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Uncertainty Risk Knowledge Knowledge-Doing Gap

"Dread risk" was characterized by Paul Slovic in his classic 1987 article in terms of its "perceived lack of control, dread, catastrophic potential, fatal consequences, and the inequitable distribution of risks and benefits."  The key terms in that description is perceived.  Slovic provides evidence that expert judgments of risk sometimes run counter to judgments by lay people, and he provides nuclear power as a canonical example.  Most experts find nuclear power to be a relatively low risk technology, whereas the public finds it to be high risk. The difference has to do with "dread risk."

Risk Perception Dread Risk Nuclear

On many topics of risk there are a wide range of legitimate points of view which collectively span a large range, and there is benefit for companies to selectively interpreting such risks in a way that is beneficial to their bottom line.

Insurance Risk Climate Change Climate Science Reality

Insurance Risk Climate Change Climate Science Reality

Religion Risk

Risk is a very complex topic, since it's all about things we can't predict, which just about includes everything. Many aspects of risk are studied by researchers all over the world. In the Big Risk Test, which is now live as part of BBC Lab UK, we want to find out how people deal with risk, particularly to try and understand what makes people have such different opinions and feelings about life's chances.

Risk Uncertainty Mathematics

That which cannot be controlled must be prevented. Today, that means preventing the threat of climate change and eradicating nuclear weapons. But we cannot afford efforts to address one challenge that end up aggravating the other. Attempting to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions through nuclear energy, thereby fueling the dangers of the ultimate global incendiary – nuclear war – could be the most tragic of all miscalculations.

Governmentality Risk Benefits Nuclear Climate Change

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has recently released a report listing the “Dirty Dozen” and the “Clean 15″ of fruits and veggies, giving consumers an idea of which foods have been found to be most contaminated with chemicals. Although EWG clearly states that eating any fruits and veggies is definitely better than eating none, the Group aims to give concerned shoppers some knowledge for the produce isle. Their methods involve poring over studies published by the FDA and USDA, tallying findings and making them more accessible to the often blind-sided consumer.

Food Quantity Quality Pesticide Health Governmentality Risk Benefits Capitalism

Thousands of older people are being put at increased risk of death or developing dementia by taking combinations of common medicines to treat routine illnesses, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Many are available over the counter at pharmacies as well as being prescribed by GPs, nurses and chemists.

British scientists behind the study are calling for doctors to recognise how dangerous these drug combinations can be and to prescribe harmless alternatives instead.

Drugs Medicine Risk Benefits Uncertainty Chance

Cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, which have been shown to lower a person’s risk for heart attack, can also slightly increase a patient’s risk for developing diabetes, particularly at higher doses, new research shows.

Body Biology Complex System Drugs Uncertainty Risk

The global economy’s most striking feature nowadays is the magnitude and interconnectedness of the macro risks that it faces. The post-crisis period has produced a multi-speed world, as the major advanced economies – with the notable exception of Germany – struggle with low growth and high unemployment, while the main emerging-market economies (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and Russia) have restored growth to pre-crisis levels.

Risk Capitalism Globalization

Firefighters are putting their lives on the line in order to control the blaze.  This is dangerous work.  Why do they choose to take such a job? Sociologist Matthew Desmond asks this question in his book, On the Fireline: Living and Dying with Wildland Firefighters, and the answer is truly surprising.

Desmond, who put himself through college fighting fires in Arizona, returned to his old job as a graduate student in order to study his fellow firefighters.  When he asked them why they were willing to put their lives at risk to fight fires, the firefighters responded, “Risk? What risk?”

It turned out that the firefighters didn’t think that their work was dangerous.  How is this possible?

Fire Nature Risk Masculinity Gender Stereotype

WASHINGTON -- Zapping salad fixings with just a bit of radiation can kill dangerous E. coli and other bacteria – and food safety experts say Europe's massive outbreak shows wary consumers should give the long-approved step a chance.

The U.S. government has OK'd irradiation for a variety of foods – meat, spices, certain imported fruits, the seeds used to grow sprouts. Even iceberg lettuce or spinach can be irradiated without the leaves going limp. And no, it doesn't make the food radioactive.

But sterilized leafy greens aren't on the market, and overall sales of irradiated foods remain low. A disappointed Grocery Manufacturers Association says one reason is that sellers worry about consumer mistrust.

Nature Fallacy Naturalistic Fallacy Radiation Risk Uncertainty Technology

a study by Kathy Fogel, Randall Morck, and Bernard Yeung, found statistical evidence that economies with more churn in the corporate sector also had faster economic growth. The relationship even seems causal: churn today is correlated with fast economic growth tomorrow. The real benefit of this creative destruction, say Fogel and her colleagues, is not the appearance of “rising stars” but the disappearance of old, inefficient companies. Failure is not only common and unpredictable, it’s healthy.

Economics Disaster Uncertainty Chance Risk Cosmopolitics

BERKELEY -- Despite a lack of convincing evidence that pollution is an important cause of human cancer, this misconception drives government policy today and results in billions of dollars spent to clean up minuscule amounts of synthetic chemicals, say two UC Berkeley researchers.

This is only one of many misconceptions, they say, that serve to divert money from the most important causes of cancer: smoking, poor diet, our own hormones and chronic infections.

Pollution Cancer Policy Science Risk

Germany's moratorium on nuclear power has not necessarily reduced Germany's reliance on nuclear power by as much as one might think

Nuclear Risk Energy

in a study released on Thursday, the folks at the Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies in Chattanooga, Tenn., decided to take an in-depth look at the promises made by purveyors of new coal plants.

Their findings seem to suggest that the trade-off that many cash-strapped communities make — specifically, accepting the health and environmental risks that come with having a new coal-burning power plant in their midst, in return for a boost in employment — is not what it’s cracked up to be.

Risk Cost Probability Coal Energy Environment Health

Critics of technology are often dubbed in policy circles as anti-science. Yet critical thinking is central to any rational decision-making process - it is less scientific to support a technology uncritically. Accidents happen with all technologies, and are regrettable but not disastrous so long as the technology does not have catastrophic potential; this raises significant questions about whether we want to adopt technologies that do have such potential.

Science Nuclear Complex System Chance Risk

The environmental movement has a strange historical relationship with nuclear power. In many countries, opposition to nuclear reactors in the wake of Chernobyl gave rise to major Green political parties. Many environmentalists still oppose nuclear power--Greenpeace, for example, still calls for the phase out of all reactors. But as climate change has taken over the Green agenda, other environmentalists have come to favor nuclear  as part of a low-carbon energy mix.  It was this confluence of factors—fading memories of Chernobyl and increased concern about greenhouse gases--that gave the nuclear industry such confidence just a few years ago. That confidence will have been deeply shaken by events in Japan.

Greenhoues Gases Green Energy Nuclear Risk

As the New York Times reports:

The Japanese disaster has led some energy officials in the United States and in industrialized European nations to think twice about nuclear expansion. And if a huge release of radiation worsens the crisis, even big developing nations might reconsider their ambitious plans. But for now, while acknowledging the need for safety, they say their unmet energy needs give them little choice but to continue investing in nuclear power.

Greenhoues Gases Green Energy Nuclear Risk