Complications - I

Yesterday I argued that the IPCC should hire some professionals to help it communicate its findings to the public and policy makers. There are two complications: (1) Many scientists regard a communications strategy as "fluff" and "spin". (2) Effective communication requires a coherent message.

Let's talk about "fluff" and "spin".

As scientists, we're trained to collect and analyze data. We use those data to evaluate hypotheses and to refine our understanding of the world. If the data we collect are inconsistent with what we thought we understood, we modify our understanding. This approach can be summed up in two words: Data rule.

If data rule, then how they're communicated don't matter. It's the data that determine whether our ideas are right, not how flashy our PowerPoint is or how cool our graphics are. If the extent of Arctic sea ice is decreasing faster than expected, it doesn't make any difference if I draw a pretty picture or simply print a big table of numbers. What matters is what the data say. In fact, you could argue that the table of numbers is better, because it allows you to make quantitative rather than qualitative comparisons of the data and what's expected.

Daniel Kahneman, Dan Lovallo, and Olivier Sibany would point out¹ that this reflects only one of two modes of human thinking, what cognitive scientists call "reflective thinking". The other mode of thinking, "intuitive thinking" mostly determines our thoughts. It "produces a constant representation of the world around us". It's that representation of the world that determines how we respond.²

That's where the communications professionals come in. They live and breathe in a world that's focused on affecting our intuitive thinking, not our reflective thinking. And there's a science, or at least an art, to doing that well.

Most people, even most policy makers, don't have the time to study the data and findings of the IPCC in detail.³ Their opinions and decisions about policy will be based on intuitive thinking, on the "representation of the world" that has been formed in their mind.

Which brings us (tomorrow) to the second complication.