̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication

Interactive tool helps you decide how to protect yourself and others from COVID-19

sc604 — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 00:08:47 +0000

A new interactive graphic developed by UK researchers and published by ̽��ֱ��BMJ will help people decide what to do in everyday situations to protect themselves, and others, from COVID-19.

Based on estimates provided by 26 international experts, it shows the different pathways that may be taken by the virus that causes COVID-19 when it transfers between two people.

It is designed to help illustrate the risks of catching COVID-19 in different scenarios - and what can be done to reduce those risks - based on the available evidence.

As well as the areas of scientific consensus, it also conveys the uncertainties and the disagreement that exists between experts about how the virus behaves, how it is transmitted, and how we can best reduce the likelihood of transmission through personal and social measures.

̽��ֱ��researchers say the tool should support decision-makers and the public to make informed decisions about how to reduce virus transmission in different contexts, such as how to make a workplace or a public area as safe as it can be while still being open and functional.

To create the tool, the researchers, led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, consulted 26 experts from a range of disciplines and countries, asking them for every value needed to underpin the graphic.

These included the importance of different virus transmission routes (eg. small and large airborne droplets, contact with contaminated surfaces) during a range of activities (eg. talking, coughing, exercising, eating) in different environments (eg. outdoors or indoors in different sized rooms, with or without ventilation).

They also gathered estimates on the importance of different protective measures, such as face coverings and screens, physical distancing, hand hygiene, surface cleaning, in reducing transmission.

Analysis of all the values showed that airborne transmission routes were most important in almost all situations, while face coverings, especially when worn by an infected person as a form of source control, were the most important mitigation measure.

But importantly, all routes were considered to play a part in transmission, and simple measures such as physical distancing, hand washing, and respiratory hygiene all made a useful contribution.

̽��ֱ��researchers found important evidence gaps and differences in opinion among experts around several variables, including the role of aerosol transmission; the effects of different kinds of masks on inhaled aerosols; and the effects of face coverings on transfer from hand to eyes, nose, and mouth.

“Everyone has been keen to know how much difference each possible action we’ve been told about makes, and finally we have been able to gather together enough knowledge from experts from around the world and in a range of fields to answer those questions,” said co-lead author Dr Alexandra Freeman from Cambridge’s Winton Centre for Risk & Evidence Communication.

She added: “ ̽��ֱ��tool is interactive, so that you can explore the scenarios that are most relevant to you, whether it’s because you sing in a choir, or want to know about the risks of eating in a small restaurant. How much difference would it make if you opened the windows, or cleaned the surfaces? Have a look and find out.”

“It is all too easy to focus on just a single route of spread for COVID and forget about all the others,” said co-author Harry Rutter from the ̽��ֱ�� of Bath. “One of the ways a tool like this can help is by making it clear that all the transmission routes matter, in different proportions in different contexts. ̽��ֱ��fact that one of those routes - airborne transmission - is the main one in most situations doesn’t mean that we can ignore the others.”

̽��ֱ��authors acknowledge some study limitations and say generating robust evidence on the complex and highly contingent routes of COVID-19 virus transmission is not straightforward. But they say they hope their approach will prove helpful to those faced with the challenge of communicating complex, imprecise, and uncertain evidence in the future.

̽��ֱ��research was supported by the PROTECT COVID-19 National Core Study on transmission and environment (managed by the Health and Safety Executive on behalf of HM Government), and the David and Claudia Harding Foundation. Cambridge co-authors on the paper also included Dr Shaun Fitzgerald from the Department of Engineering and Professor David Spiegelhalter from the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication.

Reference:
Alexandra LJ Freeman et al. ‘Expert elicitation on the relative importance of possible SARS-CoV-2 transmission routes and the effectiveness of mitigations.’ BMJ Open (2021). DOI: 10.1136/ bmjopen-2021-050869

Harry Rutter et al. ‘Visualising SARS-CoV-2 transmission routes and mitigations.’ BMJ (2021). DOI: 10.1136/bmj-2021-065312

Adapted from a BMJ press release.

Is it risky to sing in a choir? What are the risks of eating in a small restaurant? How much difference does it make to open windows or clean surfaces? New interactive tool helps people make decisions on COVID-19.

Everyone has been keen to know how much difference each possible action we’ve been told about makes, and finally we have been able to gather together enough knowledge from experts from around the world and in a range of fields to answer those questions

Alexandra Freeman

Will Stahl-Timmins, ̽��ֱ��BMJ

COVID-19 risk calculator

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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How accurate were early expert predictions on COVID-19, and how did they compare to the public?

sc604 — Wed, 05 May 2021 18:00:00 +0000

Researchers from the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication surveyed 140 UK experts and 2,086 UK laypersons in April 2020 and asked them to make four quantitative predictions about the impact of COVID-19 by the end of 2020. Participants were also asked to indicate confidence in their predictions by providing upper and lower bounds of where they were 75% sure that the true answer would fall - for example, a participant would say they were 75% sure that the total number of infections would be between 300,000 and 800,000.

̽��ֱ��results, published in the journal PLOS ONE, demonstrate the difficulty in predicting the course of the pandemic, especially in its early days. While only 44% of predictions from the expert group fell within their own 75% confidence ranges, the non-expert group fared far worse, with only 12% of predictions falling within their ranges. Even when the non-expert group was restricted to those with high numeracy scores, only 16% of predictions fell within the ranges of values that they were 75% sure would contain the true outcomes.

“Experts perhaps didn’t predict as accurately as we hoped they might, but the fact that they were far more accurate than the non-expert group reminds us that they have expertise that’s worth listening to,” said Dr Gabriel Recchia from the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, the paper’s lead author. “Predicting the course of a brand-new disease like COVID-19 just a few months after it had first been identified is incredibly difficult, but the important thing is for experts to be able to acknowledge uncertainty and adapt their predictions as more data become available.”

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, social and traditional media have disseminated predictions from experts and non-experts about its expected magnitude.

Expert opinion is undoubtedly important in informing and advising those making individual and policy-level decisions. However, as the quality of expert intuition can vary drastically depending on the field of expertise and the type of judgment required, it is important to conduct domain-specific research to establish how good expert predictions really are, particularly in cases where they have the potential to shape public opinion or government policy.

“People mean different things by ‘expert’: these are not necessarily people working on COVID-19 or developing the models to inform the response,” said Recchia. “Many of the people approached to provide comment or make predictions have relevant expertise, but not necessarily the most relevant.” He noted that in the early COVID-19 pandemic, clinicians, epidemiologists, statisticians, and other individuals seen as experts by the media and the general public, were frequently asked to give off-the-cuff answers to questions about how bad the pandemic might get. “We wanted to test how accurate some of these predictions from people with this kind of expertise were, and importantly, see how they compared to the public.”

For the survey, participants were asked to predict how many people living in their country would have died and would have been infected by the end of 2020; they were also asked to predict infection fatality rates both for their country and worldwide.

Both the expert group and the non-expert group underestimated the total number of deaths and infections in the UK. ̽��ֱ��official UK death toll at 31 December was 75,346. ̽��ֱ��median prediction of the expert group was 30,000, while the median prediction for the non-expert group was 25,000.

For infection fatality rates, the median expert prediction was that 10 out of every 1,000 people with the virus worldwide would die from it, and 9.5 out of 1,000 people with the virus in the UK would die from it. ̽��ֱ��median non-expert response to the same questions was 50 out of 1,000 and 40 out of 1,000. ̽��ֱ��real infection fatality rate at the end of 2020—as best the researchers could determine, given the fact that the true number of infections remains difficult to estimate—was closer to 4.55 out of 1,000 worldwide and 11.8 out of 1,000 in the UK.

“There’s a temptation to look at any results that says experts are less accurate than we might hope and say we shouldn’t listen to them, but the fact that non-experts did so much worse shows that it remains important to listen to experts, as long as we keep in mind that what happens in the real world can surprise you,” said Recchia.

̽��ֱ��researchers caution that it is important to differentiate between research evaluating the forecasts of ‘experts’—individuals holding occupations or roles in subject-relevant fields, such as epidemiologists and statisticians—and research evaluating specific epidemiological models, although expert forecasts may well be informed by epidemiological models. Many COVID-19 models have been found to be reasonably accurate over the short term, but get less accurate as they try to predict outcomes further into the future.

Reference:
Gabriel Recchia, Alexandra L.J. Freeman, David Spiegelhalter. ‘How well did experts and laypeople forecast the size of the COVID-19 pandemic?’ PLOS ONE (2021). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250935

Who made more accurate predictions about the course of the COVID-19 pandemic – experts or the public? A study from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has found that experts such as epidemiologists and statisticians made far more accurate predictions than the public, but both groups substantially underestimated the true extent of the pandemic.

Predicting the course of a brand-new disease like COVID-19 just a few months after it had first been identified is incredibly difficult, but the important thing is for experts to be able to acknowledge uncertainty and adapt their predictions as more data become available.

Gabriel Recchia

NIH Image Gallery

Novel Coronavirus SARS-Cov-2

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Licence type:

Public Domain

Nine Cambridge researchers among this year’s Royal Society medal and award winners

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 05:00:00 +0000

He is one of the 25 Royal Society medals and awards winners announced today, nine of whom are researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��annual prizes celebrate exceptional researchers and outstanding contributions to science across a wide array of fields.

President of the Royal Society, Venki Ramakrishnan, said:

" ̽��ֱ��Royal Society’s medals and awards celebrate those researchers whose ground-breaking work has helped answer fundamental questions and advance our understanding of the world around us. They also champion those who have reinforced science’s place in society, whether through inspiring public engagement, improving our education system, or by making STEM careers more inclusive and rewarding.

"This year has highlighted how integral science is in our daily lives, and tackling the challenges we face, and it gives me great pleasure to congratulate all our winners and thank them for their work."

Sir Alan Fersht FMedSci FRS, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Chemistry and former Master of Gonville and Caius College, is awarded the Copley Medal for the development and application of methods to describe protein folding pathways at atomic resolution, revolutionising our understanding of these processes.

"Most of us who become scientists do so because science is one of the most rewarding and satisfying of careers and we actually get paid for doing what we enjoy and for our benefitting humankind. Recognition of one’s work, especially at home, is icing on the cake," said Sir Alan. "Like many Copley medallists, I hail from a humble immigrant background and the first of my family to go to university. If people like me are seen to be honoured for science, then I hope it will encourage young people in similar situations to take up science."

As the latest recipient of the Royal Society’s premier award, Sir Alan joins an elite group of scientists, that includes Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Dorothy Hodgkin, and more recently Professor John Goodenough (2020) for his research on the rechargeable lithium battery, Peter Higgs (2015), the physicist who hypothesised the existence of the Higgs Boson, and DNA fingerprinting pioneer Alec Jeffreys (2014).

Professor Barry Everitt FMedSci FRS, from the Department of Psychology and former Master of Downing College, receives the Croonian Medal and Lecture for research which has elucidated brain mechanisms of motivation and applied them to important societal issues such as drug addiction.

Professor Everitt said: "In addition to my personal pride about having received this prestigious award, I hope that it helps draw attention to experimental addiction research, its importance and potential."

Professor Herbert Huppert FRS of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and a Fellow of King’s College, receives a Royal Medal for outstanding achievements in the physical sciences. He has been at the forefront of research in fluid mechanics. As an applied mathematician he has consistently developed highly original analysis of key natural and industrial processes. Further to his research, he has chaired policy work on how science can help defend against terrorism, and carbon capture and storage in Europe.

In addition to the work for which they are recognised with an award, several of this year’s recipients have also been working on issues relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Julia Gog of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and a Fellow of Queens’ College, receives the Rosalind Franklin Award and Lecture for her achievements in the field of mathematics. Her expertise in infectious diseases and virus modelling has seen her contribute to the pandemic response, including as a participant at SAGE meetings. ̽��ֱ��STEM project component of her award will produce resources for Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14) maths pupils and teachers exploring the curriculum in the context of modelling epidemics and infectious diseases and showing how maths can change the world for the better.

̽��ֱ��Society’s Michael Faraday Prize is awarded to Sir David Spiegelhalter OBE FRS, of the Winton Centre for Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication and a Fellow of Churchill College, for bringing key insights from the disciplines of statistics and probability vividly home to the public at large, and to key decision-makers, in entertaining and accessible ways, most recently through the COVID-19 pandemic.

̽��ֱ��full list of Cambridge’s 2020 winners and their award citations:

Copley Medal
Alan Fersht FMedSci FRS, Department of Chemistry, and Gonville and Caius College
He has developed and applied the methods of protein engineering to provide descriptions of protein folding pathways at atomic resolution, revolutionising our understanding of these processes.

Croonian Medal and Lecture
Professor Barry Everitt FMedSci FRS, Department of Psychology and Downing College
He has elucidated brain mechanisms of motivation and applied them to important societal issues such as drug addiction.

Royal Medal A
Professor Herbert Huppert FRS, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and King’s College
He has been at the forefront of research in fluid mechanics. As an applied mathematician he has consistently developed highly original analysis of key natural and industrial processes.

Hughes Medal
Professor Clare Grey FRS, Department of Chemistry and Pembroke College
For her pioneering work on the development and application of new characterization methodology to develop fundamental insight into how batteries, supercapacitors and fuel cells operate.

Ferrier Medal and Lecture
Professor Daniel Wolpert FMedSci FRS, Department of Engineering and Trinity College
For ground-breaking contributions to our understanding of how the brain controls movement. Using theoretical and experimental approaches he has elucidated the computational principles underlying skilled motor behaviour.

Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture
Sir David Spiegelhalter OBE FRS, Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication and Churchill College
For bringing key insights from the disciplines of statistics and probability vividly home to the public at large, and to key decision-makers, in entertaining and accessible ways, most recently through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Milner Award and Lecture
Professor Zoubin Ghahramani FRS, Department of Engineering and St John’s College
For his fundamental contributions to probabilistic machine learning.

Rosalind Franklin Award and Lecture
Professor Julia Gog, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and Queens’ College
For her achievements in the field of mathematics and her impactful project proposal with its potential for a long-term legacy.

Royal Society Mullard Award
Professor Stephen Jackson FMedSci FRS, Gurdon Institute, Department of Biochemistry
For pioneering research on DNA repair mechanisms and synthetic lethality that led to the discovery of olaparib, which has reached blockbuster status for the treatment of ovarian and breast cancers.

̽��ֱ��full list of medals and awards, including their description and past winners can be found on the Royal Society website: https://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/awards/

Adapted from a Royal Society press release.

A leading pioneer in the field of protein engineering, Sir Alan Fersht FMedSci FRS, has been named as the 2020 winner of the world’s oldest scientific prize, the Royal Society’s prestigious Copley Medal.

Yes

Tackling COVID-19: Dr Sander van der Linden

jg533 — Thu, 14 May 2020 07:46:09 +0000

This article is part of a series in which we speak to some of the many Cambridge researchers tackling COVID-19. For other articles about our latest COVID-19-related research, click here.

I normally work in the Old Cavendish Laboratory, where I run the Cambridge Social Decision-Making lab. It’s a historic landmark where Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss the tour groups pausing below my window every morning. I work from my home in Cambridge now, around the corner from Midsummer Common. ̽��ֱ��cows are out this time of year, so we often exchange theories about the pandemic when I go for a walk. They seem mostly skeptical, uninterested, and refuse to wear masks, but we get along well otherwise.

In my view, the pandemic is as much a behavioural as a biological problem. We need a vaccine, but we also need people around the world to coordinate their behaviours to help slow the spread of the virus. ̽��ֱ��required behavioural changes range from the relatively mundane, such as frequent hand washing, to making costly personal sacrifices by self-isolating at home. This necessitates knowledge about human cooperation as well as economic and social inequalities. Models that attempt to forecast the benefits of widespread social distancing and self-isolation also depend on accurate estimates of human behaviour under various conditions.

Behavioural science is also relevant in terms of how to communicate the science to the wider public, how to communicate uncertainty and risk, and how to protect people from the onslaught of fake news and misinformation about COVID-19. I am honoured to have been part of an effort to synthesize what behavioural science has to contribute to the pandemic, as part of a team of 40 international experts around the world. I hope that the article Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, will be useful to policy-makers.

My research looks at how humans make judgments and decisions. This could be about information, risk, societal issues, or other people. In collaboration with our partners we developed Bad News, an award-winning interactive online game. It helps inoculate players against fake news and misinformation, including fake news about COVID-19. We rely on the biomedical analogy: just as administering a weakened dose of a virus triggers the production of antibodies to confer immunity against future infection, the same can be achieved with information. By actively exposing people to severely weakened doses of the tactics used to produce fake news, people gain psychological immunity (or mental ‘antibodies’) against misinformation.

We use a large variety of methods to study human decision-making. We frequently test our interventions ‘in the wild’, for example, our study on the BBC news site tested how people react to uncertainty about scientific facts, and when ‘reality’ is not an option, we use virtual reality! So in a sense, our ability to do research has not been massively affected by the pandemic. A large chunk of it happens online using experimental and computational methods, online surveys, and ‘big data’.

Human behaviour is notoriously variable, and difficult to change and predict. I think it’s one of the biggest challenges of this pandemic. If we don’t get it right, there’s a chance the spread of the virus will pick up again as restrictions are relaxed. ̽��ֱ��constant stream of misinformation is also a major challenge. For example, concerted disinformation campaigns have the potential to undermine public willingness to vaccinate if people do not believe the vaccine is safe. In addition, several leading nations in the world have not adopted evidence-based strategies, which is a major hurdle.

I’ve been really impressed by the way the research community has come together so quickly. I’m on the management board of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, which has been able to track public opinion on COVID-19 around the world almost immediately. ̽��ֱ��Centre has pivoted many of their resources to help provide empirical data on how to best communicate evidence during the pandemic. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge press office has also been fantastic in helping researchers communicate their findings and expertise.

My own research programme has taught me the power of a proactive approach. Prevention is better than cure. People forget that this applies to psychology and communication too. For example, inoculation is all about pre-emptively protecting people from future harm, both in a biological as well as in a psychological sense. ̽��ֱ��same goes for communication of risk. Much of the response to COVID-19 was reactive, too late, and not well-prepared. One of the wonders of the human brain is our ability to simulate the future. We can start now.

When the pandemic is over, I’m looking forward to a cold beer with friends who are less than six feet away. I can’t wait to sit outside in the sun with colleagues, family, and friends, and have a good laugh again. It’s the little things in life. In the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”

Sander van der Linden is Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology and a Fellow of Churchill College. Listen to him discuss the psychological aspects of isolation, on Cambridge's Centre for Science and Policy podcast: Science, Policy & Pandemics Episode Five.

How you can support Cambridge’s COVID-19 research

“ ̽��ֱ��psychology of pandemics was not on my research agenda, but I can tell you one thing: it is now,” says Dr Sander van der Linden. As an expert in psychological and behavioural science, his research has - until recently - been focused on societal risks like climate change and misinformation. Suddenly he has a lot to contribute to the pandemic response.

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UK public ‘most concerned’ about coronavirus – more than Spain or Italy, study suggests

fpjl2 — Wed, 06 May 2020 08:22:53 +0000

A new study of public attitudes across Europe, America and Asia has found that people in the UK have the highest overall levels of concern about coronavirus – more than Italy or Spain – while those in South Korea are the least concerned.

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge conducted surveys on how people feel and think about the risk of the virus between mid-March and mid-April, across ten different countries with varying approaches to tackling the pandemic.

̽��ֱ��study, co-authored by Dr Sarah Dryhurst and Dr Claudia Schneider from the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, measured risk perception by combining people’s ratings of how prevalent, how life-threatening, and how worrying they thought the virus was.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge team also set out to uncover some of the key psychological factors behind people’s concern. ̽��ֱ��findings, based on data from 6,991 participants, are published today in the Journal of Risk Research.

“Without pharmaceutical treatment, we are relying on people changing their behaviour to put the brakes on this pandemic,” said Dr Sander van der Linden, study lead and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab.

“ ̽��ֱ��willingness to adopt protective behaviours such as frequent hand-washing or physical distancing is likely to be influenced, in part, by how risky people perceive the virus to be.”

“We think this is the first comparative evidence of how people perceive the risk of COVID-19 around the world,” he said.

In the study’s sample, Spain followed the UK for greatest public concern about coronavirus, with the US in third place. Although remaining differences were smaller, Germany came in fourth above Sweden – where the government has been less proscriptive about lockdowns – followed by Australia then Japan.

Perhaps surprisingly, Italy – the pandemic’s first European epicentre – ranked fairly low out of the ten nations, with only Mexico and South Korea having lower average risk perception scores.

However, there was little difference between many of the countries, with risk perception generally high in all nations.

̽��ֱ��researchers also found that greater concern about the virus did indeed correlate with taking a number of preventative public health measures such as increased hand washing or wearing facemasks.

Men typically had lower levels of concern about the virus than women, despite the fact that, on average, COVID-19 appears to be considerably more dangerous to men if contracted.

̽��ֱ��significance of different psychological factors varied between countries. However, some attitudes and traits consistently indicated increased perception of risk in people across several countries.

For example, across all nations, those who suspected they had already contracted the virus perceived a higher risk from it. In several countries, people who got information on the virus from friends or family also perceived higher risk.

“Prosociality”, or a belief in the importance of doing things for the benefit of others, related to heightened concern about the virus in nine of the ten countries. In fact, it emerged as one of the most important psychological factors of risk perception internationally.

“Appealing to prosocial motives can be an important part of solving social dilemmas during pandemics,” said Dr Claudia Schneider, co-author of the study. “For example, ‘clap for our carers’ campaigns help us to publicly signal prosocial intentions through shared sentiment and the spread of positive emotions.”

By contrast, what the researchers term an “individualistic worldview” – inferred from a belief that governments meddle too much in our lives – related to lower levels of concern about the risks of coronavirus.

While this worldview is famously associated with certain US states, it was also significantly related to risk perception in several other countries, such as Germany, Sweden, Spain, Japan and the UK.

“ ̽��ֱ��perception that the government is restricting people’s freedom might cause psychological pushback among some people with strong individualistic worldviews,” said Dr Sarah Dryhurst, co-author of the study. “We see this expressed in anti-lockdown protests in the US and Germany, for example.”

Political ideology was less significant for risk perception overall, although a more conservative outlook was associated with lower levels of concern in the UK and the US.

“Governments are asking people to stay inside and give up their livelihoods in order to protect their societies. It’s important we understand how people react to the information and instructions they receive about the virus,” said Dr Alexandra Freeman, Director of the Winton Centre.

“We’ve made all our data publicly available to help institutions and journalists communicate better. We hope that this work can help the global effort to react appropriately to this threat,” she said.

Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, co-author and Chairman of the Winton Centre, added: "As we move towards relaxing the lockdown, it is important to understand both the overall levels of concern, and the variability between people in their attitudes to the virus and the counter-measures taken. This evidence suggests that different worldviews need to be taken into account."

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“Risk perception” among UK population greater than in nine other countries surveyed for latest research.

Appealing to prosocial motives can be an important part of solving social dilemmas during pandemics

Claudia Schneider

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How different countries are reacting to the COVID-19 risk and their governments’ responses

fpjl2 — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 12:52:31 +0000

Researchers at the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication spent the weekend surveying people's attitudes towards the risk of coronavirus, and their governments’ reactions.

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.

How you can support Cambridge's COVID-19 research effort

Donate to support COVID-19 research at Cambridge

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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Opinion: Climate change, pandemics, biodiversity loss – no country is sufficiently prepared

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 14:53:32 +0000

There’s little that the left and the right agree on these days. But surely one thing is beyond question: that national governments must protect citizens from the gravest threats and risks they face. Although our government, wherever we are in the world, may not be able to save everyone from a pandemic or protect people and infrastructure from a devastating cyberattack, surely they have thought through these risks in advance and have well-funded, adequately practiced plans?

Unfortunately, the answer to this question is an emphatic no.

Not all policy areas are subject to this challenge. National defence establishments, for example, often have the frameworks and processes that facilitate policy decisions for extreme risks. But more often than not, and on more issues than not, governments fail to imagine how worst-case scenarios can come about – much less plan for them. Governments have never been able to divert significant attention from the here and happening to the future and uncertain.

A recent report published by Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk argues that this needs to change. If even only one catastrophic risk manifests – whether through nature, accident or intention – it would harm human security, prosperity and potential on a scale never before seen in human history. There are concrete steps governments can take to address this, but they are currently being neglected.

̽��ֱ��risks that we face today are many and varied. They include:

Tipping points in the environmental system due to climate change or mass biodiversity loss.
Malicious, or accidentally harmful, use of artificial intelligence.
Malicious use of, or unintended consequences from, advanced biotechnologies.
A natural or engineered global pandemic.
Intentional, miscalculated, or accidental use of nuclear weapons.

Each of these global catastrophic risks could cause unprecedented harm. A pandemic, for example, could speed around our hyper-connected world, threatening hundreds of millions – potentially billions – of people. In this globalised world of just-in-time delivery and global supply chains, we are more vulnerable to disruption than ever before. And the secondary effects of instability, mass migration and unrest may be comparably destructive. If any of these events occurred, we would pass on a diminished, fearful and wounded world to our descendants.

So how did we come to be so woefully unprepared, and what, if anything, can our governments do to make us safer?

A modern problem

Dealing with catastrophic risks on a global scale is a particularly modern problem. ̽��ֱ��risks themselves are a result of modern trends in population, information, politics, warfare, technology, climate and environmental damage.

These risks are a problem for governments that are set up around traditional threats. Defence forces were built to protect from external menaces, mostly foreign invading forces. Domestic security agencies became increasingly significant in the 20th century, as threats to sovereignty and security – such as organised crime, domestic terrorism, extreme political ideologies and sophisticated espionage – increasingly came from inside national borders.

Unfortunately, these traditional threats are no longer the greatest concern today. Risks arising from the domains of technology, environment, biology and warfare don’t fall neatly into government’s view of the world. Instead, they are varied, global, complex and catastrophic.

As a result, these risks are currently not a priority for governments. Individually, they are quite unlikely. And such low-probability high-impact events are difficult to mobilise a response to. In addition, their unprecedented nature means we haven’t yet been taught a sharp lesson in the need to prepare for them. Many of the risks could take decades to arise, which conflicts with typical political time scales.

Governments, and the bureaucracies that support them, are not positioned to handle what’s coming. They don’t have the right incentives or skill sets to manage extreme risks, at least beyond natural disasters and military attacks. They are often stuck on old problems, and struggle to be agile to what’s new or emerging. Risk management as a practice is not a government’s strength. And technical expertise, especially on these challenging problem sets, tends to reside outside government.

Perhaps most troubling is the fact that any attempt to tackle these risks is not nationally confined: it would benefit everyone in the world – and indeed future generations. When the benefits are dispersed and the costs immediate, it is tempting to coast and hope others will pick up the slack.

Time to act

Despite these daunting challenges, governments have the capability and responsibility to increase national readiness for extreme events.

̽��ֱ��first step is for governments to improve their own understanding of the risks. Developing a better understanding of extreme risks is not as simple as conducting better analysis or more research. It requires a whole-of-government framework with explicit strategies for understanding the types of risks we face, as well as their causes, impacts, probabilities and time scales.

With this plan, governments can chart more secure and prosperous futures for their citizens, even if the most catastrophic possibilities never come to pass.

Governments around the world are already working towards improving their understanding of risk. For example, the United Kingdom is a world leader in applying an all-hazard national risk assessment process. This assessment ensures governments understand all the hazards – natural disasters, pandemics, cyber attacks, space weather, infrastructure collapse – that their country faces. It helps local first responders to prepare for the most damaging scenarios.

Finland’s Committee for the Future, meanwhile, is an example of a parliamentary select committee that injects a dose of much-needed long-term thinking into domestic policy. It acts as a think tank for futures, science and technology policy and provides advice on legislation coming forward that has an impact on Finland’s long-range future.

And Singapore’s Centre for Strategic Futures is leading in “horizon scanning”, a set of methods that helps people think about the future and potential scenarios. This is not prediction. It’s thinking about what might be coming around the corner, and using that knowledge to inform policy.

But these actions are few and far between.

We need all governments to put more energy towards understanding the risks, and acting on that knowledge. Some countries may even need grand changes to their political and economic systems, a level of change that typically only occurs after a catastrophe. We cannot – and do not have to – wait for these structural changes or for a global crisis. Forward-leaning leaders must act now to better understand the risks that their countries face.

Gabriel Recchia, Research Associate, Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, and Haydn Belfield, Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

This article is republished from ̽��ֱ��Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Two Cambridge risk researchers discuss how national governments are still stuck on "old problems", and run through the things that should be keeping our leaders awake at night.

Risks arising from the domains of technology, environment, biology and warfare don’t fall neatly into government’s view of the world

Gabriel Recchia and Haydn Belfield

Markus Spiske

Banner from a climate strike in Erlangen, Germany

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