David Ropeik
Retired Harvard Instructor, Author
David Ropeik is an award-winning broadcast journalist, a Harvard instructor, and an international consultant in risk communication and risk perception. He’s also the author of How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts.
It rose up out of the sea, a fearsome roaring monster unlike anything humans had ever seen, horrible, primeval, unstoppable, towering, breathing radioactive fire and leaving total destruction in […]
Dear Biosphere, While you are well aware of the physical inputs we humans inject into your system, you may be blind to the human politics and polling and psychology about […]
Proposed U.S government regulations to curtail carbon dioxide emissions from power plants are rightfully being hailed as major progress in the fight against climate change. Major environmental groups are applauding. […]
A few thoughts on your lazy brain. But just a few because, well, you know, the brain likes things nice and easy. The brain normally operates on what […]
Clean energy. GREEN energy. Energy that can solve global warming. Environmentalists are all for it. And as a direct result, no matter what the benefits, conservatives are absolutely against it. […]
The National Climate Assessment released today by the White House is a masterful piece of science and risk communication Susan Joy Hassol, Senior Science Writer, who turned massive contributions […]
Eaten any cheese lately? It was probably made with genetic engineering. Anything with sugar in it? Good chance that was made with genetic engineering too. Anything with ingredients containing […]
Psychologists have known for a long time the emotional truth captured in Joseph Stalin’s chilling (reputed) observation, “One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic.” This […]
If you’re running a little short on potable water, you might want to take some empty jugs up to Portland Oregon, where for the next few days they will be […]
Toms River, by a friend, Dan Fagin, came out a year ago, to deservedly great reviews. It’s an epic piece of science journalism and a powerful human story, intelligently woven […]
A lot of work on climate change these days is trying to address what seems to be a major part of the problem; people don’t care all that much. […]
The goal of this blog is to help raise awareness of what I call The Risk Perception Gap the danger that arises when we worry about some things more […]
More than 20 people are dead and at least 90 are missing and presumed dead after a huge hillside of mud and clay and rock collapsed and slid down into […]
By 2002, Golden Rice was technically ready to go. Animal testing had found no health risks. Syngenta, which had figured out how to insert the Vitamin A-producing gene from carrots […]
The news is full of scary stories about threats to our health; from industrial chemicals, or the newest unfamiliar disease, or from the seemingly mundane things in life that […]
I was just thinking, which, it turns out, the brain does not like to do. At least not the purposeful, effortful, stay-focused kind. It’s work to think, to pay attention.
Anyone who has followed the fuss over fracking has heard opponents of the process claim that it causes earthquakes. According to a new report from the U.S. Geological Survey, […]
I participate in a Unitarian Universalist spiritual community. The UU faith has some basic beliefs, largely universal truths about how to be a good person, but when it comes […]
Global leaders seriously worried about climate change are having trouble getting more people to share that concern. One big reason is that climate change just doesn’t have the psychological […]
Should scientists advocate on policy issues, or, to protect their personal credibility and the credibility of their findings, should they just quietly do their work and avoid making policy […]
What do you know about fracking, the process of injecting water and sand and chemicals under high pressure into deep rock, cracking the rock open and allowing recovery of […]
The Frankenstein metaphor that opponents of genetically modified food use to promote their fears is more apt than they realize. Yes, the monster is an unnatural life form created […]
You know that old philosophical question; If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it fall? Here’s a variation; If a tree falls in the […]
At one second past midnight on Tuesday, the day will change to Wednesday, a normally unremarkable transition that happens every day, with no significance. But somehow this change, which […]
Hey, all you natural food fans. You die-hard anti-Monsanto opponents of genetically modified food, who say it’s dangerous because, well, it’s unnatural. You may want to think twice before you […]
You know those national debt counters, with the numbers that rapidly get bigger and bigger? Or those global population counters that do the same thing? Well now comes a […]
An intriguing piece of research has added an unexpected category of things that evolution may have taught us, down in our DNA, to be afraid of. Plants.
I just read an alarming piece on what the world will look like, possibly soon, when the efficacy of our current arsenal of antibiotics really starts to fade. There […]
It’s no mystery that fear sells, and for good reason. News stories, products, politics…it doesn’t matter what it is or where you hear about it, if something suggests danger, […]
Have you heard about the Echinacea that was actually ground-up Parthenium hysterophorus, an invasive exotic weed in Asia and Africa which doesn’t do much for a cold but causes […]