JoNova

By Jo Nova

A group of arty psychologists has accidentally shown how much skeptics can achieve if they just speak up.

The small, poorly worded study, done by people who have little understanding of the climate debate, or even of the scientific method, doesn’t prove much at all. But if you start with 170 people who have been fed propaganda for years and then ask some random questions, whatever you repeat seems more believable. We could have learnt so much more if these psychologists did not start so confused themselves.

Their big “discovery” was that hearing something skeptical a second time gave it a significant boost in believability, even when the audience were 90% believers.  Their big conclusion was the advice to essentially never utter a skeptical word, just repeat the propaganda:

“Do not repeat false information. Instead, repeat what is true and enhance its familiarity.”

They appear to be oblivious that their advice essentially kills the idea of open public debate. They don’t mention public debate or free speech. Possibly, since they are at an Australian university, they’ve never come across it.

But the core message comes through at The Guardian — they are scared skeptics might be heard:

Repeating climate denial claims makes them seem more credible, Australian-led study finds

Our new research has produced worrying findings. Climate misinformation may be more effective than we’d like to think because of a phenomenon called the illusory truth effect In short, we are more likely to believe a lie if we encounter it repeatedly. Worse, the effect works immediately – a lie seems to be more true even after just one repetition.

Repetition, boys and girls, is “insidious”:

The study’s lead author, Mary Jiang, from the Australian National University, said: “The findings show how powerful and insidious repetition is and how it can influence people’s assessment of truth.”

But it is only “insidious” when skeptics repeat things, not when the State says the same thing a thousand times, and starts the repetition at kindergarten. These researchers live in an academic fishbowl.

The survey was a swamp of irrelevant questions on boring things skeptics hardly ever say like “Global warming will not increase skin cancer”. But one question they designated as misinformation may have gone off like a bomb in the survey:

“Emails seized from prominent climate scientists suggest conspiracy and data manipulation.”

Clearly these researchers have never read the ClimateGate emails where esteemed professors admitted in writing that they use “Mikes Nature trick” to “hide the decline”. However, as is their way, they suggest conspiracies themselves based on nothing but their avid imagination. At the Conversion (it’s not a conversation if they ban half the country) they let their hair down —  seemingly afraid skeptics might use AI bots to wipe out their “public support” (that was created through decades of mindless repetition).

Repeating aids believing: climate misinformation feels more true through repetition – even if you back climate science

As our social media feeds fill up with AI-driven bots, sheer repetition of lies may erode the most essential resource for action on climate change – public support. Traditional media has a different problem – in their commitment to presenting both sides, journalists often platform climate sceptics whose untrue claims add to the repetition of misinformation.

Somehow they lie to themselves that “journalists” are committed to presenting both sides and often platform climate skeptics. Where have they been for the last 10 years — not apparently doing any background research for their paper. If they spent half an hour reading skeptical blogs they’d know that belief in climate change levitates on billion dollar propaganda campaigns, a million lines of “carbon is pollution” and mass censorship. The academic world has trained a generation to hate the sixth element of the periodic table, and these psychologists would probably think that’s a good communication strategy.

Their Holy Arc is “the consensus” — that quintessentially unscientific philosophy of polling the scientists you haven’t sacked yet

Australian universities are nothing if not hotbeds of GroupThink.

What can we do to protect ourselves, they ask, and the answer is to chant the permitted litany. In an immature science it’s absurd that 999 climate scientists out of 1,000 say the exact same thing, but this is their garlic to ward off the vampires:

Researchers have found one reliable solution – come back to the scientific consensus. For decades, scientists have researched the question of whether our activities are the main cause of rising global temperatures. Many different lines of evidence from rates of ice melt to sea temperatures to satellite measurements have now answered this conclusively. The scientific consensus is now 99.9% certain, a figure which has only grown over time. Drawing on this consensus may work to protect us from accepting sceptic arguments by reminding us of the very large areas of agreement.

They write as though they are children afraid of catching of catching typhoid: “Drawing on the consensus may work to protect us from accepting skeptic arguments”. Lord help us all, in case we find a skeptic persuasive!

It’s so pathetically intellectually feeble. And indeed, their conspiratorial minds are unleashed, they see “actors” with “an agenda” and never for a moment guess that they are the actors and their agenda is to protect the establishment that pays them:

There’s a systemic problem here. Never before in history have we been able to access so much information. But our information environments are not benign. Actors with an agenda are at work in many areas of public life, trying to shape what we do or do not do. We need to learn more about how we can battle the power of lies on repeat.

These poor psychologists are so badly trained in the philosophy and methods of science, they have no idea that open public debate is an essential part of science. If the man-made catastrophe was overwhelmingly true, it would survive public open debate. There wouldn’t be a gap where 50% of the population disagree with 99.9% of the experts. Nor would the experts struggle to convince half the meteorologists and two thirds of engineers and geologists.

They only need to worry about maintaining belief in climate change because it is a manufactured falsity which billions of dollars depends on.

As I’ve said for years: there’s a reason we don’t ask scientists if they believe in gravity.

Other Polls

• 70% of Australians don’t even want to spend $1 a week on “Net Zero”
• Most people don’t believe climate change harms them and have no plans to be vegetarian or give up their cars
• Young adults are  losing the climate faith in the US, and only one third of voters think the IPCC experts are right
• Only 3% of young voters say Climate Change is the top issue
• One third of UK teenagers think climate change is deliberately exaggerated
• Half of Americans believe the media is trying to mislead them, and the people running the USA are “unknown” to voters
• Most people in the West are still skeptics of climate change and the IPCC position
•  57% don’t think UN Scientists can speak with authority on climate
•  Public are not buying science “experts” opinions: AAAS survey shows 30-50% gap
• 65% of US population are skeptical that each flood drought or heatwave is mostly “man-made”

REFERENCE

Jiang Y, Schwarz N, Reynolds KJ, Newman EJ (2024) Repetition increases belief in climate-skeptical claims, even for climate science endorsers. PLoS ONE 19(8): e0307294. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307294

Experiment 1: N = 47 (Judging by the dated questions this was done about ten years ago).

Experiment 2: N= 120 participants (including 5 uncategorized). 36 participants were Alarmed (31%), 35 Concerned (29.2%), 27 Cautious (22.5%), 0 Disengaged (0%), 8 Dismissive (7%), and 14 Doubtful (11.7%).

Photo: Cory Doctorow