Who doesn’t love a good magician? Yes, they can be a bit cheesy at times, but a good one can make you believe that they actually do have magical powers. Of course, the truth is far more mundane. Despite appearances, these folk are not supernatural, they are just masters of misdirection. If you want to get all sciency about it, the trickery relies upon the fact that we don’t notice what we aren’t paying attention to, and so the magician makes sure that we are paying attention to the wrong thing. A good magician can do this so subtly that we are not aware that our focus of attention is being manipulated. It’s not so much that they are being dishonest with their audience; they are just taking advantage of our inability to process all of the information in real time. It’s an inability for which we must blame evolution, since natural selection has favoured those with an ability to focus their attention.

But you don’t have to buy tickets for a cabaret act in order to experience the wonders of misdirection. It surrounds you everywhere you go. Just ask the behavioural scientists and they will tell you just how easy it is to influence the decisions of we poor, intuitive thinkers with our cognitive biases. What is far less appreciated, however, is that even within the realm of scientific research, where analytical thinking is the eel’s eyebrows, much can still be achieved in terms of public misdirection, and it doesn’t require scientific malpractice or outright deception. But whilst this has always been appreciated by your average climate sceptic, it has taken until now for a pair of philosophy professors to draw the rest of the world’s attention to this important phenomenon.

Earlier this year, a paper appeared in Philosophy of Science (the ‘Official Journal of the Philosophy of Science Association’) highlighting the problem. The abstract reads:

There are myriad techniques industry actors use to shape the public understanding of science. While a naive view might assume these techniques typically involve fraud or outright deception, the truth is more nuanced. This paper analyzes industrial distraction, a common technique where industry actors fund and share research that is accurate, often high-quality, but nonetheless misleading on important matters of fact. This involves reshaping causal understanding of phenomena with distracting information.

The headline example offered by the paper is that of Coca-Cola, who funded a great deal of legitimate and high quality research establishing the health benefits of exercise, thereby distracting attention away from the health problems associated with their own product. No one was suggesting that there was any fraud or outright deception involved, just a very subtle but effective sleight of hand. The paper continues with much talk about the tobacco industry and what they had got up to in the past (cue Oreskes and Conway). Predictably enough, it isn’t too long before the climate sceptics also appear within the paper’s crosshairs:

Consider the recent transition from fossil fuels to wind power, intended to prevent the harms of global warming. The oil and gas industry spent decades obfuscating the link between fossil fuels and global warming, but their ability to plausibly do so is waning (Oreskes and Conway 2011). Instead, a number of prominent Republican lawmakers in the United States—backed by powerful oil and gas interests—have blamed offshore wind turbines for the deaths of whales (Hu Reference Hu2023).

The paper goes on to explain:

Legitimate scientists are indeed worried about impacts of these installations on cetaceans, and have produced studies of these impacts (Quintana-Rizzo et al. Reference Quintana-Rizzo, Leiter, Cole, Hagbloom, Knowlton, Nagelkirk, Brien, Khan, Henry, Duley, Crowe, Mayo and Kraus2021; Thompson et al. Reference Thompson, David Lusseau, Simmons, Rusin and Bailey2010). But their worries are being shared cynically to distract from the more important benefits of wind energy. Others connected to the Republican party, and funded by oil and gas, have emphasized the impacts of wind turbines on birds, despite evidence of fossil fuel’s much more serious impacts on bird life (Katovich Reference Katovich2023; Sovacool Reference Sovacool2013; Bateman et al. Reference Bateman, Chad Wilsey and Joanna Wu2020).

I don’t wish to argue the rights and wrongs of the impacts being referred to above (these are topics discussed elsewhere, such as here and here). Instead, what I want to do is clarify the real nature of the misdirection we are dealing with here. Whilst the paper chooses to feature examples of ‘industrial distraction’ allegedly perpetrated by climate sceptics, it distracts attention away from the many examples in which sleight of hand is clearly used by climate scientists and activists alike. The paper is in many respects perfectly sound in its description of the phenomenon (I particularly like its use of Bayesian causal networks to demonstrate how the reshaping of causal understanding works), and yet through its choice of examples it is, to quote its own abstract, “reshaping causal understanding of phenomena with distracting information.”

To illustrate that point, I refer once more to the important observations made by climate scientist Patrick T. Brown, when he commented upon the nature of published research quantifying the causation of wildfires:

I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.

Quantification is, of course, the key issue here. A causal model relating to wildfires should include both climatic and non-climatic causations, and quantitative research has to cover all elements of the model. By focusing entirely upon the quantification of climatic causations we end up ‘reshaping causal understanding of phenomena with distracting information.” As Brown put it himself:

To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.

The dearth of published papers quantifying the non-climatic causations alongside the climatic ones bears out Brown’s accusation, and yet, rather than accepting that Brown’s observations provide a perfect example of endemic ‘industrial distraction’ within a particular branch of climate science, the reaction was one of hysterical dismissal, as if the very idea that sound but incomplete research could ever be a feature of climate science. And the really galling thing is that the very same people who were frothing at the mouth to hear Brown speak, would no doubt cheer from the side-lines, enthusiastically waving their tiny ‘No planet B’ flags, after reading the Philosophy of Science paper.

The reality is there is barely a single example in which climate change, as a causation of environmental impact, is not embroiled with other non-climatic causations. And yet, time and again, it is the climate change impact that is emphasised in reports. We see it in wildfire causation, in which no attempt is made to quantify the impact resulting from the deterioration of forest management practices or the reduction of fire protection assets (or indeed trends in arson and the increased human/forest boundary). We see it in flooding, in which the impacts of deforestation are not quantified alongside those of climate change. We see it in loss of species, in which habitat loss is mentioned in passing but too often is not treated as the primary causation. We see it in heat-related excess mortality, the numbers for which are forever thrust on the front pages with nary a mention of the much greater cold-related mortality rates. In fact, much of the website you are now on is devoted to the exposure of the extent to which ‘industrial distraction’ aligns with the focus of climate research and also skews the reporting of the science. And yet when a couple of philosophy professors finally suss that such subtleties as research focus can distort causal narratives, they can’t find a single example to support the sceptic’s case!

Quantified causal models provide a bedrock for scientific understanding. But one should never forget that they are just that: models. They are a map of the landscape rather than the landscape itself. As such, they provide a map whose contours are formed by mounds of evidence. Furthermore, the heights of these mounds are just as much a reflection of the effort expended in evidence collection as they are a faithful representation of the territory; a level of effort that will usually be determined by an explorer’s agenda. As I explained many moons ago:

But a word of warning here. The evidential terrain is not the territory – it is the map. Furthermore, it is a map that has been drawn up by explorers who may not have visited all areas, and so vital high-ground may be missing. It is easy to be confident in a homespun proposition if one steadfastly stays at home.

This appreciation of the concepts not only predates the revelations of our two philosophy professors, it is also one that offers an insight that is much less value-laden, since it does not require the presence of cynicism. So-called industrial distraction can indeed be a conscious intent, but it can also simply be the inevitable but unintended outcome of curiosity married to a particular goal. As such, no lobby group should be singled out as being uniquely guilty or adept. Unfortunately, the Philosophy of Science paper does exactly that. So whilst being a paper about industrial distraction, it simultaneously serves as being one of the worst examples of the phenomenon that I have come across in a long, long time. Which is a shame but I have to say, in view of the current state of academia, not at all surprising.