It’s clear – as Martin Sims argued in a recent PolicyTracker editorial – that the cellular industry and its associated regulators and scientists have made a pig’s ear of the 5G/radiation issue. However, the 5G/COVID concern (e.g. #5Gcorona) is just the latest installment in a long tale.
Angst about the health effects of electromagnetic emissions has been simmering for years. Before COVID, there was community resistance to cellular phones, e.g. the various California lawsuits; and before that, worries about power lines. Industry and its regulators have responded, when they responded at all, with “Look at the science. Trust us, we’re scientists. Nothing to see here, move along now.” In other words, to use Aristotle’s persuasion triangle, they responded with logos and ethos, rather than pathos. This clearly hasn’t worked.
There are many reasons for this. One of them is that anti-radiation activists have framed their own position in terms of logos and ethos. When I look at their websites, I see frequent references to science, and testimonials by scientists. Even though I believe activists’ concern is grounded on and sustained by emotion, i.e. pathos, they have armored (um, immunized?) themselves against industry’s rebuttals by using industry’s science-based language.
I think moral foundations theory may also be relevant. It proposes that six dimensions underpin moral reasoning: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression. The management class, particularly technologists and economists, focuses on Care/Harm; utilitarianism, their preferred approach to ethics, is essentially about minimizing harm. However, popular concerns about RF radiation issue are often framed in terms of the Sanctity/Degradation axis, i.e. a profound concern about purity and pollution. This perspective is completely alien to the experts, but very familiar to religious conservatives and (in the case at hand) to New Age adherents. While anxiety about RF isn’t limited to people who believe in crystals and vibrations, it seems prevalent among them.
If the cellular industry is to win this argument (not that it deserves to, given its patronizing behavior to date), it’s going to have to do something different. I agree with Sims that the answer doesn’t lie in talking to (and citing) scientists and engineers, and that industry “needs to get down in the trenches and engage in some hand-to-hand combat with the conspiracy theorists.”
However, I don’t agree that “every false claim needs to be met with facts.” On the contrary, I’m convinced that Andrew McAfee is right that you will never displace a feeling with a fact. To exaggerate a little: forget logos and ethos; go for pathos.
As a not-entirely-serious example: Don’t cite the world’s leading scientists in the WHO-recognized International Commission on Non‐Ionizing Blah Blah – make a big deal of the fact that a leader of the #5Gcoronavirus movement has claimed that blood-drinking, shape-shifting reptilian humanoids from the Alpha Draconis star system are behind a worldwide conspiracy against humanity.
One could also infuse logos-like claims with the authority of practices and beliefs the target resonates with; that is, play the ethos card. Again with tongue in cheek: Assuming one is speaking to a New Age audience, 5G proponents could demonstrate in a pseudo-scientific way that “5G frequencies” are, in fact, beneficial. For example, one could run a small trial that shows the benefits of bathing acupuncture needles in 5G frequencies. (With small enough N and enough torturing of the data, one can prove anything.) Or one could assert that “5G” signal modulations are in tune with the natural modulation of our neurons, with a calming and healing effect much like meditation. This could be contrasted with “older and more rigid” modulation methods, which can force brain activity into unnatural patterns.
This is a sleazy strategy that will (or at least should) make the experts squirm, but politics teaches that sleaze succeeds. And it’s not as if the cellular industry is pure; it has made many wild claims about the miracles of 5G. In fact, I suspect industry has enabled the 5G/COVID conspiracy by ascribing magical potency and revolutionary novelty to 5G. If 5G is powerful enough to be a transformative good, it could just as well be an existential evil. The following is bad logic, but persuasive rhetoric:
- Premise: 5G will change the world
- Premise: COVID has changed the world
- Conclusion: 5G caused COVID
As a colleague of mine has pointed out, this situation looks a little like cosmic payback for the sins of the 5G priesthood in crafting and singing epic myths that their new standard is a magical breakthrough technology. An easy way to dispel the conspiracy theory would be to admit that 5G technology is largely the same as 4G – but coming clean about that would be expensive, myth-wise, indeed!
Of course, factual rebuttals do have their uses. Persuasion requires ethos, pathos and logos. However, the experts (we experts?) should take care to speak simply but without condescension. It is possible to communicate science without baffling or alienating a lay audience – but it takes great skill and true subject matter understanding.
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