Defending Good Science

April, 2005

Who Do You Trust?

Who do you trust?  Do others trust you? 

Far too often the perception of truth is filtered through those who are delivering it.  So I eagerly await March for three reasons each year – the NCAA basketball tournament, the arrival of spring, and the Leger and Leger Marketing “Profession Barometer” poll which examines which professions are trusted by the general public.  (Which can be found here.)

Leger and Leger ask, “Which profession do you trust?”  The poll is limited to Canadians (Leger & Leger is a Canadian firm) but the results are easily transposed upon the population as a whole.  For the fifth year running, Firefighters have earned the trust of a whopping 97% of the general population.  Nurses, Doctors, Farmers and Teachers all share an A+ ranking, with at least 88% support.

What comes as no surprise is the bottom of the pile of public credibility – car salesmen and politicians.  (To be fair, Public Relations consultants are also hanging out in the basement, but at least we double the score of an average MP or Senator.)

Other professions of note… perhaps surprisingly, church leaders are only trusted by 65% of the population.  Journalists score less than half.  Lawyers actually score higher than you may suspect, with a score of 45%, but “senior public servants” have declined over the past four years – losing 3% a year – and are down to lawyer level.

The very notion of your profession shaping your message is one of the simplest reasons industry groups have such a hard time combating a health care message – whether or not the science is sound, if the medical community says pesticides are bad, people will tend to believe that.  And if, for example, a public service bureaucracy, such as the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, dares to disagree, the notions are dismissed.

People begin forming an opinion of your message before they even hear it.  It’s critical to understand where you stand in terms of public credibility before you attempt to shape your message, much less say anything publicly.

Where this gets confusing is in ‘mixed professions.’  During a teachers strike, are the picketers considered teachers (high credibility) or union activists (low credibility?)

It happens all the time in the biotechnology industry – farmers (very high credibility) get caught up in the debate over genetically modified seeds from industrial sources (low credibility.)  If a farmer is making bio-products on his family farm, is he considered a farmer, or a small industrial factory?  This is why activists develop terms like “factory farming” – to drive the credibility factor lower than it would normally be. 

Assuming you carry a high amount of trust and credibility to your target audience is a recipe for disaster.  If you have an obligation to communicate to the public, you’re shirking your responsibilities by pretending otherwise.  Ignoring the public need for trusted information isn’t ‘communication’ – its ‘propaganda.’

So what can you do to communicate a trusted message?  It’s a complex answer, and not easily summarized in a few paragraphs.  But some very quick tips to remember: 

• Examine your source.  After all, what’s more important – the message or the messenger?  Can you say what needs to be said with someone else – perhaps a third party with higher credibility than you?
  
• Watch your delivery.  There are over 70 non-verbal indicators which influence trust and credibility.  Managing your non-verbals means not having to defend any spoken mistakes.
  
• Kill message traps.  Obviously, it helps knowing what your message traps are in the first place, but inappropriate humor, denying negative allegations with another negative, or offering guarantees all torpedo a message.

Remember, you can’t shape what you are… but you can shape who you are.  Sometimes the road to trust and credibility is longer than we’d like – but it’s always worth pursuing.

Link of the Month

Science & Environmental Policy Project

The Science and Environmental Policy Project is an initiative founded on the premise that sound, credible science must form the basis for health and environmental decisions that affect millions of people and cost tens of billions of dollars every year.

The premise is good, the execution is... how shall I frame this delicately... shaky.  The organization is desperately in need of a new website.

That being said - it's a great idea, and I'd urge you to check it out, if for nothing else than Fred Singers weekly "The Week That Was" (TWTW) feature detailing some of the junk science stories which have happened lately.

SEPP TWTW Archive

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