Reducing carbon emissions to minimise climate change is a global challenge, which 195 of world’s countries have agreed to work towards. Unlike most human modifications of the planet, the effect of carbon emissions is truly global, and can only be avoided through global cooperation. Based on overwhelming scientific evidence and substantial negotiations, the Paris agreement set the target of keeping global average temperature increase below 2°C, while attempting to limit it to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The agreement opens scientific questions as to whether this target is achievable, and, if so, how it could be achieved. This study set out to answer these questions using carbon cycle models and emissions scenarios. The results caused a media storm of divergent reports.
Dr Theodore Koutmeridis is a Lecturer in Economics at the Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow. He holds a PhD in Economics from Warwick University where he was a Royal Economic Society Junior Fellow and an Onassis Scholar, and he has recently been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. His work on economic inequality and crime has been recognised with various awards, such as the Sir Alec Cairncross Prize, the 1st Prize of the ‘European Science Days’ Interdisciplinary Award, the British Academy Rising Star Award, grants by the ESRC, and has been featured in the media and various symposia, such as his TEDx talk on ‘The Underground Economy’. His contribution to the YAS Brexit Report highlighted the opportunities and risks of Brexit to the Scottish Economy, and also the role of the media in communicating socioeconomic issues.
During the Brexit referendum, there was a lot of talk of the impact of EU migration, and migration in general, on the job prospects and incomes of UK born workers. You have described this as a ‘misuse of evidence’. Can you explain what you mean by this, and how the media reporting influenced this?
My feeling is that several advanced economies are looking inward, following an anti-globalising sentiment, which has been influenced also by the current migration crisis. The Brexit advocates and the believers of other xenophobic campaigns, such as Trump’s supporters, focus on the sensitive issue of migration and emphasise its perils on the labour market outcomes of native workers. Instead of examining the evidence to shape their opinion, such campaigners are prepared to misuse the evidence to support their preconceptions, ignoring the detrimental consequences that this may have. I am highlighting this as almost every study suggests that migration at large, or EU migration do not influence much the employment prospects or the real wages of UK-born workers (e.g., work by the London School of Economics). To the contrary several studies argue that restrictions in migration will reduce per capita GDP in the UK post Brexit. If these findings, and in particular the misuse of evidence regarding migration, had been reported impartially in the media, the referendum outcome might have been different. The result so far has been that Brexit voters have not received the promised benefits and at the top of this they must face the ugly truth of reduced income for the next decade or so. This is a bad deal.
Your Brexit Report contribution highlighted that the impact of Brexit will be heterogeneous across the Scottish economy, with some industries doing better than others. Can you give an example of this?
Indeed the impact of Brexit is expected to be heterogeneous across the various industries of the UK and the Scottish economy. Nevertheless, most of the related work overlooks such heterogeneous outcomes, as researchers, policymakers and media representatives have not examined such mixed effects adequately. Identifying that Brexit is going to generate several threats but also some moderate opportunities is the key for a smooth exit from EU that can minimise the losses. Just to give some examples. Several industries, such as those related to healthcare, require skill-diverse human resources, and migration over the past few decades supplied such workers to the UK and to Scotland. Brexit is estimated to harm disproportionally the health sector compared to other sectors. In contrast, the depreciation of the British pound is expected to make some Scottish and UK industries, such as those related to tourism, more attractive to foreigners and EU citizens. In fact visiting the UK and Scotland becomes cheaper and therefore after the Brexit vote the tourism sector is expected to grow more or get harmed less compared to other sectors.
Do you think this has been well portrayed in the media?
The media have described the situation in some of these industries in isolation but they have not focused on such heterogeneous effects across several industries, which could offer a unified framework to analyse the impact of Brexit. Also, the media have focused primarily on the risks related to Brexit, disregarding the modest opportunities that might appear. In my opinion it would be important to examine the costs and opportunities both across sectors but also within sector. As we have already discussed health services and tourism offer examples of heterogeneous effects across different industries. The Higher Education sector can offer an illustrative example of costs and opportunities within a particular industry. In this case, and holding other things constant, the depreciation of the British pound due to Brexit will make college degrees cheaper and thus more attractive to EU citizens. In contrast, the reduced job opportunities for graduates might make Higher Education institutions in the UK less attractive to EU citizens. Such positive and negative effects leave the overall outcome of Brexit on Higher Education uncertain. Notice that my oversimplified analysis abstracts from many other key aspects, such as the role of EU funding or the importance of EU staff in UK universities that will be influenced by Brexit too. I feel that the media can contribute more meaningfully to the Brexit debates if they focus precisely on quantifying such conflicting effects.
How do you see economic arguments continuing to shape the Brexit debate, in terms of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Brexit?
Following the recent elections the interest around the type of Brexit has been rekindled. The economic arguments point to a clear direction, as I have emphasized in the YAS Brexit Report. Analyses from various different sources, such as the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), the HM Treasury and the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, consistently indicate that Brexit will have a negative impact on the economy. In particular, Brexit is expected to reduce GDP by anything from 1.3%, in the case of soft Brexit within the European Economic Area, to 9.5% in the case of hard Brexit with free-trade agreements. Even so, such forecasts should be treated with care in the absence of appropriate counterfactuals for comparisons between Brexit and Bremain, it seems that a soft Brexit is what the UK government should try to achieve. However, we should bear in mind that EU has no interest in supporting a soft Brexit, as such an agreement might lead other EU members to follow the same soft exit route, endangering the future of the continent and threatening European integration. Concluding, it seems that UK wishes a soft but EU might force a hard Brexit and even worse is that UK has an inferior bargaining position in these negotiations.
How does this compare with the ‘revenge of the disadvantaged’, as you have termed the political behaviour of those that seem to vote against their economic interests?
The type of Brexit is a key factor and the UK should aim not only at reducing the overall costs but also at mitigating the uneven distribution of costs and the sharp socio-economic inequalities. When I started writing my report I realised that a fundamental factor has been overlooked by scholars, politicians, businesspersons and the media. This fundamental factor relates to disadvantaged groups who feel that they are the losers of globalisation. Such disadvantaged UK citizens suffer in the labour market due to global competition and xenophobic anti-globalising campaigns that target migrants offer an easily digestible narrative to them. In several cases the following Bob Dylan lyric describes their voting behaviour quite well: “when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose”.
These less-privileged citizens are prepared to take a risk and vote for Brexit but they end up finding themselves in a worse situation. The revenge of the disadvantaged describes that fact that poor citizens seem to prefer to act in a way that destabilises the economy and harms the elites, instead of securing moderate benefits for themselves. This highlights the importance of relative position in determining their vote, despite the fact that even marginal income declines might have detrimental consequences for such marginalised groups. Overall, as I highlighted in the report, UK and Scotland need inclusive growth based on a healthy middle class, labour market reforms to support low earners and more affordable education to allow intergenerational mobility. The political arena occasionally allows the less privileged to transfer some of the risks they face on a daily basis to the rest of society. It is essential to recognize this and view Brexit as an opportunity to build a less divided society.
Every so often, an article comes along that purports to be based in quantitative research, where we in RtH don’t particularly care whether the research is represented well or not. A good example is the recent Daily Mail piece on “the perfect woman“, which collates quantitative measures of various aspects of the female body in an attempt to find what features are “the most attractive”.
At this point, I would normally attempt to find the research quoted, describe it to you and then review the journalist’s attempts to convey the same information. I’m not going to do that here, for a host of reasons.
Firstly, the article is a grab bag of various research papers/press statements, none of which are linked to or cited appropriately. There is no discussion of how features are determined to be “attractive”. After all, attractiveness is a property that varies greatly between cultures, and most studies use participants falling into the WEIRD category (White Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic). Also, the article relies on explanations harking back to cave-people, which should immediately raise alarm bells, as these “just-so” explanations using early humans often have little to no basis in established fact.
Finally, even if the science contained is sound, the article’s ultimate aim is negative. The use of this research to objectify women, deconstructing them into their component body parts and identifying “the best”, goes against decades of efforts to prevent body dysmorphic and eating disorders in women and girls. The Mail article does try to offer balanced body statements, such as suggesting that underweight body types are “less attractive”, but I find it difficult to believe such statements would be helpful to women struggling with body image issues.
<sarcasm> I look forward to the accompanying article deconstructing male attractiveness <\sarcasm>
For parents of newborns grappling with limited sleep, a headline such as ‘babies who sleep in separate rooms from their parents…..get more shut eye’ is bound to raise an eyebrow. The latest findings, at first glance, seem to challenge official guidelines that babies should sleep in the same room as their parents until at least 6 months. Indeed the reporting specifically claims the findings challenge the guidelines. On closer inspection though, the headline and the article is riddled with misinterpretations of the study findings. So what does the study actually reveal?
Dear readers, as it’s August again we would like to welcome you to another roundup of research related shows on at the various festivals hosted in Edinburgh this month. These include the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, its more prestigious elder, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and the Edinburgh International TV Festival. As we have done in previous years (2014, 2015) we would like to provide suggestions for research-related shows and events for any Research the Headlines readers who may be visiting Edinburgh this month. Read more…
The process of peer-review is one of the pillars of modern scientific research. In its ideal form, researchers submit articles to a journal, which selects expert reviewers to read the manuscript, assess its quality, and either reject the article or ask for corrections before it is published. This process (along with careful editorial control) ensures that when research is published, its content is accurate, honest and of value to the scientific community.
Even in our modern age of preprint servers, where new research can be downloaded for free, peer-review remains the gold standard, and journals remain the gatekeepers of the peer-review process. Sadly, not all journals hold their article to the same high standard. Read more…
When we talk about research in the media, it’s often assumed we’re focussing primarily on the way journalists or the media might misrepresent solidly conducted and robust research. While that does happen, and we’ve talked about that in various posts at Research the Headlines, it’s important to remember the translation of new research from “lab to headline” is a process that involves a number of people. Inaccuracies can creep in at different stages and those can ultimately affect the way people interpret that evidence, or indeed trust the whole process. That’s just one of the topics considered in a new report from the Academy of Medical Sciences released last month. Read more…
The most abundant biological entity on the planet is the bacteriophage (literally bacteria-eater) – and yet there have been long debates over whether they are really ‘alive’ – see here. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect and kill bacteria and are sometimes simply called ‘phage’. They attach to their bacterial host, inject their DNA and ‘take over’ the host, making the bacterial cell in to a bacteriophage factory. Once the progeny bacteriophage are assembled, they burst out of the bacterium, killing it and releasing the phage to go on and infect more bacteria. Read more…
Compared to the belching fumes and loud noises we are bombarded with when walking beside a busy street, the environment within a car seems quite peaceful. This sense of security leads many people to believe that being in the car protects them from air pollution and particulates. Parents might think this is especially the case for small children, with their lower stature and delicate developing bodies. But is it better for your kids’ health if they walk or cycle, even if exposed to urban air pollution, or take the car? Read more…
There has been considerable media interest in a study that examined the impact of an African sleeping sickness drug, suramin, on children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Some media reports take a very hopeful view of the drug and its ability to treat children with autism with headlines evident such as ‘New autism drug shows promising results’ and ‘Century-old drug, suramin may provide hope for autistic kids’. Headlines such as these merit a closer look at the research behind them and what this means for those with autism.
