A crash course in changing the world.
Learn 9 1 Most important secret of Crisis Communication
Understanding conflicting and uncertain
information
information
| • | It’s possible to report on infectious disease outbreaks without being a graduate-trained scientist. |
| • | There’s tremendous uncertainty about a lot of the science of influenza viruses and there’s therefore a lot of disagreement
among scientists, mainly on the topics about which we’re uncertain. For example, there is legitimate uncertainty about which changes in the influenza virus are most likely to change its adaptation to humans or the severity of disease it causes; about why influenza is usually seasonal (but less so in pandemics); and about why drug resistant viruses become common in some cases and not in others. |
| • | So there’s a reason to have multiple sources, good and really knowledgeable sources, to make some sense of where consensus lies. |
| • | Many journals (for example, the British Medical Journal and PLoS Medicine) have summaries of their
articles that lay out what was known, what the new study adds, and what the implications are. These are the first questions that you should want to know the answers to when a new study or release of data comes out. Many new studies and data releases add little to our current knowledge. These should be threshold questions for deciding whether a piece of information is newsworthy. |
| • | Another perspective on the previous point: few good scientists write paper after paper on unrelated observations; rather,
they understand why and how their observations are relevant to a larger picture. In my small experience with journalism, that offers a pretty good description of the best journalists as well. |
| • | There is a lot of information coming out, and the last thing you want to do is contribute to confusion, panic or complacency.
One of those three is hard to avoid in any given case; in good news, bad news or mixed news, there can be grounds respectively for complacency, panic, or confusion. Once again this emphasizes the importance of contextualizing information. |
| • | The other aspect is prioritization. With so much news and information and limited space to talk about flu, it’s more important
to talk perhaps about the mortuary directors once in a while than to write about each press release. Prioritizing news stories will help to make space for the important ones. |
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