[0-O-0]

> Approximately 14% of press releases opposing climate action or denying the science behind climate change received major national news coverage, she found, compared to about 7% of press releases with pro-climate action messages.

There might be a very simple explanation: there are significantly more pro-climate change press releases, than anti. Comparing percentages without correcting for that seems to be dishonest.

[netcan]

Covid has really driven home a point to me. As a society, we are statistically illiterate. Politicians and journalists particularly so. Most of our important, newsworthy information today is statistical.

This is a real problem. In the context of public schooling, I think statistics needs to become the primary discipline taught in high school maths. It's more useful to our work life, and (relevant in the context of public schooling) essential to informed citizenship.

Literacy is a pretty close analogy here. The average person is totally ill equipped to to read politically relevant news and form an opinion about it. Often, the person who wrote it is just as ill equipped.

Statistical statements have a tricky form. They seem like a statement of fact. They are, kind of. It's a fact that this researcher measured what she measured. The implication though, that's conjecture, and it may or may not be a good one.

[tomp]

If anything, COVID drove the opposite point for me.

The whole "masks don't work" spiel that the WHO did was statistically legitimate... We really don't have proof (or whatever the medical community considers is "proof" - like double blind large scale trail with less than 5% chance of being false) that masks work. Statistically, we don't know.

But operationally masks have negligible risk and practical burden, while having a huge potential benefit (stopping the pandemic in its tracks), so even if the overall probability of this benefit is low (or at least not necessarily 95+%), it's the correct decision from an executive perspective.

Basically: scientific / statistical opinion: masks aren't proven to work; executive decision: recommending masks has minimal downside and massive potential upside;

[jkingsbery]

The latest EconTalk episode talks about this: https://www.econtalk.org/nassim-nicholas-taleb-on-the-pandem... ... Once the Pandemic hit, we should have worn masks. Statistical studies aren't the only form of human knowledge - we understand that when we speak, air and saliva leave our mouth, carrying viruses along. Masks catch air and saliva (and as you say, have low cost). Therefore, wearing masks makes sense as a matter of logic. We don't need to drag p-values into everything.

[imtringued]

Masks reduce spread of the virus by already infected people. They work because even people who don't even know they are sick are wearing them from the beginning to the end of their infection. When it comes to exponential growth it doesn't matter if the masks reduce infection rate by 10%, 1% or even 0.1%. Alternatively, even if masks don't work physically there is a psychological component to wearing masks that can reduce the infection rate by reminding people that there is a virus out there and as long as you are wearing the mask you should be extra careful.

[DanBC]

There's not much evidence to support anything in your comment.

If masks were so effective it would be easy to find that benefit in any of the good quality trials that have been run, and we don't see that benefit. To see any benefit of mask wearing we have to drop the quality of evidence right down.

One thing often missing from these discussions is the concept of "number needed to treat". How many people need to wear a mask to prevent one additional infection?

https://www.fhi.no/globalassets/dokumenterfiler/rapporter/20...

> Given the low prevalence of COVID-19 currently, even if facemasks are assumed to be effective, the difference in infection rates between using facemasks and not using facemasks would be small. Assuming that 20% of people infectious with SARS-CoV-2 do not have symptoms, and assuming a risk reduction of 40% for wearing facemask, 200000 people would need to wear facemasks to prevent one new infection per week in the current epidemiological situation.

[tacocataco]

I was under the impression that masks only work to protect you from transmitting to others. Has that aspect not been studied yet?

Or are you talking about the efficacy of masks protecting the person that wears it?

Appreciate your time.

[ryanmcbride]

The largest reduction in rate of transmission is when the infected person is wearing a mask. However if both the infected, and uninfected person are wearing masts, it drops just a little bit lower. But you're right that if an unmasked infected person comes in contact with a masked healthy person, the masked person is still very likely to get infected.

[xapata]

It's much like flossing. The mechanism is so obvious, we didn't need a statistical study to be confident. We now have statistical evidence from Covid-19 spread.

[tomp]

No idea. I’m not an expert.

My physics intuition says that air filter is almost equally effective whereever it is (your mouth or another person’s mouth). It depends on the details though - how big the virus is? How far does it travel? How much of it comes out “dry” vs in water droplets? How big are these water droplets? What’s the distance it can travel in a droplet vs “dry”? And so on and so on. My prior says that eyes aren’t a big transmission factor (as the virus has particular affinity towards lung cell receptors) and that the only way that mask efficiency is radically different depending on who’s wearing it is, if the virus is mostly exhaled in water droplets and most of them evaporate in the next 1-2 meters (so when you inhale through a mask, it doesn’t filter the tiny virus particles, whereas exhaling into a mask does filter the less tiny water droplets).

But the bigger point is, it doesn’t matter. Masks can help, and that should be enough to make a decision, like a general rule or recommendation to wear masks (or face coverings).

[marcosdumay]

The last few years have made it very clear that worldwide the medicine regulation sector sucks at cost-benefit analysis.

[Joeri]

Statistical literacy doesn’t necessarily help. Economists have proven to be “excellent” armchair virologists. They understand the statistics well enough that they think they can give an informed opinion, but because they don’t actually understand viruses and infection their opinions are dangerously uninformed.

Knowing statistics isn’t enough, you also need to know the field those statistics are applied to, because otherwise you can reach statistically sound but inherently meaningless conclusions.

[r00fus]

If I could upvote this twice I would. The basis for our childrens' education is missing statistics and finance/economics.

My kids' school does teaches basic consumer protection and critical thinking "how to spot ads/scams"

Teaching those should be the foundation on which we teach other things.

[netcan]

Thanks.

I agree on extending the point past statistics. When we talk a lot about schooling tha should prepare kids for the world, that talk is usually directed at work-ready type skills. Coding, resume writing, etc.

We really need to update our fundamentals, near the epistemological level.

[dfxm12]

Just like COVID-19, education is also a politicized platform in America. It's not a coincidence that the same politicians who are trying to downplay the global pandemic and effects of the virus are colleagues with, if not the same, politicians that are trying to reduce access to education.

If you agree with the premise of the parent poster that improper education is "a real problem", change towards a more educated citizenship begins in November.

[netcan]

Not everything is conspiracy. The US isn't unique here. Statistics is more important than it used to be. Schooling just hasn't changed.

[cagenut]

I call it "functional innumeracy". Our society is stuck at a local-maxima for communicating via headlines and short-conversations where we can only really compress and encode signed-keywords to each other. Meaning like, musk+ or musk-, bitcoin+ or bitcoin-.

If we want to take things to the next level of numerical understanding, where we "graph" all sorts of rates, distributions, curves, crossover and inflection points, etc, then what do we do? Fuck around in a spreadsheet for an hour and screen shot that and upload it to imgur and put the link in here? Comb through google images for something close enough and maybe photoshop some arrows on it?

We need a better communication toolkit than a few hundred bytes of ascii to make it possible for people to introduce a heightened degree of numeracy in everyday conversations and decision making. Image macros and emojis and infographics are pigin attempts to go down this road, but we're not there yet (that i've seen, links if you got 'em).

Imagine you're a journalist right now, you're logged into wordpress, you need to explain the insane disaster of today's GDP report, and you have a deadline of finishing your post before lunch. What do you do?

[taneq]

Statistically and scientifically illiterate, yes. There is this overall belief that one person's opinion, however gained, is equal to another person's opinion, however gained. If one opinion is the result of multiple well designed scientific studies and the other is the result of some late night YouTube indulgement then no, they're not equal.

[throwaway_pdp09]

Upvoted because it's a good point but I think the problem goes deeper. Simply expressed most people will deny or plain block out what they don't want to hear, and education can't cure that. There are plenty of people still denying that covid is of significant risk - and we're right in the middle of it!

[ryathal]

As a society we are increasingly illiterate. Mathematical or statistical knowledge isn't achievable without reading comprehension that is above the average person.

The real problem is we aren't teaching kids to read well enough to have a chance of them establishing a foundation in anything else. Statistics needs a base understanding of arithmetic and algebra (calculus would help a ton but lets be realistic in expectations), it's just even more math the average student won't understand. We need to get the basics actually taught to the point of mastery for most students before adding stretch goals.

[samizdis]

Possibly tangential, so apologies for that, but I am reminded of the "Linda problem"[1], as posed by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.

Michael Lewis's book The Undoing Project[2], which in my opinion provides an accessible and informative look into the work of Tversky and Kahneman, is worth a read.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy

[2} https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undoing_Project

[chippy]

I think the explanation about why certain things get more news is in the word "news". News is just that, new. New, interesting, unique, different, something to be talked about.

An accepted truth like "climate change is real" isn't really that new today. Page 10: "Another professor agrees with the professor from last week who talked about this topic, read more on page 56." A protest turned riot about climate change is news. Crackpot theories are also new and news worthy.

The entire premise that the news is impartial and should cover issues statistically equally is utterly at odds with the core principle of what the news actually is.

The news is not information and never has been. It's telling stories about the world.

[imtringued]

Most climate change news is always the same "eat your veggies" style reporting. We need x,y,z and we have time until current date + 30 years [0]. There is also the opposite. "Wind power and grid expansion permits have started piling up for the third year in a row". Not exactly exciting. There is also the yearly CO2 tax article and people always respond "I hate taxes". Usually the only exciting times are when the government decides to change things up.

[0] worst cases keep getting worse but the amount of work stays the same, if you tell people we have 12 years left to reach the old temperature goal they'll just give up and call you a doomsayer

[handol]

> Crackpot theories are also new and news worthy.

Only when the crackpots have wealthy benefactors.

[WarOnPrivacy]

>The news is not information and never has been.

Assuming that's true then perhaps we need more journalism & less news.

Journalism here being performance of those duties implied by the 1st Amendment's Freedom Of The Press clause.

[jjk166]

No one was ever going to win a Pulitzer for "yet another climate scientists agrees with widely accepted consensus." I do believe journalistic standards have fallen in recent times, but their job has always been to update us on new and surprising developments, not provide all the information a person would ever need. Climate change, just as an example, is a complicated process and the science behind it can not be accurately conveyed in a 30 second snippet by a layman. A responsible citizen should be able and willing to go out and acquire the background information they need to make an informed opinion, and in this day and age that information is probably only a few clicks away.

[take_a_breath]

In fact, i think that is the entire point. Our media is built on clicks and eyeballs. Promoting the idea of legitimate "debate" in the science helps drive more clicks and eyeballs. It's the same things media does with politics.

[acqq]

It's in The very Fine Article:

"While just 10% of the press releases Wetts found featured anti-climate action messaging, those rarer releases were twice as likely to get coverage as pro-climate action press releases"

"Wetts said the results seem to support the popular opinion that mainstream news organizations often mislead readers by giving equal weight to two sides of an argument, even when one side isn’t as widely believed or lacks scientific evidence."

[valvar]

I know this is beside your point, but the following part of the last sentence stung my eyes somewhat:

>even when one side isn’t as widely believed or lacks scientific evidence

This is not how ``Science'' is supposed to work. While the comparison is in all likelihood not accurate in this case (I happen to think that the establishment is usually right, and that it is mostly right when it comes to the subject of climate change), it is very reminiscent of the classic example of how the establishment viewed Gallileo's objections to the geocentric model of the universe. Science is advanced by adversity, and especially by figuring out what should be done when parts of mainstream theories are falsified or challenged. Science is not advanced by eliminating everything that disagrees with the establishment. The establishment are all very excellent scientists, but science (should) never really become ``established''. I think perhaps the most important reason for why the currently mainstream climate models are actually so strong is that it has been necessary to overcome a lot of adversity.

[TheOperator]

Equally presenting heterodox theories with less evidence to casual news readers doesn't drive science forward so much as it gives people a confused sense of what conclusion most scientists and experts in the trenches believe is most plausible. Which is then used as a lever to promote agendas which very much fly in the face of what evidence suggests that we should do.

[eirini1]

>Science is not advanced by eliminating everything that disagrees with the establishment.

It is also definitely not advanced by presenting fringe theories that very few scientists actually consider relevant as actually being about as close to the truth as a theory that is believed to be the most accurate by the vast majority.

The article is not saying these theories should be suppressed, but that they are presented as more relevant to current scientific consensus than they actually are. There's a huge difference.

[imtringued]

Climate science is pretty old (50s). Sure, back in the day they got the details wrong but it was pretty much set in stone that things aren't going to get better by doing nothing. I don't remember the exact time frame but 20-30 years ago pretty much every politician was openly in favor of climate friendly policies.

Although there was no consensus on what exactly needed to be done to slow down climate change, nobody was questioning whether it was happening at all. Empty promises were still better than the active sabotage we see today. I don't know what changed but it feels like being against climate change policies is a very recent phenomenon and not something that had been the default stance for decades.

My only guess is that climate change denial is happening in response to something. Democrats [0] have basically no problem with the topic. Does it boil down to plain old populism?

[0] http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019...

[specialist]

"Truth is out of style" -- MC 900 ft Jesus

The comparative value of "beliefs" is derived from the quality of the predictions based on those "beliefs".

I've observed that other people's "beliefs" are based on identity, culture, "truth", whatever.

I'm provisionally calling my new worldview as "post-Popperian". Until the smart people, philosophers & epistemologists, share the proper phrase with plebes like me.

--

Tying this back to the OP...

The "beliefs" of the climate change skeptics have negative value, because their predictions have been consistently wrong.

About everything.

"Negative value" meaning harmful, potentially maliciously, akin to Murray Gell-mann's pejorative "worse than wrong".

[acqq]

> Science is not advanced by eliminating everything that disagrees with the establishment.

That however has nothing to do with the news coverage. That coverage does a poor job or is even harmful to all the citizens if it falls prey to the manipulations of the political parties and corporations which are making simply wrong claims, using the paid actors.

And that's what is happening behind the "climate change denial."

The most current example of such manipulations, in something much more short-term than climate change, this is just not science:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/dark-money-pac-s-c...

And these surely aren't Galileos:

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/87797

"No Evidence That Doctor Group in Viral Video Got Near COVID 'Front Lines'"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/07/28/stella-...

"Immanuel has asserted that many gynecological issues are the result of having sex with witches and demons (“succubi” and “incubi”) in dreams, a myth that dates back at least to the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” a Sumerian poem written more than 4,000 years ago. She falsely claims that issues such as endometriosis, infertility, miscarriages and STIs are “evil deposits from the spirit husband.”"

Likewise, the claims from the "climate change deniers" could be checked by the other scientists, and if they are rejected, it's not because of some conspiracy, but because there is typically no science there. It's just a bit more subtle to be shown to the "common people" than "sex with demons."

The science behind the climate change was developed through the last 150 years. Those that denied until quite recently denied what was already proven 150 years ago, then much later started to deny what was proven 100 years ago etc. That's not science. But boy were they supported politically, by the sponsors and by the news giving them "equal time."

Also:

https://commoninfirmities.com/2015/03/26/the-patron-saint-of...

"Galileo was not dismissed by the scientific experts of his day. His theories and discoveries were controversial, but he was generally acclaimed by scientific authorities. He was punished for contradicting the Church’s entrenched philosophical commitments."

His actual sentence: "suspected of" "having believed" "heresy" "that the sun is the center of the world" "contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures":

http://hti.osu.edu/sites/default/files/documents_in_the_case...

"We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo . . . have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world; also, that an opinion can be held and supported as probable, after it has been declared and finally decreed contrary to the Holy Scripture".

By the way Galileo was really the "first" in hist "front line": he constructed his own telescopes and was the first to see the moons orbiting around Jupiter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons

[valvar]

>That coverage does a poor job or is even harmful to all the citizens if it falls prey to the manipulations of the political parties and corporations which are making simply wrong claims, using the paid actors.

This is a statement that concerns that nature of contemporary journalism, and could equally be applied to the findings of the mainstream. You have found several dubious pieces which spread misconceptions -- whether those misconceptions come from a mainstream or skeptic perspective is beside the point. There are plenty of misconceptions in favour of the mainstream which are being spread -- and it's certainly not in the mainstream's interests. The point of the OP article is that a relatively larger number of skeptic views are spread, but that is to be expected when the figures are so imbalanced and has already been discussed elsewhere in this comments section.

>And that's what is happening behind the "climate change denial."

I'll be fair -- seeing as you are using quotes around "climate change denial", I will assume that it's not a term that you yourself favour. But is the term not very reminiscent of the word "heresy"? In what fine points do the terms differ?

>And these surely aren't Galileos:

>Viral video [....] sex with witches and demons [...] etc

I mean, OK, if your crusade is against these sorts of things, I can only wish you luck. I wouldn't pick that particular hill, though.

>The science behind the climate change was developed through the last 150 years. Those that denied until quite recently denied what was already proven 150 years ago, then much later started to deny what was proven 100 years ago etc.

I'm sure you are right, but I really fail to see how this is relevant or detracts from my earlier points.

>"Galileo was not dismissed by the scientific experts of his day. His theories and discoveries were controversial, but he was generally acclaimed by scientific authorities. He was punished for contradicting the Church’s entrenched philosophical commitments."

This is simply wrong. This is the main reason I'm responding at all -- I'm not interested in a long back-and-forth exchange, but I felt that this had to be addressed, and that I might just as well address the other points at the same time. The linked blog article contains no sources, and for good reason. He had adherents, of course, but so do many contemporary fringe scientists -- even climate change skeptics. Still, calling their views ``controversial'' is a gross understatement.

Here, for example is what Descartes has to say regarding Galileo:

“without having considered the first causes of nature, [Galileo] has merely looked for the explanations of a few particular effects, and he has thereby built without foundations” [1]

For a thorough review of the views of the Aristotelian establishment of the time, and the many flaws in Galileo's reasoning I recommend [2]. It may also be one of the most interesting (if not important) books that you'll ever read, and my poor argumentation here cannot do it justice.

>By the way Galileo was really the "first" in hist "front line": he constructed his own telescopes and was the first to see the moons orbiting around Jupiter

This is quite true. But one should also remember that in order to be first in his front line, he had to use equipment which very few of his contemporaries had access to -- which is why they were not initially able to confirm his findings, and many rejected them outright [3]. I do not think that "first in his front line" is how the majority of his contemporaries would have described him. And that, really, is the point.

[1] - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-physics/

[2] - Feyerabend, Paul. Against method. Verso, 1993.

[3] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00774t5 -- I think. I recall hearing this on an epsiode of In Our Time, and I think it was this one.

[ojbyrne]

Isn’t this just the nature of news? Common events are not news, uncommon ones are. So news is always going to give more coverage to the less common theory.

[Aunche]

10% of anti-climate action messaging isn't causing ~30% of people being opposed to taking measures against climate change. It's the other way around.

[reaperducer]

news organizations often mislead readers by giving equal weight to two sides of an argument, even when one side isn’t as widely believed or lacks scientific evidence.

News organizations used to filter out the cranks. Some still do, but more have buckled to the pressure to shove out metric assloads of low-quality content in order to satiate people who only get their news by scrolling. (It's called "feeding the beast.")

And those that still do filter out the low-quality garbage are attacked on social media for being left-wing or right-wing, or whatever wing the social media megaphones decide is bad at that particular nanosecond.

[VBprogrammer]

When heads of state of Western nations are pushing the crank theories it's hard to blame the media for not filtering them.

[taneq]

> there are significantly more pro-climate change press releases, than anti

This was my immediate thought. There have got to be at least twice as many "climate-change-is-happening"[1] articles as "climate-change-isn't-happening" articles, given the current indications that climate change has, in fact, happened and continues to do so.

[1] I can't bring myself to call it 'pro climate change' or 'anti climate change' because it's about whether it's happening, not whether I think it should.

[csallen]

How would that explain things? If there were significantly more pro-climate action press releases than anti-, you'd expect to see similar a proportion of coverage, not the opposite. A better explanation is that the news likes to focus on rare, novel, and/or controversial statements.

It's also worth noting that the article doesn't seem to differentiate between positive and negative coverage. So anti-climate action press releases might be receiving significantly more negative coverage.

[cptnapalm]

The old explanation that "dog bites man" is not news, but "man bites dog" is. I do wonder what the effect is when the news on a topic is all "man bites dog". Does an appreciable percentage of readers begin thinking that "man bites dog" is so incredibly common now that something must be done and that "dog bites man" is just a myth?

[imtringued]

When you "consume" a new piece of information you have are three options: verify it yourself, believe without proof or dismiss it without proof.

The problem is that some claims are hard to verify so you immediately have to believe or dismiss the claim without proof. However, when you receive new information it is possible to change your stance on unproven claims. Over time you develop a network of claims that strengthen each other. This makes you less susceptible to obviously wrong information because you can easily cross check it based on several existing claims. The downside is that when you see a new obviously correct claim it could potentially require you to throw out a large portion of your existing beliefs. It's less risky to just deny the claim even if it had substance.

[TheOperator]

I wouldn't call it dishonest but it is important context. "Study says same thing as consensus" doesn't garner clicks. I think the broader issue is how much the news is tilted towards focusing on contrarian viewpoints.

[jellicle]

If there are 100 press releases that say "earth is round" and 10 press releases that say "earth is flat", how many of each should be publicized by your local newspaper?

[boomlinde]

I don't think it's dishonest. I expect editorial responsibility, and lack thereof discredits the publication.

[bzb3]

This entire debate is about dishonesty. It is like supporters of football teams at this point.