A couple of words in the most recent post jumped out at me, though.  In addition to “reconstructing the history” and “behavior” of the glacier–how it “changed in the past”–the scientist-author explained his interest in figuring out what the glacier was like when it “last maintained a robust, healthy profile.”  Healthy?

Healthy Iowa Glacier?

The glacier doesn’t care about how big it is–but we do.  ”Healthy” and its correlate “sick” are value-laden metaphors;  they direct us to think of the state of the ice as something like a human body, that needs maintaining or remedying.

Some work has suggested that such normative terms are pervasive even in scholarly publications, at least in natural resource fields (Scott et al., 2007).  Should such terms show up at all when scientists discuss their results?  Brendon Larson in his recent (and great) book Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability: Redefining Our Relationship with Nature argues that such metaphors are inevitable and useful–but ought to be chosen with care:

“Consider the metaphorical statement “The health of the Great Lakes has recently declined.” Some scientists would defend this statement with objective measures of health, such as pollution levels or the population sizes of aquatic indicator species. When we speak about ecosystem health, however, we necessarily draw on both factual and normative components because the choice of which measure or measures to use is value-laden. It depends on how we conceive of health. There has thus been continued debate about whether ecosystem health can even be considered a scientific concept. Those scientists who use it as such entangle the facts with the popular resonance of the word health. Most of us would interpret a statement about ecosystem health to be value-laden because we consider health to be a positive feature within our normal personal experience. A factual statement thereby easily becomes an evaluative ought, namely that we should seek to return the Great Lakes to a state of renewed health. A similar process applies to many terms in environmental science, most notably biodiversity, which assumes that diversity is a good thing. I do not wish to claim that such statements are straightforwardly problematic; instead, this type of terminology may exemplify the sort of resonant language that environmental scientists need to cultivate, though carefully.”

One difficulty is that normative terms like “health” tap into large and basic patterns of thinking.  That gives them their power; but it also can deflect critical thinking. To speak of a glacier in Bhutan as less than fully healthy, for example, assumes that the glaciers have indeed gotten smaller and that their shrinking is bad–specifically, bad for people who live downstream, since big glaciers play a key role in providing their water. In this case, the author has probably fulfilled his responsibility by presenting evidence in other posts for these assertions. But not all communicators are equally up front, or perhaps even aware of the normative spin “health” metaphor is giving their words.  Speaking from an Iowa perspective, I know that I don’t want all glaciers to be “healthy”!

May 30 – June 1, 2013; Ames, IA

Submission deadline: January 31, 2013

As science continues to become implicated in personal and collective decision-making, the stakes for communicating science to non-expert audiences intensify. In such an environment, a clear articulation of ethical issues arising from science communication is essential. Unfortunately, such an articulation does not yet exist. The purpose of this symposium is to bring together scholars from across disciplines whose research can contribute toward a theoretical articulation of the ethical issues surrounding the communication of science to non-expert audiences.

For this symposium, we invite work from relevant disciplines including communication, rhetoric, philosophy, science and technology studies, and the sciences themselves, on topics such as:

• The underlying goals of science communication
• Specific ethical issues within science communication, such as hype, spin, appropriate advocacy
• Ethical standards for the use of non-rational appeals such as narrative, framing, and metaphor
• Normative roles of scientists, citizens, science journalists, science bloggers and other stakeholders within the science communication process
• Ethical challenges in communicating subjects such as risk and uncertainty
• Normative issues in the design of public participation processes
• Empirical work on the perceptions of ethical issues from the perspectives of various stakeholders
• Approaches to teaching science communication ethics

This list is illustrative but not intended to be exhaustive. Work at all stages of development is invited–from early overviews to completed studies. We expect to be able to support travel costs for at least some participants. Contact Michael Dahlstrom, email below, for more information.

Proceedings of the workshop will be published in print-on-demand and electronic formats. In addition, this event will serve as the first of a two-part symposium series aimed at the creation of an edited volume introducing the best available work on issues in science communication ethics to our scholarly communities and helping to define the area for future study.

For consideration, submit to mfd@iastate.edu by January 31, 2013: (a) a 250-500 word abstract with an additional 5-10 item bibliography, and (b) a separate cover page with complete contact information, an indication of the status of the work (from early overview to completed study), and an indication of whether you are seeking funding.

Organizing committee: Michael Dahlstrom and Jean Goodwin (Iowa State University), and Susanna Priest (University of Washington)

Here’s one situation that’s come up a couple of times in our talks.  A scientist is making a presentation to a public (non-specialist) audience.  She’s asked a question relevant in a general way to her topic, but outside of her immediate research area.  She remembers reading something about it, but isn’t quite sure of the answer.  What should she say?

This problem is going to come up frequently in policy-relevant science.  The “grand challenges” citizens and policy-makers want scientists to talk about are Big:  Climate Change, Water, Renewable Fuels, Sustainability, Cybersecurity, Vaccination.  The sciences have grown Big in response:  inter/cross/transdisciplinary team/center/network endeavors.  But every individual scientist is still small.  In fact, the more successful the science is, the more focused her expertise is likely to be.

One way to bridge the gap between small and Big is to organize scientists into groups, like blue ribbon committees or the IPCC.  But individual scientists are still going to get calls from the press, give talks to local groups, and help out at their community’s high school.

When she addresses such a public audience, the scientist in some sense represents Science.  Her audience may not have other scientists on call, so if she fails to answer, they’re going to be left with whatever knowledge they had before.  There’s also a question of how admitting ignorance is going to affect the scientist’s own credibility.  What would it sound like to duck a question–especially if she has to duck virtually every question she’s asked?

On the other hand, it’s only candid for the scientist to admit the limits of her knowledge. Saying something that turns out to be wrong will do far more damage to her credibility than will admitting ignorance. And she’s not likely to be effective anyways, since one of the basic precepts of critical thinking is not to trust experts speaking outside the expertise.

“Experts”

The Red Green Show used to include a segment called “The Experts,” exploring the three little words men (and others) find it so hard to say:  ”I don’t know.”

Of course it should be easy to deny knowledge when asked about the taste of dino meat, as in this clip.  It’s harder for a specialist in clouds giving a talk about climate change to say the three little words when asked about Hurricane Sandy or the midwest drought, but she probably should. So here’s the question:  what should she say next?

One idea:  Should scientists promote results over process?

There was one interesting moment, though:  something that wasn’t said.

A reporter told the story of her attempt to interview Republican Congressional representatives on (1) the existence of, (2) the attribution of, and (3) policy options for, climate change. She was met by refusals to answer, including by escape attempts involving elevators.  This was interpreted as yet another sign of the domination of the Republican party by special interests.

I’d take it a bit differently.

Public talk by responsible political actors is accountable:  if the system is working well, people will get in trouble for saying something that turns out to be wrong.

The exchange of arguments in policy deliberations isn’t meant to persuade, as much as to change the terrain of what is sayable. For example, the long work of the civil rights movement did not eliminate racism, but it made openly racist arguments unsayable in mainstream political discourse. That makes it harder to defend racist policies, and in the long run can result in the eventual extinction of beliefs that cannot receive public acknowledgement.  Thus many of my students don’t believe that racism exists any longer, because they’ve never heard legitimized racist talk.

It’s not particularly surprising that Republic representatives, responsible to their base, aren’t going to respond with a vigorous “Yes! Yes! Yes!” when asked about climate change.  (See entry for Political Suicide, subcategory Bob Inglis.)  But notice that they didn’t take the easy alternative route of just saying “No.” Instead, they ran away.

So:  In the halls of Congress, representatives refuse to question the existence of climate change. Both presidential candidates acknowledge the existence of climate change.  In the blogosphere as a whole, my impression is that the more responsible voices are disputing only the C in CAGW–a big change over the last few years.  In sum, skepticism about the existence of climate change seems to be inching into the category of the unsayable.

This should open opportunities for collaboration on policies aimed at adaptation to climate change, since a whole range of arguments against adaptation now can’t be said. Not surprisingly, well-funded interests on the right will try to block the deliberations. But progress can equally be blocked if the forces of climate good refuse to move forward until their opponents grovel before them, repent their errors, and publicly confess the full climate catechism. We’d all be better off if we didn’t force each other to agree, but instead listened for what isn’t being said.

P.S. Good to be back to blogging!  Maybe this time I’ll keep it up.

Why not look back and consider how Climate, Etc. has managed to construct and maintain a fragile community?  What kinds of communication practices are making the site work?  At the beginning, Curry aimed for discussions in three different styles.  Did that work out?  There’s at least one rule that didn’t:  limiting comments to 250 words!

I think most people who like science and are interested in climate science would welcome more “skeptic” arguments that meet the above criteria. It is a relief, even when disagreeing, to have some sort of a common language and set of expectations. Without that, argument is pointless, or to put it another way: The first thing you need to prove to me is that your ignorance is something that concerns me.

That’s exactly what I decline to do. The hockey stick needs no defense. Rather, you need to find some cogent explanation of why your ignorance of paleoclimate concerns me.

The writer here asserts that his position “needs no defense”;  it’s up to his opponents to produce reasons–or in other words, they have the burden of proof.

Of course, both sides can make this move.  Another writer comes back later in the discussion to assert that it’s the “hockey stick” [graph] that needs the defense:

There is no basis for discussion about AGW that starts with “the Hockey Stick is correct and unassailable”.

The true statment is  “the Hockey Stick is part of a very large con game and until the AGW side acknowledges that and apologizes, nothing they say should be believed.”   [Later:]   AGW is discredited until it confesses its fraud.

And this argumentative move–”MY position stands until YOU meet your burden of proof”–isn’t just confined to the climate debate.  Should genetically modified crops be presumed to be safe, until there is definitive evidence that they are harmful?  Or by the precautionary principle should this kind of new technology be considered dangerous, until it is shown to be safe?

To straighten out what’s happening in these moves, I want to distinguish between (a) the way people are using “burden of proof” to manage their own, personal thinking, and (b) the way they are using it to manage the debate they are having with other people.  For more on (a), proceed below;  (b) will follow in the next post.

It would not be reasonable to be too reasonable

I like to think of myself as a reasonable person–someone who searches out good information, evidence and expert opinion, considers it carefully, and reaches a sound judgment.  But I’m also a person living in 24-hour days, 365-day years, and only perhaps 80-90 of those (trusting the actuaries on that).  So at some point far, far short of having all the evidence about most subjects, I have to stop thinking about them.

For example, there are a half a dozen different toothpastes available at my local store.  I suppose they have some meaningful differences that I could find–if I investigated.  Or perhaps they’re all basically the same–but I’d have to investigate to find out whether that was the case.  I’m not going to investigate, however;  absent some fairly conspicuous new consideration (e.g., something that looks like a big sale, or some new advice from my dentist) I’m just going to buy the same brand as usual.

Or consider donating to charities–that’s a more significant choice.  I have put some time into investigating some charities, trying to determine whether they’re doing things I think are important, and are doing them efficiently.  The phone bank person who calls trying to persuade me to consider a new option is basically out of luck.  It could be that the charity she’s working for does much better than the one’s I’ve chosen, but unfortunately, I’m not even going to listen to her arguments.  I’m confident my choices are good enough, and I have better things to do with my time than to donate it to a salesperson.  In fact, I don’t even have to explain to her the reason why I’m not going to listen to more reasons.

Not listening to reason about climate change

The controversy over climate change has been going on for two decades now;  it sprawls over dozens of academic fields, and has produced an inconceivably large heap of arguments.  (There are 60K+ words just in the blog discussion linked above.)  Given the size of the controversy and the limits of human reason, every one of us is going to reach a point when we’re going to have to “say when.”  As one participant in the discussion put it:

If I had multiple lives, I might spend one of them doing the same. Unfortunately, I have no inclination to do so, any more than I have the desire (or time) to learn biology so that I can argue about evolution “inteligently.”.  .  .  I will certainly not learn a new topic just to defend a much broader theory from point-scoring attacks that are not directed toward advancing science. It is a useless endeavor, and life affords only so much time.

“Burden of Proof” #1:  Managing our own thinking

Since thinking takes up limited resources, we need to think about our thinking.  One of the tools we use to do this is something like the “burden of proof”.  At some point, after we’ve reached a considered decision, we tell ourselves that we’re not going to think about that any more, until some fairly significant consideration becomes obvious.  The burden of proof is on the other side.

Like all reasoning, reasoning-about-reasoning can go wrong.  A close-minded person turns her brain off too soon;  her opposite–the excessively open-minded person–continues to gather evidence and weigh options when he should have gone on to something else.

How do we tell how much is enough?  That would be a good question to ask a philosopher.  I’m a communication person, however, and I’m more interested in another use for “burden of proof”–the way we use it to manage not our own personal thinking, but our debates with those who disagree.  As soon as I can dig out of some other work, I’ll post some thoughts about that.

Between Scientists & Citizens: Assessing Expertise In Policy Controversies

June 1-2, 2012
Iowa State University, Ames, IA

Keynote speakers:

• Sally Jackson, Communication, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana
• Massimo Pigliucci, Philosophy, Lehman College, CUNY

We are increasingly dependent on advice from experts in making decisions in our personal, professional, and civic lives. But as our dependence on experts has grown, new media have broken down the institutional barriers between the technical, personal and civic realms, and we are inundated with purported science from all sides. Many share a sense that science has lost its “rightful place” in our deliberations. Grappling with this cluster of problems will require collaboration across disciplines: among rhetorical and communication theorists studying the practices and norms of public discourse, philosophers interested in the informal logic of everyday reasoning and in the theory of deliberative democracy, and science studies scholars examining the intersections between the social worlds of scientists and citizens. For this conference, we invite work on expertise in policy controversies from across the disciplines focused on argumentation, reasoning, rhetoric, communication and deliberation.

Once upon Shakespeare’s time, the art of disagreement was pursued with elegance.  Degrees of challenge were measured out by the book, as one of his characters explains:

as thus, sir. I did dislike the cut of a certain courtier’s beard: he sent me word, if I said his beard was not cut well, he was in the mind it was: this is called the Retort Courteous.  If I sent him word again ’it was not well cut,’ he would send me word, he cut it to please himself: this is called the Quip Modest.  If again ‘it was not well cut,’ he disabled my judgment: this is called the Reply Churlish.  If again ‘it was not well cut,’ he would answer, I spake not true: this is called the Reproof Valiant.  If again ‘it was not well cut,’ he would say I lied: this is called the Counter-cheque Quarrelsome: and so to the Lie Circumstantial and the Lie Direct.

–As You Like It V.4

Alas, we’ve mostly lost that art, especially in the blogosphere.  Disagreements proceed pretty quickly to the Lie Direct.  That’s dull!  Let’s review the wisdom of Touchstone the Fool to recover more sophisticated practices.

Avoiding the Lie Direct

Imagine that some has just indicated that they spurn your position, e.g. on the soundness of the IPCC report.  How can you reply?

Retort Courteous:  Well, my view differs.  (Note:  then you have to stop.  Really.)

Quip Modest:  I’ve considered the evidence, and have come to my own conclusion on this matter.

Reply Churlish:  As your judgment on this subject seems to me impaired, I don’t think it worthwhile to pursue this with you further.

Reproof Valiant:  Your statement is wrong, for this reason…. (Note:  this reproof is indeed valiant, because you have now undertaken responsibility to provide a full defense of your view.)

Counter-cheque Quarrelsome:  How dare you speak to me like that!

Lie Circumstantial:  If you said so, you would be lying.

Lie Direct:  You lie!

In praise of indirectness

We may think of  communication about climate change or other issues largely as exchanges of claims together evidence to back those claims up.  The importance of science for these debates may reinforce the impression that what’s really at stake are the facts, just the facts. But when we actually examine arguers’ language choices in detail, we can observe that a lot more is happening.  Arguers (and speakers in general) are not only conveying information to each other, they are also carrying forward an interpersonal relationship.

The Lie Direct is indeed direct–it directly frames the relationship as hostile.  One person attacks the other (“you”), and in particular attacks the basic legitimacy of their contributions to the conversation.  By contrast, the other strategies use various techniques of indirectness:

• speaking only of one’s own point of view, not expressly characterizing the other (“it seems to me…”)
• focusing on what is said, not on the sayer
• shifting from assertions to possibilities (“if”)

Why indirectness?  ”You lie” does not leave much wiggle room;  accused of lying, the honorable person must draw his/her weapon.  Indirectness, by contrast, leaves each some degree of plausible deniability.  The speaker can point out that he did not actually say that the other person was a liar, however much that was insinuated.  Both parties can continue to pretend that they respect each other.  Everyone is keeping up appearances, and something like a conversation, as opposed to a duel, can continue.

For more:  see Stephen Pinker’s a nice explanation of the way indirectness allows us to maintain relationships, part of the RSA Animate series.

A final plea

If you are going to insult, at least use some verbal dexterity.  That way you’ll demonstrate your intellectual superiority even as you use your verbal weapons to slaughter your opponent.  You can get some help from the Bard with this, too.

Judith Curry in 1688?

Still, it’s not like the online world is completely separate from the world of face-to-face communication, and the blogosphere can draw from communication skills already well-developed and understood in “meat-space” contexts.  I’ve done a series of posts, for example, on how debate can work online (here and here).

Similarly, in a very interesting post, Judith Curry has identified her objective on her own blog as translating an old communication activity into a new setting:

I am striving for something different, sort of an e-salon where we discuss interesting topics at the knowledge frontier.

Three hundred plus years ago, another prominent woman wrote extensively about salon communication;  let’s see what we can learn from her.

Madeleine de Scudéry is often credited with organizing one of the first salons, bringing together men and women across at least some class boundaries to share a pleasant conversation of the topics of the day.  Her novels centered around long conversational set-pieces, which she also collected and extended in multiple volumes of Conversations.  These works not only provided models for salon wannabes;  some of the Conversations conversations were about conversation, and can serve as instructional manuals of a sort.

Warning:  I am no Scudéry expert. Students in an overview of rhetorical theory class persuaded me that she was worth teaching, so I did.  Take the following only as what I learned from reading a bit of Scudéry, largely with an eye towards contemporary theory and applications.

Being mixed up

There is one thing that all the characters in Scudery’s dialogues agree on:  Conversations must include both men and women.  All-female and all-male conversations are deadly dull.  Difference drives interest–but only if it repressed. Sex is thus a constant subtext in every conversation.  Never openly discussed, nor even often openly acknowledged (flirting would be self-indulgent), but adding a bit of spice or tension to the talk about other topics.

Maybe policy/ideological/etc. differences should be treated in the same way in the e-salon?  No humping on the tea-table, but still everyone is looking each other over out of the corners of their eyes?

Madeleine de Scudéry in 2011?

Irresoluteness

The primary aim of conversationalists should be to keep the conversation going in a way that’s enjoyable to all.  This requires some suppression of individuality:  no long lectures on one’s own children or merchant ventures;  no insistence on one’s own views of some novel.  At the same time, everyone has to have a unique perspective to contribute to move the conversation forward. And Bizell & Herzberg (The Rhetorical Tradition, 2nd Ed.) provide a nice summary of where conversations are supposed to end up:

Harmony among conflicting viewpoints, not the victory of one of them, should be the ultimate goal (and the topics discussed in Scudéry’s conversations are usually left unresolved for that reason).

Note that “harmony,” unlike “consensus” requires diversity.  We do in fact have to live with irresolution in the blogosphere.  But can we come to like it?

Wit

One can’t openly “win” a conversation without breaking it.  But there is still plenty of room for competitive self-display, in the manner one expresses one’s points.  Getting the right word (we still stay it in French–le mot juste);  constructing prose that is clear, flexible and maybe even a bit fancy;  managing interpersonal relations in a subtle way:  the conversationalist can win on style points where outright victory is denied.

Achieving this on the spur of the moment in the course of conversation was a high art;  it had to look mannered, but not labored.

Now this would certainly be a nice thing to see more of in the blogosphere!

What does a formal debate offer that the ordinary disorderly flow of arguing in the blogosphere doesn’t?  To pick up on a theme from my last post:  a formal debate allows the participants to control  what they are taking responsibility for–and to force others to take responsibility, too.  Roger Pielke, Jr. is a masterful debater, and his recent challenge to critics of “climate pragmatism” shows this strategy at its finest.

The assignment–and enforcement–of responsibilities

There’s nothing much to stop people from selecting the strongest arguments to defend their valid point of view–or from cherry-picking evidence to support a blatant mischaracterization–on their own blogs.  How to stop such loose talk?  By making it expensive.  Pielke opens his post with an “invitation” to his critics to come to his blog and “to explain what is wrong with the math and logic presented below.”  As he frames it, those who take up this challenge accept a burden of proof (a/k/a probative obligation) to clearly “identify where they disagree” with his case for climate pragmatism, and then to “provide evidence” why he is wrong.  Presumably, once a critic does so, Pielke himself will have a probative obligation to further defend his views.  No more cheap talk; let the debate begin!

Pielke’s opening paragraphs set up the debaters’ responsibilities; a good deal of the resulting debate is spent not in making arguments, but in enforcing those responsibilities.  Consider these moves in the debate that are made possible by the initial assignment of responsibilities:

Demand clarity:  One of the critics’ responsibilities to identify their points of disagreement.  Pielke is thus licensed to refuse to respond until his critics answer a “simple question, do you contest any of the 10 statements above?”

Refuse to acknowledge a comment:  The critics’ other responsibility is to offer some kind of a defense.  Again, Pielke can refuse to respond until his critic follows his ”Advice: if you want to make a claim that ‘X is false’ then you need to provide evidence and an argument.”

Critique the arguer for an inadequate argument:  Even when the critic puts some kind of argument forward, Pielke can refuse to reply in detail if that argument does not fulfill the critic’s probative responsibilities.  While at the beginning of the debate, it looks like the critic is only responsible for responding to the ten listed points, by the middle, Pielke has insisted that the ten points are just stand-ins for the longer arguments made in the just-released Climate Pragmatism report (30 pages), last year’s Hartwell Paper (42 pages) or Pielke’s own Climate Fix (288 pages). When critics don’t show adequate knowledge of these works, Pielke responds with an escalating level of personal criticism for their failure to live up to the ground rules of the debate.  Watch this progression:  from a slightly condescending question and referral (to an article by Pielke):

which I assume you are familiar with?…If you are unfamiliar with [it] you can get up to speed quickly here on it…

To a request (i.e., demand) for the critic to prepare himself:

“I haven’t read it yet” And yet you feel qualified to trash it and critique it? … Please come back after you’ve informed yourself, makes for a much better conversation. Thanks!

And finally to an open shaming–a bit softened by indirect expression and a smiley:

Once again, your strong and certain critiques will be much more informed if you actually read the arguments that you are critiquing, rather than parroting what you think Romm might be on about. I’d suggest starting with TCF then reading THP then CP. You will then be in a position to avoid the embarrassment of publicly commenting on materials that you have no yet engaged

By the middle of the debate, the critics’ responsibility to be well-informed has been established enough that commenters apologize in advance for their likely failure to live up to it, prefacing their point with “blushingly confess[ion]” of their inadequacies.

In sum:  about half the debate consists not of arguments pro and con, but of Pielke’s reasoned refusals to respond–refusals justified by his critics’ failures to meet the probative obligations set up at the opening of the debate.

What can a critic do?

One possibility is obvious:  Meet the announced burden of proof!  Of course, that may be hard to do in the fast-moving blog world–the first critic in this debate, for example, came in only an hour after the challenge was issued.

A second strategy is to attempt to redefine the burden of proof.  One critic tries this midway by demanding that Pielke take responsibility himself, for producing and defending a solution to AGW.  Pielke of course refuses to make a case until his critic has offered an adequate counterargument under the responsibilities set up at the beginning of the debate, and refers the critic back to all his previous works.

A final strategy for the critic:  Refuse to engage, at least on the terms Pielke has set.  This strategy has a downside;  it allows Pielke to make (slightly indirect again) accusations of cowardice and sophistry:

The “climate hawks” have usually been pretty loathe to engage in open intellectual debate, preferring instead to lob ad homs and mischaracterizations.  (Maybe they should be called “climate chickens” — that is a joke;-)

These charges are pretty easy to brush off, however.  The critic in refusing to debate can respond that he has dealt with the matter sufficiently on his own blog;  that he has other responsibilities to meet (like the need to craft his next multipage blog post);  that Pielke is unlikely to play fair;  and so on.  As the poet said, “the wise cats never appeared.”

This is why despite the many challenges to Climate Smackdowns, few have actually come off.  We in the audience would enjoy the drama of a definitive climate debate, we would relish the victory (at least, if our side won), and we would all benefit from the higher quality arguments participants would be responsible for offering.  But the debaters themselves seldom have incentives to take responsibility for what they are saying;  and so in the Gresham’s law of argument, cheap talk drives out expensive argument.