"Pink Slime" and Cognitive Bias; Or, How to Make Mountains of Molehills

Last year, Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman published a book titled Thinking, Fast and Slow. The book has won awards and landed on bestseller lists and I recommend it. (It's not an easy read but it's worth the effort.) Kahneman looks at how we "think" and how our intuition and cognitive biases (and we all have them) shape how we think and how we respond to ideas and events In Chapter 13, he discusses the role of "risk" in our thinking, especially the way "biased reactions" and inaccurate  assessments of  risk can and do shape public policy. He cites the work of another scholar, Cass Sunstein, who argues that, as Kahneman puts it,

biased reactions to risks are an important source of erratic and misplaced priorities in public policy. Lawmakers and regulators may be overly responsive to the irrational concerns of citizens, both because of political sensitivity and because they are prone to the same cognitive biases as other citizens.

Kahneman describes what happens when the public's inability to calculate "risk" accurately fuels an irrational response to a relatively trivial matter. The passage is long but worth quoting in full.

[This] . . .  self-sustaining chain of events .  .  . may start from media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. On some occasions, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried. This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by "availability entrepreneurs," individuals or organizations who work to ensure a continuous flow of worrying news.

The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media compete for attention-grabbing headlines. Scientists and others who try to dampen the increasing fear and revulsion attract little attention, most of it hostile: anyone who claims that the danger is overstated is suspected of association with a "heinous cover-up." The issue become politically important because it is on everyone's mind, and the response of the political system is guided by the intensity of public sentiment.

Kahneman cites two specific examples of cases where a minor episode blew up into a Very Big Deal and facts were ignored: the Love Canal episode of the late 1970s, and the "Alar scare" in 1989. In both cases, the facts did not support the dangers touted.

To which I would add the example of Pink Slime in 2012: Jamie Oliver describes salvaged beef scraps as dog food; a blogger demands that the USDA stop using said scraps and launches a petition; the media picks up the story; a media-savvy group of "availability entrepreneurs" fan the flames --- and a company ends up teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.

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Quotes are from Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), p. 142.

In My Other Life --- I Talk, Not Write

Have I ever mentioned that I often talk about my work to others? I do. Anyway, thanks to Lean Finely-Textured Beef (Pink Slime to you and me), I've already done a couple of radio interviews about meat (nice because the book won't even be out until early 2013).

This one was with the always kind and thoughtful Ray Bowman.

This one early this morning for Q, a program that originates on CBC in Canada and is broadcast in the US via PRI.

Bill Maher Explains It All

AHA! Now I get it! Anyone who denounces Pink Slime is a "liberal," and anyone who doesn't is a "conservative."

So says Bill Maher. Speaking about two Republican governors who spoke out in support of BPI, Inc. and Pink Slime:

I think the Republican party is at war with common sense… I think Republicans live in a world now where whatever a liberal says, no matter how sensible, is automatically evil, wrong, and needs to be fought with the fervor of a starving racoon on crystalmeth.

So if I'm reading this him correctly, anyone who is opposed to PS is a "liberal." Those who aren't are, by default, conservatives.

So. Now I understand why some folks think that since I didn't issue an unequivocal condemnation of PS, it follows that I don't believe in global warming or the climate crisis. Because I'm a REPUBLICAN, stupid.

Okaaaay. Now I get it. Whew. So glad to have that little mystery cleared up.

Gotta go. Off to the county courthouse to correct the error on my voter registration card.

"Beer Wars," "Content Creation," and Crap Shoots

Three years? Somehow it seemed longer than that (which, heh, is probably due to the way I've spent the past three years). According to Anat Baron (and she should know), it's been three years since her film "Beer Wars" debuted. (*1)  Her comment on the film and the anniversary are worth reading in whole, but I'll quote this part of it here:

I still get asked about a follow up film or a sequel. I don’t think that folks understand what it takes to produce and distribute a feature film. Just because everyone has a digital camera these days doesn’t mean that they’re making a feature-length movie. That millions of people will see. And so, if you haven’t realized from my tone, there will not be another film. It takes too long. Costs too much. And in the end, viewers want content for free. So, for me the economics just don’t add up.

I had a story to tell. I told it in the best way I knew how. It’s a documentary so you can’t just make shit up and manipulate the facts.

Ain't that the truth? Especially the "make shit up" part and the "viewers want content for free" part. Making films, like making books, is absurdly difficult and EXPENSIVE and a total crap shoot. Will anyone want to see the film? Will anyone want to PAY MONEY to see the film? Will anyone read the book? Will anyone plunk down some coin to BUY the book?

We "content creators" never know. Which is why, ya know, it's a crap shoot. Most "content" is built on faith and a prayer and a shitload of hard work.

Anyway: As Anat points out, in the three years since BW debuted, everyone and her mother has cranked out some form of beer-related visual "content." (Sorry. Can't help myself. My favorite shoot-a-hole-in-that-mother phrase is "content creator.") And she hopes that someone else will, as she says, grab the baton and make a new cinematic statement about craft brewing.

Which is another way of saying she hopes the dreamers and doers and suckers (like me. Like her.) keep coming. Here's to us: the craps-shooting content creators!

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*1: Full disclosure: I am in the film (BRIEFLY); I participated in the live panel discussion that followed the film debut in Los Angeles. Anat is a dear friend. I also weighed in --- at, cough cough, length --- on the film, its reception, its meaning, etc. in a ridiculously long blog series.

And the Winner Is . . .

My pick for THE worst piece of "beer" writing ever. No wonder the business of "history" is so screwed up. Hat tip to the always fine Lew Bryson.

No Neutrality Allowed

The meat book is still about ten months away from publication, and already, thanks to Pink Slime, it's another version of the beer book. Not that I'm surprised. Disheartened, but not surprised.

Let me explain: When the beer book came out, I was criticized by many in the craft beer community because I had not written an all-out attack on the "big" brewers. Critics assumed that I MUST be on the big brewers' "side." (As if there were sides to be taken....) And, worse, that I'd been paid by a big brewer to write the book. (Nothing could have been further from the truth.)

I didn't write Ambitious Brew in order to "take sides." I wrote the book because I thought the history of beer in America would enrich my understanding of what it means to be an American. Period. End of story. It never occurred to me to "take sides."

So, too, the meat book: I wrote it because I didn't know anything about meat, its place in American society, how it's made or why. I spent researching the book, and, no surprise, I learned a great deal about meat and its place in American history and society.

When the Pink Slime uproar began, I thought that  knowledge could add to our understanding of Pink Slime. In my mind, the PS uproar smacked of conclusion-jumping and fear-mongering, and I hoped that if people had some facts, they might slow down and rethink the conclusions to which they'd jumped.

Silly me. (Stupid me?) The pro-PS crowd immediately concluded I was "one of them," and the anti-PS crowd concluded that I was a shill for Big Ag and Corporate America.

Neither is true --- but the food "debate" is so mired in hostility that neutrality is (apparently) not an option.

Live. Learn.