Climategate: passing judgment on peer review

This is a reprint of a piece I wrote for the Times Higher Education magazine last month, which was the cover story for 22nd July.

With the benefit of hindsight, the firestorm of controversy created by "Climategate" - the illegal release of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the end of 2009 - had been brewing for a very long time. In the highly politicised world of climate science, the accusative chorus of sceptical voices and the increasingly exasperated statements of defence from beleaguered climate scientists had become a deafening cacophony.

Initial media reports talked excitedly of the emails as a "smoking gun" showing climate change to be an elaborate hoax, but these were quickly exposed as completely unfounded. A House of Commons inquiry in March found no evidence of systematic deception by CRU researchers. A science panel led by Lord Oxburgh found no evidence of scientific malpractice. And finally on 7 July, after many months of gathering information, the independent inquiry led by Sir Muir Russell reported its long-awaited findings.
The inquiry examined the conduct of the scientists at the CRU and concluded that their rigour and honesty were not in doubt. Concerns were raised over the openness of CRU researchers (and university officials), and reforms of practices and procedures were identified. No evidence of subversion of the peer review or editorial process was unearthed, but the report did include a lengthy reflection on Climategate's implications for peer review by Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet. Horton argued that much of the confusion about what took place at the CRU stemmed from a misunderstanding of what the peer review process can - and cannot - do.

Drawing on Horton's analysis, the Russell report concluded: "Many who are far from the reality of the peer review process would like to believe that peer review is a firewall between truth on the one hand and error or dishonesty on the other. It is not. It is a means of sieving out evident error, currently unacceptable practices, repetition of previously published work without acknowledgement, and trivial contributions that add little to knowledge."

Reacting to the unedifying sight of science's sock drawer emptied on to the floor, however, many commentators have sought to pass judgement on peer review. The processes and practices of science are now in the dock, and non-scientists observing the private correspondence of the peers behind the peer review have found it difficult to escape the conclusion that science is not what it seems.
But for Harry Collins, distinguished research professor of sociology at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, who has for decades studied scientific practices, Climategate told him nothing he did not know already.

"The message that a lot of people seem to have taken from Climategate is far more damaging than it ought to be, because the normal to and fro of scientific practice looks like that. Most of what happened in Climategate was business as usual. People have a misconception of what science is because they are exposed to hero worship about science - stories about Newton, stories about Einstein - it's a sort of fairy tale. But it's disadvantageous to scientists to have science presented in this way, because politicians and journalists ask them for exact answers. Even if science is exact, it's exact only in the long term."

According to Collins, the romantic idealisation of science as a neat and tidy linear path towards greater knowledge is a myth. Science is often messy, sometimes sloppy, and always more complicated than it seems. Tensions can easily arise. Policymakers schooled in the canonical view of science (and battling an electoral cycle that privileges rapid responses over considered contemplation) face enormous pressures to transform the uncertainties of science into political soundbites. Confronted with a politically filtered version of science - clear, certain and precise - it is no surprise that people sense a scandal when things do not turn out to be quite as they expected.

Scientific objectivity goes no further than the circles of expertise that comprise fields of scientific endeavour. Of course, there are any number of "facts" to be objectively recorded in the natural world through experiment or observation. In climate science, the facts unambiguously point to the influence of human activity on the climate. But as the science and environmental journalist David Adam has suggested, the process by which scientists judge each other's work as fit for publication has always been where objective science dashes on the rocks of subjective human opinion. Short of automating the peer review process, the human fallibility of peer reviewers is simply unavoidable.

Arguments such as these are potent fuel for the fire of sceptical claims that climate science has become a self-regarding consensus machine, fine-tuned to keep out the outliers and reinforce the status quo. Three inquiries into Climategate have found no evidence that this is the case. But sceptics have been eager to use the emails as a vehicle for attacking climate science and climate scientists' behaviour nonetheless.
Some have even sought to broaden their criticism to science in general. A.W. Montford, author of The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science, has grandly suggested that peer review achieves very little for society and is "not up to the job". The response of some high-profile environmental commentators has also been surprisingly visceral. Pre-empting all the inquiries, the campaigner and writer George Monbiot called for Phil Jones, who was then head of the CRU, to resign (a call he much later retracted).

The science journalist Fred Pearce - despite doing an enormous amount of work in challenging the initial media response to Climategate - has repeatedly criticised CRU researchers. "I think the emails raise questions about conflicts of interest apparently tolerated in science that would surely not be tolerated in most other professions," he said. In one email, Phil Jones expresses a desire to "keep out" two papers critical of his work from the Fourth Assessment Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The papers were not, in fact, excluded. But according to Pearce, "Phil Jones seemed to relish the chance to 'go to town' against those questioning his work."

In fact, it is common practice for journal editors to send papers challenging a body of work to the author responsible for that work - as experts in increasingly atomised fields, they are often in the best position to review it. The process hinges on honesty: faulty methodology is a reason to reject a paper; a personal dislike of another scientist, however, is clearly out of bounds. The appropriate criteria for making peer review judgements about another's work could - in some circumstances - include inferences about the author. "If some group of activists invent a journal, peer review it themselves, and have no intention of doing the job honestly, then of course this is relevant," states Collins, "but you'd have to set out the reasons - not just make up your mind."

Robert Evans - a colleague of Collins' at Cardiff and an expert in the sociology of knowledge and expertise - points out that these criteria are not fixed and may vary from discipline to discipline. "It depends what kind of publishing culture there is - in some fields, journals publish what are really quite daft ideas, because they feel that people have the right to take these ideas down in public; whereas in other fields, a lot of that work is done in private, in the selection process."

Of course, it is precisely these private selection processes that have come under scrutiny. There's no doubt that science up close bears little resemblance to the brave and noble empiricism of Newton and Einstein. But to claim - as Pearce and others have repeatedly - that the CRU email exchanges revealed some previously unacknowledged fault with the scientific method is hyperbole. "It might have been a good thing," suggests Evans. "Maybe all people found out was what science was actually like. It only seems as if scientists were behaving badly if you had a very idealised view of what scientists were like in the first place."

It's a strange kind of defence - innocence by appeal to mass guilt - but if Collins and Evans' analysis of what science is "really" like is accurate, then it is important to consider the implications. An uncomfortable light has been shone into the inner chambers of science's castle, and outside observers have not been impressed by what has been revealed. So is there an argument for radical reform of the institutional culture of science?
There is a movement in science towards publicly accessible data, and the archiving of databases is now common practice in many subjects. The digitisation of data and the ubiquity of the internet have ushered in a new level of expectation around public access to information - not only in science, but in global society more generally. Reflecting this, the aftermath of Climategate has seen repeated calls for climate scientists' raw data to be made available to the general public.

"I think people should be open about their data and about their methods wherever possible," says Ben Goldacre, the doctor, columnist and author of Bad Science. "If someone is making a public claim about a conclusion they have drawn from a piece of scientific research, they should be ready to be meticulous about showing their work. If someone doesn't, I find it hard to take them seriously."
The move towards open access is not only reasonable but inevitable. But for highly politicised areas of science such as climate change, there may be hidden dangers. "I'm not sure it would solve things in the way people would like," says Evans, "because the data themselves would still need to be analysed in the context of the scientific theories that give them meaning."

Collins is even more direct: "That would be a complete disaster. Analysing data and making sense of it is a very subtle business. Analysing data and getting something out of it is very easy - you can get out of it more or less what you want. There are an infinite number of ways to analyse data, and it would take an infinite amount of time to track down all the things that had gone wrong. If you allow that to happen, then you are saying goodbye to your science."

As with much of the Climategate debate, there is more at stake than climate change data. Although the perceived integrity of climate science seems to need a shot in the arm, it cannot come at the cost of a functioning scientific community. "Scientists would spend their whole lives trying to pick apart what other people had done, and the science would just grind to a halt," Collins suggests.
Throwing open complex climate science databases without due caution could amount to sacrificing climate change data on the altar of public opinion. Faced with dozens of well-publicised and smartly presented pseudo-analyses of climate change data, who other than the climate scientists themselves would be capable of sorting the wheat from the chaff?

Perhaps the answer is "citizen scientists". The notion that science should seek actively to engage with non-scientists is increasingly popular. At its best, public engagement with science can help shape the values that guide scientific enquiry, construct scientific knowledge and contribute to decisions about science funding. By determining the social and ethical implications of science, engaging with citizens can enhance the role of science in society. The movement towards more public engagement is a hugely positive development.
But are the legions of bloggers and auditors - often, but not always, ideologically motivated to find fault (real or imagined) with climate science data - really fulfilling the role of citizen scientists? Alice Bell, a lecturer in science communication at Imperial College London, has argued that successful citizen-science projects work because they offer collaborative relationships between scientists and the public - not an adversarial auditing of data on the assumption that scientists are dishonest. The bottom line is that open access can never be a panacea for a crisis of institutional trust.

Open access is based on the premise that there are those outside the inner circle of peer reviewers who are competent enough to provide a second opinion on the science. This is indisputably true. But while talk of throwing open the lab doors might be rhetorically satisfying, it would provide only an illusion of democracy. Certainly there are non-academics competent enough with statistics to find errors in a piece of published science. Correcting errors in science would be a valuable service for an auditor to offer. But if several auditors reached conflicting conclusions, then somehow a judgement would have to be made about their respective competence. And who should make that judgement? Presumably a group of suitably qualified, honest individuals with a proven track record in a relevant discipline - in other words, peer review.
Any argument for reform must contain more than just a critique of the existing system - it must also hold out the possibility of something better. Would broadening the group of people who are assigned the task of fact verification resolve the problems of peer review? Sadly, there is very little in the way of guidance for answering this question, as very few systematic studies have been conducted into the merits of peer review. Although its flaws are well documented (and have been for many years), critiques typically focus on the fact that peer review is not perfect, but struggle to identify serious alternatives.

Harry Collins' suggestions for reform include removing the anonymity of reviewers and ring-fencing a proportion of journal space for papers that generate significant controversy among reviewers (as these papers hold an interest of their own). In the Russell report, Richard Horton suggests that "the best one might hope for the future of peer review is to be able to foster an environment of continuous critique of research papers before and after publication".

There is no question that science needs to be proactive in engaging the public. There may be some role for Freedom of Information legislation to play in bringing this about. But processes of dialogue and participatory engagement seem much more promising ways for scientists and the public to interact. Citizens' juries and deliberative workshops are two tried-and-tested methods for achieving this aim.
Perhaps if any good is to come of the Climategate controversy, it will be a renewed interest in smoothing the rough edges of peer review and a greater awareness of the necessary fallibility of the scientific publishing process. However, no one seems to have any suggestions for a serious alternative. For now, like Winston Churchill's famous description of democracy, peer review is the worst option - except for all the others that have been tried.

AC

Climate change: the merchants of doubt will soon run out of steam

First published on www.climatesafety.org

Last week saw the release of three university-led nationally representative surveys on public attitudes towards climate change – two in the US (1, 2) and one in the UK. In line with previous surveys from the last few years, the UK poll shows four consistent findings:

• A large majority of people think the climate is changing (78%)
• A large majority of people are concerned about this (71%)
• A large majority support the use of tax revenue to fund low-carbon policies such as investment in renewables (68%)
• A large majority of people say they are willing to reduce the amount of energy they use in order to tackle climate change (65%)

If this doesn’t sound like the findings you saw reported, or your impression of public attitudes towards climate change, then go and look up the results which are publicly available. The picture in the US is slightly different, but not drastically so, with large majorities agreeing that climate change is happening and expressing support for developing low-carbon energy infrastructure.

But what about belief in whether humans are causing climate change? Isn’t that the crucial measure of scepticism?

Intriguingly, given that the public are frequently portrayed as teetering on the brink of abandoning climate change altogether, one of the US polls recorded an increase in the number of people who believe that human activity is changing the climate (the other had no previous survey to compare with, but found that 75% acknowledged human influence on the climate).

True, the number of people who agree that climate change is largely the result of human activity is significantly lower (in the UK and the US) than it was three years ago. But given the four consistent findings outlined above, the big question has to be ‘so what’?

Consider the BBC poll conducted in February, routinely cited as the most damaging of the public opinion polls in the UK. The statistic that was widely reported and repeated was that only 26% of the public agreed that:

“Climate change is happening and is now established as largely man-made”

Seems pretty damning doesn’t it? But a further 38% agreed that:

“Climate change is happening, but not yet proven to be largely man-made”

Even in the BBC poll, at the height of everything-gate, a healthy majority accepted that the climate was changing. In the very same poll, only 11% reported being any less concerned about the risks of climate change. The BBC results are completely consistent with the fact that a majority of people are concerned about climate change – anthropogenic or not – and want something done about it.

That significant numbers of people feel confused about whether human influence is responsible for climate change is unsurprising – a great deal of effort has been expended in trying to confuse them. The parallels between the strategies of the tobacco industry in the 1960s and the tactics of ideologically driven climate sceptics today are now well documented. The tobacco companies knew that if they could create enough uncertainty around the link between smoking and lung cancer, then people would continue to consume their product. But as opinion poll after opinion poll comes in, it is starting to look like the link between belief in human-caused climate change and support for low carbon policies is nowhere near as direct.

There is no escaping the fact that there is a major disparity between the level of certainty expressed by climate scientists and by the general public about the basic facts of climate change. It seems counter-intuitive that people dispute anthropogenic climate change, but are willing to modify their behaviour to prevent it. It seems bizarre that 73% of the BBC poll respondents who had heard about ‘climategate’ and IPCC glaciers error claimed that their views about climate change had not been altered. But this is what the polls are telling us.
The merchants of doubt will soon run out of steam – for all the uncertainty they can generate about human impact on the climate, public support for mitigating climate change remains high.

AC

Pickles’ ‘big society’ recycling scheme is a nudge in the wrong direction

First published on www.climatesafety.org

On the Guardian’s Comment is Free, the Communities Minister Eric Pickles has made some bold claims about ‘human nature’ in introducing the coalition’s household recycling policy. Under the new policy, householders will be rewarded for recycling with points that can be cashed in at ‘local businesses’ such as Marks and Spencer and Cineworld. Bravely summarising decades of behavioural research in just two sentences, Pickles states that:

“There are some basic truths about human nature that the previous government found hard to grasp. If you want people to do something, then it’s always much more effective to give them support and encouragement – a nudge in the right direction – than to tell them what to do and then punish them if they don’t obey.”

He later goes on to claim:

“What’s really important about this scheme is that it treats people like adults. There’s no compulsion to participate, no penalties for opting out. It works because there’s a clear incentive to get involved. You put something in, you get something back. This is the Big Society in action.”

Unfortunately, the one basic truth about human nature that Pickles overlooks is the one that seems most essential for the Big Society: people respond to what others around them are doing, and don’t just behave in a rational, individually beneficial way. If they did, far less people would play the lottery.
Much more important than any individual-level cost/benefit analysis of whether to recycle is whether a particular behaviour is seen as socially acceptable. In several psychological studies, the power of social norms has been demonstrated for environmental behaviours like recycling and home energy management. In a famous example, American researchers showed that energy-hungry households reduced their energy consumption when they had access to information about the average usage in their area. They saw their high-energy use as socially undesirable, and fell into line.
Nobody wants to be seen as the gas guzzler in a neighbourhood full of waste-watchers, so reward or punishment schemes may be missing the point if they are aimed at individuals rather than tapping into the huge potential of social comparisons to generate behaviour change. People are more likely to compete to out-do each other than they are for a few pounds off their supermarket bill, and another recent psychological study showed how important people think it is to be ‘seen to be green’. Shoppers were willing to pay a premium for products with an environmental advantage – although only if they thought that other people were watching.
But there are also deeper reasons for not creating a direct link between recycling rates and financial rewards. Studies by Tim Kasser have shown that people who are highly materialistic are the least likely to act in a pro-environmental way. Paying people to recycle promotes the very value (material gain) that is likely to inhibit more ambitious changes in behaviour, or support for policies that may in fact cost people money in low-carbon taxes.
In short, Pickles’ Big Society recycling plan has no societal component, promotes the environmentally and socially antagonistic value of individual material gain as a reason for recycling, and amounts to paying people to put out their rubbish. Is that the best the Big Society can do?

AC

Is there a “new politics” ...? and what can it do for climate change?

The month of May for the UK has been dominated by the general election and arguments about the dawn of a so called “new politics.” Certainly the election results had a different look than the UK parliament has seen for a long time. A hung parliament, a new Green Party MP catch the eye as does the “new” and “historic” they tell us, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats coalition doing a policy debate, sync and regenerate exercise under the watchful gaze of the media.

And so it has gone on…this politics, that sure feels different (if you weren’t a voter in the 1970’s at least) but which hasn't proved itself yet - like a home appliance with a novel Dyson look that comes with an earnestly proffered 5 year guarantee. Post election developments fill the news agenda and the claims continue from No 10, Westminster and from some journos that we are in the grip of a New Politics of cooperation.

Do people like politicians working together? An interesting quirk of the election this time was "The Worm" the instant reaction graph that showed approval of undecided voters as the leader debates ran realtime and The Worm turned favourably for Clegg when he talked about "working together" - Obama in the US and Kevin Rudd in Australia similarly won the approval of The Worm with the same sentiments in leaders debates.  

The question being asked now in the UK is what kind of working together is it? Is it a New Politics of progressive consensus building that will empower government ministers, backbench MP's, public servants and citizens or is it the old style horse trading with a layer of double gloss - blue and yellow stripes – colours for a political marriage that will fade, crack and split beyond the flashbulb honeymoon. New arrangements yes but is it a new culture? Some watching on as Cameron and Clegg share a platform will give an instinctive answer this question, others will pick through the queens speech and sit on their judgment. 

However you look at this it is a sharply relevant question for action on climate change, because primarily of the policy that comes out of the coalition. It is yet also a basic conundrum of politics to which the climate change challenge more than any other needs forward progress. We need stronger consensus building, better working together to meet the challenge of climate change and straight up vested interest horse trading - the Old politics - won't do it, the lack of progress from Copenhagen showed that. 

Nick Clegg is in the public gaze the embodiment of this so called “new politics” (ahead of David Laws still yet as things stand!) and his fate will probably reveal whether May has seen begun a genuinely new phase of progressive politics. And there are 2 persons whose fortunes may reveal how positive or not this new political context will be for action on climate change.

Lib Dem Chris Huhne the new energy and climate change secretary was one of  David Cameron's first coalition ministers to venture into the news agenda. He told us "There are a whole series of compromises which have been struck in this agreement which I think are obviously unpleasant for each of the parties"

A refreshingly honest characterisation of cabinet and coalition politics you could say. He expressed these sentiments in the context of his explanation of the coalition policy on Nuclear power; New nuclear power stations will be built if they are funded by the private sector and Lib Dems can continue to hold to their election manifesto position of disagreeing with nuclear power generation. Huhne reconciles himself to this policy by speaking loud the belief that the private sector hasn't and probably won’t be able to build  nuclear without state support - refreshing or regressive change? Ed Miliband Labour ex energy and climate change minister came up with the memorable line Huhne in his job was like “putting a vegan in charge of MacDonald’s.”

Caroline Lucas is the First Green Party MP in the Uk parliament, cheered on by many sympathizers outside and in her constituency, how can she make a difference in Parliament? Will the coalitions new politics permeate the whole of Westminster’s benches or if she wants to be more than a pressure group with a Westminster head office should Lucas roll up her sleeves harder and faster for a old style fight. Lucas provides the answer that she will be going after change on her own terms

"I passionately hope it is possible to demonstrate that you don't have to get your hands filthy in terms of doing politics."

 Climate Change has been hungry for a taste of some new politics for a long time and if a progressive partnership ethos is to burst through the left right binary and horse trading Lucas as principled advocate and Huhne as government green light monitor will have to put a shift in, get noticed by us  and most importantly be allowed get things done - if they don’t it may tell us that the new politics is old and the latest dawn for big strides on climate change is false. 

TF

Why Fishermen believe in climate change (and everyone else believes in overfishing)

(Originally published by Adam Corner at www.climatesafety.org) 

 How much of what is recorded as scepticism about the scientific reality of climate change is in fact a desire for it not to be true – or at the very least, for it not to be as bad as the scientists and politicians say? This is a question that cannot easily be answered. When people are motivated not to believe something, they are also motivated not to acknowledge that their non-belief is anything other than rational. But two fishy tales shed some light on one type of climate change scepticism, and highlight an enormous challenge for climate change communicators: how do you persuade someone to believe something that they really don’t want to believe?

Fishy Tale 1

Last month in Doha, delegates at the Washington Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species voted against a ban on fishing bluefin tuna. The decision was widely condemned by environmental groups, and in The Guardian, George Monbiot described the refusal to acknowledge the critically endangered state of the bluefin tuna as:

“Olympic-class denial, a flat refusal to look reality in the face.”

Even the most casual follower of Guardian etiquette knows what happens next – when a writer uses the ‘d’ word, the comment threads fill up with red-faced, indignant micro-treatises on the inappropriateness and offensiveness of the term ‘denial’. But on this occasion, the comments were broadly supportive of Monbiot’s stance. Yes, agreed some of the very same posters who usually follow his pieces with streams of bile (hello CheshireRed), overfishing of the bluefin tuna was a serious problem and should be stopped.

Fishy Tale 2

‘Bottomfeeder’, by Taras Grescoe is a book about the overfishing and ultimate demise of many of the world’s fisheries. Combining barely-believable statistics about the collapse of once abundant oceanic ecosystems (some estimates put European fish populations at 5% of their first-recorded levels) and interviews with countless fishermen and traders in ports and harbours around the world, Grescoe builds up a bewildering picture of the world’s seas.

While the evidence is anecdotal rather than statistical, it is striking just how many of the fishermen (and it is primarily men) that Grescoe speaks to are adamant that climate change is warming their seas and driving away their catch. Their intuition that the seas are warming is supported by sea temperature data – but by far and away the biggest impact on the number of fish they are pulling out of the sea is intensive overfishing. Far fewer of Grescoe’s interviewees acknowledge this – blaming seals, foreigners, and global warming before conceding that perhaps their methods of fishing might be having an effect.

Why fishermen believe in climate change (and everyone else believes in overfishing)

So, notorious Guardian message board climate denier CheshireRed solemnly supports the protestors who seek to prevent overfishing of the bluefin tuna, and accepts that those who are responsible for the overfishing are in denial about the cause of the problem – but does not support measures to curb greenhouse gases which would (presumably) impact on his behaviour. Conversely, the fishermen responsible for overfishing happily accept climate change but doubt that their actions have any impact on the state of the world’s fisheries.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that CheshireRed (and his message board buddies) are not sea fishermen, with a vested interest in underplaying the impact of overfishing. However, like most of us in the developed world they have a personal stake in climate change being shown to be a scam – it would eliminate the need to change our high-consuming lifestyles. Some people – for economic or ideological reasons – have a more formal desire to reject the science of climate change.

Perhaps we need to start asking some more subtle questions about belief in climate change. Combating the increasing level of climate change scepticism is high on most campaigners’ priority lists. But without a sensible grasp of the reasons for scepticism, an awful lot of effort could be expended without any discernible effect. We urgently need a typology of scepticism.

 AC

April 2010 - Going green to be seen

First published in the Ethical living section of the Guardian Environment website

For most people, there is nothing quite as interesting as other people. We are incredibly well attuned to what others are doing and thinking – especially if they might be thinking about us. The choices we make speak volumes about our likes, our hates, our personalities and our social status. New research published yesterday suggests that our environmental choices are no different. Over and above the financial or environmental benefits of making low-carbon choices, we value the boost in social status this can provide – what's important is that we are seen to be going green.

Across three studies, Vladas Griskevicius and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota examined the conditions under which people selected the "green" option when provided with a choice between a regular and environmentally beneficial product. Some participants read a story about social status and "moving up in the world" before making their choice. Displaying a phenomenon known as "competitive altruism", these people opted to "self-sacrifice" and chose the environmentally friendly product, even though it was of inferior quality.

The authors of the study argued that what these participants lost in product functionality, they gained in social status. Voluntarily engaging in altruistic behaviour sends a powerful signal that you are caring and compassionate enough to take a hit for the team – and that you have the resources to act pro-socially. Previous research has shown that we take our cues for what is "normal" from those around us, and it seems that we're even prepared to "self-sacrifice" to boost our social standing. Combine these two findings and you have a powerful tool for promoting pro-environmental behaviour. As the long decarbonisation of the transport system begins, will people start competing over the efficiency rather than the acceleration of their cars?

Interestingly, participants in the study only displayed competitive altruism when they thought that others would be made aware of their choice – or when the green products were highly priced (signalling high status wealth). Coupled with the recent finding that individuals in an experiment who bought green goodies subsequently displayed more selfish behaviour, does this undermine the seemingly selfless nature of altruistic, pro-environmental behaviour?

The study certainly provides a window on the psychological basis of greenwash. When people make a consumer decision they buy into the idea of the product as much as the product itself. Unfortunately, the "idea" of sustainability can be a remarkably effective way of shifting patently unsustainable goods, and left to their own devices, people will compete to outdo each other on whatever criteria happen to be around. Flying to an eco-trek in Peru? I'll take two please.

Confronted with a problem like climate change, our consumption-based economy responds in the only way it knows how – by selling sustainability like it sells soap. But while a desire to be "seen to be green" clearly leaves us vulnerable to the dubious motives of commercial marketing campaigns (not to mention some ribbing down the pub), harnessing the primal urge for social status is critical for promoting pro-environmental behaviours that are more substance than spin. We may currently compete through demonstrations of conspicuous material consumption, but material goods are simply a marker for social status. It's the social status that's important – and the markers we use to signify it can easily change.

Griskevicius and his colleagues suggest that visible signs, tags and badges are an important aid for signalling to others that a particular behaviour is not just common, but desirable. Several studies in America have found that rates of recycling were boosted when householders were asked to make a public commitment to recycle, rather than just get on with it quietly.

But paying attention to the social aspects of how and why people take action to protect the environment goes far deeper than displaying a pro-recycling window sticker. Many environmental messages focus on what others should be doing, but time might be better spent setting a positive example and letting the social status that comes with altruistic behaviour do the hard work.

No one likes to be told what to do, but few of us can resist the temptation to get one over on the Joneses. And if what the Joneses are doing happens to be good for the environment, then being green to be seen might not be such a bad thing after all.

AC
Photo by Michael Meiklejohn

March 2010 - Translating Science

Earlier this year the Centre for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University published a guide to The Psychology of Climate Change Communication. My favourite bit is a table of 'words with different meanings to scientists and the general public'. Here are some of them (science term first, followed by non-science interpretation):

Uncertainty = Not knowing

Error = Wrong, Incorrect

Bias = Unfair and deliberate distortion

Positive Trend = A good trend

Positive Feedback = Constructive criticism

Theory = A hunch, opinion, speculation

Manipulation = Exploitation

Values = Ethics, money

Scheme = Conspiracy


While this is probably something of a caricature of how people interpret these words, there's an important message in here for climate change communication - don't assume that people interpret specialist terminology in the same way you do!