The infiltration of rogue information

For me, the past month can be summed up in one word; infiltration. Horse meat has infiltrated our food chain and, more worryingly for me, rogue ‘facts’ seem to have made their way into otherwise trustworthy sources of information.

In the last episode of the BBC’s otherwise excellent series Africa, narrator Sir David Attenborough suggested that some parts of the continent had become 3.5^oC hotter in the last 20 years. If, like me, the dulcet tones of Attenborough happened on this occasion to be on in the background whilst you desperately tried to get your three year-old ready for bed, then you to would have had your attention, well, not so much grabbed as physically assaulted by this statement.

In the delicate balance of global climate change – where whole island nations can be swallowed by the subtlest of temperature hikes – 3.5^oC is an enormous change in just 20 years. Were the BBC absolutely sure they were correct here? Well, sadly not. So much so that in the repeat of the episode the offending statement was removed.

How the ‘fact’ in question came to the fore when the producers were putting together the script for the voiceover is uncertain. The BBC claim the source was a report written and compiled by Oxfam and the New Economics Foundation, who in turn cite a Christian Aid report as the source. Wherever it came from, it appears to be wholly inaccurate. Indeed several experts have picked apart why this is so on Leo Hickman’s environmental blog on the Guardian web site.

But my main concern is this – whilst the horsemeat scandal was indeed worrying, in dominating the headlines it at least reminded the public of the vital role food testing laboratories play in a secure food chain.  This imposter however seems to serve only to stoke an already mired controversy. When dealing with a subject such as climate change, upon which controversy still has a firm grip, facts are very valuable indeed. As with any valuable commodity, soon enough fakes will begin to appear. Fakes that will at best fog the window of truth slightly, and at worse completely undermine our understanding of the reality of a situation. In the case of climate change – dangerously so.

Climate change has proved, indeed is proving, difficult enough to understand even with accurate data – so the presence of even one rouge piece of mis-information can do tremendous damage. For the climate change deniers this will likely be the perfect grist to their mill, just another example of the liberal media bending the truth to their world view. Let us hope that the next time the BBC want to make an impact with science, they check their sources very carefully indeed.