On Accountability 2

In the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan, I again have started to reflect on accountability. This time, I am thinking about the accountability of the general media and not only scientific publications. During my studies, I read two courses of modern physics, which would be in layman's terms nuclear physics. I have repeated this often, but I still contend that only after having studied modern physics did I learn to sufficiently appreciate my ignorance. In other words, only after having studied nuclear physics did I understand that I don't know by far enough to make any sensible statements about nuclear physics. It's just too difficult.

Now, having read plenty of news from Fukushima, I realize that most journalists do not share my appreciation of their own ignorance. The news are filled with statements that are to me obviously flawed, and which scare people that do not spot the flaw. In effect, the main news outlets are doing their best to spread panic and fear.

As horrible as the events in Fukushima are, I believe that we should refrain ourselves from making decisions based on emotion only, instead of facts and evidence based judgement. Spreading fear and panic is in this sense counter-productive. Fears should be considered in decision making, since it has a strong negative effect on the well-being of people, but it should not be taken as an excuse for ignoring facts and evidence.

My conclusion of this is, with respect to news outlets, that news corporations driven by economical motives do not have sufficient incentives to retain accountability. Spreading fear and panic sells newspapers, even if the news would be slightly inaccurate. It seems that this lack of accountability is a common theme in market driven corporations - it is, after all, lack of accountability that caused the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. Likewise, lack of accountability caused the economic crash a few years ago. If thus accept that the capitalistic system is lacking in incentives for accountability, the question that remains is what we should do about it?

To me it seems that the only way to introduce accountability in world economy, is to change the rules of the game somehow. The most obvious choice is regulation. However, I fear that such regulations would be difficult to design and even more difficult to supervise. To be honest, I don't even have an idea where to begin. Personally, I would lay more hope in changing the rules on a different level, by opening things up instead of closing them down. I believe that enforcing transparency, not only to governments, but to privately owned corporations as well, that would be a good start. This would not, however, solve the problem with news outlets.

This is a problem that still eludes me. Especially now that the border between news media and private persons on the Internet has diffused, it will be difficult to enforce accountability. For traditional newspapers, it perhaps would have been possible to enforce a law that demands that facts should be double-checked. But with bloggers such rules become meaningless.

Right at this moment, I had an idea! What about a scientific validation service for news outlets? A service, that would employ scientific experts to validate the plausibility of claims made in a news story? Hmm. Have to think about that more.

On Accountability

A word that I have come to stumble on with increasing frequency is "accountability". It is with pleasure I have seen its rise, not only because it often involves bringing justice, which is inherently good, but because it demonstrates a rise awareness of systemic relationships. Let me explain why.

A recent topic in Finland has been the quality of food. Many in the general public have bemoaned the low quality. The producers respond that their offerings match the demand, so the general public is to blame. In effect, both parties are pointing fingers at the opposite side.
Personally, I happen to agree with both sides. The quality of many products is shamefully low, but a depressingly large portion of people are primarily interested in the price, not quality. The public cries for accountability, but producers cannot commit economical suicide by raising quality without obtaining something in return.
A systemic analysis of the situation would probably most naturally begin by observing the incentives the producers have to improve the quality and the incentives the public has to buy good quality food. For the low-income people, there are no incentives. You eat what you can afford. This fact alone enforces the status quo. There is an obvious demand for cheap food and the producers main incentive is to meet the demand.
Here the cry for accountability is effectively a demand for a feedback system. Without going into how the accountability should be implemented, for which I do not have any clue, I would like to emphasise the importance of a feedback system. The demand and supply relationship is, in a narrow sense, a linear relationship, where more demand gives more supply. The demand for accountability, for a feedback mechanism, is essentially a desire to create another connection between supply and demand, that balances or counter-acts the existing relationship.
I find it important to realize that all parties in this equation currently already act in a way that is well-warranted, when observed in isolation. Each participant tries his best to do good in his local surroundings. That the outcome is bad, is not to be blamed on the individuals, but on the design of the system.

Another example is the famous and infamous Wikileaks. I honestly believe that US officials quite earnestly believe that they have been acting in the best interest of the people of USA all along, if not always "the world". From their own isolated perspectives, all their actions seem well-warranted and justified. The fact is, however, that the US has in secret done some horrible things (for a abbreviated list, see http://www.opendemocracy.net/ryan-gallagher/what-has-wikileaks-ever-taught-us-read-on). Although the US government is supposedly held accountable to the people of USA, the flow of information from the government to the public has been too weak. The government has not had any incentive to improve the flow of information, since improving would have made life within the government more difficult. What is needed is an independent party to control the flow of information. Wikileaks is one such independent party, although admittedly it has its faults.

Yet another example of a completely different kind is the scientific peer-review process. To obtain good quality science, we must have a mechanic for assessing the quality. Peer-review is the best mechanism we know of. Usually, peer-review is enforced in scientific publications, where any input must be subjected to examination of independent experts. Only when the experts agree that the input meets scientific standards of quality, is the article accepted for publication.
The standard way of implementing peer-review is anonymous review, where the independent experts are chosen secretly by the editors of the scientific publication and the authors never learn the experts identity. The purpose of this mechanism is to prevent undesirable feedback, that is, enable reviewers to express negative criticism without fear of retaliation. An undesirable side-effect is that the reviewers do not get any feedback for their comments. Again, the system is linear. Information flows only from reviewers to the authors.
An alternative is open review, such as exploited by Wikipedia, where commentary is signed, if not by name, at least by alias. (In on-line communities, an alias can become as valuable as a real-life identity.) In the open review model, a reviewer dare not submit careless criticism, because his own reputation is on the line. Only well-argued criticism can be presented, without a negative impact on ones own reputation.

In each of these cases, the usual level of dialogue is finger pointing, name calling and blaming the opponent for the problems that exist. I find such dialogue un-constructive and distasteful. Yet, the emergence of the word accountability, gives hope that people in positions of power would catch up on a systemic perspective, if not consciously, perhaps at least intuitively. Personally, I have today tried to start a movement within my own field of science toward increased accountability through open review. After all, I do not want to be just another "finger pointer", but I believe it is imperative to act upon what you think is right.