All posts by Brian Martin

Brian Martin is professor of social sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and vice president of Whistleblowers Australia. He is the author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles on dissent, nonviolence, scientific controversies, democracy, information issues, education and other topics.

corruption, military, nonviolent action, whistleblowing

Military research dilemmas

January 2, 2015 Brian Martin

Should peace activists care about corruption and exploitation in military research?

In May 2015, a new law will take effect in Australia concerning military-related research and development. The law has many critics, including leaders of Australian universities. Among the law’s opponents is Brendan Jones, a high-tech entrepreneur. In a strongly argued article in the December issue of Australasian Science, he lays out the case against the new law. The article begins:

From 17 May 2015, when the Defence Trade Controls Act (DTCA) comes into effect, the federal Department of Defence will gain control over a very large share of high-tech and science research in Australia. Under the Act, publication, discussion or communication of research without a Defence permit will be punishable by up to 10 years jail, a $425,000 fine and forfeiture of research to the government. This includes scientists, academics, librarians, engineers, high-tech workers and companies that have never had a prior relationship with the Department of Defence.

Jones has been passionate in raising the alarm about the DTCA. He claims his business was the victim of depredations by the Australian Department of Defence, which took over his intellectual property without any compensation, causing his business to fail. If it had just been him, he might not have tried to expose it, but after he found out about several other similar cases, he decided he had to act.

It appears the Defence Department has its own favoured business partners. The department seeks out promising research and uses the ideas for its own purposes, without permission or compensation. The DTCA will legalise this sort of extractive process, backing it with punitive penalties for resistance.

Jones quotes several organisations and high-tech entrepreneurs who are critical of the DTCA. And not just critical — some of the entrepreneurs are planning to leave Australia. Jones is one of them, but not without a fight.

For months, Jones has been writing the most amazingly comprehensive treatments of the problems facing whistleblowers in Australia, typically in the form of open letters to politicians. It’s because of his interest in whistleblowing that I have been in touch with him. I’ve commented on drafts of several of his open letters, and posted a couple of them on my website.

Jones wrote a highly informative treatment of how whistleblowers should interact with journalists. In preparing his article, he contacted numerous journalists for feedback and advice. His article, “A whistleblower’s guide to journalists,” is the best available treatment on this topic. One of his recommendations for whistleblowers is to always remain anonymous if possible.

Several of Jones’ open letters are impressive pieces of research, with dozens or even hundreds of footnotes with references, quotes and examples. If you want a compendium of serious cases of corruption in Australia, Jones’ “Royal petition concerning federal government corruption” is the best available. Likewise, for a powerful indictment of the state of free speech in Australia, it is hard to go past his “Debunking Dreyfus on free speech and freedom.”

Corruption in the military

Military expenditures are huge and highly subject to corruption. In many countries, the government runs a monopoly. In others, notably the US, the government buys from favoured suppliers. Because of secrecy and the pretext of national security, shonky operations prosper. In the US, where the processes are best documented, there is a revolving door for top-level military personnel, who join companies and lobby to obtain lucrative contracts.

One of the most famous early whistleblowers in the US was A. Ernest Fitzgerald, who in the 1980s exposed a $2 billion cost overrun in a military aircraft project. Taking inflation into account, this would be more like $20 billion in today’s dollars. For his efforts, Fitzgerald was subject to the usual methods of discrediting, harassment and sidelining. He wrote two books exposing corruption in US military contracting: The High Priests of Waste and The Pentagonists.

Over the years I’ve talked with quite a few military whistleblowers. They seldom have an easy time. Corruption is as common in the military as in any other part of society, perhaps more common; speaking out about it is quite a bit riskier, because reprisals can be severe, and sometimes whistleblowers are physically attacked. Few areas pose this level of danger to whistleblowers.

There’s a fascinating connection between military corruption and whistleblower laws. During the US civil war, President Abraham Lincoln was disgusted by companies cheating the government when providing military supplies, because their shoddy goods were undermining the war effort.

The government passed the False Claims Act, allowing whistleblowers who exposed companies defrauding the government to take legal action on behalf of the government, sometimes with the backing of the Department of Justice. The act provides financial rewards to these whistleblowers when prosecutions of corrupt companies are successful. The False Claims Act was revived in 1986 in response to corruption during a massive expansion in military expenditures, and is now widely seen as one of the most powerful pieces of whistleblower legislation. In Australia, the government has long resisted introduction of a similar law.

A dilemma for peace activists?

I’ve been involved with peace issues since the 1970s, and occasionally pondered the question of military corruption and waste. Should a peace activist care? Perhaps military waste is better than military efficiency!

In 1982, Mary Kaldor, a prominent figure in the European peace movement, authored a book entitled The Baroque Arsenal. She argued that military technology was becoming ever more gigantic in scale, high-cost and elaborate, rather like baroque churches that took decades to build. The result was that many weapons systems were becoming almost irrelevant for actual war-fighting: they were not rational from the point of view of military efficiency.

After I read Kaldor’s book, not long after it was published, I wrote in my notes about it, “But all this has little direct relevance to how to move against war. It seems more useful for those military and civilian planners who would like to truly modernise their armaments towards new industries and simplicity.”

Another thought: perhaps it is better for money to be wasted on inefficient, pointless technological monstrosities, especially if they don’t work. Billions of dollars spent on fighters or bombers that were never deployed might be better than less money spent on lean, efficient tools for killing.

On the other hand, when a military force has more than enough firepower for its purposes, additional expenditures may be pure waste and a drag on society. Furthermore, military corruption and waste may lead to lobbying for more funding: beneficiaries of boondoggles will seek to find ways to continue and increase their income streams. And even if some projects for new fighters or submarines are dropped after the expenditure of billions of dollars, this doesn’t mean other weapons disappear. Whatever the level of waste, rifles keep being produced.

Recently I read Paul Koistinen’s book State of War. His analysis of US military systems supports Kaldor’s analysis. Koistinen writes:

As a form of state capitalism, the defense sector was freed from practically all competitive market pressures. Under those circumstances, the industry became characterized by inefficiency, waste, and corruption; defense contractors too often turned out defective or failed weapons and equipment. Over time, massive expenditures for defense have had a very deleterious effect on the economy. These outlays have led to the hoarding of capital and human resources, especially among scientists and engineers, and to the diverting of public assistance from civilian enterprises. Of crucial significance, according to numerous critics, DOD [Department of Defense] budgets have distorted public priorities and spending, denying adequate attention and resources to infrastructure, education, medical care, and other public services and interests. (p. 235)

Activists have long stated that military spending would be more beneficial if redirected to human needs. However, making the military more efficient does not guarantee that savings will be redeployed for clean water, housing, education or health. Military efficiency might simply mean more money is available for weapons systems.

The DTCA brought back memories of these issues. The DTCA can be thought of as a straitjacket for Australian military-related research. Arguably, it will hinder research and development, with the additional side effect of undermining related civilian research, especially concerning so-called dual-use technologies, which can be adapted for military or civilian purposes.

Another possibility is that military systems that are fair and honest might be more open to switching to nonmilitary production. For decades, there has been a small but dedicated push for what is called “economic conversion” or “peace conversion,” which means switching from military production to production for civilian needs, for example from military vehicles to public transport. After the end of the cold war in 1989, there were great hopes that much such conversion would take place, as it did after the end of World Wars I and II. But these hopes were dashed: the military-industrial complex continued pretty much as before while searching for a new rationale. (Terrorism turned out to be the prime justification.)

It does seem plausible that military research and development that is riddled with corrupt and exploitative practices will be resistant to change, because corrupt operators are less subject to rational argument and planning. On the other hand, corrupt systems are less likely to lead to efficient killing machines. Perhaps the world is a safer place if nuclear weapons contractors cut corners in manufacturing, design and maintenance, so that weapons, if ever used, miss their targets or simply won’t work. In this scenario, the baroque arsenal that Mary Kaldor warned about is not such a bad thing: incredibly wasteful but less deadly than it might otherwise be.

An alternative research agenda

There is an alternative to military defence based on civilian methods of nonviolent action such as rallies, strikes, boycotts and occupations. Many people, because they believe violence always triumphs over nonviolence, see this as totally implausible, but there is good evidence that nonviolent methods can be more effective than armed struggle in challenging repressive regimes, because the goal is to win over the opponent, including the opponent’s troops.

The arguments about nonviolent defence – also called civilian-based defence, social defence and defence by civil resistance – have been canvassed elsewhere. Their relevance here is that if this alternative is taken seriously, it leads to an entirely different agenda for research, development and infrastructure. For example, decentralised renewable energy systems are much more suited for surviving an occupation, a blockade or a terrorist attack than centralised energy systems based on fossil fuels or nuclear power. Analogous considerations apply to communications, transport, agriculture and construction. A nonviolence-driven research agenda would give far more attention to social sciences and would change priorities in nearly every field of study.

From this point of view, the DTCA and problems of corruption in the military seem almost irrelevant. Research continues to be driven by military priorities, whether done efficiently or not.

Back to practicalities

A reorientation of military expenditures towards nonviolent alternatives is almost completely off the agenda. It proceeds only to the extent that developments, for example in energy and communications, increase the capacity of citizens to take action. As seen in the Arab spring and other nonviolent movements, network communication systems help citizens organise and coordinate actions.

For now, I will continue to support two seemingly disparate agendas: one is nonviolent defence and the other is dissent, including those who challenge the DTCA and other such legislation.

Image: Igor Saktor, The Australian

I’ve talked to a number of people in the military about nonviolent defence. Although most are sceptical about whether it could work, they recognise a common interest in thinking strategically about defending against aggression. Indeed, many officers would prefer to never have to fire a weapon in anger, seeing deterrence and prevention as superior to fighting.

In the same way, there can be a worthwhile dialogue and sharing of concerns when it comes to supporting integrity and free speech in the military. I will continue to support military whistleblowers and hope others will too.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

I thank Anu Bissoonauth-Bedford, Jørgen Johansen, Brendan Jones, Anne Melano, Brian Rappert and Kim Sawyer for valuable comments on drafts.

Jørgen Johansen comments

There are several discussions running in parallel here: one about the waste in military spending, one on the corruption in the military-industrial complex, one on defending a country without violent means, and one on the morality of having an inefficient military system compared to an efficient one. Even if they are related I think these should be held separate. One reason is that addressing topics separately makes it easier to understand, analyse, and act.

More importantly, for anyone who wants to oppose military/violent/corrupt systems, it is strategically important to confront them one at a time. To lump them together makes it almost impossible to “sell the arguments” and/or build alliances with those who are engaged in only one of these topics.

Too many activists are trapped in a fundamentalist attitude; “If you don’t agree with us on veganism, feminism, pacifism, sustainable energy, bi- and trans-sexuality, … we cannot have you in our group.” Almost all successful movements have focused on more limited questions, such as universal voting rights, anti-slavery, civil rights (anti-segregation), anti-personnel mines and anti-whaling.

If you don’t plan to write a huge book, there is no way you can properly describe all the complexities of the issues you mention in a single blog. This is of course not an argument against your topic for the blog, but advice for those who want to take up any of the issues you present and to run a campaign.

A final thought: it should not be on the peace movement’s agenda to discuss what sort of military means we want to see. Leave that to others.

nonviolent action, tactics

Learning from dictators

December 22, 2014 Brian Martin

Dictators are becoming more sophisticated, according to William Dobson. Studying techniques used by repressive rulers can give insights for challenging injustice in any country.

The usual idea of a dictatorship is a ruler at the top who uses centralised control, surveillance and violence to smash any challenges. But sometimes heavy-handed measures can provoke internal opposition and trigger concerns by foreign governments and international organisations. So rulers are becoming more sophisticated, learning from their experiences, from their opponents and from what happens to other dictators.

One of the dictators to lose the struggle was Slobodan Milošević, who ruled in Serbia through the 1990s. The opposition movement Otpor used a variety of tactics to drum up support, including many humorous stunts, and pushed opposition parties to produce a united ticket. Milošević called an early election in 2000 and tried to steal it through vote-rigging, but a country-wide convergence on Belgrade caused Milošević’s supporters to give way. Otpor activists went on to provide advice to opposition movements in numerous other countries.

Slobodan Milošević

To avoid a similar fate, rulers are learning to be more creative and flexible. They can allow a bit of dissent to give the appearance of free speech. They can set up regime-friendly citizens’ groups. They can harass opponents using low-key, procedural methods, such as fire and safety inspections. They can keep the population happy by not interfering with personal activities, maintaining economic growth and responding to citizen complaints.

This is the message from William J. Dobson in his important book The Dictator’s Learning Curve (Anchor, 2013). Dobson, an experienced US journalist and editor, spent two years travelling the globe to study repressive regimes, interviewing government leaders, bureaucrats, opposition politicians and activists. He concentrated on five countries: Russia, China, Egypt, Venezuela and Malaysia. From this study of struggles over freedom, he offers numerous fascinating personal profiles, accounts of campaigns, and explanations of tactics.

The Dictator’s Learning Curve is one of the most readable accounts available of the uses of nonviolent action to challenge regimes and of the methods used by regimes to counter it. Dobson did not investigate armed resistance to governments such as in the Philippines or Syria. Instead, he highlights the insights used by campaigners using leaflets, vigils, rallies, strikes, boycotts, sit-ins and other methods of nonviolent action.

Dobson writes as a journalist and in this book shows the advantages of avoiding an academic style. He offers many more insights than a typical academic text, but without the sort of scholarly apparatus and pretensions that can be so off-putting to people outside academia.

Dictator techniques

One favourite technique of sophisticated rulers is to set up procedures and organisations that give the appearance of openness and fair play without the substance. For example, Putin in Russia set up the Public Chamber to give the appearance of allowing criticism of the government, but critics are not allowed to speak directly to the people. Dobson quotes Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch as saying that government officials “want independent information, but they want to use it for their own purposes” (p. 24).

Tanya Lokshina

In the old Soviet Union, there were sham elections, with Communist Party candidates typically receiving 99% of the vote. The trouble is that 99% is not credible to anyone. Cagey rulers instead run elections in which they win by a respectable percentage, but not more. Ideally, they would like to win without stuffing ballots, and sometimes this is possible. In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez won one election after another, thereby gaining great legitimacy. Dobson recounts how Chávez controlled most of the television stations and was on air for hours every week. He also hampered opposition candidates by banning them from running, imprisoning some of them, creating an elaborate gerrymander, and maintaining a constant state of alarm about dangers from the US government. Chávez was wily enough to gain popular support by rigging the system in a way that wasn’t too blatant. He stacked the electoral office with loyalists, and the electoral office set up the gerrymander that ensured that Chávez’s party could win even with a minority of the vote.

Another important technique is to allow greater freedom but only in areas that do not threaten rule at the top. Chinese leaders are expert at this. Chinese people have greater freedoms than before, including to change their residence, to travel to other countries, to select careers, to obtain information and to live their private lives as they choose. What they don’t have is political freedom.

Chinese rulers have instituted a raft of reforms, including local elections, limits on terms of office, public hearings and involvement of citizens in decisions about local budgets. At the upper reaches of the party, most corruption has been rooted out. On the other hand, Chinese rulers are willing to use force if needed, which turns out to be fairly often, because there is a lot of lower-level corruption and citizen discontent about it. The government now spends more on internal security than for external defence.

Regimes have learned not to use heavy-handed techniques against the general population, but instead to concentrate on opposition leaders, who are imprisoned, “harassed, beaten, and denied their livelihoods. Their names and reputations have been destroyed, their families torn apart” (p. 121). The dual aim is to discourage these opponents and cut them off from the people.

Citizen responses

Just as rulers are learning from experience and observation how to counter challenges from their subjects, so citizens are developing insights and skills in response. The result is an ongoing strategic encounter. No single technique can remain successful for long, because the opponent learns about it and how to counter it. This generalisation applies to both regimes and their opponents.

In Venezuela, Dobson reports that there was a consensus on how to oppose Chávez and his machine: be connected to the people, offer alternatives (not just criticism), and be united.

When regimes offer new processes to give the appearance of justice and openness, critics may be able to use these processes as levers for making a challenge. In particular, when authoritarians seek legitimacy through the law, they can also be exposed through the law. Ayman Nour, an Egyptian notary public, became so effective that the regime took strong action against him, for example banning him from law practice and imprisoning him.

Ayman Nour

Many regime opponents have had to learn the hard way, through trial and error. There is now another source of insight: information about nonviolent struggle, obtained through the Internet or in workshops organised by the US-based International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and by CANVAS – Centre for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies – set up in 2005 by former Otpor activists. Dobson provides an illuminating treatment of the global circulation of ideas about nonviolent conflict, interviewing key figures such as premier thinker Gene Sharp and Otpor veteran Srdja Popovic, and attending a CANVAS workshop.

Dobson notes that in some countries, such as Egypt under Mubarak, the official opposition had become tired and predictable, and thus was no threat to the regime. In nonviolent campaigns, built on a carefully constructed strategy taking into account strengths and weaknesses of the regime and the opposition, there is a premium on tactical innovation. Activists cannot rely on repeating the same old methods, but need to keep using new techniques and bringing new sectors of the population into the struggle. One of the key reasons for tactical innovation is that rulers learn from experience, just as activists do. This is one of Dobson’s key themes.

Lessons for elsewhere

Dobson restricts his attention to just a few countries with authoritarian governments, though he is careful to note the differences between them and not lump them together. Indeed, he notes that the techniques used by Chávez in Venezuela, as a populist authoritarian leader, are quite different than those used by, for example, Chinese rulers, who he labels technocrats.

Hugo Chávez

What Dobson does not do is spell out implications for countries that are ostensibly free. If elections are fair and no one is being whisked away to prison without trial, then it might seem there is little in common with authoritarian regimes. Actually, though, what Dobson has to say is quite pertinent in nearly every country. Governments in so-called free countries try to stigmatise opponents, use sophisticated media strategies, change the rules to centralise power, harass opponents, and set up formal processes that provide the appearance of fairness without the substance.

The rulers in China are eager learners, studying the operations of representative governments for ideas on how to dampen dissent. Campaigners need to be eager learners too, learning from each other and about the various ways that governments discourage dissent and pacify populations. A good place to start is with The Dictator’s Learning Curve.

Postscript

The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict has pointed out a number of errors in Dobson’s book, in relation to the ICNC itself. This suggests there is a need for others to follow in Dobson’s footsteps and verify, correct or extend his assessments.

education, self-development

Rapid learning

December 12, 2014 Brian Martin

You can become pretty good at a new skill in just 20 hours by following Josh Kaufman’s advice.

Josh Kaufman

Josh Kaufman is a busy man. He has three children, runs a business and is a writer on the side. Yet he wants to do more. He wants to acquire new skills and to learn them as quickly as possible.

There’s an enormous body of research on learning. There are millions of teachers in schools and universities, not to mention private teachers and coaches on every topic from driving to playing the violin. Despite this wealth of knowledge and experience, Kaufman was looking for something different: how to tackle a completely new skill and become competent as rapidly as possible, fitting it all into his busy life.

So Kaufman developed his own system, based on 10 principles of effective learning. Being a practical person, he drew on his experiences in developing the principles, and then tried out his approach. And he’s written a book about it: The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything … Fast (Penguin, 2013).

Expert performance and rapid learning

There’s a growing body of research on expert performance, the sort of high-level competence that would make you a chess grandmaster, a piano virtuoso, or a famous scientist. The research suggests that achieving this level of performance usually requires at least 10,000 hours of practice. Furthermore, not just any sort of practice will do: it has to be what is called “deliberate practice,” during which you concentrate intensely on improving, typically by working on the most challenging tasks for your level of performance. A swimmer, for example, needs to be pushing most the time during training.

Kaufman respects those who seek this level of performance. His goal is something different: to become as good as possible in a short time. It is quite compatible with deliberate practice. Indeed, it could be seen as the beginning of a journey towards high-level performance.

Anders Ericsson, the most prominent researcher on expert performance, notes that in learning a new skill most people improve rapidly to start with, but then their performance level plateaus. For example, most people learning to drive improve steadily because they are putting themselves in ever more challenging situations. But as soon as they are reasonably competent, they stop pushing themselves: they are driving but not improving much. Race car drivers, on the other hand, need to keep challenging themselves to achieve much higher level skills.

Kaufman is interested in this early skill acquisition stage and how to make it really efficient. No messing about attending classes for him.

So how good can he get in just 20 hours? Kaufman’s 10 principles for rapidly acquiring skills seem plausible, but how to apply them is what counts. To illustrate this, he offers six case studies in which he personally set out to learn a new skill in just 20 hours. These case studies take up most of the book. They are fascinating and are powerful recommendations for Kaufman’s approach.

Typing: learning it fast

Kaufman was already a good typist. Using a standard online test, he could type 60 words per minute. But he felt he was moving his fingers too much and so wanted to learn to type using a different, more efficient keyboard.

The standard keyboard is called QWERTY, after the first six letters in the top row of keys. Nearly all keyboards are laid out this way, and nearly everyone who learns to type learns this system. So why would anyone want to change?

QWERTY keyboard

QWERTY was set up in the days of manual typewriters and designed so the moving keys wouldn’t get stuck. But in terms of finger movement it is not ideal. For example, a highly efficient key arrangement would have the most common letters, E and T, on the middle line of keys, so less finger motion is required.

Kaufman set himself a goal: in 20 hours, he would seek to learn to type using a different keyboard, up to the same speed as before, 60 words per minute. So how did he proceed?

If deliberate practice is the key to skill acquisition, then you might guess that Kaufman spent 20 hours practising using the new keyboard. This is only partly right. One of the key insights Kaufman provides is that it is vital to figure out the best way forward. Time spent doing this is at least as important as deliberate practice.

First he had to choose the alternative keyboard he wanted to learn. He investigated several options and chose Colemak, one that suited his circumstances. He figured out how to change his computer so that when he pressed keys, they gave Colemak rather than QWERTY outputs. He then purchased some key covers and set up his keyboard in the new configuration. Now he was ready to practise typing using Colemak.

Colemak keyboard

Deliberate practice is the key

How to practise? Kaufman searched the web to find training programs, and compared the ones he found, choosing one that suited his purposes. Then it was time to begin. He used the program for an hour every day, practising in the evening to that his new skills would be better cemented into his mind through sleep.

After just 20 hours total — comprising choosing the keyboard, setting it up and practising using it — he achieved his goal of typing at 60 words per minute in Colemak. Along the way, though, he did a little experiment that is one of the best advertisements for deliberate practice I’ve seen.

While learning the new typing system, Kaufman couldn’t just drop all his regular correspondence. He still needed to type. So as soon as he was competent, even at a slow typing speed, he used Colemak. But doing his correspondence wasn’t deliberate practice, because he was concentrating on what he was writing, not on improving his typing speed.

I wonder: What if I drop the deliberate practice for a while and just continue typing e-mails and surfing the web? I’m two-thirds of the way to my target performance level of sixty WPM [words per minute] after only fourteen hours of deliberate practice. Can ambient practice carry me the rest of the way, without additional focused effort?

I decided to do an experiment: I’m going to suspend my deliberate practice for thirty days and set what happens. I’ll continue typing normally in Colemak, without switching back to QWERTY. With as much time as I spend on the computer, I should be able to get enough ambient practice to hit sixty WPM, right?

After thirty days, I retook the typing test. Want to guess my typing speed?

Forty WPM. Zero improvement.

Even though I was typing quite a bit, I wasn’t actively focused on improving my skills. Ambient practice wasn’t enough to improve.

If you want to improve a skill, you need deliberate practice, at least in the early stages of skill acquisition. Lesson learned. (pp. 151-152)

Other skills

Kaufman describes his efforts at learning a variety of skills using his approach: yoga, computer programming, the game of go, and windsurfing. In some cases, it’s an advantage to be able to pay for good equipment, as in the case of windsurfing. Kaufman tells how he searches for information about the most suitable equipment for his purposes, yet at a moderate price. And he does this all within the 20 hours.

To my mind, his most impressive achievement was learning the ukulele. Musicians will tell you that the ukulele is one of the easier instruments to learn. In 20 hours you can only make a start on the violin or oboe. Although the ukulele is relatively easy, Kaufman set himself a performance target that most people would find impossibly daunting.

He was invited to give a talk at a conference to tell about his approach to rapid learning. It was just 10 days until the conference and he thought, “Why don’t I demonstrate my approach by learning the ukulele in 10 days and performing on it as part of my talk?” And so he did. He practised hard during those 10 days, but also, as usual, spent a good portion of the time ensuring that he adopted the most efficient approach to practice. The response to his talk, and the accompanying ukulele performance, exceeded his expectations.

Josh Kaufman on the ukulele

What happens after 20 hours and a reasonable level of competency? Kaufman makes it clear that this depends. In some cases he wants to keep going: he continues to use Colemak for touch typing. In other cases he decides not to do any more. He became a decent beginner at the game of go, but decided not to continue playing the game. After all, if he learns too many skills, he’ll run out of time to deploy them, much less to continue to improve at them.

If you have a desire to learn any of the skills Kaufman took up, for example computer programming, the details he provides about how he learned will prove helpful. Even if you want to learn something quite different, the case studies are inspiring. They show how to approach a completely new area and make the task manageable. In the age of the Internet, this has become far easier than it would have been a few decades ago.

Implications for learning

Kaufman is a learning addict: he loves learning for learning’s sake, as well as for the satisfaction of using skills. Could his approach be applied to schools and universities? In many courses, students in a semester spend more than 20 hours attending classes — at least if they attend as they are expected to — and are supposed to devote many additional hours in study. Yet, based on Kaufman’s account, my impression is that few students learn as much in 100 hours as he does in 20.

There are several reasons for this. Kaufman’s first principle of rapid skill acquisition is “Choose a lovable project.” Many if not most students take courses primarily because they want a diploma or degree. They might enjoy some of the topics, but study is commonly seen as onerous, whereas Kaufman sees it as part of an intensely absorbing challenge.

Another factor is that Kaufman is in charge of his learning process. He chooses what to learn and how to learn it. Students seldom have this autonomy.

Kaufman pushes himself really hard. He designs his deliberate practice so it is maximally effective in achieving goals he has set himself. Most students are driven to study not by their own desires but by targets imposed externally, by their teachers. Kaufman set himself a goal of performing the ukulele before an audience. Students have a goal of passing an exam set by their teacher.

20 hours, but not so rapid

Kaufman wants to acquire skills rapidly. Is it possible to learn efficiently but not so rapidly? I decided to apply a variant of Kaufman’s approach. I acquired some juggling balls and the book Juggling for the Complete Klutz, and started to practise. But rather than doing it intensely, I decided to practise only five minutes per day. After a few months, I could juggle three balls with two hands or two balls with one hand without too much difficulty — in less than 20 hours of practice. I discovered that the key is practising every day, even for just a couple of minutes.

While learning, I demonstrated to myself the importance of concentration. If my thoughts wandered for even a second or two, I would inevitably drop the balls.

I’m not as brave as Kaufman: I’m not going to juggle in front of an audience, at least not yet!

Kaufman versus textbooks

A typical textbook tells about subject matter, whether philosophy or physics. What it doesn’t tell is how to go about learning in a really efficient fashion. Educational researchers know a lot about learning, but this is seldom translated into practical guides for high-speed learning. So it takes someone like Kaufman, not a professional educator, to provide an original, inspirational guide. If you really want to learn, enjoy it and get better quickly, then spend a few hours learning from Kaufman’s example.

But there is no substitute for practice, a point that Kaufman reiterates.

If you want to acquire a new skill, you have to practice. There is no other way.

You can prepare. You can research. You can eliminate distractions and alter your environment to make it easier to practice. You can find intelligent ways to make your practice more effective or efficient. But, in the end, you must practice.

What feels like the long way is the shortest way. Zero-practice shortcuts don’t exist. No practice, no skill acquisition. It’s as simple as that.

Why don’t we practice? Simple: we’re busy and we’re scared. …

The major barrier to rapid skill acquisition is not physical or intellectual: it’s emotional. Doing something new is always uncomfortable at first, and it’s easy to waste a ton of time and energy thinking about practicing instead of practicing. …

One final thought: the only time you can choose to practice is today.

Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next month or next year. Today. (pp. 257-258)

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

drugs, health

The daily fix

November 24, 2014 Brian Martin

Caffeine is the world’s most popular drug, but it has some dangers.

Nearly everyone takes it but hardly anyone refers to it as a drug. I’m talking about caffeine.

It’s in coffee, tea, soft drinks, chocolate and some pharmaceutical drugs. It’s the “energy” in energy drinks. There’s a booming legal drug industry built around caffeine.

In the early 1980s, I was involved in a group called Community Action on Science and the Environment. One of our projects concerned caffeine. We studied the medical literature and produced a leaflet. Even back then, the evidence was pretty clear. If you’re getting more than about 200 milligrams of caffeine per day – the amount in two cups of coffee or four cups of tea – it’s quite likely you’re having adverse physiological effects such as headaches or digestive disorders. You might also suffer withdrawal symptoms.

Source: wikipedia

If you want to be entertained while learning more about caffeine, get the new book Caffeinated by Murray Carpenter. He is a caffeine aficionado, touring the world to test and collect exotic products. The items on his shelf include:

Amp energy gum, 6 Hour Power energy shots, and Jitterbeans “highly caffeinated” candy. Cans of Red Bull, Rockstar 2X Energy, and Mega Monster energy drinks. There are bottles of Mountain Dew and Coke, and the cans of Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi … There is a small package of roasted and ground cacao, which I purchased in Chiapas, where it is grown. … (p. xii)

Carpenter also delves into the worldwide political economy of caffeine, probing the expanding industrial connections and advertising operations.

I’m unusual in not getting much caffeine. I don’t drink coffee, tea or soft drinks, but do have some chocolate. One benefit is that I get plenty of sleep and wake up refreshed, without the need for a pick-me-up. Despite this unusual level of caffeine avoidance, I wanted to know more about what I’m missing, for good and bad. Caffeinated provides plenty of information.

Benefits and adverse effects

There has been a great deal of research on the effects of caffeine, including using the rigorous method of double-blind trials. Caffeine undoubtedly has some positive effects, especially in mental acuity. If you are doing something that requires alertness – such as driving a truck long distance, or staying up all night to write an essay – caffeine is a drug of choice.

The benefits of caffeine have been studied especially in relation to two groups. The first is athletes, for whom caffeine can give an edge in motivation and performance, though it can be addictive, with the benefits less for habitual users. The second group is soldiers, who need to overcome fatigue; the military has sponsored lots of research.

However, although caffeine provides alertness and energy, it is a short-term fix, and it’s not so clear whether regular users obtain much benefit compared to non-users. Caffeine can mask a lack of sleep, and performance might benefit nearly as much from proper sleep as from continual doses of the drug.

Carpenter quotes two researchers, Jack James and Peter Rogers, in a 2005 literature review in the journal Psychopharmacology as saying:

Appropriately controlled studies show that the effects of caffeine on performance and mood, widely perceived to be net beneficial psychostimulant effects, are almost wholly attributable to reversal of adverse withdrawal effects associated with short periods of abstinence from the drug. (p. 70)

After reading this, I felt my low caffeine intake was vindicated – until I read further to find that many other researchers disagree with James and Rogers, citing studies showing better memory and attention in a routinely caffeinated state.

For most people, though, caffeine is taken less for immediate performance benefits than as a habit, often attached to social rituals. Regular caffeine intake may be rationalised as a quest for a tasty drink, whether a good cup of coffee, a decent cup of tea or a refreshing cola. According to Carpenter, “The varied preferences for different forms of caffeine in all corners of the globe suggest that it is the drug itself that is the object of our desire” (p. 71).

Advertisers do what they can to make their drinks attractive, but they seldom highlight the key ingredient. Imagine a drink advertised as “a quick and easy way to get your daily fix”.

Some drug users take a great interest in the taste of the delivery mechanism. There are wine connoisseurs, but have you ever heard of grape juice connoisseurs? Without caffeine, would the quest for a delicious coffee evaporate?

There is increasing research interest in the adverse effects of caffeine. One important problem is anxiety. Studies of individuals prone to panic attacks show that caffeine increases the risk of an attack; a placebo does not. Even more surprising is that caffeine can trigger panic attacks in individuals who never had them before, but who are close relatives of those who have had them. There’s apparently a genetic component in susceptibility to caffeine-induced anxiety.

Caffeine in soft drinks creates the physical dependence that keeps imbibers coming back for more. In this way, caffeine is implicated in the problem of obesity.

Another rising problem is mixing caffeine with alcohol, as in some drinks now on the market. The problem is that alcohol impairs judgement but the caffeine masks the effects, so young users take more risks.

Just 10 grams of caffeine are enough to kill you. This would be require chugging 200 cups of tea, but ingesting a lethal dose is much more feasible with tablets. I remember a high school science experiment in which we extracted caffeine from tea leaves. We were awed that such as small amount of a white powder, obtained from a seemingly innocuous source, could be deadly.

synthetic caffeine

Marketing caffeine

Marketers usually avoid mentioning the caffeine in their products. Starbucks emphasises the quality of its coffee, while energy drinks such as Red Bull refer to energy, not caffeine.

Carpenter provides a fascinating tour of regulatory reactions to the increasing number of caffeine-loaded products. In the US, companies have long avoided regulation through an early classification of caffeine as GRAS (Generally Recognised as Safe), but the Food and Drug Administration has started paying attention to the plethora of new products delivering caffeine, and companies try to avoid regulation by setting their levels just below what has historically been treated as acceptable.

Downplaying caffeine’s role is disingenuous, but entirely understandable. Caffeine is a drug, so to admit that a drug is the primary attraction in any product is fraught with both regulatory and moral peril. But there is another reason to divert the public’s attention from caffeine’s key role in commerce. If Starbucks acknowledged the caffeine’s importance, then it would be more difficult to charge four dollars for a coffee drink. Consumers might prefer a Jet Alert tablet (you could buy a hundred for less than the price of a double latte). Starbucks Refreshers drinks, with fifty milligrams of caffeine, could easily be replaced at half price by a Diet Mountain Dew. (p. 206)

Ironically, caffeine’s popularity is triggering regulatory interest in many countries. When caffeine was consumed in ritual settings of drinking tea and coffee, its adverse effects were less visible, though some individuals over-indulged. With the expansion of caffeine intake through soft drinks and energy drinks, sometimes mixed with alcohol, the hazards are becoming more obvious, for example when youth take shots containing multiple caffeine tablets. The spotlight is now being thrown on all uses of caffeine.

However, although some health-conscious individuals may modify their intake of caffeine, and regulators attempt to control some of the more risky products, the caffeine-industrial complex continues apace. There is a lot of money to be made by hooking ever more customers into demanding their daily fix in the guise of a costly delivery vehicle, whether coffee, tea, soft drink, energy drink or chocolate.

Reflecting on the benefits and risks of caffeine can be useful when considering policy on other drugs. All drugs have benefits and risks, after all, and there is no obvious cut-off point for deciding whether and when a drug should be banned, taxed, available only on prescription, or otherwise condemned or controlled. The adverse health effects of caffeine could be reduced by removing it from food and drink, but at the expense of creating a huge black market and stimulating organised crime. As you get your daily lift from caffeine, you can use your greater mental acuity to consider how best to address habits that are increasingly caffeinated.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Murray Carpenter, Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us (New York: Penguin, 2014)

Addendum

Melissa Raven offers the following historical angles on caffeine.

Coffee Cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach
The early 18th century enthusiasm in Western Europe for coffee amongst the middle classes was affecting Prussia’s economy. The country’s monarch, Frederick the Great, wanted to block imports of green coffee as Prussia’s wealth was being drained by the huge sums of money going to foreign exporters. Also the right to sell coffee was intended to be restricted to four distillers but the fashion for drinking coffee has become so widespread that the law was being flouted and coffee beans illegally roasted. The Prussian king condemned the increase in coffee consumption as “disgusting” and urged his subjects to drink beer instead. Frederick employed coffee smellers, who stalked the streets sniffing for the outlawed aroma of home roasting. However such was the public outcry that eventually he was forced to change his mind. As a satire on the whole affair, Bach wrote the “Coffee Cantata,” a humorous one act operetta about a stern father’s attempt to check his daughter’s indulgence in the much loved Saxon habit of coffee drinking.
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=18529

LONG before the multi-coloured hippie experience there was another group of long-haired men and women who went in for drink, drugs and sex. The Bohemians, as they were known, lived in Paris in the 1840s. Although their sexual and drinking habits raised eyebrows, what really shocked Parisians was their use of a stimulant drug in large quantities. According to a later medical textbook it ‘made the sufferer tremulous, subject to fits of agitation and depression. The sufferers loses colour and has a haggard appearance’. The drug was coffee,
Wells, Troth. (1984, October). Our daily fix. New Internationalist, pp. 14-15.

From Melissa’s PhD thesis (http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4688&context=theses), p. 303
Hennessey (1993) documented an epidemic of deaths, predominantly female, due to kidney failure resulting from long-term use of compound analgesics such as Bex and Vincents in Australia from the mid-1950s to the 1970s. Although the damage was directly caused by the combination of phenacetin and aspirin, the high caffeine content of these products (APCs – aspirin, phenacetin, caffeine) fostered the dependence that led to the cumulative effects (p. 6). Advertising in influential Australian women’s magazines also played a major role in encouraging and indeed normalising use. Compound analgesics were constructed as the solution to everyday stresses experienced by women (particularly housewives).
Citation: Hennessey, Eileen (1993). A cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down. Department of History & Politics, James Cook University of North Queensland.

emotions

Feeling good when others suffer

November 12, 2014 Brian Martin

The emotion of schadenfreude — joy in the pain of others — is widespread but has some dangerous associations.

Imagine that your favourite team is about to play a crucial match, and you hear the news that the other team’s star player has suffered a serious injury during training. You might feel sorry for the player but you also might initially feel a surge of pleasure about the improved prospects for your team.

Another scenario: you have been striving hard at work to be chosen for an important assignment, but are frustrated by a talented rival. Your rival suffers a setback due to a family crisis. You are outwardly concerned but may feel some satisfaction in the turn of events.

Your next-door neighbour is outwardly successful, with a prestigious high-paying job, a large house, fancy car and immaculately presented family. By comparison, you are not nearly so well off. Imagine your feeling when a news report reveals that your neighbour has been the victim of a swindle and will have to downsize.

These are examples of the emotion called schadenfreude, a German word meaning pleasure resulting from someone else’s pain. To learn more about it, I recommend Richard H. Smith’s book The Joy of Pain: Schadenfreude and the Dark Side of Human Nature (Oxford University Press, 2013). Smith describes, in an accessible manner, research on schadenfreude, providing everyday examples drawn from popular culture, for example The Simpsons.

Although schadenfreude is often experienced, it is seldom acknowledged publicly or even privately. It is not seen as proper to gloat over someone else’s pain, so in many cases this is a secret emotion. However, there are some circumstances in which schadenfreude is more acceptable and freely expressed: when the other person seems to deserve their suffering.

Smith describes the US television programme To Catch a Predator in which men were enticed, through online conversations, to visit a house where they expected to meet an underage person, possibly for sex. The house was rigged with numerous cameras and the men were filmed as they were informed that their activities and responses were being recorded for broadcast on television. For the men, this was close to the ultimate in humiliation: they were being exposed on national television as likely paedophiles.

Smith notes that paedophilia is so universally reviled that it seems acceptable to revel in the acute agony of these men. They are suffering and many audience members feel it is only fair. Yet the background to each man’s visit was omitted from the program. Some of them may have been victims of child sexual abuse, and there was no explanation of what led up to their visit, nor any proof that they were guilty of paedophilia. The program was set up to enable viewers to enjoy the men’s humiliation, a spectacle called humilitainment.

The example of To Catch a Predator is just one example of what Smith calls the dark side of human nature. Humans are constantly comparing themselves to others, and improve their self-esteem when they come out on top. Studies show that when assessments of personal qualities are subjective, most people think they are better than average. For example, nearly everyone thinks their sense of humour is above average.

Social comparison is almost universal, and when people peg their self-image by comparisons, it is a short step to envy, a toxic emotion. Envy is the resentment and ill will felt when observing that someone has something — money, possessions, talent, good looks, fame — that you don’t. Few people like to feel inferior. Envy often includes a wish for the envied person to suffer or be brought down. This sets the stage for schadenfreude.

It is one thing to be secretly pleased when someone else suffers, because you feel better about yourself, and another to take action to bring about another person’s suffering. Smith, to probe the darkest aspect of these emotions, considers the actions and emotions of Germans during the Nazi occupation of Europe, in particular their attitudes towards the Jews. At the time, many Jews were highly successful, disproportionately filling the ranks of doctors, lawyers and media proprietors, so it is plausible that their high social standing evoked envy. However, few people like to admit to envy, so Hitler and other Nazis instead devalued the Jews — including with furious condemnations — thereby providing a pretext for harming them. Smith provides some telling bits of evidence suggesting that schadenfreude was one of the emotions involved in the genocide of the Jews.

He is also careful to note that in ordinary circumstances, envy is held in check and does not lead to actions to hurt others. To provide a more positive note, Smith gives some examples of individuals who have learned how to rise above any suggestion of schadenfreude. He tells of a man he knew, widely esteemed by others, who never said an ill word about anyone.

In psychology, the “fundamental error of attribution” refers to a widespread mental process of assuming that the behaviour of others reflects their inner purpose. If someone makes some nasty comments, we may assume they have a hostile personality. Yet there are often explanations for behaviour based on circumstance. The other person may be physically ill or suffering extreme stress, which could help to explain their comments.

When our own poor behaviour is involved, we readily blame it on external factors. The fundamental error of attribution involves interpreting actions by others differently than our own.

This is pertinent to schadenfreude. Our own misfortunes, we may feel, are unfair or due to circumstances beyond our control, but the misfortunes of others are attributed to their own flaws. To overcome the tendency to think this way, it is useful to try to think of possible external causes for others’ behaviour. The man who Smith knew learned to do this, and hence did not join in the usual gossiping about the foibles and misfortunes of others.

Smith offers as an exemplar Abraham Lincoln, who early in his career learned the wisdom of not condemning others and subsequently showed amazing restraint in his comments to them. After General George Meade won the battle of Gettysburg but failed to follow up by pursuing the Robert E. Lee’s army and thereby winning the civil war then and there, Lincoln was immensely frustrated, especially because he had futilely appealed to Meade to pursue Lee’s army. Lincoln wrote a letter to Meade expressing his distress at his shortcoming — but he never sent it, and it was found in Lincoln’s papers subsequently. To have sent the letter would have pained Meade but to no purpose.

The Joy of Pain is valuable because it tackles a topic seldom probed outside the scholarly literature. Without being pointed, it can encourage the reader to reflect on emotions and behaviour in a new light, taking into account social comparisons and the toxic consequences of envy.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Thanks to Sharon Crozier-De Rosa and Roger Patulny for useful comments.

democracy

From selling politicians to promoting deliberation

November 4, 2014 Brian Martin

Dee Madigan’s book The Hard Sell reveals how Australian political advertising works. It can also be used to highlight obstacles to deliberative democracy.

Dee Madigan worked for many years in the advertising industry as a creative director. She became involved in political advertising, being part of the campaign teams for several politicians in the Australian Labor Party. With this background, she was highly knowledgeable about what might be called “The selling of Australian politicians” (in the tradition of several accounts of US presidential campaigns).

Madigan has written an exposé entitled The Hard Sell: The Tricks of Political Advertising (Melbourne University Press, 2014). She tells about various standard techniques used in advertising efforts on behalf of politicians, for example branding of parties, preparing advertisements, the use of positive and attack ads, different platforms (television, social media, etc.) and focus groups.

This is a no-nonsense guide that is engaging in its style and content. For example, in the chapter “TV isn’t dead but the internet is awesome” she writes:

With the advent of social media things got even more frantic in the ad world. Agencies started employing “social media experts” (which was anyone with a Twitter account) to run campaigns. These “experts” were full of lines like, “It’s about starting a conversation.”

Every time someone says this, I’m tempted to whack them over the head with my laptop.

Because it is utter, utter bullshit.

The role of any form of marketing is to persuade. And anyone who says the conversation itself is the purpose is either fooling themselves or fooling you. (p. 133)

She writes about the Australian political scene but also draws on research and experiences in other countries, especially the US where political marketing techniques are most highly developed. The Australian political system is different from the US in several ways. One of the most important, for the purposes of political campaigning, is that voting in the US is voluntary, so much effort is expended trying to encourage supporters to actually vote. In Australia, where voting is compulsory, the orientation is more to try to get so-called “swinging voters” — who don’t pay much attention to politics — to vote for the preferred brand.

Swinging voters (image: Eric Lobbecke, The Australian)

Madigan acknowledges that shady activities can occur, such as unfair and manipulative slurs in ads, but she basically believes in the system, arguing that dodgy practices are constrained in various ways, and can actually be counterproductive. She could hardly be an effective player in campaigns if she was too cynical.

She is a supporter of Labor, but The Hard Sell is quite balanced in providing insights, pointing to the strengths and weaknesses of efforts on behalf of Labor, Liberals and other parties. You don’t have to be a Labor supporter to learn a lot from the book.

Here, I want to use Madigan’s book for a different purpose, namely to highlight features of the Australian political system that are obstacles to the goal of deliberation in political decision-making, in particular deliberation by citizens. The word “deliberation” in this context means carefully considering information, options and goals, often in discussions with others.

In a jury trial, the jury members are involved in a process of deliberation. They hear the evidence and assess it, and then discuss with each other their observations and views with the goal of reaching a consensus on the verdict. This is quite different from listening to ads and deciding what product (or politician) to buy.

The idea of jury deliberations has actually been applied to political decision-making in what are called policy juries or citizens panels. A group of 12 or more randomly selected citizens is brought together for several days and asked to address a particular issue, such as nanotechnology policy. They get to hear presentations from advocates and researchers, receive printed materials to study, spend time discussing options with each other, and deliberate towards a consensus position. The panels are coordinated by independent facilitators, rather like referees at sporting matches, whose aim is good process rather than any particular outcome. They help the group find its own way towards mutually agreed recommendations.

Citizens’ jury in Minnesota

Hundreds of such policy-panel deliberations have been organised in recent decades, in many different countries. The results are encouraging. Jury members take the process very seriously, carefully consider the evidence, learn from each other, and come up with recommendations that most external observers see as sensible, even wise. Perhaps best of all, most participants report that the experience is satisfying for them personally. Some even say it is the best thing they have done in their entire lives. Genuine participation, with deliberation, is empowering. The experience with citizens’ juries provides some of the best evidence that deliberative democracy is a worthwhile ideal.

In looking at Australian political campaigning, as so clearly presented by Madigan, in light of the goal of greater deliberation, I will consider branding, focus groups, voting and news cycles. This isn’t a comprehensive coverage of ideas in The Hard Sell but is sufficient to illustrate that any political system susceptible to marketing is unlikely to foster deliberation.

Branding

Madigan:

Many politicians get cross when we in advertising refer to “political brands”. They feel we are emphasising the selling over the doing. But that just shows they don’t really understand what a brand is. A brand is who you are, what you say and what you stand for. Equally, it’s about how the voter feels about you — the emotions that are elicited when they think of you. It is the emotional and psychological relationship a political party has with their voters.

So, yes, political parties are brands, and individuals within parties have personal brands. Unless parties understand this they will struggle to connect with voters. (p. 2)

The value of a brand is that it short-circuits thinking. At a supermarket, a shopper who relies on brands does not check prices or contents: the brand is enough to ensure a purchase, or at least a preference. When products are essentially identical, brands make choice easier. They can also command a premium. Some fruit juices, for example, come from the same cannery but are put into differently branded containers. Some designer clothes are little different from cheaper copies. Purchasers may be buying image rather than substance.

Any political system in which branding plays a significant role is likely to be the enemy of deliberation. In Australia, political brands are highly influential. Labor and Liberals try to create favourable images, sometimes contradictory ones to different sections of the electorate, with the hope that voters will identify with them.

Branding of parties means that voting doesn’t require examination of policies or performance. The key is image.

Australian Liberal Party attack ad

Political party identification actually can induce people to accept positions contrary to their personal beliefs. In the US, researchers found that when a policy position was labelled Republican or Democratic — namely endorsed by their favoured party — many voters would accept the policy even when it conflicted with the belief system supposedly associated with their party. What this means is that a Republican voter might accept a policy if it is labelled Republican but reject it if it is labelled Democratic. In short, these voters don’t think for themselves.

If deliberation is to become important in a political system, branding needs to be minimised. The most radical solution is to get rid of political parties. Imagine going to a polling booth and finding that the ballot paper only has names, without any party identification. However, this doesn’t get rid of personal branding.

An alternative to the electoral system is to use random selection of decision makers, as in a jury. Branding doesn’t give any advantage when choices are made randomly. Indeed, election campaigning becomes superfluous.

Focus groups

Madigan:

On any given night, somewhere in Australia, there is a group of eight complete strangers being paid to sit around a table in a room and give their opinion about something: a flavour of ice-cream, the merits of eight grooves in a tampon instead of six (no, I am not joking), or a particular ad for TV. And behind a glass window, there is another room filled with people watching them. (p. 31)

Focus groups might sound like a form of deliberation, but they are closer to a type of opinion poll. Furthermore, they are used for market research, a non-deliberative purpose.

Australian political parties use focus groups extensively to test out ideas. Madigan’s special interest is how focus groups are used to assess political ads. She creates an ad, or at least the draft of an ad, and then it is introduced to a focus group. The response can make the difference between running it and canning it. This use of a focus group is designed to help select tools — ads — that more effectively manipulate voters. The word “manipulate” is appropriate here because ads are not aimed at fostering insight or reflection but at producing an outcome or, to use the relevant metaphor, inducing the selection of the desired political brand.

Then there is choice of who is selected to join focus groups.

In elections, focus groups are chosen according to targeted demographics; in short, they are the “low-hanging fruit”. “High-hanging fruit” are those who are voting the other way — there’s no point trying to get them as you’ll never reach them. And the fruit on the ground are yours anyway so you don’t spend much money trying to get them either. The low-hanging fruit are the soft voters — they have voted for you at one of the last two elections, and are considering voting the other way this time around. (pp. 36–37)

Parties hire recruitment companies to survey people and, using their answers to key questions, identify those who soft voters. These are the ones invited to focus groups and whose opinions are used to select ads — that are, as a result, oriented to soft voters. So the entire operation of focus groups in political campaigning is targeted at these sorts of voters. In Australia, they are often called swinging voters, because they may swing back and forth, from one election to another, between one major party to another.

(Australia has preferential voting, so a vote for a minor party usually ends up supporting one of the two major parties, especially in the House of Representatives. In any case, the idea of swing in the “two-party preferred vote” is highly influential in the way commentators and party officials think about elections.)

So focus groups are, during an election campaign, a particular type of market research, namely targeting swinging voters with persuasive ads.

Australian Labor Party attack ad

Putting so much weight on the views of swinging voters puts deliberation even further from the agenda, because many of these voters pay little attention to political issues: they are more swayed by the brand than policies and by promises rather than performance. In a fully functioning deliberative democracy, the views of all citizens would be taken into account, and those who are most informed would be more respected and possibly influential.

Voting

Madigan’s main interest is political advertising, but she recognises the value of traditional forms of campaigning. In particular, she acknowledges the importance of politicians actually meeting voters, for example through door-knocking.

Door-knocking on climate change

In a large electorate, a politician cannot possibly meet everyone, so door-knocking is carried out by supporters. And in this there is plenty of data and analysis about how to be more effective. Parties, or agencies working for them, build up databases about citizens. Again, those targeted in efforts to meet and interact with voters are the “low-hanging fruit.” Furthermore, meetings with voters are designed to be efficient, usually last two minutes or so, enough to make an impression but no longer than necessary. Spending an hour with a voter is not an efficient use of resources, especially with a voter with strongly held views.

Madigan reports that up to 20% of voters make up their decisions on the way to the polling booth. One key influence is the how-to-vote card. Near polling stations, supporters of different parties set up shop with tables, banners and leaflets. Most important is the how-to-vote card, indicating exactly what boxes to number to support a particular party or candidate.

Many voters do not know enough about the candidates, parties or issues to make a decision based on informed choice, so they choose a brand — a party — and follow its instructions. Some Australian governments have made this even easier by introducing voting “above the line”: a voter can give a tick to single party, without giving preferences to other parties or candidates, and the party chosen selects the preferences. There is all sorts of horse-trading between parties as they seek to acquire preferences from other parties.

All of this could be overcome by simple changes to ballot papers. Instead of listing political parties, just the candidates could be listed — in a random order. Different ballot papers would have the names printed in different sequences. This would mean that the usual how-to-vote card wouldn’t work: instead of ticking according to the card — 4, 5, 1, 6, 3, 2 for example — the voter would actually have to identify their favoured candidate by name and put a 1 next to it. This doesn’t sound like much, but many voters pay so little attention to elections that without a how-to-vote card they would be clueless.

There is a phenomenon called the donkey vote. Some voters, rather than submitting a blank ballot — which seems the most sensible option if you don’t really care who is elected — instead number the candidates sequentially: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. This means that the candidate allocated the top position on the ballot gets extra, unwarranted votes. If different ballot papers had the candidates listed in different orders, then donkey votes would give little or no advantage.

Of course, parties could still hand out how-to-vote cards giving the names of their preferred candidates. Furthermore, some desperate candidates might change their names to Liberal Party or Labor Party, seeking the ultimate in brand identification. Randomising names on ballot papers would be only a small step towards encouraging greater awareness by voters. On its own it would not do a lot towards deliberation.

News cycles

The mass media, especially television, remains a potent influence on voters. Political parties have various ways to influence the news, for example putting out media releases at suitable times (to encourage or discourage coverage, depending on the story), cultivating journalists and using spin. Madigan covers all this, including the peculiarly Australian aspects of parliamentary elections, such as the blackout of political ads on radio and television three days before elections (newspaper and online ads are allowed).

Australian Greens bumper sticker

Madigan notes that the 24-hour news cycle, in which something more than a day old is no longer newsworthy, no longer exists. The news cycle is much shorter, in part due to social media.

As news cycles get shorter, so do political memories. The amount of credit you get after an event also gets shorter and shorter. It’s why politicians are increasingly looking for short-term wins rather than planning for the long term. (p. 160)

The news cycle, long or short, is hardly conducive to deliberation. It has been well documented that most news coverage lacks context, history and careful analysis. Hearing the news provides little insight into the pros and cons of issues. It does very little to encourage deliberation. This is especially true when the news is subject to politicians’ efforts to sway opinion via what is called “spin.”

Spin is designed to argue a viewpoint and direct people’s attention. It is one side of the truth. Democracy is built on the principles of debate, after all. The danger is when the media presents it as the whole truth. (p. 163)

“Democracy” is seen here by Madigan as built on debate — but a debate between opposing spin doctors, each using the media to present a one-sided, partial truth. This form of debate is all very well, but citizens are positioned as the audience, not as participants in the debate.

In any debate each side has both the right, and indeed the responsibility, to present their arguments in as compelling a way as possible to garner the most support from the audience — or, in this case, the voters. That is a fundamental part of democracy. And just as some people are better with numbers and others at fixing stuff, some are experts at communicating. So it makes sense to use these people in this area. Especially now that so much of political debate takes place in media forums in which effective, persuasive communication is essential. (p. 156)

This passage articulates the conventional idea of politics as a professional activity, in which political operatives, along with communication specialists such as Madigan, attempt to persuade voters to adopt their brand. Citizens become the audience, watching the performance and occasionally — at elections — expressing their preferences.

Deliberative democracy is something quite different. It involves the erstwhile audience members becoming the performers. Rather than just debating preformed views, they explore options, imagine alternatives and work towards collective judgement.

Some questions then arise. Is there any scope for the skills of Madigan and other political communication specialists being used to promote deliberative democracy itself? Is deliberation simply one more product to be sold to an audience? If not, what is the process for transforming political systems into more participatory forms? What would be the role of persuasive communication in a set of deliberative processes?

Ideally, the process of promoting deliberative democracy would itself be participatory: the means would reflect the ends. Perhaps, in doing this, Madigan or others like her can contribute. Meanwhile, we can learn from The Hard Sell the essence of party politics as marketing, and better understand why politicians have such difficulty imagining participatory alternatives.

Brian Martin

bmartin@uow.edu.au

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Lyn Carson for invaluable comments on a draft.

mobbing

Bad behaviour in disasters

October 13, 2014 Brian Martin

Some disasters bring out the very worst in human behaviour, as described in the frightening and illuminating book No Mercy.

What do people do in a disaster? Panic? Actually, collective behaviour in many disasters is surprisingly rational.

During the Cold War, US planners prepared for the ultimate disaster, a nuclear attack, and looked to other sorts of disasters to find out what might happen. They found a relatively comforting picture: most people protected themselves and those closest to them, and many were altruistic, helping anyone they could. Only a relatively few descended into antisocial behaviours such as looting and shooting.

More recently, Amanda Ripley in her book The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why described people’s responses to crisis situations, for example being in an aircraft when it crashes. Only a few panic and only a few quickly take the most sensible action, leaving the aircraft. Most are simply stunned and do nothing – which can be deadly if the plane explodes.

However, there is another potential response to disaster, evoked in some situations: extreme selfishness, including willingness to kill.

No Mercy

Eleanor Learmonth and Jenny Tabakoff in their book No Mercy: True Stories of Disaster, Survival and Brutality (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2013) reveal the depths of human behaviour. The authors collected numerous stories from historical accounts of shipwrecks, aeroplane crashes and sieges. The circumstances in their chosen cases were particularly dire. A relatively small number of individuals, from a handful to several hundred, were stranded in circumstances in which their lives were at risk. Rescue was not imminent, and drowning or starvation was a prospect. The result, in some cases, was cruelty and selfishness so extreme as to make readers question their understandings of human nature.

William Brown

On the night of 19 April 1841, the ship William Brown struck an iceberg off Newfoundland and sank. The crew took most of the places in the two boats available, leaving many passengers on the ship to drown. Of the two craft, the longboat was more crowded, and it leaked. By the second night, crew on the boat started to select passengers to be thrown overboard to their death, even as the wind died down and there was no risk of sinking. And so they continued, throwing one passenger after another, both men and women, overboard into the icy water, until 16 were dead. Half an hour later, a passing vessel rescued the remaining survivors on the longboat.

Learmonth and Tabakoff give lots of detail about this case, and much of it is even more horrifying than this summary. Only one of the killers was charged with a crime; he spent six months in prison.

Other stories of disaster in No Mercy describe equally appalling human behaviour, including cannibalism. They involve different centuries and nationalities, with seagoing nations heavily represented.

It is easy to say, “I would never do anything like this.” Perhaps not, but it’s hard to know if you’ve never been in the same circumstances. Privation and starvation, and the threat of imminent death, can change many people’s behaviour.

An experiment and a novel

Throughout No Mercy, Learmonth and Tabakoff weave information from two books, each published in 1954. The first was titled The Robbers Cave Experiment, and reported a study of group dynamics.

Two groups of 11-year-old boys were observed in a camp setting in the US state of Oklahoma, where they were left pretty much to their own devices for a week, while camp staff unobtrusively provided facilities and services, and watched. Unbeknownst to the boys, the staff were researchers.

Then each group of boys was allowed to become aware of the other group, in a situation of mild rivalry. What happened next was disturbing. Each group treated the other group as an enemy, and verbal abuse escalated into hostile raids. Just as important as the inter-group rivalry was the transformation of internal dynamics, with leaders emerging who castigated softness. The researchers had to call off the experiment before it became physically dangerous.

The Robbers Cave experiment is famous in the annals of the psychology of groups. It shows the tendency for members of randomly composed groups to bond quickly and to treat outsiders as enemies, even when the others are basically just like them. The experiment took place using well-adjusted middle-class boys in an industrialised country without any privation. It shows the dangerous potential for group loyalty to descend into violence.

The other book published in 1954 was Lord of the Flies, a famous novel by William Golding. The fictional story starts with the contrivance of a group of young British boys being stranded on an island alone after an aeroplane crash in which all the adults are killed. Rivalries and superstitions develop, and scapegoats are picked out for sacrifice, culminating in murder.

Golding’s story was fictional, but it was inspired by his personal experiences. He had been a schoolteacher for a decade and observed his pupils closely, including in casual experiments on field trips in which he manipulated circumstances in ways not unlike the Robbers Cave experimenters. Though Golding portrayed his insights fictionally, they eerily mirrored what was happening across the world in Oklahoma.

Learmonth and Tabakoff use these two books as templates for understanding what happened in the cases they describe. Of the two books, Lord of the Flies is far better known, and many people were disturbed to imagine that such a scenario might be possible in reality. No Mercy is testimony that Golding was too optimistic: in certain extreme circumstances, some humans can descend into savagery much more quickly than Golding’s fictional portrayal, in a matter of days rather than months.

Lessons

No Mercy is not all bad news. The authors also describe some cases in which a small number of disaster survivors, in dire circumstances, worked together in a humane and supportive fashion, resulting in better prospects for survival and rescue. Some cases featured valiant and altruistic behaviour. What factors make a difference?

Learmonth and Tabakoff say leadership is crucial. If formal leaders are selfish, cruel and unfair, prospects are grimmer: a new informal leadership may emerge, usually mimicking the original ones. But when formal leaders are supportive and fair, the odds are better for good behaviour. For example, some leaders ensure that everyone – even those likely to die soon – received an equal allocation of scarce food supplies, thereby helping bond the survivors in a common commitment to the group.

No Mercy can be gruelling at times, but it has important messages. One of them is that humans can be tribal in a highly dangerous way, as shown by the Robbers Cave experiment, even when there is no survival advantage to the group. There are parallels in quite a few contemporary social problems, including mobbing (collective bullying), partisan party politics and genocide.

At the conclusion of No Mercy, Learmonth and Tabakoff return to a question they posed at the beginning of their book:

As a template for social decay, how accurate is the Lord of the Flies principle?

The answer is inescapable – exceptionally accurate. William Golding’s work followed with almost pinpoint precision all of the main aspects of the implosion of a failed group:

– neglect of the weak and sick;

– a rapid descent into bickering over resources and labour;

– the corrosive, emotional effect of hunger, paranoia and fear;

– the collapse of leadership;

– fragmentation into hostile factions;

– the emergence of personal hatred;

– an absolute loss of compassion and altruism;

– casual acceptance of death;

– violent fights that escalate into murder and, finally, the emergence of killing for entertainment. (pp. 280-281)

Learmonth and Tabakoff conclude the main text with a list of ways to avoid the Lord of the Flies principle. I will conclude with them here. But before reading them, I invite you to pick a political, economic, social or religious framework – for example feminism, neoliberalism, socialism or Buddhism – and see how it would serve survival in a disaster scenario, according to the following 13 recommendations. This can be a revealing exercise.

As soon as disaster strikes, get rid of any alcohol.
Acknowledge the situation has changed: the group should be free to choose a new leader – someone they can trust to make decisions for the good of the group.
As soon as possible, establish order and a routine.
Never allow the weak to die in order to save the strong – survivor maths is a fatal game.
Share resources and workloads equally among the survivors, regardless of rank.
Use a rotating work schedule.
Communicate. Silence is your enemy.
Stay busy, even if it seems pointless.
The leader must be accountable and replaceable.
Fragmentation is almost inevitable, but the leader must control factional discord.
Have a plan. If it fails, make a new plan.
If one faction begins to dominate and victimise the rest, it is imperative the remainder organise and defend themselves. Once murders commence, they tend to escalate.
Fight the mindset of individual self-preservation – we are communal creatures and we survive best in groups. (p. 287)

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Thanks to Don Eldridge for helpful comments on a draft.

corruption, tactics, whistleblowing

Whistleblowing and loyalty

October 1, 2014 Brian Martin

Whistleblowers can gain insights from Jonathan Haidt’s studies of the foundations for morality.

Whistleblowers are people who speak out in the public interest, for example to expose corruption, abuse or dangers to the public. Surely this should be seen as a valuable service. Yet whistleblowers are frequently treated as traitors, as guilty of something worse than the abuses and crimes they reveal.

National security whistleblowers, such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, have been called traitors. Whistleblowers who are teachers, police officers, public servants or corporate executives may be called traitors, dobbers, snitches or other epithets.

Just as important as words are the reprisals that whistleblowers experience, including ostracism, petty harassment, demotions, referral to psychiatrists and dismissal. To be targeted with such hostile actions signifies condemnation, even contempt. Where does this vitriol and hostility come from?

Also important is the role of bystanders, in particular the co-workers who might personally support the whistleblower but are unwilling to take a stand. Many of them are afraid they will become targets themselves; others always support management, sometimes in the hope of rewards. It is reasonable to ask, where does the incredible power of the organisation come from?

The Righteous Mind

Insights can be gained from Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind. Haidt, a psychologist, set out to discover the biological bases of human morality. But first it is useful to explain Haidt’s picture of the mind.

Imagine that your mind has two main components. The first is a rational, calculating operator that can examine courses of action and logically consider principles of behaviour. This is how most people think of themselves. Haidt calls this component the “rider.”

The second part of the mind is an intuitive operator that makes judgements on the basis of gut instinct, without consideration for facts or logic. This part is filled with passions and commitments, which the rider might consider biased and impulsive. Haidt calls this second part of the mind the “elephant.” The elephant makes day-to-day life possible; its quick responses are often sensible — but not always.

Haidt uses the metaphors of the rider and the elephant to highlight a key insight from studies of the mind: for many purposes, rational evaluation is unable to restrain instinctive responses. The elephant is too large and powerful to be controlled by the rider.

Haidt, through careful assessment of psychological research, concludes that in most cases the primary role of the rider is to figure out ways to justify what the elephant does. In other words, people reach their views about the world on the basis of gut instinct, and then their rational minds figure out reasons to justify these views.

This is not a pretty picture, especially for those who believe in the primacy of rationality, or believe that they personally follow reason rather than emotion.

The next step in Haidt’s analysis is discovering the foundations of morality. Through a variety of means, he arrived at six main foundations that shape people’s senses of right and wrong: care, liberty, fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity. Haidt used various tests to work out which of these values influence judgements in US people. He found that “liberals” (who might be called progressives in Australia) rely especially on care, liberty and fairness, whereas conservatives rely more equally on all of the foundations. This helps explain some of the political differences in the US.

Most of these foundations are relevant to whistleblowers. One key foundation, care, means looking after those in need, for example children and people suffering misfortune. When whistleblowers speak out about abuse of children or shortcomings in health services, they are implicitly appealing to the care foundation for morality. Another foundation, fairness, is relevant for those who speak out about corruption, including bribery, theft and nepotism. These are all violations of fairness.

So far so good. But whistleblowers come up against some of the other foundations. They are seen to be disloyal (to their employers), undermining authority (of their bosses) and sometimes transgressing on things considered sacred (such as when revealing confidential information). Haidt’s framework suggests that whistleblowers can gain support from some foundations of morality but are up against instinctive responses based on others.

At this point it is worth remembering the rider-elephant metaphor. Few people sit around scrutinising the bases of their own morality. Rather, their ideas of right and wrong are intuitive: they react with their gut and then search for rational justifications for their feelings. So if someone’s morality is strongly shaped by respect for authority, they may react emotionally against a co-worker who breaks ranks and then find reasons for their antagonism.

Sometimes there are multiple sources of authority. For example, a person can accept the authority of church leaders or seek a higher authority in the teachings of spiritual leaders such as Buddha, Jesus or Mohammed. However, the rider-elephant factor enters in here: because most teachings can be interpreted in various ways, the rider can find ways of justifying the elephant’s actions. For example, even when religious texts oppose killing, most religious leaders allow participation in war, using various rationalisations.

However, it seems too simple to say that whistleblowers put a priority on care, fairness and liberty (moral priorities for liberals) whereas bosses put a priority on loyalty and authority (which influence conservatives more than liberals). Whistleblowers vary greatly in their beliefs; many are the epitome of the loyal employee. Furthermore, what about all the bystanders, who by their inaction support bosses and let whistleblowers cop it? They are bound to include people driven by a variety of moral precepts.

Various researchers have tried to figure out what, psychologically, makes whistleblowers different from others. Employers would love to know, so they could avoid hiring potential whistleblowers or, having hired one, keep them away from sensitive information. Given the lack of any reliable psychological tests to detect potential whistleblowers, it is safe to assume that psychology is not the key to understanding whistleblowing. This is especially the case for inadvertent whistleblowers, the workers who report a problem, are totally surprised when they experience reprisals, and afterwards say “I was just doing my job.” There are psychological factors involved in this, for example honesty and conscientiousness, but no obvious connection to the foundations of morality traced by Haidt. Or is there?

Care versus loyalty?

Sexual abuse is a violation of the morality of care: those who are vulnerable need to be protected. Speaking out about the abuse, on the other hand, challenges authority and loyalty.

Consider, for example, sexual abuse by clergy. The disturbing reality is that many people in churches knew about it but took little or no action. This can be interpreted as loyalty and authority taking precedence over care. On the other hand, the response of many members of the public, when they learned about the abuse, was completely different: many were horrified and disgusted. As outsiders, their conceptions of loyalty were potentially quite different. They may have had no particular connection to the church, or perhaps had their own loyalty, for example to their children.

But what about authority? Those who are not directly subject to a particular authority may not think deference to it is so important. This observation is compatible with the advice that whistleblowers can gain greatest support from other whistleblowers and from members of the public, for example through media stories.

So morality based on authority seems, at least when it applies to whistleblowers, to be quite specific: deference to authority takes precedence mainly when people are directly subject to the authority, as in the case of bosses or church leaders. This deference can also be explained a different way: people are afraid of the consequences of bucking authority. They might lose their job or, just as worrying, be subject to reprisals such as reprimands, harassment and ostracism. It might seem that fear is a fundamental factor in this dimension of morality.

Loyalty to what?

For me, this raises another question. Why should the two factors of loyalty and authority be tied to the organisation where a person works? In terms of evolution, humans lived in groups whose very survival often depended on banding together. Dissent was potentially dangerous, so it could have been advantageous to attack or expel those who challenged the group’s leaders or threatened its cohesion.

However, many groups today are a far cry from the groups in human prehistory, which were often quite small and probably never much more than a few hundred people in size. Working for a government or corporation with thousands of employees is not the same, neither in scale nor in the danger to the organisation of a bit of dissent.

This suggests to me that although loyalty is a key factor in morality, how loyalty is assigned remains open. Inside a school, for example, a pupil might be loyal to a peer group, a sporting team, a teacher or the school as a whole. In a corporation, a worker might be loyal to a work team, a union, professional peers in the field, a particular boss or the company as a whole. The possibility that loyalty is not automatic suggests that it is worth looking at the methods by which organisations foster it.

Changing gut reactions to whistleblowers

It’s worth considering each of Haidt’s six foundations for morality and asking, what can be done, by whistleblowers and their supporters, to change gut reactions to whistleblowing so it is more valued? The foundations of care, fairness and liberty are ones that should create favourable attitudes towards whistleblowers. The message is to continually emphasise care for others when speaking out about hazards to the public, emphasise fairness when speaking out about corruption, and emphasise liberty — resistance to domination — when speaking out about threats from government or corporate power.

Those three foundations are the easy ones for whistleblowers, namely ones where they have a natural advantage. The other three foundations are more challenging: loyalty, authority and sanctity.

Loyalty to the employer is commonly expected. Whistleblowers violate this sense of loyalty: they are seen as traitors. Are there other ways to assign loyalty to which whistleblowers could appeal? One possibility is loyalty to the mission of the organisation, not to the organisation itself. Of course organisational leaders say they are pursuing the mission, so distinguishing between the mission and the organisation is hard to sell.

Another possibility of an alternative loyalty is to other workers, especially when they are supportive of each other, as in work teams or unions. Instead of speaking out as an individual, a worker concerned about abuses could instead build networks and alliances first, gaining support in order to promote collective action. This is not easy, but does have a prospect of fostering a different assignment of loyalties.

Then there is authority, a moral foundation that whistleblowers almost inevitably challenge. Questioning the boss’s authority is difficult, whether by direct confrontation or by reporting problems to the boss’s boss, higher officials or watchdog bodies. Is there any different line of authority that can be an alternative source of legitimacy? One possibility is the authority of laws. If bosses are violating the law, they are violating legal authority. The trouble is that by the time legal sanctions are applied — if they ever are — it is too late for the whistleblower. After all, corrupt operators do not declare they are breaking the law. Indeed, they commonly allege that whistleblowers are criminals, by violating terms of employment, confidentiality agreements and the like.

One of the advantages of whistleblower laws is that they give legitimacy to whistleblowers. Even though the laws may give little protection in practice and, even worse, give a false sense of security, their very existence may help undermine the assumption that authority is always right.

Finally there is sanctity, a moral foundation of special significance to many political conservatives. If corruption is stigmatised, then whistleblowers can draw on this moral foundation. This is suggested by the expressions “clean hands” and “dirty hands,” referring to honest and dishonest individuals. Whistleblowers can assist their cause by avoiding any activity that can be easily stigmatised as dishonest or unsavoury. By the same token, employers regularly manipulate the sanctity foundation by trying to stigmatise the whistleblower, by spreading rumours (sexual misbehaviour is a favourite allegation) and by treating the whistleblower as tainted, not to be trusted or even spoken to. Ostracism — cutting off personal relationships — is in essence to treat a person as dangerous and even contagious.

When whistleblowers join together with others, and obtain support from bystanders, it is far more difficult to stigmatise them. There is protection in numbers.

Considering the various foundations of morality thus provides some direction for whistleblowers and their supporters.

When appropriate, emphasise violations of care, fairness, and liberty.
Search for alternative bases for loyalty and authority.
Try to assign stigma to wrongdoers.
Be prepared for the tactics used to turn these moral foundations against whistleblowers.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

More information

I haven’t tried to provide sources for many of the generalisations I’ve made about whistleblowers. For more information see my book Whistleblowing and my site on suppression of dissent.

PS I’ve applied moral foundations ideas to several other topics:

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Paula Arvela, Don Eldridge, Kathy Flynn, Xiaoping Gao, Steven Howard, Nicola Marks and Tshering Yangden for helpful feedback on drafts.

I am vice president of Whistleblowers Australia but my views here do not necessarily represent those of others in the organisation.

Comments from Kim Sawyer

[Kim was a whistleblower at two Australian universities, and has been active on whistleblowing issues for many years.]

Excellent analysis – corresponds to the thoughts I’ve had over a long period of time. Haidt’s prescription of the rider-elephant dichotomy and the six foundations of morality are insightful. Your application of those foundations to whistleblowing is spot on. Two general comments, and then some specific comments from my experience.

First, whistleblowing acts to elevate the conflict between the foundations. It brings morality into focus for everyone; the whistleblower, the respondent, the bystanders. The foundations are like latent characteristics, and whistleblowing becomes the realization of those characteristics so that an individual has to now make a choice. It’s like going to the ballot box, you have to now choose between fairness and loyalty to the institution.

Secondly, one aspect which could be highlighted more is risk. Everyone, whistleblower, respondent and bystander, assesses their risks. Risk minimization takes over – that is, self-interest. The bystander may see the same unfairness as the whistleblower, but they also see the risk to themselves. You could say that these six foundations are a portfolio, and the whistleblower and bystander assign different weights to different foundations. My sense is that the bystander will always converge to the less risky portfolio which is loyalty to authority.

Some specific comments from my own experience

For me, fairness was always the important factor. In both whistleblowing cases, I chose fairness over loyalty to an unfair authority. And it correlates with my political leanings which are progressive. Of course, there was also a sense of professional responsibility, that a professor should act in the long-term interests of the institution and of higher education in general. Obviously, I took my professional responsibilities too seriously.
The two cases I was involved with highlighted the singularity of whistleblowing, but from vastly different starting points. In both cases though, the institution tried to replace the loyalty of colleagues to me by loyalty to the institution. This strategy emphasises the whistleblower and not the whistleblowing; the weaknesses of the whistleblower and not the foundational issues were highlighted.
Another issue is the conflicting loyalties within the whistleblower. I had loyalty to both universities, but the loyalty was principally to the long-term, not to the short-term management. Whistleblowing involves a lot of internal conflict for a whistleblower between fairness and loyalty to authority. Fairness won out for me.

self-development

Marking essays: making it easier and more fun

September 8, 2014 Brian Martin

It’s worthwhile discovering methods to make marking more enjoyable. The same methods can be used to tackle other dreaded tasks.

Sitting on your desk is a pile of essays that need to be marked. There might be just 10 or 20, or maybe 50, 100 or more. For most teachers, this is not an eagerly awaited task. Is there some way to make marking easier and more enjoyable?

I’ve been marking undergraduate essays for over 25 years and have tried out various methods to make the task less onerous. Gradually I’ve discovered ways that work well for me. You may or may not want to adapt these for your own circumstances. In any case, I encourage you to undertake your own search for better methods. If you’re looking ahead at 25 years of marking, surely it’s worthwhile to explore better ways to go about it.

Pacing

Because marking is generally seen as unpleasant, it is very common to postpone starting. Doing other things, such as reading a book, checking emails, searching the web or even doing housework, suddenly seems more appealing. After all, it really won’t matter much if you start tomorrow. Days and sometimes weeks go by until it becomes urgent to do the marking. Then it becomes a matter of long exhausting hours of mental labour. It seems like a marathon, and only goes to prove that it really was something to be avoided.

The habits of procrastination and bingeing are deep-seated. Most teachers learned them when they were students, cramming for exams or doing all-nighters to write essays.

The solution to the syndrome of procrastination and binge marking is simple: tackle just a few essays each day. If I have 80 essays and need to finish marking them in two weeks, I set myself a target of six every day. Six essays seem much less daunting than 80.

The hard part is getting started. It’s best to begin marking the very first day or, if some essays come in early, before the due date.

Robert Boice researched the habits of highly productive new academics, and found the secret of success was working in moderation. Academics who did a little every day — research, writing, class preparation — were vastly more productive than those who waited for big blocks of time to complete tasks in lengthy sessions. Furthermore, the ones who worked in moderation were less stressed.

I can’t tell you how to change habits of procrastination and bingeing; you can learn a lot from various self-help books. All I can say is that it’s one of the most important things you can do to make marking easier.

Staying fresh

My goal is to approach each essay feeling fresh and positive. Doing only a moderate number of essays per day helps. So does taking breaks. After marking one or two essays, I’ll take a break: a stretch, a snack, some research work, some reading, perhaps the dishes.

If I’m doing only an hour’s worth of marking per day, a break may not be needed. For anything longer, breaks are vital.

Marking requires mental effort, and the mind behaves like a muscle. Do too much and it gets tired and cries out in pain. Do the right amount and it gets stronger day by day. This is another reason for pacing: marking gradually becomes easier. So often it’s better to start with a few essays on the first day and increase the daily target later.

Going faster

How long does it take to mark an essay? A few teachers I’ve met may spend an hour or more, reading and rereading the essay, writing lengthy comments and agonising over the mark. My goal, though, is to go faster while maintaining quality.

Many people read at 200 to 300 words per minute. Yet it is possible to read several times this fast while maintaining comprehension. To do this requires practice, going a little bit faster until it seems natural, and then pushing to go faster still.

Going faster is similar to progressive training of the body, with greater speed or strength developing over time. It’s also similar to typists who train so they can achieve amazing speeds with great accuracy.

My aim is to be fresh and to maintain concentration so I need to read an essay only once and retain a short-term memory of it, perhaps jotting down a few notes along the way. I then type all my comments. If I feel a need to read the essay again, it usually means I haven’t maintained concentration. Time for a break.

Marking less

Even the most efficient marker can be daunted by the prospect of hundreds of essays. If you have some control over assessments, then there are ways to cut back on the marking load.

One option is to simply reduce the number of assignments. Students are often overloaded with work, and could do a better job on fewer assignments, putting more effort into each one.

Another option is to mark some student performance during class. I used to have students do short oral presentations. With a simple template, I would scribble feedback on a sheet of paper and give this to the students at the end of the class. One advantage for students was getting feedback promptly, which seldom happens with essays.

Yet another option is to have frequent small assignments, but only mark some of them. For example, in one class students had to write eight mini-essays, one per week. However, only two these were marked, in weeks chosen randomly after weeks four and eight. Some students complained that they wanted all their submissions marked; I responded by saying that marking just two of them was equivalent to having an exam in which only two of eight possible questions were asked.

Another source of essay marking overload is writing too many comments. I discovered that some students were discouraged by too much red ink. Others never bothered to read my comments at all. In one case a student – one of the weakest in the class – glanced at the mark and immediately deposited the essay in the rubbish bin. All the effort I had put into commenting on strengths and weaknesses was for naught.

For final assignments, some of my colleagues have a policy of asking students to say in advance whether they want comments. Students who don’t ask just receive a mark.

Years ago, I used to correct spelling and grammar as well as give comments on content. But I don’t teach English composition, so why become a proofreader? So I stopped giving detailed feedback on expression, and concentrate on content.

My current system is to write brief comments on each assessment criterion, mentioning strengths and ways to improve, and to supplement this with “general comments” that are generic for the whole class. The general comments explain my expectations and elaborate on how essays could be better. I say in my feedback that if my specific comments don’t say anything about a particular aspect of the assignment, then the student should look to the general comments. This approach avoids the need to write the same comments on essay after essay.

Varied assignments

Monotony is a great source of pain in marking. If there are 50 essays each answering the question “What are the factors behind the rise of social media?” the task quickly becomes tedious. If you are marking essays for someone else’s class and have no control over essay questions, you have my sympathies. Luckily, I’ve usually been able to set my own assignment topics. One of my goals has been to make it interesting for me to mark essays — even the ones that aren’t so good.

Thinking up assignments that are stimulating for students to carry out and for me to mark is not easy, but it has been worthwhile. Two ways of doing this are to give students quite a bit of choice in their topics and to invite or require them to use unconventional formats.

In an environmental politics class, we covered a series of topics such as sustainable development and the precautionary principle. Each week I asked the students to write a comment on that week’s environmental topic using a randomly chosen political, economic or other theory or framework, such as liberalism, militarism, feminism or Buddhism. Then for the final assignment, students had to write a dialogue between two characters, as in a script for a play, with footnotes as appropriate. Each character had to represent or embody some theory, for example Mao Tsetung for Marxism and Gandhi for pacifism. The characters had to discuss some environmental topic. So one possible dialogue would be between Mao and Gandhi discussing sustainable development.

For marking purposes, this assignment was delightful. Every submission was different, and many students were creative in their choices. One student crafted a discussion between Thomas the Tank Engine and Percy the Small Engine. Percy was a Rastafarian and used rasta slang; footnotes explained unusual terms.

When designing such unorthodox assignments, it can be challenging to explain to students exactly what is expected. I’ve found a fairly good method: with students’ permission, I post top assignments from previous years on my website. These show the format expected, for example a dialogue, and by demonstrating really good work can provide an inspiration to do well.

Designing an assignment that is interesting to mark has a spin-off effect. It can change the mode of covering the content. In many cases, I’ve found it effective to let students investigate topics themselves rather than me delivering lectures. For the environmental politics class, we had an excellent textbook for the environmental topics, and I let the students (many of whom were doing an environmental science degree) look up topics like liberalism and Buddhism on their own.

To some, this might seem to be abdicating a teacher’s responsibility to provide authoritative perspectives on content. For me, it is part of encouraging students to learn on their own, including finding relevant readings, understanding concepts and applying them to case studies.

In making marking more enjoyable, I also hope to make learning more enjoyable for students. By getting students to do more work on their own and tackle unorthodox assignments, I hope to encourage student creativity and initiative. I remind myself that for the teacher to work hard often is not all that relevant to student learning. Students learn more when they work hard, and they are more likely to work hard on an interesting assignment. When the assignment is interesting to both students and the teacher, it is a win-win solution.

Other applications

If marking can be made reasonably enjoyable, what about other dreaded tasks? What is dreaded depends on the person, and might be paperwork filing, housework, gardening, tax returns or practising the violin. Often it’s whatever you’re avoiding. Whatever the challenge, the same sorts of principles can be applied.

1. Work in moderation, a little bit each day, rather than procrastinating and bingeing.

2. Remain fresh and alert by taking breaks when needed.

3. Practise going a bit faster while maintaining quality.

4. Aim to do what’s good enough, not at perfection.

5. Redesign the task to make it more interesting.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Further reading

Robert Boice, Advice for New Faculty Members: Nihil Nimus (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2000): on moderation as a philosophy for academic work.

Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (New York: Random House, 2012): a fascinating account including advice on changing habits. (See Brian’s commentary.)

http://www.bmartin.cc/classes/: subject outlines and outstanding student work illustrating unusual types of assignments.

Acknowledgements Thanks to Paula Arvela, Don Eldridge, Kathy Flynn and Anne Melano for helpful comments.

health

A prostate story

August 20, 2014 Brian Martin

Who benefits from testing to see if you have prostate cancer?

Being told “You’ve got cancer” can strike fear into a person’s heart. For middle-aged men, prostate cancer is the most common reason to hear this diagnosis.

Here’s how it usually happens. You have a simple blood test and receive a figure for your PSA, the prostate specific antigen. Anything above 4.0 is supposed to be a cause for worry, and possibly more tests. The number gives the PSA blood level in nanograms per millilitre.

I remember having the test done quite some years ago. A nurse rang to give me the results. She said “It’s 4.1”. I thought, this seems a bit high given my lifestyle. Then she said, “Oh, sorry, it’s actually 0.1”. That was okay, then. Little did I know.

An elevated PSA level is considered a cause for worry. The doctor might recommend a biopsy just to be sure, or the patient might want to know. This can lead to trouble. If the biopsy is positive for cancer, what next?

In the US, most urologists recommend removal of the prostate, an operation called a prostatectomy. This is supposed to get rid of the cancer. It sounds straightforward, but the operation is extremely delicate. The prostate straddles the urethra, the channel for urine and semen, and is surrounded by many sensitive nerves.

Sometimes the operation doesn’t get rid of the cancer. And quite often the operation has serious side effects: most men are left impotent and many become incontinent.

Instead of removing the prostate, another option is called “active surveillance” or “watchful waiting”, though it might better be called “worried waiting”. What this means is checking at regular intervals to see whether the PSA score is increasing.

Although most men in their 50s and 60s have cancer in their prostates, relatively few of them die of it. The cancer is usually slow-growing, so slow-growing that something else kills them first. They die with prostate cancer, not from prostate cancer.

Because the advantages of taking a PSA test are so limited, and the possible side-effects of unnecessary treatment are so severe, some researchers and policy-makers have argued that healthy men should not be screened using the test. On the other side are those – including urologists and advocacy groups, among others – who argue that PSA testing saves lives, and accuse the no-screening advocates of playing with men’s lives.

This debate has played out differently in different countries. In Britain, watchful waiting is more common; in the US, testing and aggressive treatment, especially removing the prostate if there is any sign of cancer, is standard.

Into this debate, there’s a new book titled The Great Prostate Hoax. The subtitle indicates the message: How Big Medicine Hijacked the PSA Test and Caused a Public Health Disaster.

The author is Richard J. Ablin, assisted by Ronald Piana. Ablin has credibility in this area: he discovered PSA in 1970. And he is appalled at the widespread use of the PSA test in the US. He says that as the discoverer of PSA,

I have been linked to the 30 million American men … who undergo routine PSA screening for prostate cancer. The result: a million needle biopsies per year, leading to more than 100,000 radical prostatectomies, most of which are unnecessary. (p. 4, emphasis in the original)

Richard J. Ablin

Ablin provides one key point that undermines the argument for testing: the PSA test is not a test for prostate cancer. It is only a test for the prostate specific antigen, in extremely tiny amounts in the blood. This is not the same as a prostate-cancer specific antigen. Ablin says that using the PSA test is roughly as accurate as flipping a coin. Furthermore, the level of 4.0 as a warning of whether there might be cancer is arbitrary: it was more or less picked out of the air.

Researchers have been searching for a prostate-cancer indicator, but haven’t found one yet. The next question is how the PSA test ever became accepted, given its dubious diagnostic value.

This is where “big medicine” comes in. The PSA test does have some value. For men being treated for prostate cancer, the PSA level is an indicator of whether the cancer has returned, and therefore of how effective treatment is.

For a company selling a PSA test, there’s not much money to be made in testing men being treated for prostate cancer. But there are big bucks in screening. In the US, this means tens of millions of men per year.

Ablin tells the story of how the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which licenses medical tests, was swayed by emotion over rationality in approving a PSA test. For example, one of the test’s advocates, Jim Wise, used this approach:

Queried on the suffering of countless numbers of men harmed by PSA false positives, Wise circled the wagons around his insular community – men who claim they were saved by PSA screening – in essence, seemingly implying that their lives outweigh the harms to other men produced by false-positive PSA results. This is the common emotion-based type of exchange used by advocates to promote PSA screening. It’s a kind of flag-waving patriotism that people are loath to challenge; we’ve seen the results of that sheeplike mentality. (pp. 66-67)

But there is more to the FDA story than emotional pleas. Corporate interests played a role. Some FDA advisory committee members tried to expose the scientific shortcomings of the PSA test, but corporate connections prevailed. Ablin describes the FDA advisory committee meeting in considerable detail, down to individual exchanges, revealing a system that is corrupt at several levels.

FDA officials tried to cover themselves by issuing warnings about inappropriate use of the test, but their inaction sent a different message. The FDA did nothing about massive off-label promotion of the PSA test.

Advocacy groups were part of the promotion of PSA screening; many of them are sponsored by the companies. Before long, PSA screening became the basis for a massive commercial enterprise. Screening is only the beginning. False positives keep the money rolling in. Men are told their PSA might indicate prostate cancer and should have a biopsy. Then, quite commonly, cancer is detected in the prostate, and prostatectomy is recommended.

An experienced surgeon can usually do a good job, but many men opt for a much more expensive method using a robot. The surgeon is still involved, but using a complicated piece of equipment. Robotic prostatectomies have become the primary method used in the US, even though there is little evidence they are any more successful than conventional surgeries.

If radiation is the preferred option, the latest generation of high-tech treatment is proton-beam therapy, in centres costing over $100 million to construct. Without sufficient patients, these centres would go bankrupt.

Then there are the side effects of treatment, though they might be better described as the main effects: impotence and incontinence. Ablin offers some moving stories from men whose lives have been seriously damaged by prostate removal. Some of them feel their manhood has been lost.

and so does a prostatectomy

Because of impotence and incontinence, there’s an additional market in medical fixes, for example penile implants and bulbourethral sling surgery. Ablin quotes experts saying that half of urology practices in the US would go out of business if not for the steady stream of patients whose problems begin with PSA testing.

From Ablin’s perspective, PSA testing is a gravy train for urologists and for drug and medical device manufacturers, with a seemingly inexhaustible stream of men entering the shadow of a prostate cancer diagnosis. Ablin calls PSA testing a hoax because there is no good evidence that it reduces the death rate and there is ample evidence that it causes a huge amount of suffering.

The Great Prostate Hoax is powerful testimony to the dangers of a profit-driven health system. It can be added to the growing body of writing about corruption in corporate healthcare, something that causes far more suffering and death than most of the hazards that exercise the public mind.

The book does have some limitations. It deals almost exclusively with the situation in the US, giving little attention to practices and debates in other countries. The US situation is important, to be sure, but insight into ways to control the PSA-testing juggernaut could be obtained by an examination of what is happening in countries where different attitudes and policies prevail. (For an Australian critical commentary on PSA testing, see Let Sleeping Dogs Lie?)

Another context for the book is screening for other conditions. A decade ago, H. Gilbert Welch wrote Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here’s Why, providing close scrutiny of the hazards of screening people with no symptoms. More recently, he and two colleagues extended their critique of screening to a wide variety of conditions, in a 2011 book titled Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health.

The implication of Ablin’s book is that any man without symptoms should be reluctant to enter the screening roller coaster. But is there anything else worth doing? Ablin doesn’t mention non-standard treatments of prostate cancer, for example hyperthermia, available in Germany. Nor does he mention the possibility of nutritional prevention. There is a considerable body of information about the possible benefits of selenium, zinc, fish oil, natural vitamin E and saw palmetto, as well as more general benefits from a diet with cruciferous vegetables. Hyperthermia and nutritional prevention are controversial, to be sure, but their hazards are far lower than conventional treatment.

For men concerned about their personal risks from prostate cancer, it is worth considering a range of information, about prevention, screening and treatment methods. In this, The Great Prostate Hoax is essential reading, especially to appreciate the intersection between science and politics. Ablin deserves the last word.

Medical industry profiteers have squandered trillions of health care dollars since the PSA test was first brought to the market. Given the utter failure of PSA screening, scientifically and clinically, why are we continuing to drain our health care system by repeating something we already know does not work. The late Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Repeating the same mistakes borne at the beginning of the PSA saga borders on criminal insanity. (p. 228, emphasis in the original)

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

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