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Sponsored by the Wellcome Trust | |  |  | 
|  |  | | (This debate is closed and is a read-only archive.) | | Evidence v superstition
[29-Jan-2004]
| There will always be issues surrounding risk analysis and risk aversion, when people are faced with the pros and cons of an argument, without having the ability to measure the weight of evidence supporting each stance.
| Hence, when the BBC runs a story where there are strong arguments, its response is to provide equal airtime to each side - even when one argument might be supported with a huge weight of evidence, while the other is supported by not much more than supposition. In the absence of any weighting according to evidence, most people will avoid the risk, not really caring whether it is infinitesimally smaller than the risk in crossing the road.
| This is exacerbated, when negative stories come along. The academic George Gaskell has illustrated this well, using prospect theory, in which a negative story has a much bigger (negative) impact upon a debate than a positive story would have.
| Julian Little, public and government affairs manager, Bayer CropScience, UK
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