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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, Cautionary Tales listeners, Tim Harford here, I have

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Speaker 1: some good news followed by a treat. The good news

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Speaker 1: is that, after long months in the making, the new

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Speaker 1: mega season of Cautionary Tales is about to appear right

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Speaker 1: here on this feed. Fourteen episodes of fiasco and catastrophe,

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Speaker 1: of nerdy insights and heroic failures, and occasionally, not too often,

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Speaker 1: a happy ending. There are murderers, idiots and heroes. There

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Speaker 1: are fraudsters and fighters and whistleblowers. There are gamblers and

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Speaker 1: gamers and geeks galore, all played by a stellar cast

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Speaker 1: of actors, so stellar in fact, that I'm still pinching

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Speaker 1: myself and I'm looking forward to revealing their names very soon.

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Speaker 1: I loved writing this series, and I really hope that

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Speaker 1: you're going to love listening to it, starting weekly on

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Speaker 1: the twenty sixth of February, and now the treat. Loyal

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Speaker 1: listeners may know that my new book, The Data Detective

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Speaker 1: has just been released in the US and Canada. My publishers,

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Speaker 1: Riverhead Books, have kindly agreed to let me share with

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Speaker 1: you the final chapter of the audiobook, in which I

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Speaker 1: reveal the golden rule of thinking about numbers in the news.

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Speaker 1: I've been so pleased with The Data Detective. The international

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Speaker 1: edition was called How to Make the World That Up

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Speaker 1: and was a number one business bestseller in the UK.

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Speaker 1: The Data Detective is a book about how to think

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Speaker 1: clearly about the world by being wiser about statistics and

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Speaker 1: wiser about ourselves and our cognitive biases. In it, I

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Speaker 1: offer ten simple rules to help you be calmer and

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Speaker 1: smarter as you scroll through social media or scan the headlines,

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Speaker 1: and plenty of stories too. The book is available wherever

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Speaker 1: books are sold, and so as the audio book read

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Speaker 1: by yours truly. I hope you like the audiobook extract

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Speaker 1: you're about to hear, and if you do, look out

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Speaker 1: for The Data Detective book, ebook and audiobook, and please

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Speaker 1: spread the word the golden rule be curious. I can

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Speaker 1: think of nothing an audience won't understand. The only problem

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Speaker 1: is to interest them. Once they're interested, they understand anything

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Speaker 1: in the world. Orson wells. I've laid down ten statistical

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Speaker 1: commandments in this book. First, we should learn to stop

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Speaker 1: and notice our emotional reaction to a claim, rather than

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Speaker 1: accepting or rejecting it because of how it makes us feel. Second,

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Speaker 1: we should look for ways to combine the bird's eye

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Speaker 1: statistical perspective with the worm's eye view from personal experience. Third,

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Speaker 1: we should look at the labels on the data we're

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Speaker 1: being given and ask if we understand what's really being described. Fourth,

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Speaker 1: we should look for comparisons and context, putting any claim

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Speaker 1: into perspective. Fifth, we should look behind the statistics, at

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Speaker 1: where they came from and what other data might have

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Speaker 1: vanished into obscurity. Sixth, we should ask who is missing

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Speaker 1: from the data we're being shown, and whether our conclusions

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Speaker 1: might differ if they were included. Seventh, we should ask

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Speaker 1: tough questions about algorithms and the big data sets that

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Speaker 1: drive them, recognizing that without intelligent openness, eight cannot be trusted. Eighth,

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Speaker 1: we should pay more attention to the bedrock of official

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Speaker 1: statistics and the sometimes heroic statisticians who protect it. Ninth

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Speaker 1: we should look under the surface of any beautiful graph

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Speaker 1: or chart, and tenth we should keep an open mind,

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Speaker 1: asking how we might be mistaken and whether the facts

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Speaker 1: have changed. I realize that having ten commandments is something

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Speaker 1: of a cliche, and in truth, they're not commandments so

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Speaker 1: much as rules of thumb or habits of mind that

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Speaker 1: I've acquired the hard way as I've gone along. You

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Speaker 1: might find them worth a try yourself when you come

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Speaker 1: across a statistical claim of particular interest to you. Of course,

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Speaker 1: I don't expect you to run personally through the checklist

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Speaker 1: with every claim you see in the media. Who has

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Speaker 1: the time for that they can be useful in forming

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Speaker 1: a preliminary assessment of your new source? Is the journalist

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Speaker 1: making an effort to define terms, provide context, assess sources.

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Speaker 1: The less these habits of mind are in evidence, the

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Speaker 1: louder alarm bell should ring. Ten rules of thumb is

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Speaker 1: still a lot for anyone to remember, so perhaps I

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Speaker 1: should try to make things simpler. I realize that these

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Speaker 1: suggestions have a common thread, a golden rule. If you like,

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Speaker 1: be curious, look deeper, and ask questions. It is a

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Speaker 1: lot to ask, but I hope that it's not too much.

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Speaker 1: At the start of this book, I begged you not

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Speaker 1: to abandon the idea that we can understand the world

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Speaker 1: by looking at it with the help of statistics. I

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Speaker 1: believe we can and should be able to trust that

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Speaker 1: numbers can give us answers to important questions. But of

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Speaker 1: course nullius inverber we shouldn't trust without also asking questions.

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Speaker 1: The philosopher and Norah O'Neill once declared well placed trust

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Speaker 1: grows out of active inquiry rather than blind acceptance. That

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Speaker 1: seems right. If we want to be able to trust

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Speaker 1: the world around us, we need to show an interest

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Speaker 1: and ask a few basic questions. And despite all the

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Speaker 1: confusions of the modern world, it has never been easier

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Speaker 1: to find answers to those questions. Curiosity, it turns out,

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Speaker 1: can be a remarkably powerful thing. About a decade ago,

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Speaker 1: a Yale University researcher Dan Kahan showed students some footage

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Speaker 1: of a protest outside an unidentified building. Some of the

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Speaker 1: students were told that it was a pro life demonstration

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Speaker 1: outside an abortion clinic. Others were informed that it was

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Speaker 1: a gay rights demonstration outside an army recruitment office. The

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Speaker 1: students were asked some factual questions. Was it a peaceful protest?

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Speaker 1: Did the protesters try to intimidate people passing by? Did

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Speaker 1: they scream or shout? Did they block the entrance to

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Speaker 1: the building. The answers people gave depended on the political

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Speaker 1: identities they embraced. Conservative students who believed they were looking

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Speaker 1: at a demonstration against abortion, saw no problems with a protest,

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Speaker 1: no abuse, no violence, no obstruction. Students on the left

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Speaker 1: who thought they were looking at a gay rights protest

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Speaker 1: reached the same conclusion the protesters had conducted themselves with

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Speaker 1: dignity and restraint. But right wing students who thought they

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Speaker 1: were looking at a gay rights demonstration reached a very

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Speaker 1: different conclusion, as did left wing students who believed they

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Speaker 1: were watching an anti abortion protest. Both these groups concluded

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Speaker 1: that the protesters had been aggressive, intimidating, and obstructive. Kahan

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Speaker 1: was studying a problem we met in the first chapter.

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Speaker 1: The way our political and cultural identity are desired to

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Speaker 1: belong to a community of like minded, right thinking people can,

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Speaker 1: on certain hot button issues, leaders to reach the conclusions

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Speaker 1: we wished to reach. Depressingly, not only do we reach

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Speaker 1: politically comfortable conclusions when parsing complex statistical claims on issues

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Speaker 1: such as climate change, we reach politically comfortable conclusions regardless

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Speaker 1: of the evidence of our own eyes. As we saw earlier,

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Speaker 1: expertise is no guarantee against this kind of motivated reasoning.

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Speaker 1: Republicans and Democrats with high levels of scientific literacy are

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Speaker 1: further apart on climate change than those with little scientific education.

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Speaker 1: The same disheartening pattern holds from nuclear power to gun

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Speaker 1: control to fracking. The more scientifically literate opponents are, the

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Speaker 1: more they disagree. The same is true for numeracy. The

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Speaker 1: greater the proficiency, the more acute the polarization, notes Kahan.

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Speaker 1: After a long and fruitless search for an antidote to tribalism,

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Speaker 1: Kahan could be forgiven for becoming jaded. Yet a few

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Speaker 1: years ago, to his surprise, Kahan and his colleagues stumbled

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Speaker 1: upon a trait that some people have and that other

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Speaker 1: people can be encouraged to develop, which inoculates us against

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Speaker 1: this toxic polarization on the most politically polluted tribal questions,

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Speaker 1: where intelligence and education fail, this trait does not. And

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Speaker 1: if you're desperately, burningly curious to know what it is, congratulations,

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Speaker 1: you may be inoculated already. Curiosity breaks the relentless pattern. Specifically,

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Speaker 1: Kahan identified scientific curiosity that's different from scientific literacy. The

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Speaker 1: two qualities are correlated, of course, but there are curious

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Speaker 1: people who know rather little about science yet and highly

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Speaker 1: trained people with little appetite to learn more. More scientifically

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Speaker 1: curious republic plans aren't further apart from Democrats on these

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Speaker 1: polarized issues. If anything, they're slightly closer together. It's important

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Speaker 1: not to exaggerate the effect. Curious Republicans and Democrats still

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Speaker 1: disagree on issues such as climate change, but the more

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Speaker 1: curious they are, the more they converge on what we

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Speaker 1: might call an evidence based view of the issues in question.

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Speaker 1: Or to put it another way, the more curious we are,

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Speaker 1: the less our tribalism seems to matter. There is little

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Speaker 1: correlation between scientific curiosity and political affiliation. Happily, there are

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Speaker 1: plenty of curious people across the political spectrum. Although the

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Speaker 1: discovery surprised Kahan, it makes sense, as we've seen one

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Speaker 1: of our most stubborn defenses against changing our minds is

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Speaker 1: that we're good at filtering out or dismissing unwelcome information.

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Speaker 1: A curious person, however, enjoys being surprised and hungers for

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Speaker 1: the unexpected. He or she will not be filtering out

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Speaker 1: surprising news because it's far too intriguing. The scientifically curious

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Speaker 1: people Kahan's team studded were originally identified with simple questions

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Speaker 1: buried in a marketing survey so that people weren't conscious

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Speaker 1: that their curiosity was being measured. One question, for example,

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Speaker 1: was how often do you read science books? Scientifically curious

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Speaker 1: people are more interested in watching a documentary about space

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Speaker 1: travel or penguins than a basketball game or a celebrity

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Speaker 1: gossip show. And they didn't just answer survey questions differently,

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Speaker 1: they also made different choices in the psychology lab. In

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Speaker 1: one experiment, participants were shown a range of headlines about

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Speaker 1: climate change and invited to pick the most interesting article

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Speaker 1: to read. There were four headlines, Two suggested climate skepticism

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Speaker 1: and two did not, two reframed as surprising, and two

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Speaker 1: were not. One scientists find still more evidence that global

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Speaker 1: warming actually slowed in last decade skeptical, unsurprising. Two scientists

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Speaker 1: report surprising evidence Arctic ice melting even faster than expected,

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Speaker 1: surprising and not skeptical. Three scientists report surprising evidence ice

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Speaker 1: increasing in Antarctic not currently contributing to sea level rise,

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Speaker 1: skeptical and surprising. Four scientists find still more evidence linking

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Speaker 1: global warming to extreme weather, neither surprising nor skeptical. Typically,

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Speaker 1: we'd expect people to reach for the article that pandered

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Speaker 1: to their prejudices. The Democrats would tend to favor a

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Speaker 1: headline that took global warming seriously, while Republicans would prefer

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Speaker 1: something with a skeptical tone. Scientifically curious people Republicans or

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Speaker 1: Democrats were different. They were happy to grab an article

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Speaker 1: which ran counter to their preconceptions as long as it

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Speaker 1: seemed surprising and fresh, and once you're actually reading the article,

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Speaker 1: there's always a chance that it might teach you something.

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Speaker 1: A surprising statistical claim is a challenge to our existing worldview.

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Speaker 1: It may provoke an emotional response, even a fearful one.

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Speaker 1: Neuroscientific studies suggest that the brain responds in much the

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Speaker 1: same anxious way to facts which threaten our preconceptions as

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Speaker 1: it does to wild animals which threaten our lives. Yet,

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Speaker 1: for someone in a curious frame of mind, in contrast,

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Speaker 1: a surprising claim need not provoke anxiety. It can be

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Speaker 1: an engaging mystery or a puzzle to solve. You're listening

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Speaker 1: to an excerpt of The Data Detective courtesy of Penguin

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Speaker 1: Random House Audio. The Data Detective is a brand new

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Speaker 1: book written and narrated by me, Tim Harford, and we'll

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Speaker 1: be back with more after this message. A curious person

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Speaker 1: might at this point have some questions. When I met

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Speaker 1: Dan Kahan, the question that was most urgent in my

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Speaker 1: mind was can we cultivate curiosity? Can we become more curious?

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Speaker 1: And can we inspire curiosity in others? There are reasons

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Speaker 1: to believe that the answers are yes. One reason, says Kahan,

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Speaker 1: is that his measure of curiosity suggests that incremental change

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Speaker 1: is possible. When he measures scientific curiosity, he doesn't find

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Speaker 1: a lump of stubbornly incurious people at one end of

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Speaker 1: the spectrum and a lump of voraciously curious people at

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Speaker 1: the other, with a yawning gap in the middle. Instead,

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Speaker 1: curiosity follows a continuous bell curve. Most people are either

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Speaker 1: moderately incurious or moderately curious. This doesn't prove that curiosity

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Speaker 1: can be cultivated. Perhaps that bell curve is cast in iron.

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Speaker 1: Yet it does at least hold out some hope that

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Speaker 1: people can be nudged a little further towards the curious

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Speaker 1: end of that curve, because no radical leap is required.

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Speaker 1: A second reason is that curiosity is often situational. In

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Speaker 1: the right place at the right time, curiosity will smolder

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Speaker 1: in any of us. Indeed, Cahan's discovery that an individual's

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Speaker 1: scientific curiosity persisted over time was a surprise to some psychologists.

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Speaker 1: They had believed with some and that there was no

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Speaker 1: such thing as a curious person, just a situation that

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Speaker 1: inspired curiosity. In fact, it does now seem that people

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Speaker 1: can tend to be curious or incurious. That does not

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Speaker 1: alter the fact that curiosity can be fueled or dampened

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Speaker 1: by context. We all have it in us to be

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Speaker 1: curious or not about different things at different times. One

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Speaker 1: thing that provokes curiosity is the sense of a gap

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Speaker 1: in our knowledge to be filled. George Lowenstein, a behavioral economist,

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Speaker 1: framed this idea in what has become known as the

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Speaker 1: information gap theory of curiosity. As Lowenstein puts it, curiosity

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Speaker 1: starts to glow when there's a gap between what we

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Speaker 1: know and what we want to know. There's a sweet

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Speaker 1: spot for curiosity. If we know nothing, we ask no questions.

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Speaker 1: If we know everything, we ask no questions. Either. Curiosity

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Speaker 1: is fueled once we know enough to know that we

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Speaker 1: do not know alas all too often we don't even

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Speaker 1: think about what we don't know. There's a beautiful little

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Speaker 1: experiment about our Incuriosity, conducted by the psychologists Leonard Rosenblitt

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Speaker 1: and Frank Kyle. They gave their experimental subjects a simple

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Speaker 1: task to look through a list of everyday objects, such

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Speaker 1: as a flush lavatory, a zip fastener, and a bicycle,

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Speaker 1: and to rate their understanding of each object on a

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Speaker 1: scale of one to seven. After people had written down

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Speaker 1: their ratings, the researchers would gently launch a devastating ambush.

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Speaker 1: They asked the subjects to elaborate. Here's a pen and paper.

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Speaker 1: They would say, please write out your explanation of a

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Speaker 1: flush lavatory in as much detail as he can by

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Speaker 1: all means include diagrams. It turns out that this task

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Speaker 1: wasn't as easy as people had thought. People stumbled struggling

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Speaker 1: to explain the details of everyday mechanisms. They had assumed

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Speaker 1: that those details would readily spring to mind, and they

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Speaker 1: did not. And to their credit, most experimental subjects realized

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Speaker 1: that they've been lying to themselves. They had felt they

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Speaker 1: understood zip fastness and lavatories, but when invited to elaborate,

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Speaker 1: they realized they didn't understand at all. When people were

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Speaker 1: asked to reconsider their previous one to seven rating, they

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Speaker 1: marked themselves down, acknowledging that their knowledge had been shallower

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Speaker 1: than they'd realized. Rosen Blitt and Kyle called this the

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Speaker 1: illusion of explanatory depth. The illusion of explanatory depth is

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Speaker 1: a curiosity killer and a trap. If we think we

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Speaker 1: already understand, why go deeper? Why ask questions? It is

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Speaker 1: striking that it was so easy to get people to

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Speaker 1: pull back from their earlier confidence. All it took was

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Speaker 1: to get them to reflect on the gaps in their knowledge, and,

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Speaker 1: as Lowenstein argued, gaps in knowledge fuel curiosity. There is

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Speaker 1: more at stake here than zip fastness. Another team of researchers,

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Speaker 1: led by Philip Fernbach and Steve Sloman, authors of The

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Speaker 1: Knowledge Illusion, adapted the flush laboratory question to ask about

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Speaker 1: policies such as a cap and trade system for carbon emissions,

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Speaker 1: a flat tax, or a proposal to impose unilateral sanctions

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Speaker 1: on Iran. The researchers importantly didn't ask people whether or

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Speaker 1: not they were in favor of or against these policies.

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Speaker 1: There's plenty of prior evidence that such questions would lead

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Speaker 1: people to dig in. Instead, Fernbach and his colleagues just

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Speaker 1: ask them the same simple question, Please, rate your understanding

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Speaker 1: on a scale of one to seven. Then the same

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Speaker 1: devastating follow up, please elaborate, tell us exactly what unilateral

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Speaker 1: sanctions are and how a flat tax works, and the

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Speaker 1: same thing happened. People said, yes, they basically understood these

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Speaker 1: policies fairly well. Then when prompted to explain, the illusion

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Speaker 1: was dispelled, they realized that perhaps they didn't really understand

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Speaker 1: at all. More striking was that when the illusion faded,

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Speaker 1: political polarization also started to fade. People who would have

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Speaker 1: instinctively described their political opponents as wicked and who would

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Speaker 1: have gone to the barricades to defend their own ideas

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Speaker 1: tended to be less strident when forced to admit to

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Speaker 1: themselves that they didn't fully understand what it was that

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Speaker 1: they were so passionate about in the first place. The

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Speaker 1: experiment influenced actions as well as words. Search has found

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Speaker 1: that people became less likely to give money to lobby

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Speaker 1: groups or other organizations which supported the positions they had

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Speaker 1: once favored. It's a rather beautiful discovery in a world

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Speaker 1: where so many people seem to hold extreme views with

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Speaker 1: strident certainty. You can deflate somebody's over confidence and moderate

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Speaker 1: their politics simply by asking them to explain the details.

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Speaker 1: Next time you're in a politically heated argument, try asking

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Speaker 1: your interlocutor not to justify herself, but simply to explain

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Speaker 1: the policy in question. She wants to introduce a universal

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Speaker 1: basic income, or a flat tax, or a points based

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Speaker 1: immigration system or medicare for all. Okay, that's interesting. So

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Speaker 1: what exactly does she mean by that? She may learn

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Speaker 1: something as she tries to explain. So may you and

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Speaker 1: you may both find that you understand a little less

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Speaker 1: and agree a little more than you had assumed. Figuring

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Speaker 1: out the workings of a flush lavatory, or understanding what

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Speaker 1: a cap and trade scheme really is, can require some effort.

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Speaker 1: One way to encourage that effort is to embarrass somebody

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Speaker 1: by innocently inviting an overconfident answer on a scale of

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Speaker 1: one to seven. But another kinder way is to engage

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Speaker 1: their interest. As Orson Wells said, once people are interested,

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Speaker 1: they can understand anything in the world. How to engage

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Speaker 1: people's interest is neither a new problem nor an intractable one. Novelists, screenwriters,

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Speaker 1: and comedians have been figuring out this craft for as

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Speaker 1: long as they've existed. They know that we love mysteries,

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Speaker 1: are drawn in by sympathetic characters, enjoy the arc of

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Speaker 1: a good story, and will stick around for anything that

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Speaker 1: makes us laugh, and scientific evidence suggests that Orson Wells

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Speaker 1: was absolutely right. For example, studies in which people were

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Speaker 1: asked to read narratives and non narrative texts found that

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Speaker 1: they zipped through the narrative at twice the speed and

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Speaker 1: recalled twice as much information later. As for humor, consider

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Speaker 1: the case of the comedian Stephen Colbert's civics lesson. Before

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Speaker 1: his current role as the host of The Late Show,

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Speaker 1: Colbert presented The Colbert Report in character as a blowhard

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Speaker 1: right wing commentator. In March twenty eleven, Colbert began a

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Speaker 1: long running joke in which he explored the role of

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Speaker 1: money in US politics. He decided that he needed to

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Speaker 1: set up a political action committee a pack to raise

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Speaker 1: funds in case he decided to run for president. I

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Speaker 1: clearly need a pack, but I have no idea what

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Speaker 1: packs do, he explained to a friendly expert on air.

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Speaker 1: Over the course of the next few weeks, Colbert had

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Speaker 1: packs and super PACs and five or one se fours

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Speaker 1: explained to him from where they could accept donations up

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Speaker 1: to what limits, with what transparency requirements, and to spend

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Speaker 1: on what He was to discover that the right combination

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Speaker 1: of fundraising structures could be used to raise almost any

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Speaker 1: amount of money for almost any purpose with almost no disclosure. Clearly,

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Speaker 1: Sea fours have created an unprecedented, unaccountable, untraceable cash tsunami

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Speaker 1: that will infect every corner of the next election, he mused,

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Speaker 1: and I feel like an idiot for not having one.

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Speaker 1: Colbert later learned how to dissolve his fundraising structures and

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Speaker 1: keep the money without notifying the taxman by repeatedly returning

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Speaker 1: to the topic and in character demanding advice as to

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Speaker 1: how to abuse the electoral rules. Colbert explored campaign finance

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Speaker 1: in far more depth than any news report could have

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Speaker 1: dreamed of doing. Did all of this actually improve viewers

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Speaker 1: knowledge of the issue, It seems so. A team including

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Speaker 1: Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who also worked with Dan Kohan on

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Speaker 1: the Scientific Curiosity Research, used the Colbert storyline to investigate

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Speaker 1: how much people learned amid the laughter. They found that

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Speaker 1: watching the Colbert report was correlated with increased knowledge about

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Speaker 1: super pacts and five O, one C four groups. How

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Speaker 1: they worked what they could legally do. Reading a newspaper

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Speaker 1: or listening to talk radio also helped, but the effect

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Speaker 1: of the Colbert Report was much bigger. One day a

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Speaker 1: week of watching Colbert taught people as much about campaign

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Speaker 1: finance as four days a week reading a newspaper, for example,

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Speaker 1: or five extra years of schooling. Of course, this is

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Speaker 1: a measure of correlation, not causation. It's possible that the

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Speaker 1: people who were already interested in super PACs tuned in

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Speaker 1: to Colbert to hear him wisecrack about them, or perhaps

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Speaker 1: politics junkies know about super PACs and also love watching Colbert.

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Speaker 1: But I suspect the show did cause the growing understanding

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Speaker 1: because Colbert really did go deep into the details, and

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Speaker 1: large audiences stuck with him because he was funny. You

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Speaker 1: don't have to be one of America's best loved comedians

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Speaker 1: to pull off this trick. The NPR podcast Planet Money

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Speaker 1: Wants shed light on the details of the global economy

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Speaker 1: by designing, manufacturing, and importing several thousand T shirts. This

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Speaker 1: allowed a long running storyline investigating cotton farming the role

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Speaker 1: of automation in textiles, how African communities make new fashion

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Speaker 1: out of donated American T shirts, the logistics of the

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Speaker 1: shipping industry, and strange details such as the fact that

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Speaker 1: the men shirts which were made in Bangladesh attract a

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Speaker 1: tariff of sixteen point five percent, whereas the women shirts

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Speaker 1: made in Columbia are duty free. These examples should be

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Speaker 1: models for communication precisely because they inspire curiosity. How does

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Speaker 1: money influence politics is not an especially engaging question, But

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Speaker 1: if I were running for president, how would I raise

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Speaker 1: lots of money with few conditions and no scrutiny is

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Speaker 1: much more intriguing. Those of us in the business of

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Speaker 1: communicating ideas need to go beyond the fact check and

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Speaker 1: the statistical SmackDown. Facts are valuable things, and so is

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Speaker 1: fact checking. But if we really want people to understand

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Speaker 1: complex issues, we need to engage their curiosity. If people

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Speaker 1: are curious, they will learn. I found this in my

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Speaker 1: own work with a team who make more or less

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Speaker 1: for the BBC. The program is often regarded affectionately as

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Speaker 1: a MythBuster. I feel that our best work is when

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Speaker 1: we use statistics to illuminate the truth, rather than to

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Speaker 1: debunker stream of falsehoods. We try to bring people along

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Speaker 1: with us as we explore the world around us with

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Speaker 1: the help of reliable numbers. What's false is interesting, but

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Speaker 1: not as interesting as what's true. After the referendum of

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Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, in which my fellow British voters decided to

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Speaker 1: leave the European Union, the economics profession engaged in some

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Speaker 1: soul searching. Most technical experts thought that leaving the EU

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Speaker 1: was a bad idea, costly complex, and unlikely to deliver

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Speaker 1: many of the promised benefits or solve the country's most

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Speaker 1: pressing problems. Yet, as one infamous sound bite put it,

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Speaker 1: the people in this country have had enough of experts.

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Speaker 1: Few people seemed to care what economists had to say

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Speaker 1: on the subject, and to our credit, I think professional

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Speaker 1: economists wanted to understand what we had done wrong and

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Speaker 1: whether we might do better in future. Later, at a

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Speaker 1: conference about the profession and the Public, the Grades and

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Speaker 1: the Good of the British economics community pondered the problem.

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Speaker 1: The discussed solutions. We needed to be more chatty and

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Speaker 1: approachable on Twitter, suggested one analysis. We needed to express

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Speaker 1: ourselves clearly and without jargon, offered many speakers, not unreasonably.

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Speaker 1: My own perspective was slightly different. I argued that we

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Speaker 1: were operating in a politically polarized environment in which almost

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Speaker 1: any opinion we might offer would be fiercely contested by partisans.

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Speaker 1: Economists deal with controversial issues such as inequality, taxation, public spending,

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Speaker 1: climate change, trade, immigration, and of course Brexit. In such

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Speaker 1: a febrile environment, Speaking slowly and clearly will only get

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Speaker 1: you so far. To communicate complex ideas, we needed to

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Speaker 1: spark people's curiosity, even inspire a sense of wander the

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Speaker 1: great science communicators, after all, people such as Stephen Hawking

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Speaker 1: and David Attenborough do not win over people simply by

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Speaker 1: using small words, crisply spoken. They stoke the flames of

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Speaker 1: our curiosity, making us burn with desire to learn more.

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Speaker 1: If we economists want people to understand economics, we must

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Speaker 1: first engage their interest. What is true of economists is

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Speaker 1: equally true for scientists, social scientists, historians, statisticians, or anyone

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Speaker 1: else with complex ideas to convey. Whether the topic is

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Speaker 1: the evolution of black holes or the emergence of black

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Speaker 1: lives matter, the possibility of precognition or the necessity of preregistration.

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Speaker 1: The details matter, and presented in the right way, they

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Speaker 1: should always have the capacity to fascinate us awaken our

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Speaker 1: sense of wander. I say to my fellow nerd communicators,

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Speaker 1: ignite the spark of curiosity and give it some fuel

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Speaker 1: using the time honored methods of storytelling, character, suspense, and humor.

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Speaker 1: But let's not rely on the journalists and the scientists

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Speaker 1: and the other communicators of complex ideas. We have to

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Speaker 1: be responsible for our own sense of curiosity. As the

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Speaker 1: saying goes, only boring people get bored. The world is

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Speaker 1: so much more interesting if we take an active interest

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Speaker 1: in it. The cure for boredom is curiosity, goes an

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Speaker 1: old saying, there is no cure for curiosity. Just so

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Speaker 1: once we start to peer beneath the surface of things,

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Speaker 1: become aware of the gaps in our knowledge, and treat

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Speaker 1: each question as the path to a better question, we

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Speaker 1: find that curiosity is habit forming. Sometimes we need to

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Speaker 1: think like Darrel Half. There is a place in life

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Speaker 1: for the mean minded, hard nosed skepticism that asks where's

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Speaker 1: the trick? Why is this line bastard lying to me?

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Speaker 1: But while I don't believe it is sometimes the right

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Speaker 1: starting point. When confronted with a surprising statistical claim, it

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Speaker 1: is a lazy and depressing place to finish, and I

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Speaker 1: hope you won't finish there. I hope that I have

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Speaker 1: persuaded you that we should make more room both for

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Speaker 1: the novelty seeking curiosity that says, tell me more, and

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Speaker 1: the dogged curiosity that drove Austin Bradford Hill and Richard

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Speaker 1: Doll to ask why so many people were dying of

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Speaker 1: lung cancer and whether cigarettes might be to blame. If

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Speaker 1: we want to make the world add up, we need

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Speaker 1: to ask questions, open minded, genuine questions, and once we

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Speaker 1: start asking them, we may find it delightfully difficult to stop.

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Speaker 1: That was an extract from my new book, The Data Detective.

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Speaker 1: The International edition is How to make the World Add Up.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and keep on listening, because Cautionary Tails

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Speaker 1: is back on the twenty sixth of February. Wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: a b