Peter M. Sandman website update

August 23: Do we need safety activism and safety outrage (like environmental activism and environmental outrage)?

Guestbook comment and response

August 8: President Obama's handling of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

August 8: Why aren't people more worried about cell phone health risks?

Guestbook comment and response

June 29: The "Fake Pandemic" Charge Goes Mainstream and WHO'ss Credibility Nosedives

by Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard

In June 2010, one year after the World Health Organization declared swine flu a full-fledged pandemic, WHO’s credibility nosedived as even mainstream sources began to take seriously the absurd allegation that WHO had invented a “fake pandemic” in order to enrich the pharmaceutical industry. This column assesses at great length the three main reasons why this allegation made the move from fringe to mainstream: (a) WHO’s failure to acknowledge the ongoing mildness and current low incidence of the pandemic; (b) WHO’s failure to acknowledge that it changed some flu pandemic definitions and descriptions just as H1N1 was emerging; and (c) WHO’s failure to acknowledge until recently the legitimacy of concerns about transparency and conflict of interest. In a nutshell, the credibility of the World Health Organization crashed and burned because WHO mishandled some essential aspects of pandemic risk communication.

June 11: WHO: Hyping the pandemic or helping the world prepare?

Guestbook entry and response

A question about whether officials should be praised for raising pandemic awareness rather than criticized for “hyping” the swine flu pandemic led me to consider whether pandemic warnings did harm or good, given that the pandemic has turned out mild so far. Not much of either, I conclude in this response. The main harmful effect was probably the diminished credibility of the World Health Organization – which I attribute not to its early warnings but to its failure to modulate those warnings sufficiently in response to new information. This Guestbook entry describes four questions that officials need to answer, again and again, in a pandemic or any changing crisis situation. It proposes answers to those four questions with regard to swine flu as of June 2010.

June 8: Empathic Communication in High-Stress Situations

These are the notes I developed for a multinational management consulting firm that asked me to help give empathy training to its top consultant-managers. Though applied (as best I could) to a management consulting context, these notes are based largely on my 2007 column “<a href="http://www.psandman.com/col/empathy.htm">Empathy in Risk Communication</a>,” supplemented with such risk communication basics as the “<a href="http://www.psandman.com/col/games.htm">donkey’s” game</a>, the <a href="http://www.psandman.com/col/games.htm">risk communication seesaw</a>, and <a href="http://www.psandman.com/col/uncertin.htm">acknowledging uncertainty</a>.

June 6: The ethics of risk communication consulting and the BP oil spill

Guestbook comment and response

June 5: Jim Joyce, Tony Hayward, and how to apologize

Guestbook comment and response

June 4: Why We'sre Vilifying BP

by Peter M. Sandman
Solicited letter to the editor, London Evening Standard, June 4, 2010

On June 3, the London Evening Standard published a piece by City Editor Chris Blackhurst urging everybody to “<a href="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23840981-stop-putting-the-boot-into-bp---we-need-it-to-survive.do">Stop putting the boot into BP – we need it to survive</a>.” The editors asked me to write a response for the next day’s paper. So I wrote one, agreeing with Blackhurst that vilifying BP is unwise and in some ways unfair, then pointing out some other ways I think the vilification is justified. I don’t know if the response was published (the Evening Standard website doesn’t include letters), but here it is.

June 1: Communicating about the BP Oil Spill: What to Say; Who Should Talk

by Peter M. Sandman (with contributions by Jody Lanard)

Posted on <cite>Daily Kos</cite>, May 30, 2010

On May 29, one of the editors of the popular left-leaning blog Daily Kos, who goes under the nom-de-Web “DemFromCT,” wrote to ask my views on two risk communication aspects of the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: What should the sources be saying about the likely future course of the spill, and who should do the talking. He quoted liberally from my response in his May 30 post, entitled “Risk Communication and Disasters: Just Tell the Truth.” He also posted my whole response at the end of his piece. I focused mostly on telling the whole truth, avoiding over-reassurance, and letting everybody talk instead of trying to “speak with one voice.”

May 30: The role of public affairs professionals in enterprise risk management

Guestbook comment and answer