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 .p099 [[ /journalism.uoregon.edu/directory/faculty-and-staff/all/ellenpet | Ellen Peters: ]] more numerate people less likely to make bad gut decisions  .p099 [[ https://journalism.uoregon.edu/directory/faculty-and-staff/all/ellenpet | Ellen Peters: ]] more numerate people less likely to make bad gut decisions
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 .p146 more cancer because of more and older people; the ''death rate'' and ''incidence'' is falling
 .p146 almost all skin cancer deaths are rare [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanoma | melanoma ]]
 .p147 very little evidence that sunscreen protects against melanoma
 .p147 American Cancer Society ads paid for by [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrogena | Neutrogena, ]] uncredited
 .p148 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Pound | Dick Pound ]] claimed 1/3 of National Hockey League players used illegal performance-enhancing drugs. source? "... just invented it ... call me a liar"
 .p149 public relations companies create "news releases" that TV stations ran as their own reporting. Free content, free advertising
 .p150 [[ https://www.cspi.org/ | CSPI ]] "over 11,000 cases of school foodborne illness 1990-2004"
  . compare to CDC's 76 million US cases per year. 11000/14 = 768 cases per year, out of 50 million students, 0.00157% chance per student
 .p152 activists replace "likely" with "certain"

The Science of Fear

Daniel Gardner . 2008 . BvtLib 152.46 GAR


  • p001 Prologue: 1595

  • p002 fear of flying after 9/11, anthrax-infected mail

  • p003 flying FAR safer, the drive to the airport more dangerous
  • p003 If hijackers crashed one flight per WEEK, the risk is 1 in 1.6 million per flight
  • p003 annual car crash risk is 1 in 6000
  • p003 Gerd Gigerenzer observed shift to driving for a year, costing 1595 extra lives

  • p005 ch01 Prehistoric Refugee

  • p008 England life expectancy at birth: 1900:46y . 1980:74y . 2003: 80y
    • United States 1930:59y 2000:78y . Canada >80y

  • p008 childbirth deaths: developing world 440/100K developed world 20/100K
  • p010 June 1990 Lowenstein Mather Dynamic processes in risk perception
  • p010 Breast cancer highest after 80, 99% guessed lower ages (20% guessed fifties)
  • p011 Chernobyl estimated extra risk 9000, American skin cancer deaths more than 10,000 per year
  • p012 cars kill far more than handguns (not if suicide included)
    • 2023 Oregon guns / 134 homicides / 489 suicides / 587 crashes (20% are pedestrians and cyclists)
  • p013 Aum Shinrikyo 1995 subway nerve gas, 12 deaths, obesity kills 100K/y, inadequate preventive care "hundreds of thousands"
  • p015 Paul Slovic UO Daniel Kahneman 2002 Economics Nobel

  • p015 System 1 fast/stereotypic Feeling, System 2 slow/logical Reason

  • p016 availability heuristic

  • p018 ch02 Of Two Minds

  • p019 human brain size 5MYa 400cc, 2Mya 650cc, 0.5Mya 120cc, modern 1400cc
  • p020 human common ancestor 100Kya
  • p021 René Descartes: body and mind separate. Gilbert Ryle 1949 scorned "the ghost in the machine"
  • p022 big brain big skull, women's pelvis too small
  • p024 snake phobia universal inclination, even in snake-free Arctic
  • p032 ch03 The Death of Homo economicus

  • p032 Innocence in Danger "50,000 pedophiles on the internet" POMA

  • p033 Gandhi age of death: prime with 9, average guess 50. Prime with 140, average guess guess 67 (assassinated age 78)
  • p039 text: "For every problem there is a solution that is simple, clean, and wrong" wroteH. L. Mencken
  • p040 Kahneman and Tversky Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases Science 27 Sep 1974

  • p041 K&T "Linda description" probability ranking, 83% guessed "teller and feminist" more likely than teller or feminist

  • p042 Rule of Typical Things intuitive substitution of certainty for frequent association (my words)

    • most doctors choose intuition over logic
  • p045 Gilbert and Sullivan Mercado Act II: Pooh-Bah:
    • "Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative"
  • p046 Earthquakes less likely immediately after a prior one. Earthquake INSURANCE sales HIGHEST after one.
    • 1700 Cascadia 8.7-9.2 Mw, 325ya 40 major over 10,000 years, average every 246 years

    • 28 earthquakes since 6000 years ago, average every 215 years, longest interval 345 years.
    • We are near 326 years now. The next BIG ONE may make the region uninhabitable for YEARS
      • We should have disaster relocation insurance

  • p047 60sec: "list words _ _ _ _ _ n _" (avg. 2.9)" "list words _ _ _ _ i n g" (avg. 6.4)
    • cd /etc/dictionaries-common
    • grep '^.......$' words | wc (15459 words)
    • grep '^.....n.$' words | wc (1830 words)
    • grep '^....ing$' words | wc (1121 words)
    • students could think of 2.9 ......n. words in 60 seconds, 6.4 ....ing words in 60 seconds
  • p047 students who thought of 3 risk boosting behaviors they behave in rated their chances of disease higher than students who thought of 8
    • apples and oranges - students may be misinformed on two different axes
    • 48% of US adults have some form of cardiovascular disease
  • p054 Canary Island tsunami hazard

    • most collapses multistage events (hours to days), recurrence rate less than 100,000 years
    • Ward and Day 2001 model
      • 15-60 minutes for 50 to 100 meter waves hitting Africa
      • 3-6 hours for 15 to 20 meter waves hitting South Africa and Newfoundland
      • Spain and England shielded by La Palma, 5-7 meter waves
      • 9 hours to Florida for 20 to 25 meter waves
    • 2006 and later models suggest smaller waves, 10 meters in Africa and Europe, 3 meters in the western hemiphere
  • p054 Benjamin Franklin: "Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in none other."
  • p055 less than 20 years ago (book published in 2008, hence after 1988) ... rare journalists who knew of the internet's existence ...
    • There was already an ARPANET connection in UC Berkeley's Evans Hall in 1973, when I took classes there
    • Summer jobs at Tektronix since 1971; nearby teams were involved with ARPANET tests in 1973
  • p055 most 2008 popular internet sites (besides Google) did not exist in 1998
    • keithl.com and kl-ic.com registered in 2001, rain.net (my prior home internet connection) registered in 1994
  • p057 The Day After Tomorrow 2004 disaster film ludicrous, but led to some climate awareness

  • p059 ch04 The Emotional Brain

  • p061 30 cm meteorite explodes like 2 tons of dynamite, about 1000 per year.

0.3 m

2 tons

1000/y

1 m

100 tons

40/y

3 m

2000 tons

2/y

30 m

2 Mtons

60 m

80 Mtons

Tunguska

3000 m

80 Mtons

K–Pg (Cretaceous–Paleogene) extinction event

  • p061 K–Pg sized Doomsday rock 1/100My
  • p063 Spaceguard 1990s; by 2008 spotted 90% of 1.6km or larger

  • p064 Paul Slovic Decision Research

  • p065 Nuclear power risks: laypeople say #1 of 90, experts say #20 of 30
  • p067 Habituation

  • p070 Robert Zaljonc Ali Alhakami

  • p070 people see risk and benefit as opposites, seesaw effect, example nuclear power
  • p071 slower decisions "head", instant decisions "gut" more reflexive seesaw effect
  • p072 lethality of cancer over-estimated, more media attention, diabetes and asthma ignored and underestimated
  • p072 "nuclear" triggers the same intense fear, whether weapons or power or waste repository
  • p078 indoor radon kills 41,000 people per year in the US and EU, nobody else to blame, hence ignored,
  • p082 probability blind 1 in 10 million risk - 1/3 of population still worries

    • KL: motorcycle death rate 3 in 10 million miles
    • KL: 200M adults with BMI>25: 500,000 deaths per year -> 7 in 10 million risk per day

  • p083 PSU GE145.M37 1996 Howard Margolis d2009 Dealing With Risk

    • public demands mitigation of some tiny risks regardless of cost

  • p086 2004 Indian ocean tsunami killed 230,000 . Experts said unlikely, but create a warning system anyway, because the cost is modest.
  • p087 ch05 A Story About Numbers

  • p094 Herbert York chose 1MT warhead size for Atlas because it was a "particularly round number".

  • p096 Regression to the mean unusual results typically followed by average results

  • p099 Ellen Peters: more numerate people less likely to make bad gut decisions

    • book 513.019 P4815i 2020 Innumeracy in the wild 2020 @ Multco Hillsdale
  • p101 breast implant panic, invalid lawsuits bankrupted Dow Corning

  • p102 ch06 The Herd Senses Danger

  • p102 UCB Institute of Personality Assessment and Research

  • p103 15 out of 50 ignored what they saw and followed (fake) consensus
  • p103 Solomon_Aschconformity experiments 35% conformed to actor incorrect answer

  • p105 "today's fully independent thinker will have to have a thorough knowledge of biology, physics, medicine, chemistry, geology, and statistics"
    • nonsense. An independent thinker can say "It don't care", "I don't know", or "I will find out".
  • p107 John Weingart Waste is a Terrible Thing to Mind

  • p110 3 number test, guess rule. People find a simple rule that works when the actual rule is different.
    • the problem is not sticking to an overspecific rule, but that there are can be an infinite number of possible rules
  • p112 MRI test showed activity in a different part of brain for disconfirming information
  • p113 group polarization

  • p119 alcohol a beloved drug, kills far more people than all illicit drugs combined
  • p121 "white male effect", Paul Slovic discovered 70% agreed with women and minorities, 30% (wealthier, better educated, politically conservative) underestimated risks
  • p121 Dan Kahan four world views: individualist, egalitarian, hierarchist, communitarian

  • p123 people cherry-pick information to match their cultural predispositions
  • p125 ch07 Fear Inc.

  • p125 Security Essen 250Ksf 40V visitors

  • p126 Bulletproof Jaguar sedan

  • p127 home alarm system radio ad "breakins are on the rise" . police say breakins declining
  • p127 Negative affect

  • p129 Purell scary ads Welcome to the world of Howard Hughes

  • p129 Personal Air Purifier

  • p131 Doctor's office poster pushing Pravacol cholesterol-reducing statin drug, potentially lethal

  • p132 Moynihan and Henry 2005 Selling Sickness at Multco Central

  • p132 medical condition branding

  • p133 impotence medicalized to Erectile dysfunction

  • p135 Several ads for cholesterol-lowering drugs appeared to suggest non-pharmacological approaches were almost futile
  • p136 Paul Slovic: Tobacco companies understood affect 20 years before cognitive psychologists
  • p137 Kahneman Tversky 1974

  • p138 neuromarketing "attach subjects to MRIs" /uh/ maybe EEG

  • p142 Not less but MORE informed influenced by fear-driven political advertising
  • p143 "Nobody heard what you said ... powerful emotional pictures drown out the sound"
  • p144 Canadian "Low Income Cutoff" (people who aren't rich) conflated with "child hunger"
  • p145 Food Research Action Council 1991 claim 1 of 8 children had gone hungry sometime in the past year.
    • morphed into Dan Rather "American children in danger of starving ... one of eight is going hungry tonight"

  • p146 more cancer because of more and older people; the death rate and incidence is falling

  • p146 almost all skin cancer deaths are rare melanoma

  • p147 very little evidence that sunscreen protects against melanoma
  • p147 American Cancer Society ads paid for by Neutrogena, uncredited

  • p148 Dick Pound claimed 1/3 of National Hockey League players used illegal performance-enhancing drugs. source? "... just invented it ... call me a liar"

  • p149 public relations companies create "news releases" that TV stations ran as their own reporting. Free content, free advertising
  • p150 CSPI "over 11,000 cases of school foodborne illness 1990-2004"

    • compare to CDC's 76 million US cases per year. 11000/14 = 768 cases per year, out of 50 million students, 0.00157% chance per student
  • p152 activists replace "likely" with "certain"
  • p155 ch08 All the Fear That's Fit to Print

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  • p182 ch09 Crime and Perception

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  • p218 ch10 The Chemistry of Fear

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  • p246 ch11 Terrified of Terrorism

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  • p289 ch12 There's Never Been a Better Time To Be Alive

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  • p324 Bibliography

  • p325 Risk and Reason : safety, law, and the environment Sunstein ... PSU basement HD61 .S86 2002

  • more later

ScienceOfFear (last edited 2026-02-15 07:57:55 by KeithLofstrom)