These "Concerned Scientists" posts address a recent viewpoint article in the journal BioScience, World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice (2017), in terms of how effectively it conveys its message to climate change skeptics. No, that’s not me. It’s those members of the public the authors are trying to reach. They’re trying to change minds, convince people that climate change is not only real but that it's potentially catastrophic and serious action is urgent.
In the first post in this series, I cited research findings that heavy-handed messages tend to backfire. That is, laying it on thick is likely to trigger resistance and motivate counterarguments. As Flanagin and Metzger (2007) put it:
People tend to discount information from sources with obvious persuasive intent.... messages that exist in an online context where explicit persuasive intent may be present are subject to lower credibility assessments, perhaps as a result of higher scrutiny or skepticism.
But even with obvious “persuasive intent”, a message may be accepted if the recipient of said message trusts the source of information. If trust is low, however, the harder you try, the less they’re going to believe you. Bottom line: trust is key to getting a message across.
What is trust? Trust is a standing decision to "give someone else the benefit of the doubt” (Rahn & Transue, 1998, p. 543). Trust in a source of information doesn’t correlate with general trust in people, though: it’s quite specific to what a person thinks about that particular source, whether the “communicator demonstrates competence and honesty by conveying accurate, objective, and complete information” (Renn and Levine, 1991, p. 179). If you don't trust a source of information, you'll likely greet its communiques with a degree of scrutiny and skepticism.
Enough of the preliminaries. Onward to World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice. My process will be to Red Flag wording likely to undermine trust in a skeptical reader.
Red Flag #1: that the article has "15,364 scientist signatories from 184 countries". To a skeptic, this is an obvious attempt to overwhelm resistance and so invites resistance - followed by higher scrutiny. Who exactly are those 15,364 scientists? What were the qualifications to be a signatory? How many signatories had expert knowledge on anything in the document?
Actually, the homepage of the Alliance of World Scientists lets us know that the bar is rather low for endorsing the article. To quote:
We invite all scientists to endorse this global environmental article…If you are a scientist from any scientific discipline (e.g. ecology, medicine, economics, etc.), we invite you to endorse our Viewpoint article … In doing so, you will be included in the full list of scientists who have endorsed this article and 15,000+ scientists from 184 countries who signed the article before the publication deadline on Oct. 23, 2017. Before endorsing, we ask that you view our 1,000-word article by clicking “Read the Article” tab below (the text can be read in 6 minutes). When you click “Endorse the Article” and add your name, you will be indicating that you generally agree with our article, helping get this message to world leaders… When you endorse the scientists’ warning article, you will have the option of including your email address for occasional communication or additional collaboration as part of the AWS.
So there is no vetting process for endorsement. No checking if the "scientists" are indeed who they say they are, no way to tell if they are qualified in any way to endorse this specific article. They aren't even required to provide an email address! Granted, endorsing and signing aren't the same thing, but the AWS website certainly makes it sound like the main difference is a matter of meeting a publication deadline and not of qualifications.
If you were a climate change skeptic and knew the truth about the "scientists" behind this article, would you be more or less likely to embrace its message? I thought so.
Next: Looking at the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity (1992), which the 2017 article presents as its worthy predecessor.
References:
Flanagin, A. J. and M. J. Metzger (2007). "The role of site features, user attributes, and information verification behaviors on the perceived credibility of web-based information." New Media & Society 9(2): 319-342.
Rahn, W. M., & Transue, J. E. (1998). Social trust and value change: The decline of social capital in American youth, 1976-1995. Political Psychology, 19, 545-565.
Renn, O., & Levine, D. (1991). Trust and credibility in risk communication. In R. E. Kasperson & P. J. M. Stallen (Eds.), Communicating risks to the public (pp. 175-218). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic.
Ripple, William J. et al (2017) World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice, BioScience, 67 (12), 1026–1028, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix125