Portraying the opinion of the scientific community in media debates

Consider the case of GM foods or Climate Change.  I want to know why the public assess risk differently from scientists and other experts.  It is a problem with many components of which I will only investigate one: how is the balance of ‘opinion’ within science, communicated to the public?  The norm for televised discussions or debates is to have on one side of the table the individual representing the consensus position and on the other side an individual representing the non consensus position.  I don’t believe that this format communicates to the public an accurate reflection of what scientists think.

Take for example the recent IPCC report which states with 95% confidence that humans are the ‘dominant cause’ of global warming.  At the most basic level, I believe, that having one scientist advocating the consensus position and one individual representing the 5% of uncertainty in a debate leaves the public with the impression that something akin to equal weight should be given to each side of the debate.   I would like to see the physical set up of the discussion reflect the actual balance of confidence (which in turn reflects the evidence).  This could be achieved by giving 95% of the airtime to the consensus position but I would not advocate this approach as it would limits the opportunity of the ‘non-consensus’ position to challenge the consensus position.  I am all in favour of the consensus position being scientifically challenged, it is through challenging and improving many generations of old scientific ideas and models that we arrived at the scientific understanding we have today.  Instead I would be in favour of a more literal representation of the balance of opinion.

In the instance of the 95% confidence level, for every individual adopting the ‘non-conventional’ stance I would like to see 19 individuals on the other side of the table.  The 19 would be represented by one spokesperson, the only individual who would talk on behalf of that side of the debate.  The other 18 could show their support by raising their hands in support of the speaker or, at the end of a speaker’s statement by saying ‘I agree’.  This, I believe would much better represent the balance of opinion.  It would be necessary to ensure that there is no sense of bullying which I believe the single spokesperson would ensure.  If the person representing the non-conventional approach wished to have another person on their side of the table then they could, as long as 19 people joined the other side of the table.

As a caveat, I recognise that the 95% confidence does is not the view of 100% of scientists, 97% of scientists support the IPCC report.  Therefore, a better representation would be if the stance that humans are responsible for global warming had 95% x 97% (which equals 92.15%) representation.

So far this blog has dealt with an issue of confidence (a measure of scientists’ confidence in their model).  In this case it is not that 95% of scientists 100% hold stance ‘A’ and 5% hold stance ’B’ which actually makes it difficult to represent as all scientists who support the IPCC have some degree of uncertainty, it is not that 5% disagree with the others.  It is simpler when the question is framed such that each scientist takes a position 100%, for example if the debate was centered on the question ‘are the ecological risks posed by GM technologies outweighed by the benefits they offer?’. The same set up could be used with proportional representation of scientific opinion for a debate centering on this question

This blog is just from off of the top of my head but proportional (physical) representation of the opinion of the scientific community makes intuitive sense to me.  If you have any criticisms then please do leave them below.

Thanks