̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - journalism

Uncertainty about facts can be reported without damaging public trust in news – study

fpjl2 — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 16:33:08 +0000

̽��ֱ��numbers that drive headlines – those on Covid-19 infections, for example – contain significant levels of uncertainty: assumptions, limitations, extrapolations, and so on.

Experts and journalists have long assumed that revealing the 'noise' inherent in data confuses audiences and undermines trust, say ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researchers, despite this being little studied.

Now, new research has found that uncertainty around key facts and figures can be communicated in a way that maintains public trust in information and its source, even on contentious issues such as immigration and climate change.

Researchers say they hope the work, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, will encourage scientists and media to be bolder in reporting statistical uncertainties.

“Estimated numbers with major uncertainties get reported as absolutes,” said Dr Anne Marthe van der Bles, who led the new study while at Cambridge’s Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication.

“This can affect how the public views risk and human expertise, and it may produce negative sentiment if people end up feeling misled,” she said.

Co-author Sander van der Linden, director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, said: “Increasing accuracy when reporting a number by including an indication of its uncertainty provides the public with better information. In an era of fake news that might help foster trust.”

̽��ֱ��team of psychologists and mathematicians set out to see if they could get people much closer to the statistical 'truth' in a news-style online report without denting perceived trustworthiness.

They conducted five experiments involving a total of 5,780 participants, including a unique field experiment hosted by BBC News online, which displayed the uncertainty around a headline figure in different ways.

̽��ֱ��researchers got the best results when a figure was flagged as an estimate, and accompanied by the numerical range from which it had been derived, for example: '…the unemployment rate rose to an estimated 3.9% (between 3.7%–4.1%)'.

This format saw a marked increase in the feeling and understanding that the data held uncertainty, but little to no negative effect on levels of trust in the data itself, those who provided it (e.g. civil servants) or those reporting it (e.g. journalists).

“We hope these results help to reassure all communicators of facts and science that they can be more open and transparent about the limits of human knowledge,” said co-author Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, Chair of the Winton Centre at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Catherine Dennison, Welfare Programme Head at the Nuffield Foundation, said: “We are committed to building trust in evidence at a time when it is frequently called into question. This study provides helpful guidance on ensuring informative statistics are credibly communicated to the public.”

̽��ֱ��findings are published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Most experiment participants were recruited through the online crowdsourcing platform Prolific. They were given short, news-style texts on one of four topics: UK unemployment, UK immigration, Indian tiger populations, or climate change.

Uncertainty was presented as a single added word (e.g. ‘estimated’), a numerical range, a longer verbal caveat – 'there is uncertainty around this figure: it could be somewhat higher or lower' – or combination of these, as well as the ‘control’ of a standalone figure without uncertainty, typical of most news reporting.

They found that the added word did not register with people, and the longer caveat registered but significantly diminished trust – the researchers believe it was too ambiguous. Presenting the numerical range (from minimum to maximum) had the right balance of signaling uncertainty with little evidence for loss of trust.

Prior views on contested topics within news reports, such as migration, were included in the analysis. Although attitudes towards the issue mattered for how facts were viewed, when openness about data uncertainty was added it did not substantially reduce trust in either the numbers or the source.

̽��ֱ��team worked with the BBC to conduct a field experiment in October 2019, when figures were released about the UK labour market.

In the BBC’s online story, figures were either presented as usual, a ‘control’, or with some uncertainty – a verbal caveat or a numerical range – and a link to a brief survey. Findings from this 'real world' experiment matched those from the study’s other 'lab conditions' experiments.

“We recommend that journalists and those producing data give people the fuller picture,” said co-author Dr Alexandra Freeman, Executive Director of the Winton Centre.

“If a number is an estimate, let them know how precise that estimate is by putting a minimum and maximum in brackets afterwards.”

Sander van der Linden added: “Ultimately we’d like to see the cultivation of psychological comfort around the fact that knowledge and data always contain uncertainty.”

“Disinformation often appears definitive, and fake news plays on a sense of certainty,” he said.

“One way to help people navigate today’s post-truth news environment is by being honest about what we don’t know, such as the exact number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the UK. Our work suggests people can handle the truth.”

Last month, David Spiegelhalter launched a podcast about statistics, ‘Risky Talk’. In the first episode he discusses communicating climate change data with Sander van der Linden and Dr Emily Shuckburgh, leader of the ̽��ֱ��’s new climate initiative Cambridge Zero.

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A series of experiments – including one on the BBC News website – finds the use of numerical ranges in news reports helps us grasp the uncertainty of stats while maintaining trust in data and its sources.

Ultimately we’d like to see the cultivation of psychological comfort around the fact that knowledge and data always contain uncertainty

Sander van der Linden

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Research reveals accidental making of ‘Patient Zero’ myth during 1980s AIDS crisis

fpjl2 — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 17:02:10 +0000

A new study proves that a flight attendant who became notorious as the human epicentre of the US AIDS crisis of the 1980s – and the first person to be labeled the ‘Patient Zero’ of any epidemic – was simply one of many thousands infected in the years before HIV was recognised.

Research by a historian from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the genetic testing of decades-old blood samples by a team of US scientists has demonstrated that Gaétan Dugas, a French-Canadian gay man posthumously blamed by the media for spreading HIV across North America, was not the epidemic’s ‘Patient Zero’.

In fact, work by Dr Richard McKay, a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow from Cambridge’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science, reveals how the very term ‘Patient Zero’ – still used today in press coverage of outbreaks from Ebola to swine flu to describe the first known case – was created inadvertently in the earliest years of investigating AIDS.

Before he died, Dugas provided investigators with a significant amount of personal information to assist with studies into whether AIDS was caused by a sexually transmitted agent. McKay’s research suggests that this, combined with confusion between a letter and a number, contributed to the invention of ‘Patient Zero’ and the global defamation of Dugas.

Dr McKay’s work has added important contextual information to the latest study, led by Dr Michael Worobey from the ̽��ֱ�� of Arizona and published today in the journal Nature, which has compared a new analysis of Dugas’s blood with eight other archived serum samples dating back to the late 1970s.

“Gaétan Dugas is one of the most demonised patients in history, and one of a long line of individuals and groups vilified in the belief that they somehow fuelled epidemics with malicious intent,” says McKay.

While his wider research traces this impulse to blame back several centuries, for the Nature paper McKay located the immediate roots of the term “Patient Zero” in an early ‘cluster study’ of US AIDS patients.

Mistaken for zero

Reports emerged in early 1982 of historical sexual links between several gay men with AIDS in Los Angeles, and investigators from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) undertook a study to interview these men for the names of their sexual contacts.

They uncovered more links across southern California, but one connection was named several times despite not residing in the state: Case 057, a widely travelled airline employee. Investigators found that his sexual contacts included men in New York City, and some of his sexual partners developed symptoms of AIDS after he did.

CDC investigators employed a coding system to identify the study’s patients, numbering each city’s cases linked to the cluster in the sequence their symptoms appeared (LA 1, LA 2, NY 1, NY 2, etc.). However, within the CDC, Case 057 became known as ‘Out(side)-of-California’ – his new nickname abbreviated with the letter ‘O.’

Because other cases were numbered, it was here that the accidental coining of a new term took place. “Some researchers discussing the investigation began interpreting the ambiguous oval as a digit, and referring to Patient O as Patient 0,” says McKay. “‘Zero’ is a capacious word. It can mean nothing. But it can also mean the absolute beginning.”

̽��ֱ��LA study expanded, due in no small part to information provided by Case 057. Over 65% of men in the cluster reported more than 1,000 partners in their lifetimes, over 75% more than 50 in the past year. But most could offer only a handful of names of those partners.

As well as donating plasma for analysis, Case 057 managed to provide 72 names of the roughly 750 partners he’d had in the previous three years. Also, his distinctive name may have been easier for other men to remember, says McKay. “ ̽��ֱ��fact that Dugas provided the most names, and had a more memorable name himself, likely contributed to his perceived centrality in this sexual network.”

By the time the expanded study was published in 1984, the same year Dugas died of his illness, the cluster showed dozens of cases connecting several North American cities. Near the very centre of an accompanying diagram is a floating case that links both coasts, the itinerant Dugas. Case 057, the ‘Out-of-California’ case, had been rechristened simply as “Patient 0” – causing much speculation in the media.

‘Casting’ an epidemic

̽��ֱ��journalist Randy Shilts would use the LA cluster study as an important thread in his bestselling book on the AIDS crisis, And the Band Played On. During the book’s research, he became fascinated by the study’s ‘Patient 0’.

Motivated to find out more about this man, Shilts eventually learned his name in 1986. ̽��ֱ��journalist tracked down his friends and colleagues for interviews, and, as “Patient Zero,” made him one of the more memorable villains in his book.

To call attention to the crisis, Shilts set out to “humanise the disease”, says McKay, who discovered that an early outline for the book actually listed ‘ ̽��ֱ��Epidemic’ itself among the cast of characters. “To Shilts, Dugas as Patient Zero came to represent the disease itself.”

̽��ֱ��1982 study had initially suggested to investigators that the period between infection and the appearance of AIDS symptoms might be several months.

By the time Shilts’s book was published in 1987, however, it was known that an infected individual might not display symptoms for several years, and that the study was unlikely to have revealed a network of infection. Yet Shilts uncritically resurrected the story of the Los Angeles cluster study and its ‘Patient 0,’ with long-standing consequences.

̽��ֱ��journalist’s decision provoked immediate criticism from AIDS activists in lesbian and gay communities across North America and the UK. Some of their works of protest are cited in the Nature study, and explored in greater detail in McKay’s own forthcoming book and in a 2014 article he published in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine.

“In many ways, the historical evidence has been pointing to the fallacy of Patient Zero for decades,” explains McKay. “We now have additional phylogenetic evidence that helps to consolidate this position.”

McKay describes the very phrase ‘Patient Zero’ as “infectious.” “Long before the AIDS epidemic there was interest in locating the earliest known cases of disease outbreaks. Yet the phrases ‘first case,’ ‘primary case,’ and ‘index case’ didn’t carry the same punch.

“With the CDC’s accidental coining of this term, and Shilts’s well-honed storytelling instincts, you can see the consolidation of an ‘infectious’ formula that would become central to the way many would make sense of later epidemics.”

Blaming ‘others’

Now, almost 30 years since Shilts’s book, analysis of the HIV-1 genome taken from Dugas’s 1983 blood sample, contextualised through McKay’s historical research, has shown that he was not even a base case for HIV strains at the time, and that a trail of error and hype led to his condemnation as the so-called Patient Zero.

̽��ֱ��researchers say it may be naïve to expect Patient Zero’s legendary status, or the popular impulse to attribute blame for disease outbreaks, to ever disappear.

“Blaming ‘others’ – whether the foreign, the poor, or the wicked – has often served to establish a notional safe distance between the majority and groups or individuals identified as threats,” says McKay.

“In many ways, the US AIDS crisis was no different – as the vilification of Patient Zero shows. It is important to remember that, in the 1970s, as now, the epidemic was driven by individuals going about their lives unaware they were contracting, and sometimes transmitting, a deadly infection.

“We hope this research will give researchers, journalists and the public pause before using the term Patient Zero. ̽��ֱ��phrase carries many meanings and a freighted history, and has seldom pointed to what its users have intended.”

A combination of historical and genetic research reveals the error and hype that led to the coining of the term ‘Patient Zero’ and the blaming of one man for the spread of HIV across North America.

We hope this research will give researchers, journalists and the public pause before using the term Patient Zero

Richard McKay

Harry Reasoner introduces the 60 Minutes program featuring ‘Patient Zero’ and the American AIDS crisis, broadcast on CBS in November 1987.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Cold War PR - spinning the ideological battlefront

sjr81 — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:56:45 +0000

Public Relations of the Cold War, organised by CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) sought to examine the ‘selling’ of ideologically motivated policies to domestic audiences during the Cold War – outside of the more commonly studied area of public diplomacy, which concerns a government reaching out to foreign audiences.

̽��ֱ��conference, which drew experts from the UK, Europe, and North America and featured keynote addresses from Professor Christopher Andrew, Official Historian of the Security Service, and Professor Odd Arne Westad, a leading expert in Cold War history, aimed to demonstrate how pervasive the battle to influence domestic public opinion became – on both sides of the Cold War divide.

̽��ֱ��scope of influence was massive, whether it was Executive Branch infighting about how to best present casualty reports to the public during the Vietnam War to models of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) on sale in children’s toyshops. ̽��ֱ��conference also examined the under-recognized and -examined nuance in various means of disseminating PR.

American historian Hannah Higgin, one of the conference organisers, said: “In today’s PR-laden world, there are very important lessons to be learned by looking at how public relations influenced opinion, occupied governments and seeped into daily life and popular culture.

“And this wasn’t just practised by the USSR and USA. ̽��ֱ��conference has speakers discussing just how neutral Switzerland actually was, how Maoist thought and even the singing of ‘ ̽��ֱ��East is Red’ were among surgeon’s tools in China after the Sino-Soviet split, West Germany’s ‘reptile fund’ and how the work of George Orwell, via the medium of radio, was possibly as potent, if not a more potent, a weapon in the battle against Soviet totalitarianism as any CIA-funded or covertly-backed Cold War cultural enterprise abroad.

“This conference spurred a vital conversation about the channels and means by which governments ‘sold’ the Cold War to their own people - and how journalists, movie-makers, academics, researchers and the general public took up the ideological battle of their own volition.”

̽��ֱ��conference considered a range of controversial issues, including the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the USA’s reporting of combat casualties in both the Vietnam and Korean Wars, and dissected how official policy was transmitted through the mass media.

In the latter case, the media often challenged official casualty statistics, charging that they underreported the actual total. In response, the Pentagon increasingly provided more detailed figures, to the consternation of Truman and particularly Johnson.

In the Soviet Union, the Brezhnev-era of tightly controlled reporting of the 'events' in Afghanistan gave way to the gradual liberalisation of media policy. Under glasnost, the dynamics of public debate could not be controlled by official institutions anymore and contributed to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.

Also up for discussion was the selling of the Cold War via the media by America’s ‘Crusade for Freedom’. Developed by the CIA, the Crusade was one of the longest-running and most intensive campaigns which saturated the American media with anti-communist sentiment for two decades.

̽��ֱ��paper, presented by Dr Ken Osgood from the Colorado School of Mines, looked at how such sentiment seeped effortlessly into art, literature, movies, music and politics. ̽��ֱ��Crusade had a particularly wide reach because of the extensive support it received from public relations professionals and the Advertising Council, as well celebrities—including, in one advert, a young Ronald Reagan, corporations and the mass media.

Added Higgin: “America’s battle against Communism touched everyday life through overt and covert means. Whether it was through ‘duck and cover’ (the famous public safety campaign) or Edward R Murrow, one of America’s most respected journalists, becoming the Director of the United States Information Agency in 1961, American culture was filled with subtle and not so subtle messages about how high the ideological stakes were.

“ ̽��ֱ��PR aspect of the Cold War has not been discussed in great depth before. Often domestic and foreign realms of history are studied in relative isolation. Further, people were living with Cold War PR until relatively recently. Now there is some historical distance. We need to understand more about what constitutes domestic PR, how it was—and is—disseminated, and how it was used as means of uniting—or trying to unite—the masses to a common purpose, and when and whether it is good, bad, or something else, for society.”

̽��ֱ��conference was funded by CRASSH as well as by the International History Dept at LSE and the History Faculty at Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��conveners of the conference were PhD students Hannah Higgin (History, Cambridge), Martin Albers (History, Cambridge), Mark Miller (History, Cambridge), and Zhong Zhong Chen (LSE).

̽��ֱ��persuasive powers of Cold War PR, until now little recognised or discussed, was the subject of a three-day conference at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��.

This conference spurred a vital conversation about the channels and means by which governments ‘sold’ the Cold War to their own people - and how journalists, movie-makers, academics, researchers and the general public took up the ideological battle of their own volition.

Hannah Higgin

Image courtesy of X-Ray Delta One via Flickr

American toys for American boys and girls

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