Okay, we are to that last section about the entire cycle.
And this is the promised quantitative storytelling.
You have already heard from Lapo in the previous presentation how important is that you
look at the possible different frames for
a given issue without being blind to the power relation,
which underpin each and every different frame.
It is for this that we say that you had to do
an impact assessment study something linked to the use of frames.
So, what is quantitative storytelling?
Well, you may have different way of looking at this.
This could be like a truism.
There is always one more side of the coin.
Now, there is always more than one story.
You could say that this is something we are invited to do by philosophers,
you will see what I mean in a second.
This could be an extension of sensitivity auditing or this could be
even a way to help the process of extended peer community.
So, I promised you the philosopher,
this is Friedrich Nietzsche,
which many of you may have read and loved,
and he says that you don't never have absolute knowledge,
you only have relative knowledge.
And what he constitutes the real objectivity is the addition,
is a composition of all these different ways of looking at an issue.
In this quote, which is very often made you will find it everywhere,
Nietzsche is particularly post-modern.
So, what is the proposal made by quantitative storytelling? It's very simple.
Instead of selecting one frame and do a lot of
quantification and number crunching in this frame, he says,
"Let's explore more frames and do some maybe simpler kind of quantification only to see
what frames pass a number of elementary text," and we will describe this in a second.
Let me give you an example first, though.
I want to show you the result of a study where a number of investigators have questioned
people in their liking or disliking of genetically modified food and substances.
And the result of the study was surprising in a sense,
because we normally hear discussion on GMO framed in
terms of whether this food is good or not for our health.
If you look at what the people interviewed in the study replied,
what concern they had on GMO,
many of them rise points of this nature: "Why do we need GMO?
Who decided that they should be used or developed or put on the market?
Why were not we better informed about this food before they reached the market?
That issue of choice,
this is the labelling issue.
"Are we given a real choice to select whether we want this food or not?"
And then the last point which for me is
particularly relevant and for this reason I will read it.
"Do regulatory authorities have sufficient power and resources to effectively
counterbalance large companies who wish to develop these products?"
So, in other words, if you look at what really bothers people
about GMO is an issue of power relationship and the
fear that the citizen may be not protected by
its own regulatory authority when these are
confronted by very powerful industrial interests.
But as I said at the beginning,
this story which we read in the newspaper is a totally different story.
Here is an example from the Economist,
and the Economist in this issue was very much upset because in Vermont,
an American state, Montpelier,
capital of Vermont, food labelling scheme had been finally adopted and
this force for the economy is very bad and
the result of food scare propagated by some kind of,
sort of the flowers generation,
And here I want to show you another example of framing,
which I found is particularly disturbing and this is a letter signed
by more than 100 Nobel laureates to attack Greenpeace because,
as you can see in this letter,
Greenpeace has been opposed to the dissemination of Golden Rice.
We are again in the field of GMO and this letter
reads as a very aggressive piece of document because it says,
"Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice,
but this Golden Rice is indeed very good because if you...
It's a rice which has a higher content of
a principle which could be useful to fight vitamin A deficiency (VAD).
And so this could help really poor countries and children
in poor countries because..." I'm still reading from the letter,
so this is the text of the letter signed by the Nobel Prize.
So, two million disease could be prevented using this GMO because this disease is very...
Affecting children, making them blind.
Affecting up to half a million children every year.
Many die as a result of this VAD,
and again Golden Rice is presented as,
of course, an antidote to this disease.
So, "Opposition based on emotion and dogma should be stopped."
And then the letter concludes saying,
"How many poor people in the world must die
before we consider this a crime against humanity?"
So, this is a framing clearly,
a very strong framing of an issue.
But if you look at the literature on the subject,
you will discover that there is a lot of problem associated with this Golden Rice.
I'm not saying that the opposition is right.
I'm saying that it's not so
a clear-cut case that you could accuse people of crimes against humanity.
Let's see what the argument are.
One is that nutritionally, apparently, this food,
this Golden Rice does not really have such an increased content in the beta carotene,
which is the active ingredient.
Golden Rice, even more importantly,
has not been authorized for commerce yet.
Many countries have fought vitamin A deficiency by simply providing for more food.
Which is not said that you had to fight VAD using this particular kind of food.
Golden Rice, as the name suggest, is yellow.
In many countries, the color yellow is used,
it's useful to detect the possible existence of a micro toxin.
So, Golden Rice would prevent these detection and hence could be dangerous in this sense.
When you tamper with the genes of rice to produce this expected more beta carotene,
unfortunately, you decrease the yield.
So, this is also something,
a reason why farmers might not want or intend to use this Golden Rice.
I'm using this to show you that if you open the frame of the Nobel prizes,
you see that there is a lot of things going on and this is not a simple case of
obtuse ecologist opposing something which would save humanity.
So, in quantitative storytelling what you would like to
do is to test on whether a given frame is feasible,
whether it is viable and whether it is desirable.
And what do I mean by each of these?
Well, we will go through each of them in turn.
And feasibility, in feasibility you consider the system as
a black box which has to use input from outside and produce an output.
And, at the same time,
also depleting possible stocks.
So, if you wish, feasibility is an analysis of
the constraints with the external world of the system you are trying to assess.
A compatibility with external constraints.
This is a slide I borrowed from Mario.
So, those are processes outside human control.
With viability instead, I look inside the box and I see whether
the system can actually perform all the functions which had been requested.
Assuming that the input from outside,
from the fund, is there by default.
So, this is a, if you wish,
a compatibility with internal constraints.
And the last check which is suggested in
quantitative storytelling is that of desirability. What is desirability?
This has to do with whether a narrative
is relevant and is wished and desired by a particular group actor.
And this way may eventually... You can clearly see that this
may lead to a conflict because if you are a chicken or if you are a cow,
you may have conflicting ideas on what should be eaten on the Christmas table. Thank you.
Mario GiampietroICREA Research Professor
Andrea SaltelliGuest researcher
Tarik SerranoPost-Doc Researcher
