John Cook – Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

Coronavirus conspiracy theories are dangerous – here’s how to stop them spreading

Posted on May 12, 2020March 31, 2023 by janet.crompton

Conspiracy theories increase the likelihood that people won’t follow expert advice. Shutterstock

The number of coronavirus infections and deaths continues to rise at an alarming rate, reminding us that this crisis is far from over. In response, the global scientific community has thrown itself at the problem and research is unfolding at an unprecedented rate.

The new virus was identified, along with its natural origins, and tests for it were rapidly developed. Labs across the world are racing to develop a vaccine, which is estimated to be still around 12 to 18 months away.

At the same time, the pandemic has been accompanied by an infodemic of nonsense, disinformation, half-truths and conspiracy theories that have spread virally through social networks. This damages society in a variety of ways. For example, the myth that COVID-19 is less dangerous than the seasonal flu was deployed by US president Donald Trump as justification for delaying mitigation policies.

The recent downgrading of COVID-19 death projections, which reveal the success of social-distancing policies, has been falsely used to justify premature relaxing of social distancing measures. This is the logical equivalent of throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because it’s kept you dry until then.

The new conspiracy theory that blames COVID-19 on the 5G broadband system is one of the most bizarre pieces of misinformation. There are several strains of this theory, ranging from the claims that 5G alters people’s immune systems to the idea that 5G changes people’s DNA, making them more susceptible to infection. Then there’s the idea that secret messages about 5G and coronavirus were hidden in the design of the new £20 note in the UK. In reality, 5G relates to viruses and bank notes as much as the tooth fairy relates to zoology – not at all.

The 5G conspiracy theory originated in early March when an American physician, Thomas Cowan, proposed it in a YouTube video (which has since been taken down by YouTube according to their new policy). Some people have taken this conspiracy theory so seriously that it led to people setting 5G towers in the UK on fire and threatening broadband engineers.

The conspiracy theory has begun to penetrate mainstream society. Among other celebrities, UK TV personality Eamonn Holmes and US actor Woody Harrelson have given fuel to the idea.

Inoculating against conspiracy theories

As we document in our recent Conspiracy Theory Handbook, there is a great deal of scientific research into why people might be susceptible to conspiracy theories. When people suffer loss of control or feel threatened, it makes them more vulnerable to believing conspiracies. Unfortunately, this means that pandemics have always been breeding grounds for conspiracy theories, from antisemitic hysteria during the Black Death to today’s 5G craze.

An effective strategy for preventing conspiracy theories from spreading through social networks is, appropriately enough, inoculation. As we document in the Conspiracy Theory Handbook, if we inoculate the public by pre-emptively warning them of misleading misinformation, they develop resilience and are less likely to be negatively influenced. Inoculating messages can take several forms. As well as giving people the right facts, inoculation can also be logic-based and source-based.

Questioning the sources

The source-based approach focuses on analysing the people who push the conspiracy theory and the cultural infrastructure from which they emerged.

For example, the 5G theory began with Thomas Cowan, a physician whose medical licence is on a five-year probation. He is currently prohibited from providing cancer treatment to patients and supervising physician assistants and advanced practice nurses. So we can question his credentials.

His 5G video was from a talk he presented at a pseudo-scientific conference featuring a who’s who of science deniers. One of the headliners was Andrew Wakefield, a debarred former physician and seminal figure in the anti-vaccination movement who promotes highly damaging misinformation about vaccination based on data that he is known to have falsified.

Another attendee of this meeting was the president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, an organisation famous for bestowing awards onto fossil-fuel funded climate deniers and for giving a platform to a speaker who denied the link between HIV and AIDS, claiming that the link was invented by government scientists who wanted to cover up other health risks of “the lifestyle of homosexual men.”

For the public to be protected against the 5G conspiracy theory, it is important to understand its emergence from the same infrastructure that also supports AIDS denial, anti-vaccination conspiracies and climate denial.

It is therefore unsurprising that the rhetorical techniques that are deployed against the seriousness of climate change are similar to those used to mismanage the COVID-19 crisis.

Yale Climate Connections, Author provided

Questioning the logic

Another way to neutralise conspiracy theories is through logic-based inoculation. This involves explaining the rhetorical techniques and tell-tale traits to be found in misinformation, so that people can flag it before it has a chance to mislead them. In the Conspiracy Theory Handbook, we document seven traits of conspiratorial thinking. Spotting these can help people identify a baseless theory.

Conspiracy Theory Handbook, Author provided

One trait that is particularly salient in the 5G conspiracy theory is re-interpreting randomness. With this thought pattern, random events are re-interpreted as being causally connected and woven into a broader, interconnected pattern.

For example, the introduction of 5G in 2019 coincided with the origin of COVID-19 and hence is interpreted to be causally related. But by that logic, other factors that were introduced in 2019 – say, the global phenomenon of Baby Yoda – could also be interpreted as a possible cause of COVID-19.

Correlation does not equal causation. The 5G conspiracy theory is also immune to evidence, despite having been debunked extensively. To illustrate, some of the countries worst affected by the pandemic (such as Iran) do not have any 5G technology.

Of course, 5G has nothing to do with a virus. In the US, T-Mobile’s low-band 5G data is transmitted using old UHF TV channels. UHF TV did not cause coronavirus and neither does 5G.

John Cook, Author provided

The crucial role of social media platforms

Social media platforms contribute to the problem of misinformation by providing the means for it to quickly and freely disseminate to the general public. Given that 330,000 lives were lost in relation to AIDS in South Africa during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki, when denying the disease’s link to HIV was official state policy. Given that people in the UK are now vandalizing potentially life-saving communication infrastructure, social media companies should not aid and abet the life-threatening disinformation that is spewed by a nexus of science deniers and conspiracy theorists.

To their credit, these firms are making an effort to be part of the solution to the problem of misinformation. For example, YouTube has announced that it will take down any video that espouses the 5G conspiracy theory. This is a move in the right direction.

There is considerable room for improvement, however. A recent test by the non-profit Disinfo.eu laboratory found much conspiratorial content on various social media platforms, and we were able to find hundreds of YouTube videos promulgating the 5G nonsense with a few keystrokes.

Much remains to be done.

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This blog was written by Cabot Institute member Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair of Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol and John Cook, Research Assistant Professor, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky

Dr John Cook

John Cook in Bristol: The consensus gap

Posted on October 2, 2014April 14, 2023 by janet.crompton

As a biologist, the fact that anthropogenic climate change is occurring has been explained to me throughout my education. We are interested in how crops might respond to global warming or what might happen to bees or coral reefs, not the basic question of whether or not it is happening at all. So that is why I was keen to attend John Cook’s talk at the Cabot Institute and learn a bit more about climate science and how it is perceived both within and outside the climate change science community

John Cook is the Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, Australia. He runs the popular Skeptical Science blog, with the aim of explaining the scientific consensus on global warming. As he pointed out, his website has received a lot of criticism from people who do not agree that climate change is significantly driven by human effects.

The climate consensus

97% of climate scientists agree that humans are responsible
for climate change. Image credit: Skeptical Science

Several studies, including John’s own (Cook et al., 2013), have shown that 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are significantly contributing to global warming. Doran and Zimmermann (2009) asked earth and climate scientists whether they thought that humans are significantly impacting global climate change and found that 97.4% agreed we are, while Anderegg and colleagues (2010) found that 97-98% of climate scientists agreed with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finding that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for most of the Earth’s global warming.

Public perception of consensus

John described how the public does not seem to realise the extent of scientific agreement. When asked to estimate “how many climate experts agree that the global warming we are witnessing is a direct consequence of the burning of fossil fuels by humans”, the average response was 55%, a marked underestimate of the 97% consensus.

John
is working to improve public understanding of
the scientific consensus around global
climate change.
Image credit: Skeptical Science

John showed a video from comedian John Oliver, who insisted that the only reason there was still an ongoing debate about climate change is because it is always portrayed with an “inherently misleading” 50:50 divide in representation. He goes on to hold a “mathematically fair” debate with three sceptics and 97 climate scientists, which ends with the immortal line, “I can’t hear you over the weight of scientific evidence”.

John Cook tried to bridge the consensus gap with a more balanced approach in his latest project, entitled “97 hours of consensus”. A total of 97 experts were asked to address the topic of humans causing global warming. Cabot’s own director, Professor Rich Pancost, was one of the scientists included.

Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost was a featured
climate expert in the 97 Hours
of Consensus project.
Image credit: Skeptical Science

John said that there is a lot of misinformation out there, causing confusion for the public who put their trust in scientific experts. He highlighted one particular website, the Global Warming Petition Project, which as of today [10 February 2014] had been signed by 31,487 American scientists urging their government to reject any limits on greenhouse gas emissions. As John pointed out, only 39 of these people are actually climatologists, therefore 99.9% of them are simply people with science degrees. As I mentioned earlier, I’m a biologist, but that doesn’t give me the expertise needed to decide whether anthropogenic climate change is occurring or what the causes are. I leave that to the experts. Instead, I focus my intellectual energy on ecosystems and how global warming (and other factors) will affect them.

Dr. Tamsin Edwards is a climate scientist who actively engages with people who differ in their opinions on what the science shows. In her blog, she states, “We can’t avoid scientific uncertainty, because we can’t perfectly measure or understand the universe. So we need to be very clear about what we know, what we don’t know, and the surprises we might face”. It can be tempting to avoid discussing difficult topics, but Tamsin inspires me (and hopefully her fellow climate scientists) to explain the science behind the conclusions and hopefully enable the public to make informed decisions too.

Do we need to close the consensus gap?

John said that he fears that if people don’t realise there is 97% scientific consensus about anthropogenic climate change, they won’t accept that it is happening and/or care enough to do anything about it. In the video abstract for his 2013 paper, John states that, “This misperception has real world consequences. When people correctly understand that the scientists agree, they are more likely to support policy that mitigates climate change”.

In the UK, several polls over the past five years have looked at what people consider the main cause of global climate change. Where two options (humans versus natural causes) were given, 43-71% of respondents chose humans as the main driver of global warming. These results were diluted when a third option (both human and natural causes) was given, however it is encouraging to note that only around 10-15% blamed natural processes alone.

Carbon
Brief compared UK participants’ opinions on what
causes climate change. Image
credit: Carbon Brief

The weekend following John’s talk was a perfect example of a possible change in public opinion of climate change globally. Hundreds of thousands of people marched in cities across the world in the People’s Climate March, including a couple thousand locally in Bristol. This was the largest climate march in history. The biggest turnout was in New York, where over 300,000 people called for action from the UN climate summit, which convened in the city on Tuesday 23 September 2014. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon marched with the crowd, an unusual move highlighting the importance of the event. He said, “Action on climate change is urgent. The more we delay, the more we will pay in lives and in money”.

I think Joel Pett’s cartoon sums up my thoughts pretty well on the subject of climate change…

Joel Pett, USA Today and Kentucky.com

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This blog is written by Sarah Jose, Cabot Institute, Biological Sciences, University of Bristol

Sarah Jose

Responding and adapting to climate change: Recognizing and managing uncertainty in the physical, social, and public spheres

Posted on August 12, 2014April 14, 2023 by janet.crompton

A meeting of international experts at the University of Bristol addresses one of the crucial issues facing humanity.

“Uncertainty, uncertainty, uncertainty … so why should we bother to act?”

Who hasn’t heard politicians or media personalities appeal to uncertainty to argue against climate mitigation? And indeed, why should we interfere with the global economy when there is uncertainty about the severity of climate change?

Some 20 leading experts from around the world will be meeting in Bristol late in September to discuss the implications of scientific uncertainty on the proper response to climate change.

This is particularly crucial because in contrast to the widespread public perception that uncertainty is an invitation to delay action on climate change, recent work suggests that scientific uncertainty actually provides an impetus to engage in mitigative action. Specifically, the greater the scientific uncertainty, the greater are the risks from climate change.

This conflict between people’s common perceptions of uncertainty and its actual implications is not altogether uncommon, and there are many situations in which people’s risk perception deviates from best scientific understanding.

The Bristol meeting brings together scientists and practitioners with the goal of (a) developing more effective means to communicate uncertainty and (b) to explore how decision making under uncertainty can be better informed by scientific constraints.

To address the scientific, cultural, health, and social issues arising from climate change requires an in-depth and cross-disciplinary analysis of the role of uncertainty in all of the three principal systems involved: The physical climate system, people’s cognitive system and how that construes and potentially distorts the effects of uncertainty, and the social systems underlying the political and public debates surrounding climate change.

The results of the meeting will become publicly available through scientific publication channels, with the details to be announced closer to the time of the meeting. In addition, two attendees at the meeting will be presenting public lectures at the University of Bristol:

Friday 19 September, 6:00-7:30 pm. Dogma vs. consensus: Letting the evidence speak on climate change.

In this Cabot Institute public lecture, we are pleased to present John Cook, Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, and owner of the Skeptical Science blog, in what promises to be a fascinating talk.

In 2013, John Cook led the Consensus Project, a crowd-sourced effort to complete the most comprehensive analysis of climate research ever conducted. They found that among relevant scientific articles that expressed a position on climate change, 97% endorsed the consensus that humans were causing global warming. When this research was published, it was tweeted by President Obama and received media coverage all over the world, with the paper being awarded the “best article” prize by the journal Environmental Research Letters in 2013. However, the paper has also been the subject of intense criticism by people who reject the scientific consensus. Hundreds of blog posts have criticised the results and newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe have published negative op-eds. Organisations who deny or reject current science on human-caused climate change, such as the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the UK and the Heartland Institute in the US, have published critical reports, and the Republican Party organised congressional testimony against the consensus research on Capitol Hill. This sustained campaign is merely the latest episode in over 20 years of attacks on the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. John Cook will discuss his research, both on the 97% consensus and on the cognitive psychology of consensus. He will also look at the broader issue of scientific consensus and why it generates such intense opposition.

Tuesday 23 September 2014, 6 pm to 7.30 pm. The Hockey Stick and the climate wars—the battle continues…

In this Cabot Institute lecture, in association with the Bristol Festival of Ideas, Professor Michael E Mann will discuss the science, politics, and ethical dimensions of global warming in the context of his own ongoing experiences as a figure in the centre of the debate over human-caused climate change.

Dr. Michael E Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University, with joint appointments in the Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. He is author of more than 160 peer-reviewed and edited publications, and has published books include Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming in 2008 and The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines in 2012. He is also a co-founder and avid contributor to the award-winning science website RealClimate.org.

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This blog is by Cabot Institute member, Prof Stephan Lewandowsky of the School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol. You can also view this blog on the Shaping Tomorrow’s World blog.

Prof Stephan Lewandowsky