined negative (41%) than positive (19%).

• Language: 51% of articles used only the term “carbon tax” to describe the policy, whilst 11% used only the term “carbon price”. This pattern was more obvious in several News Ltd publications (e.g. The Courier Mail was 70% to 8% on this measure). “Carbon tax” was generally the preferred term for opponents of the policy, whereas proponents preferred the term “carbon price”.

• Sources: Business sources received more coverage than all civil society sources together, including unions, NGOs, think tanks, activists, members of the public, religious spokespeople, scientists and academics. Fossil fuel lobby and other businesses opposed to the policy received very strong representation, whereas clean energy and other businesses in support of the policy received low coverage.

• Editorial: 46% of editorials were negative, compared to 23% positive. 31% were neutral.

For more details, there is an article on The Conversation, which includes a notable reply from News Ltd. For scholars of self-awareness (or lack thereof), the reply is particularly worth reading.

Calling all creatives: Unleash the film maker in you….

Green Screen: Climate Fix Flicks is an exciting new short film competition that is now calling for entries. We’re looking for creative films that explore ways to alleviate the coming climate crisis such as the positive benefits of moves towards a clean energy future.

We are seeking film submissions of between 30 seconds and 5 minutes that effectively communicate positive messages about a zero or low carbon, clean energy future. You may choose any genre or style that you like and we encourage participants to push creative boundaries and think outside the square. Green Screen: Climate Fix Flicks is open to everyone and the winning entry receives $5000. Submission DEADLINE is Friday 10 February 2012. Download the flyer and spread the word!

The competition is an initiative of climate scientists from Macquarie University, The University of Melbourne and Monash University. Our goal is to raise awareness of the opportunities and positive effects of moving the world towards a low carbon future. This film festival will promote positive change and bring disenfranchised voters back to the table as we discuss the best options for fixing Australia’s and indeed the world’s climate future.

In Australia, the sky will fall in on 1 July 2012 next year.

That is when the modest carbon tax of around $20/ton will take effect, whereupon all civilization will cease and a new dark age will begin.

Well, that’s what the shock jocks are saying and the scribes of our voluminous gutter press. Although it beggars belief, they are actually saying stuff like that, and a tiny but loud fringe buys into this nonsense.

In the meantime, however, some other Australians crunched some numbers and did the unthinkable: In the country that is blessed with more sunshine than almost any other on Earth, we installed solar panels on our roofs.

And no, the roof did not cave in.

Instead my family is now making money from living inside a power station. My latest bill is shown below; note the comparison to last year, before the solar age (we were slow in entering the solar age, we were too busy replacing our hail-damaged car with a powerful 4WD that spews out 30% less CO2 than the average sedan and uses 5.5L/100km. Sorry Exxon.)

Right, so that’s a nearly 38% reduction in net power consumption, and a reduction in the bill (owing to the new Smartmeter tariff) of about, well, 50% at a guess. So after we pay the instalment on the solar panel, we are still ahead by a fair amount—time will tell by how much, but we will do an accounting soon. After 5 years of paying for the panels, we will be ahead by around $1300 per year.

And there is lots of other stuff we can all do as well that isn’t too hard.

Now let me apologize for not writing a complicated post in carbontaxemissionreductionscleanenergyacademiclingo. Sadly and regrettably, reducing one’s carbon footprint is just so simple and makes you money, it’s embarassing to admit it.

I am on the take now, from the powerful solar industry.

But obviously this is still way too complex for the shock jocks and tabloid thugs. They just have to continue their fear campaign. I guess that’s all they’ve got to sell. Fear.

The Debunking Handbook is an upcoming guide to debunking myths, by John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky. Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, unfortunately there is no summary of the literature that offers practical guidelines on the most effective ways of reducing the influence of misinformation. This Handbook boils down the research into a short, simple summary, intended as a guide for communicators in all areas (not just climate) who encounter misinformation. The Handbook will be available as a free, downloadable PDF at the end of this 6-part blog series.

This post has been cross-posted at Skeptical Science. 

The third and arguably most potent backfire effect occurs with topics that tie in with people’s worldviews and sense of cultural identity.  Several cognitive processes can cause people to unconsciously process information in a biased way. For those who are strongly fixed in their views, being confronted with counter-arguments can cause their views to be strengthened.

One cognitive process that contributes to this effect is Confirmation Bias, where people selectively seek out information that bolsters their view. In one experiment, people were offered information on hot-button issues like gun control or affirmative action. Each parcel of information was labelled by its source, clearly indicating whether the information would be pro or con (e.g., the National Rifle Association vs. Citizens Against Handguns). Although instructed to be even-handed, people opted for sources that matched their pre-existing views. The study found that even when people are presented with a balanced set of facts, they reinforce their pre-existing views by gravitating towards information they already agree with. The polarisation was greatest among those with strongly held views.¹

What happens when you remove that element of choice and present someone with arguments that run counter to their worldview? In this case, the cognitive process that comes to the fore is Disconfirmation Bias, the flipside of Confirmation Bias. This is where people spend significantly more time and thought actively arguing against opposing arguments.²

This was demonstrated when Republicans who believed Saddam Hussein was linked to the 9/11 terrorist attacks were provided with evidence that there was no link between the two, including a direct quote from President George Bush.³ Only 2% of participants changed their mind (although interestingly, 14% denied that they believed the link in the first place). The vast majority clung to the link between Iraq and 9/11, employing a range of arguments to brush aside the evidence. The most common response was attitude bolstering – bringing supporting facts to mind while ignoring any contrary facts. The process of bringing to the fore supporting facts resulted in strengthening people’s erroneous belief.

If facts cannot dissuade a person from their pre-existing beliefs – and can sometimes make things worse – how can we possibly reduce the effect of misinformation? There are two sources of hope. 

First, the Worldview Backfire Effect is strongest among those already fixed in their views. You therefore stand a greater chance of correcting misinformation among those not as firmly decided about hot-button issues. This suggests that outreaches should be directed towards the undecided majority rather than the unswayable minority.

Second, messages can be presented in ways that reduce the usual psychological resistance. For example, when worldview-threatening messages are coupled with so-called self-affirmation, people become more balanced in considering pro and con information.^4,5

Self-affirmation can be achieved by asking people to write a few sentences about a time when they felt good about themselves because they acted on a value that was important to them. People then become more receptive to messages that otherwise might threaten their worldviews, compared to people who received no self-affirmation. Interestingly, the “self-affirmation effect” is strongest among those whose ideology was central to their sense of self-worth. 

Another way in which information can be made more acceptable is by “framing” it in a way that is less threatening to a person’s worldview. For example, Republicans are far more likely to accept an otherwise identical charge as a “carbon offset” than as a “tax”, whereas the wording has little effect on Democrats or Independents—because their values are not challenged by the word “tax”.⁶

Self-affirmation and framing aren’t about manipulating people. They give the facts a fighting chance.

References

1. Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2006). Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50, 755–69.
2. Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2010). When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions. Political Behavior, 32, 303-330.
3. Prasad, M., Perrin, A. J., Bezila, K., Hoffman, S. G., Kindleberger, K., Manturuk, K., et al. (2009). “There Must Be a Reason’’: Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification. Sociological Inquiry, 79, 142-162.
4. Cohen, G. L., Sherman, D. K., Bastardi, A., Hsu, L., & McGoey, M. (2007). Bridging the Partisan Divide: Self-Affirmation Reduces Ideological Closed-Mindedness and Inflexibility in Negotiation. Personality & Soc. Psych., 93, 415-430.
5. Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2011). Opening the Political Mind? The effects of self-affirmation and graphical information on factual misperceptions. In press.
6. Hardisty, D. J., Johnson, E. J. & Weber, E. U. (1999). A Dirty Word or a Dirty World?: Attribute Framing, Political Affiliation, and Query Theory, Psychological Science, 21, 86-92

This is the full text of a written submission to the independent inquiry into media and media regulation, which commenced public hearings in Melbourne on 7 November 2011.

Submission to the Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulation

(25 October 2011)

0. Executive Summary

This submission makes reference to several items in the Issues Paper released by the Inquiry on 28 September 2011.

This submission argues that there is substantial evidence that large segments of the media have systematically failed to provide the Australian public with accurate scientific information, especially as it relates to climate change. This points to a systemic failure of current self-regulation schemes. There is much evidence from the behavioural sciences that inaccurate media coverage prevents the public from forming well-informed opinions on complex issues, with adverse consequences for society as a whole.

The systemic failure to provide accurate information, often accompanied by misrepresentation or slander of individual scientists, points to the need to strengthen not only regulatory schemes but also to create a suitable forum for groups who have been misrepresented to set the record straight. There is overwhelming evidence from the behavioural sciences that incorrect information is difficult to dislodge and correct once it has been stored in people’s memories, and the persistent influence of misinformation is known to have adverse consequences for the personal expression of values, for public debate and for society as a whole. 

1. The Media’s Failure to Provide Accurate Coverage of Scientific Issues

There is considerable evidence that large segments of the Australian media, especially the large-circulation organs of the News Ltd. publishing conglomerate, have consistently misrepresented and distorted the current state of climate science. The following summaries of the evidence are relevant:

• Professor Robert Manne of LaTrobe University has recently catalogued and quantitatively confirmed the systemic inability of The Australian accurately to report findings from climate science. The analysis in Professor Manne’s Quarterly Essay is not readily reconciled with conventional standards of journalistic integrity.
• Dr Tim Lambert of UNSW has meticulously documented more than 70 cases of sometimes egregious distortions of scientific findings by The Australian on his Deltoid website. I have independently confirmed several of his analyses by either contacting the authors of scientific papers or by reading the peer-reviewed literature; in all cases, Dr Lambert’s analysis turned out to be correct and the reporting of The Australian was legitimately characterized as inaccurate.
• Colleagues and I have recently compiled an in-depth analysis of media “malpractice” on The Conversation 
• Multiple additional pieces of evidence that reveal editorial bias and even a disregard for truth when it comes to climate change are available from the ABC’s Media Watch website.
• The Australian has repeatedly distorted data and science by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO and has often refused to publish corrections of these distortions.  These distortions are a matter of public record and apply across a number of issues, from sea level rise to sea ice. The serial nature of these distortions was captured by the then-chief climatologist Dr Michael Coughlan, who stated on 6 January 2009: “The Australian clearly has an editorial policy. No matter how many times the scientific community refutes these arguments, they persist in putting them out – to the point where we believe there’s little to be gained in the use of our time in responding.”

On balance, there is considerable evidence of irresponsible conduct by some—but by no means all—Australian media organs. This evidence is relevant to at least two points in the Issue Paper: 

5 Do existing standards of conduct or codes of practice such as those mentioned in 3 and 4, as well as those established by individual print and/or online media organisations, fulfil their goals?

9.1 Is there effective self-regulation of (a) print media and (b) online media by the Australian Press Council?

This failure must not be taken lightly.

There is overwhelming evidence from the behavioural sciences that the media play an essential role in the views people hold and how they behaviour and that irresponsible media can do considerable harm.

To illustrate, in the United States, Professor Stephen Kull and colleagues at the University of Maryland have been keeping track of key beliefs among the American public for many years. Their data give rise for concern: Long after the search for “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD) proved futile after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, large segments of the U.S. public continued to believe that they had actually been found in Iraq.

Further inspection of these data reveals that the extent of mistaken belief varied with people’s preferred news source: Consumers of Murdoch-owned Fox News were most likely to be misinformed on a range of issues, whereas those who primarily listened to National Public Radio (roughly comparable to our ABC) were least misinformed. Although these data leave open the direction of causality, it is noteworthy that the extent to which Fox-consumers were misinformed increased with how much attention they paid to their preferred channel. Those who watched Fox daily were most misinformed, whereas those who watched Fox ‘rarely’ or ‘only once a week’ escaped nearly unscathed and were less misinformed. In contrast to Fox, increased consumption of Public Radio was found to increase—not decrease—people’s level of understanding. Daily listeners of Public Radio were generally best-informed as shown by a number of studies spanning nearly a decade.

In Australia, I am not aware of a parallel analysis of how people’s opinions are shaped depending on their media sources. However, a recent CSIRO survey has revealed a phenomenon known as “pluralistic ignorance” that is typically associated with systemic misreporting in the media.

Pluralistic ignorance refers to the divergence between the prevalence of actual beliefs in a society and what people in that society think others believe. The CSIRO data reveal striking pluralistic ignorance with respect to climate change: It found that very few Australians (around 7 out of 100) completely denied the reality of climate change. However, those few falsely believed that their opinion was shared by half the population. Those same few people also think that only 15% of their compatriots accept the prevailing scientific opinion; namely that humans cause climate change—whereas in actual fact that number is around 40-50%, depending on how the question is asked. Based on previous research there is reason to think that this pluralistic ignorance is the result of skewed media coverage that over-emphasizes fringe views on climate change. (For more details and references, see here).

It is important to recognize that inaccurate and misleading coverage of scientific issues is not inherently inevitable, as demonstrated by the efforts of reputable media outlets overseas. For example, in the U.K., a BBC Trust review of impartiality and accuracy of the BBC’s coverage of science (July 2011) determined that: “For at least three years, the climate change deniers have been marginal to the scientific debate but somehow they continued to find a place on the airwaves. Their ability to do so suggests that an over?diligent search for due impartiality – or for a controversy – continue to hinder the objective reporting of a scientific story…”

The recommendations of the BBC Trust review were, inter alia, that: “The BBC needs to continue to be careful when reporting on science to make a distinction between an opinion and a fact. When there is a consensus of opinion on scientific matters, providing an opposite view without consideration of “due weight” can lead to ‘false balance’, meaning that viewers might perceive an issue to be more controversial than it actually is.”

(see here for complete report and press release, respectively.)

2. Can Inaccurate Media Coverage be Corrected?

The preceding section highlights the importance of the following two points in the Issues Paper:

2.1 If a substantial attack is made on the honesty, character, integrity or personal qualities of a person or group, is it appropriate for the person or group to have an opportunity to respond?

11 Would it be appropriate for such a model to include rules that would:
(a) prohibit the publication of deliberately inaccurate statements
(b) require a publisher to distinguish between comment and fact
[etc]

Behavioural evidence has much to say about those two issues, especially the importance of avoiding the publication of erroneous or misleading information.

Cognitive science research has consistently shown that people continue to rely on information that turns out to be false, even after it has been identified as misinformation and after it has been clearly retracted or corrected (e.g., the “Children overboard” affair).

In a nutshell, when people receive a piece of seemingly valid information and are later told it is actually false, they nonetheless continue to rely on this misinformation. This even happens when people believe, understand, and later demonstrably remember the retraction—in other words, people will state that they no longer believe the misinformation but their future behaviour proves otherwise.

If simple corrections are insufficient, what then is required to neutralize the lingering effects of misinformation?

Relevant research suggests that people can discount misinformation if they are given a plausible alternative explanation in addition to a mere correction, or if they are alerted to the motives underlying the dissemination of the original misinformation.  For example, if people are alerted to the fact that rumours about President Obama’s birthplace were deliberately circulated by political opponents, then they may be less likely to give credence to those rumours.

Likewise, warning people ahead of time that they may be misled (e.g., by reading a particular newspaper with a sorry record of misrepresentations) also attenuates the continued influence of misinformation.

Bibliography

Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Apai, J. (2011). Terrorists brought down the plane!—No, actually it was a technical fault: Processing corrections of emotive information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 283-310.

Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Swire, B., & Chang, D. (2011). Misinformation in memory: Effects of the encoding strength and strength of retraction. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 570-578.

Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Tang, D. T. W. (2010). Explicit warnings reduce but do not eliminate the continued influence of misinformation. Memory & Cognition, 38, 1087-1100.

Fein, S., McCloskey, A. L., & Tomlinson, T. M. (1997). Can the jury disregard that information? The use of suspicion to reduce the prejudicial effects of pretrial publicity and inadmissible testimony. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 1215-1226.

Johnson, H. M., & Seifert, C. M. (1994). Sources of the continued influence effect: When misinformation in memory affects later inferences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 20, 1420-1436.

Kull, S., Ramsay, C., & Lewis, E. (2003). Misperceptions, the media, and the Iraq war. Political Science Quarterly, 118, 569-598.

Lewandowsky, S., Stritzke, W. G. K., Oberauer, K., & Morales, M. (2005). Memory for fact, fiction and misinformation: The Iraq War 2003. Psychological Science, 16, 190-195.

Lewandowsky, S., Stritzke, W., Oberauer, K., & Morales, M. (2009). Misinformation and the ‘War on Terror’: When memory turns fiction into fact. In W. Stritzke, S. Lewandowsky, D. Denemark, J. Clare, & F. Morgan (Eds.), Terrorism and torture: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 179–203). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Series of articles on State of the Science

at The Conversation has kicked off

All pieces can be found through this page.

(The remainder of this post summarizes the series and was originally posted before the series started.)

We constantly hear that science is under attack. 

In what seems to be an increasingly acrimonious exchange between the public and the scientific community, facilitated, of course, by the media, we often see scientists defending themselves and their work. Whether it’s HPV and MMR vaccines, climate change, evolution or GM foods, scientists are finding themselves at the heart of some hysterical, and frankly unscientific, debates.

Whether or not there is a “war” going on between science and the general populace, it seems there has been a communication breakdown between the scientific community and the public.

But as any scientist will tell you, these two areas are not mutually exclusive. The scientific domain is the public domain. Science is with us every minute of every day, and is improving our lives by the hour. Those who practice science are not part of a secretive cabal, they’re not a remote elite; they’re walking down the street next to you, they’re behind you in the queue at the supermarket (though they might be studying the chemical additives in their cereal a bit harder).

And far from being at war with science, the public wants to know more about it. Study after study shows not only are people more interested in science then they are in sport (yes, even in Australia), but they also don’t feel informed enough about it.

It is in this spirit – one of curiosity, rather than one of combat – that The Conversation, along with Australia’s science community, presents The State of Science.

In a series of articles over the next fortnight, some of Australia’s most respected scientists, including both the former and current Chief Scientist for Australia, will be providing a snapshot of their discipline. 

It is an in-depth, sometimes playful, look at how science works, how and where it can go wrong, how it corrects itself, how it affects our lives, and how it is perceived by the public.

List of contributors:

• Professor Ian Chubb – Chief Scientist for Australia
• Dr Susan Lawler – Head of Environment and Ecology, La Trobe University
• Dr Will Howard – Research scientist, Office of the Chief Scientist
• Dr Cathy Foley – President, Science and Technology Australia
• Dr Danny Kingsley – Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, ANU
• Professor Penny Sackett – Former Chief Scientist for Australia, ANU
• Professor Matthew Bailes – Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research), Swinburne University, Director of the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing
• Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Australian Professorial Fellow, UWA
• Professor Steven Sherwood, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW
• Professor Denis Goodrum – Executive Consultant, Science by Doing, Australian Academy of Science
• Dr Rod Lamberts – Deputy Director, Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science at Australian National University
• Dr Will Grant – Graduate Studies Convenor, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at Australian National University
• Dr Michael Brown – ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University

For further information, contact Stephan Lewandowsky on stephan.lewandowsky (at) uwa.edu.au