April 22, 2024 • 62 mins
"We are being furtively nudged, on an unprecedented scale, to obey the doctrines of the world's elite."—Dr Gary Sidley We welcome to the programme Dr Gary Sidley—a former NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist—for an interview on the UK government's morally questionable use of "nudge" techniques during the Covid Event, the extent to which Nudge Theory is being employed more generally by government, and the serious ethical questions entailed. (Dr Sidley is a freelance writer, trainer, and blogger, who in 2013 retired as a Professional Lead/Consultant Clinical Psychologist after 33 continuous years in the NHS working in psychiatric nursing and clinical psychology. In early 2020 he became extremely concerned about the government’s response to the ‘coronavirus crisis’, and began writing on the subject at his well-known Coronababble blog. Gary is a member of the Health Advisory & Recovery Team (HART) and the Smile Free campaign to lift all mask mandates. He is currently leading on a research project into the UK’s deployment of behavioural science strategies during the Covid Event, and the ethical implications of the state using these methods on its own people.) [For show notes please visit https://themindrenewed.com]
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
Hello everybody. Julian Charles here oftheMIND Renewed dot com, coming to you
as usual from the depths of theLancashire countryside here in the UK, and
today I'm very pleased to welcome tothe program doctor Gary Sidley, who is
a retired NHS consultant clinical psychologist herein the UK and a member of HEART
that is Health Advisory and Recovery Team, which is I'm going to quote here
(00:33):
from the website, a group ofhighly qualified UK doctors, scientists, economists,
psychologists and other academic experts which cametogether over shared concerns about policy and
guidance recommendations during the COVID nineteen pandemicend quote. Since August twenty twenty,
doctor Sidley has been running the CoronaBabbel Blog that's coronababbelblog dot com, which
(00:56):
I'll probably spell out later, whichis a website dedicated to careful critique of
government policy during COVID, and hecontinues to be active today as a freelance
writer, trainer and blogger. DrSidley, thank you very much, need
for coming on the program. It'svery good to be speaking with you.
My pleasure, Julian, thank youfor inviting me on. Thank you ever
so much for agreeing, because I'vebeen many times visiting your Corona Babble blog
(01:22):
over the last few years. Ifind it very helpful, and so it's
very good to be speaking with you. And I'll take the opportunity to spell
that out. Actually, so it'sc O R O N A B A
B B l E Corona babble.What's the actual address at coronababble dot com.
That's it, coronababble dot com.Okay, well, why just before
(01:42):
we go on, why did youcall it Corona babbel. I'm not sure.
I suppose I was looking for aterm that my grab attention and some
of the original ideas to sound itvery kind of, I don't know,
a bit formal, a bit tooacademic, and so I wanted to suppose
a more populist appeal. And ofcourse, you know, you can look
(02:06):
at it both ways. Corona babblekind of suggests talking nonsense in some ways
the official sources often have been talkingnonsense. But I guess the people are
on the other side of the argumentmight say that Corona babble is an a
name because I'm talking rubbish as well, I don't know. Suppose it's swings
roundabout thing right, Yes, Iget the picture. Yes, I thought
(02:29):
it might be something like that.Yeah, oh very good. It certainly
sticks in the mind. Okay,So we're going to be talking about well
kind of three things mainly today.So you wrote a recent article called Nudges,
Nudges Everywhere. We're going to betalking about nudge techniques, which of
course we talked about on this program, has been talked about a lot,
but it's perhaps broader and wider thanmany of us realize. So we're going
(02:53):
to be talking about something to dowith the how the UK government and other
governments of course during COVID use thebehavioral psychologists to secretly influence public behavior.
So we'll go back over that tosome extent, and I want to ask
you to what extent you conceive ofthat behavior, or any behavior using nudge
techniques to be ethical or not.And there's a series of questions to do
(03:15):
with that's very interesting. And thirdly, to do specifically with this paper you
wrote, the extent to which nudgetechniques are still being used by government today
more broadly with respect to various areasof public policy and that's going to be
not only interesting, I think,but also quite concerning for all of us.
(03:36):
Really, we'll get into that ina few minutes, So let me
ask you first, Dr Sidley,a bit more about your background. I
understand that you started your career inpsychiatric nursing, but then you moved into
clinical psychology and then did a PhDindeed in psychology. Can you tell us
a bit more about that. Yes, I went to university in the late
(03:57):
nineteen seventies and graduate with a Biochemistryof physiology degree. So the proper sidenes
what you are, but my interestin mental health was always there, So
in nineteen eighty I got a jobon a local psychiatric ward. After I
graduated, working as a nursing assistanton an acute psychiatric unit. Then went
(04:20):
on to do my psychiatric nurse trainingin the early nineteen eighties, qualified in
nineteen eighty four, then worked invarious positions as a psychiatric nurse up until
nineteen eighty seven, when I wentoff to do my clinical psychology training and
qualified in nineteen eighty nine and thenpracticed for It was thirty three years in
(04:45):
total in the NHS, that includesthe nursing period as well. My doctorate,
as you mentioned, was obtained inthe year two thousand and that was
into looking at some of the psychologicalunderpinnings of suicidal behavior and self harm behavior,
and I was lucky enough to getthe opportunity to retire early in two
(05:09):
thousand and thirteen. Continued to beactive in the mental health field after that,
mainly campaigning against the dominant model inmental health, which is the biological
pschiatary model. The idea that humandistress is primarily caused by some biochemical imbalance
(05:30):
I think is flawed and very unhelpful, and so I was involved in campaign
groups then working to try and changethings in mental health. Published a book
in twenty fifteen called Tales from theMadhouse, and was happily working away with
my campaigning work right up until twentytwenty when the COVID event commenced very quickly,
(05:58):
It's true, very quickly. ByFebruary March to twenty I was expressing
and writing about concerns about the directionof travel. I viewed it as kind
of tyrannical kind of campaign really,and not too dissimilar from biological psychiatry,
and that was the irony just abigger timordy biological psychiatry I critiques because it
(06:20):
was very much dominated by medication andchemicals that it often seemed to ride rough
shod over human rights, with drugcompanies were essentially involved. So the kind
of lot of parallels in the workI was doing back then and this twenty
twenty onwards COVID event where I sawvery similar threads running through it, albeit
(06:46):
on a much larger scale. Butsadly, Julian, very few of my
mental health campaigners seemed to see itquite guided a few days, but most
were very much pro narrative. Likemany people. It's been unfortunate that some
of quite long standing colleagues and rathermore distant from now a couple kind of
(07:12):
became quite adversarial. On the positiveside of developed a new set of companions
known about yes, yes, indeed, I'm just wondering how you're saying about
this sort of biochemical approach to psychologicalissues, and you said how you saw
some parallels. And one of thethings that sprung into my mind that concerned
(07:35):
me in the very early days waswhat we were being told was, you
know, we've we've got this socalled pandemic and we've got a lockdown,
et cetera, and the only wayout of it was to wait for the
so called vaccines. That was ared flag to me quite early on,
Right, So this is the onlysolution. Did that chime with you with
respect to what you were saying,Yes, most definitely. I've researched very
(07:59):
deeply over the last few decades intothe often egregious acts of the pharmaceutical companies.
I think they currently deserved the tigersbeing the most corrupt industry in the
world. And that's not just heresaying and conspiracy, that's just based on
what they actually find guilty of.Conviction sheet is very very long, predating
(08:22):
COVID for new distorting evidence and bribingstakeholders, not the actual word used in
the criminal case, bribing stakeholders.They have a long, long history,
so I was suspicious of their kindof involvement and the power that they wield.
(08:43):
As you're probably aware, you know, a lot of our institutions are
very much dependent upon big farmer money. I think there are other reasons as
well why I became concerned about theCOVID events. Having worked in mental health
sometimes alongside those colleagues in the infectioncontrol departments, particularly when I was nursing.
(09:07):
My sense was that on many occasions, although they were well meaning,
they could be let's say, monofocused, can not see the bigger picture,
and some of their guidance was,shall we say, a bit unrealistic.
I was also mindful, like yousay, a big farmer, but
also as well around risk and riskaversion. It's I was a topic I
(09:28):
was particularly interested in my doctorate,and was very aware of how poor we
generally are at comparing different levels ofrisk and weighing them up, and how
risk aversion can be a very destructivething when we're trying to eliminate every possible
risk involved in our day to daylife. Yes, and we've had this
(09:52):
big time, haven't we. Thisnot understanding the full scope of risk with
all these lockdowns and trying to avoidone risk and giving rise to risks that
were arguably even more serious. Amassive amount that we could discuss in that
area alone. Let's return to thisissue of the nudge techniques, which is
to say, people will be familiarwith, but I do think it's really
(10:13):
important to go back over some ofthis to some extent before we get onto
the fact that This is much broaderthan perhaps many of us realized. So
let's go back to the use ofthese techniques and the use of the pavioral
psychologists during COVID. I think perhapswe should start with a definition of nudge.
This is something that was popularized,I believe by the book by Richard
(10:37):
Taylor and Cass Sunstein. Best sellingbook Nudge caught on and influenced policymakers.
Indeed, so how would you definenudge for us today? Well, nudge,
I would say probably the more straightforwarddefinition. A layer person's definition would
be that it's a range of psychologicaltechniques of persuasion that often act below are
(11:03):
a level of conscious awareness. Theseare means of trying to change other people's
behavior, where these techniques act upontheir targets in a way that the targets
are often unaware that they are beinginfluenced, so they've been covertly shaped in
their behavior. The mind Space documentfrom twenty ten which you mentioned, this
(11:26):
was the year that the Behavioral InsightTeam, sometimes referred to as the Nudge
Unit, came into existence in theCabinet office of David Cameron back in twenty
ten, and this mind Space documentwas published alongside that. One of the
co authors of the mind Space documentwas Professor David Halpen, the kind of
(11:50):
chief of the Beavile Insight team,the Nudge Unit, And in the mind
Space document they talked about just beingkind of be able strategies and our quote
that achieve low cost, law painways of nudging citizens into new ways of
acting by going with the grain ifhow we think an act. So that
(12:15):
was their conception of what nudge was. These techniques that exploit the way that
our kind of minds work be useful. Jew They're just very briefly talk a
little bit about fast brain and slowbrain when I've been in two technical but
I think it is indeed that wouldbe great. Actually, just before you
(12:37):
do that, can I just clarifybecause I think a lot of people will
be thinking in terms of propaganda.Now the two things are very very close
together. But would you agree thatpropaganda I'm thinking here of what Jacques ell
All wrote about propaganda. You knowthat the propaganda is still to do with
trying to change behavior, but ittypically does so by going through the mind.
(12:58):
Whether these are fallacious arguments or whatever, just through the mind to try
and change behavior. Whereas nudge tendsto be more direct by changing your environment,
for example, just putting lines onthe floor so you move in one
way rather other. You see anarrow on the ground, so you go
that way, changing the context inwhich you make decisions. So in some
ways it's even more direct and moreinsidious. A really, because you don't
(13:20):
even know what's going on. Wouldyou agree with that? Yeah? To
some extent, I think, andI suppose the way I asked be able
to sign strategies and nudges is thatit's one element of the proper ganda machine.
Right now, there are a lotof other techniques that are used and
are continuing to be used to silenceor shape the views of the general population.
(13:41):
Which is one of them. Butobviously alongside that there's unprecedented levels of
censorship, people being canceled and smearedselective information and being broadcast via instream media,
et cetera, et cetera. Soit's one element. I don't want
to all of us the importance ofbeing able science. It is just one
(14:03):
kind of weapon in the armory propagandist, but it's an important weapon. Yeah,
So you're telling us about these twoaspects of thinking. Can you tell
us about this, Yeah, justvery briefly. This is obviously augusimplification,
but the way the mind works canoften be viewed as being in two parts,
a fast brain sometimes referred to assystem one thinking, and a slow
(14:24):
brain system two. The fast brainsystem one brain is effortless. It's got
pretty much limitless capacity. It happensautomatically. Essentially very useful for allowing us
to cope with the complexities of life, because it means is that the large
majority of decisions that we make inour day to day life are done without
(14:48):
any deliberative thought to do them automatically. So, for example, if somebody
asks you what's two plus two,you wouldn't add to use your deliberate the
brain. You would immediately give theanswer five. These days, i'd have
to say five. Yeah. Ifyou're driving on a quiet road that you
were very familiar with most of thetime, you've being fast brain. You'd
(15:11):
be an automatic pilot. And alsosome of those subtle things like picking up
a kind of aggressive edge in afriend's tone of voice would probably be the
fast brain. So we had thiskind of fast brain that's limitless in capacity,
effortless to use and in control mostof the time. And that's opposed
(15:33):
to the slow brain, which isthe deliberative thinking bit, which is the
conscious thinking things through, which iseffortful, very limited capacity, often described
as lazy, as we try andminimizeever possible. So if somebody asks,
you know, what's twenty seven timesthirty eight, you would probably have to
(15:54):
use your deliberative type two thinking,your slow thinking the answer. And that's
what we'd normally expect public representative tobe on TV or something appealing to our
reason and making a case. Butso system one, this is all the
automatic stuff, So this is goingon with the nudges rather than system two,
where you're being addressed as a rationalhuman being so that you can make
(16:17):
a reasonable decision about things. Wellthat's right dealing. Yeah, And the
thing is we are on automatic pilottype one fast brain thinking ninety nine percent
plus of the time, probably ninetynine point nine percent of the time.
And that's what the be able scientistsexploit because we're continually using these heuristics,
(16:37):
these rules of film, these shortcutsto make our moment by moment decisions,
which, as I said, isvery useful because we didn't do that would
be paralyzed with indecision most of themost of the day, and let's be
fair, most of the time ourfast brain gets things right. Sure,
you know, if I leave myhouse this evening and two hundred people running
(17:02):
and screaming in the same director,I find myself following them because my fast
brainer has made that decision that willprobably be a wise decision. Yes,
So then the natural endowment of thismental faculty is actually useful. But the
problem here is that it's been identifiedand tapped and misused as something that can
(17:22):
be powerfully manipulated. And this isthe problem with this, isn't it.
And of course again I just saythat what you're saying here is something that's
out in the open. I mean, I have on my browser here a
very famous article. David Halpern isone of the authors. It's called Influencing
Behavior the Mind Space Way. I'msure you're completely familiar with this article in
the Journal of Economic Psychology, andthey discuss exactly this system one and system
(17:47):
two, the different ways of thinking, and how they're reflexive, controlled,
effortful, rule based, slow,conscious rational thing is what we normally think
of. But art there's the otherone whereas automatic, uncontrolled, effortless,
associative, fast, unconscious and effectivemight be useful for well, basically manipulating
people the respect to government policy.And it's there. Anybody can go and
(18:07):
read that article. Yes, it'sall in plain sight. The original Mindspace
documents and the various many other articlesthat that spawned, they're all out there.
This is not make believe, absolutely, because as I said before the
interview, I have heard people saying, you know, the mind Space document,
it's a conspiracy theory, which well, there you go. No it's
not. Go and read it foryourself. I'll put a link to it
(18:30):
in the show notes. So howinfluential was this book Nudge by Richard Thaylor
in cas Sunstein. You've got aquote from some PR person saying that it
was very influential. Is that representativeof the industry. Yeah, it's a
very influential, But there's been anothernumber of key players. The man Space
document is arguably the most cited documentsI think in the UK nudge literature.
(18:56):
But Nudge just go back a longtime, at least of the nineteen four
what is it just gained impetuous andaccelerated in twenty twenty the onset of the
COVID events. But it's been aroundfor a long time and obviously used in
industry and by private companies and salesas well. These same techniques are quite
(19:17):
ubiquitous. But it's what changed intwenty twenty I think was the intensity and
the breadth of its use, particularlyby the state, which I think puts
it more completely different domain. Yes, yes, and because it had taken
route, as you said before,in twenty ten with the UK Cabinet Office
starting the Behavior Insights Team, andit was around that time. This is
(19:38):
the quote that you have for oneof your pieces by a PR person called
Julia Bainbridge from I think It's Freud'sand she was talking about how Richard Taylor
was giving a lecturer about his bookand they loved it. She said,
was a good quote here, Weloved it, to rapturous applause. People
rose from their seats to tell Taylorhow his book, his speech, his
(19:59):
ideas had made them think of backcommunications and behavior in an entirely different way.
The paradigm had shifted, so obviouslyat that point there wasn't there was
a shift. There's a lot ofinterest in this, but did you say
ten years later it kicks into thathigh gear, doesn't it. That's right,
Yeah, And Bembridge goes on tosay that now it's kind of embedded
in the advertising agencies. One oftheir core methods, and the agency that
(20:22):
she works for, which is Freud's, is one that the government do commission
on a regular basis. I believethe advertising agency centrally involved in the look
Them in the Eyes campaign. Itwas a different one called Modern Law,
but there's no reason to believe thatthey will be any different with regards their
(20:42):
personnel and their methods. Yes,I remember that campaign. It's very effective
and effective. Look at it.You do feel guilty, which I presume
is what it's trying to induce.Really. Yes, I think the adage
shane to the previous reliance on fearinflation to make people feel shamed and guilty
(21:07):
if they should deviate from the dominantnarrative and the restrictions that were being passed
down from government. Yeah, we'llcome on to the ethics of all this
in a few minutes. The otherthing was spy Bee that was very famous,
so the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group onBehaviors I believe, which was a
subgroup of the famous SAGE, whichis Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. Now,
(21:33):
David Halpern was part of this,is that right? That's correct?
Yeah, this was a subgroup ofAGE that and this was the okay,
so this was the mind Space documentcame from them? Is that correct?
No? No, okay? DavidAlpen was one of the co authors on
mind Space, the four authors,and David Alpen is the lead of the
Behavioral Insight Team otherwise nudging it.David Alpan also sat on the SPIB,
(22:00):
the SAGE subgroup. He was amember how long, with many others,
including very prominent be able scientists.Okay, so let's go. I've got
the wrong publishers of this, butthe same sort of crew, the same
sort of set here. So okay, So the mind Space document itself is
in fact an acronym, isn't it? Of various aspects of nudge that can
(22:22):
be employed by government to achieve variouspolicy outcomes. So each one M,
I, N D. Space standsfor a different approach, different set of
techniques. Could you give us certainidea of what those are? I know
you concentrate on four of them,but what's the full list? Right?
Yeah, well you'll probably test mymemory now, because the avial science is
riddled with acronyms of this type.And this is quite confusing because it means
(22:45):
that some similar techniques come under differentlabels. Yes, yes, it's unfair
of me actually just to say itlike that. So let me say what
they are and perhatus you give usan idea of what each one has to
do with. So the first oneof mind space is m obviously, what's
that all about it? Yeah,Messages about the source of the information will
have a significant impact on whether it'sheeded or not. So, for instance,
(23:11):
if the source is an authoritative one, somebody who's perceived as an expert,
or if it comes from a sourcethat sounds very much like ourselves,
so like a regional accent that correspondsto lantur in my case, you know,
somebody with a languire accent. Ifthe source has those kind of qualities,
then the idea is that it wouldbe much more likely to be taken
(23:36):
seriously and heeded, and that's backedup by research presumable. Yeah, but
I suppose in the COVID event itwas you we were looking at how it
was put into practice, then thedaily press conferences were experts, you know,
you know we're giving the information.They were viewed as being sources that
were reliable top of their profession kindof thing. The NHS logo, because
(24:02):
it's highly trusted, was that's abit less so these days, you know,
the NHS lawgo was everywhere. Alot of the adverts, for example,
the ones pushing masks. You rememberI wear my covering to protect my
mates, that kind of thing thatwas done in different regional accents. I
noticed that, Actually, yes,it depends what you're trying to say in
(24:22):
which audience you're trying to address,as to what you might might choose.
I remember a nurse. I thinkshe was talking about COVID injections or something,
and yes, she had a veryfriendly she probably wasn't even a nurse.
She was already playing the part ofa nurse in this advert, and
she was very, very friendly anddown to worth, like the person next
door, and a regional accent.I thought, well, to me,
anyway, it was just obvious thatwas manipulaity. Yeah, I suppose the
(24:47):
other three. There's a lot ofthese nudges. But in addition to the
messenger, there's another three that I'dlike to highlight really because I think these
are the ones that are ethically questionablein a big way. And of course,
yes, these correspond to your mindspace letters. The E in mind
space is for ego, ego andnudge, which exploits the fact that we
(25:11):
all strive to maintain a positive selfimage. We'd like to be ourselves as
a good, decent, virtuous person. So what happened in the COVID event
was that a lot of the messagingsuggested that following the restrictions and taking the
vaccine was akin to being a goodperson. You know, that's what virtuous
(25:34):
people did. And obviously the reverseof that is that if we didn't do
that, you're in the bad personbox. Whi's not a comfortable place to
be. So you mantus like stayhome, protect the NHS. Saved lives
is an ego in foreign nudge,because you know, serving the NHS and
(25:55):
saving lives is obviously a worthy thingto be doing. Vaccination protect us all
it's another kind of ego nudge becauseyou know, if you don't go for
a vaccination, you are putting otherpeople at risk. So the argument went,
no one is safe until we're allsay, don't kill your gram Mat
(26:17):
infamously recorded saying so that's that's ego? Yes, yes, some others one
that I wash my hands to protectmy family. You know not that's not
a good idea, wash hands,wash your hands. But no, no,
it's got this moral dimension to whichmakes you feel good if you do
it and bad if you don't.Same with I make space to protect you.
I remember that one. I foundthat offensive. Actually, you know,
(26:41):
I make space to protect you.Well, these are just lines on
the ground, you know. Howhow dare you manipulate me like this?
This is something to do, yousay, with something called fundamental attribution error?
Is that? What you? Whatis that? How does that go?
This is again one of the manycognitive biases that we all have,
which is a tendency to attribute positiveoutcomes to ourselves and negative ones to other
(27:06):
other things, other things and otherpeople. Right, if I get a
glowing result for a university exam,I'm more likely to attribute it to my
harder work intelligence, et cetera,et cetera. Whereas if I if I
kind of feel badly that the exam, and rather more likely to attribute it
to a bad lecture, a badlecturers the exam particularly difficult that year.
(27:32):
I see, yes, and ofcourse that might be true, but you're
saying there's a as a bias hereto do that, so that you will
you will make errors like this evenwhen it's not true, And I kind
of think that's right, yes tome self esteem really, to maintain our
positive self image. We mentioned message, you had mentioned egos to just very
quickly if I made union, Ithink please do, please do on his
(27:55):
affect, which is the air inmind space, which is about motion,
and there could be any emotion,and that impacts on the way it make
sense of our world. The mostrelevant aspect of that is, of course,
fear inflation. When we're frightened,we process information in a very different
way, so we tend to focuson threatening things in our environment. Our
(28:21):
memory to past frightening events becomes muchmore impactful, and we're inclined to interpret
things in a much more threatening way. So it's kind of self propagating in
a way. So when somebody isin a state of high effect fear,
they are more likely to see dangerwhere danger isn't necessarily There is this the
(28:45):
mood congruence thing is that the onethat's right, Yes, that's right.
You know again, there are multipleexamples during the COVID events, you know,
the daily death stats that were ofour screens, the images of very
acutely unwell patients in intensive care units, you know, bodies in the streets
(29:06):
of Wuhan and Ecuador. On thestats particularly, I always thought was rather
egregious. Yes, that's right.Every day on primetime TV. It was
terrifying, and I think a lotof people were absolutely scared out of their
wits by this. Yeah, quite, you know, and non contextualized,
(29:26):
you know, they didn't they alwaysfailed to mention, for example, that
every day in the UK, onaverage, sixteen hundred people die every day
in the UK, so you know, when you were seeing these kind of
death counts coming up without putting itinto some kind of perspective, also without
(29:47):
talking about how indiscriminate the PC artistwas with massive false positives were a period
of time Julian where if you diedwithin a fortnight a positive policy artist,
she went down as a COVID death. So whereas positive on this rather dubious
test, which like I said,was fun and accurate, and then was
(30:10):
involved in a real traffic accident tendays later, I'd go down as a
COVID death. It was absurd foranybody who was thinking about it as you
were, as I was. Manypeople were, but not the majority.
I think. Did you start tothink, well, this none of this
really means anything anymore. You know, these words are being used and they're
(30:32):
scary, but what does any ofit mean? But if you're not thinking
rationally about it, if you're justencouraged to be fearful, then these are
just going to go straight through,presumably into a portion of you know,
I'm not a psychologist, but aportion of your mind where you're just reacting
rather than thinking about what does itmean. There was a very famous thing
you bring this up where Balance andWitty quoted. I think I think it
(30:52):
was a prediction of fifty thousand newcases because there's another thing, isn't it
cases rather than death? Fifty thousandnew cases per day or on the guards
you know, sooner? That waspretty terrifying. It was, and it
was this kind of modeling at work. There wasn't it right? A modeling
player disprotortionate role in my view insome of the predictions, the idea that
(31:15):
you know, you assume the worstand assume a rather distortedly high fatality rate
for the stars called two virus,and then feed that into your your equations.
Then the model inevitably comes out withthese worst scenarios, you know,
which predict all these many many deathsand many many infections, which we knew
(31:36):
from an early stage was grostly inaccurate, but they kept on pushing them and
just very quickly. The other nudge, which I think is ethically previous one
and was used widely, is theend the normative pressure and norms. Yeah,
before you do that, I've gotto just remind people about that.
Now, I want to check withyou. Was it the spy Bee meeting
in twenty twenty where they say therewasn't enough. Yeah, they needed the
(32:00):
threat to be the perceived level ofthreat needs to be increased. Was it
then that did that. Yes,that was the SPIV subgroup in their minute
of March twenty twenty, which wasone of the most kind of latent examples
of fear perpetuation and the affect nudge. Yeah. I just had to bring
(32:22):
that up because obviously what they saidwas he did yes, right. Interestantly,
they've kind of denied since then thatthat was actually advocating the use of
fear, which is rather really youknow, as you said, no quote,
a substantial number of people still donot feel sufficiently personally threatened. The
(32:45):
perceived level of personal threat needs tobe increased among those who are complacent using
hard hitting emotional messaging. Don't thinkyou get any more any clear? Really,
No, I'm not sure what youwhat other words you would do really
to bring that about? Yeah?Okay, yeah, go on the norms.
(33:06):
What's the noormative pressure is? Its? Like, again, exploits the
fact that we don't want to bein a minority. I believe ourselves to
be in a minority group. It'squite uncomfortable to think that what we believe
or how we behave doesn't correspond towhat the majority of people are doing.
It exploits that inherent desire to followthe crowd. You know, there's sometimes
(33:30):
it might be going off the edgeof a cliff, of course, but
for example, you'd hear things likeover ninety percent of adults have already been
vaccinated, out to be untrue ifit turns out, but that's kind of
given the impression that everybody else isdoing that. Ninety eight percent of people
are fully on board with the restrictions. Yeah, most people are following the
(33:52):
rules. And there was a lotof footage, wasn't there a people disobeying
the rules, and of course alot of condemnation of those people, you
know, they were on the beachor some oh these selfish people of it.
So I suppose that's the sort offlip side of it, achieving the
same thing. Oh, that's howyou shouldn't behave get into the ethical aspects
of there on you because in everything, if you, if you kind of
(34:13):
highlight this minority group of people whowere deviating from the norm and then by
other ego nudge labeled them as badindividuals. It's hardly surprising that you can
get this vilification of these minority groups, whether they be people who've opted not
to take the vaccine, or whetherit's people who are not wearing masks,
(34:36):
or whether it's people who are notkind of following the restrictions. Kind of
not rocket science, that is it? You know that if you yeah,
yeah, so those were the mostethically dubious and nudges, then I'd say,
Juli, okay, yeah, solet's not go through them all.
Okay, so the ethical question let'smove on to that. Now. Interestingly
enough, you wrote a letter earlyin twenty twenty one, and I think
(35:00):
it was forty seven co signatories thisletter to the British Psychological Society Ethics Committee,
and you were asking them to respondto some questions that you had about
the ethics of what happened during COVID, whether their code of ethics had been
followed or not by members that hadto do with this society. Can tell
us what you asked them? Yes, in brief we put it to them
(35:23):
that there were members of their organization. Talk about the British Psychological Society now,
which is the professional body that istasked with overseeing the practice of all
psychologists in the UK. Now,of course some of the prominent behaval scientists
are also prominent members of the BritishPsychological Society. So professors Susan Mickey,
(35:46):
Stephen Reiker, Robert West, youknow, they out they're all British Psychological
Society members, and of course,like any other professional body, they have
a code of ethics. And sowe wrote to them saying they're championing these
methods, these nudges, and wethink that they are ethically dubious to be
(36:07):
covertly influencing the populace without their explicitconsent, using techniques that strategically I deliberately
increase emotional discomfort to achieve their goal. We've put it to British psychological society
that there was a pretty dubious activitieson an ethical basis, and the other
(36:31):
element of the ethical questioning of coursesaround rather contentious goals to say the least,
you know, uh, you know, lockdowns, putting non evidence counterproductive
masks for healthy people never done before. So using these techniques surely raised ethical
(36:52):
kind of questions that you would havethought that the professional would have been very
interested in. Yes, because LongsteroDulian they came. They came back in
strident stat right really defending their psychologists, saying they were doing a wonderful,
wonderful job, that consent was neededright ours this was on a population level,
(37:15):
suggesting that people's level of fear wasperfectly rational, you know, to
the objective risk posed by the virus, and saying that their psychologists were all
behaving in a quote socially responsible quotewhere you know, so that that was
that was their kind of attitude backin twenty twenty one right, as far
(37:36):
as aware, hasn't really changed sincehow has it not? Has it not?
Yeah? I noticed that they seemedin a way to avoid your point
about fear and scapebursing, because Ithought you were making the point that they'd
been involved in stirring this up,and they kind of ignore it, saying,
well, yeah, it was adifficult time, they wonder people were
scared, and that's not the point. That's not that's the what you were
(37:57):
saying, was it. And theindividual psychologists involved they try and defend themselves
by saying they weren't scaring people.Know, they weren't inflating fear. What
they were doing is giving people arealistic appraisal at the risk that they were
exposed to. The fifty deaths today, well exactly. That's one of
(38:20):
the most ridiculous parts of their responsereally, because the evidence that we were
an overly scared population is overwhelming.You know. Back in twenty twenty one,
there's a professor guy called Spada worksin one of the London universities who
researched this in depth and estimated thatsomewhere in the region of around sixty percent
(38:42):
of the population at one point hadlevels of anxiety that were in the clinical
range, you know, that werethe kind of range that you'd be seeking
psychological treatment for, you know,and people just grossly overestimating how many people
have died from COVID. You know, I think at one point it was
not uncommon for the average person inthe street to think seven million UK citizens
(39:07):
have already died. You know.So this idea that the population we're not
overly scared is just total nonsense,you know, absolutely in so many ways,
and just once popped into my amountof people wearing masks outside nobody around
them, for yards and yards andyards and lit will be months and months
after COVID is no longer a thinganymore, obviously, with this legacy of
(39:31):
fear living with it. Yeah,that's quite Don't get me started on masks,
no, ye second to do that. All I'd say about masks at
this point, very quickly is themasks as well as having very little robust
evidence to favor them, and wholerange of harms. But one of the
(39:53):
key things for our discussion today isthat the mass strength and three of those
nudges, they perpetuate fear. Youknow, we're wearing a mask perpetuates fear.
They also play strengthened into the egonudge because it's a way of people
to demonstrate their virtue. We canspot the good guys and the bad guys.
(40:16):
And of course it's very powerfully nandsthis normative pressure the normal nudge,
you know, because you can instantlydifferentiate between those individuals who are the rule
followers in those individuals who aren't.And I'm sure I'm not on my own,
and I can say, if youwant to experienced directly what normative pressure
(40:38):
to conform can feel like is justtry going without a mask in a room
pack full of masks individuals. It'snot a comfortable place to be. No.
No. And indeed, as Isaid on this program many times,
that was the time when it reallyhit me that I was being told I
had to buy law put that wretchedmask back on, and I was thinking,
(40:59):
you know, I've got to thispoint now where I'm totally aware this
is a signaling device. It's gotnothing to do with viruses going in and
out of the fabric. It's asignaling device. And at that point I
just couldn't do it on a matterof principle. I'm surprised that so few
people seem to to realize. Well, I suppose a lot of people did
realize that's what it was at thetime, but not everybody unfortunately. Yeah,
(41:20):
so we're running out of time here, But I did want to ask
you whether you think nudge awareness issomething that's always wrong for government with respect
to their policies. I mean,something that Taylor and Son Science say in
their book is that, you know, we can't say these insights should never
be used because you know, youwouldn't want people to learn that they shouldn't
(41:42):
walk in front of a bus.You know, we're just by experiencing it'd
be better to have a sign atthe side saying, you know, watch
out for the bus. You know. So presumably there's a case for some
level of nudging. Yes, Iagree, And also from a realistic perspective,
the genius well than truly out now. So given what wish to eliminate
these things, that's not going tohappen. But I think what we can
(42:05):
do is look at these more ethicallydubious ones like fear inflation, like shaming,
like scape through normative pressure, andreally try and put some constraints on
the government's use of these things,yes, because I think there are some
major ethical issues surrounding them, andI think what we need to look at
(42:27):
is things like four things really veryquickly, methods. You know, I
think there's a question of should ourgovernment be using these strategies which strategically inflate
emotional discomfort in their targets? Shouldour government be using those kinds of strategies
to get to follow rather dubious goals. And of course you get into that
(42:52):
one even more with the methods becausethe collateral damage better phrase that the fear
innomated for example, well that cana whole raft of negative consequences in itself,
with people being too fearful to attendhospital, with non COVID people dying
of loneliness, people in care homesbeing deserted by the care staff because they
(43:16):
were too terrified to stay with them. There's plenty of documented evidence of that.
So the whole range of things,I think we have to look at
the methods. Secondly, I thinkwe have to look at consent. Even
David alpen And is in the mindSpace documents and in his Inside the Nudge
Unit states very explicitly that these techniquesshould not be used without the explicit permission
(43:42):
that the British public. He saysthat in his writings, and yet none
of this was discussed or there wereno kind of democracy kind of attempts or
anything. And the goals I thinkin the third area, you know,
you're asking before these techniques ever acceptable. I think personally, I think as
they probably are. You know,whether we're using these techniques for instants to
(44:07):
try and reduce the lighthood of youngmen stabbing each other, you know,
using violence in gang related and Ithink probably I'm guessing, but I think
most people in the country probably,Yeah, fair enough, that's that's fine.
But to be used in the pursuitthese contentious, non evidenced and potentially
hugely destructive goals, masking Lockdown's school, et cetera, I think is ethnically,
(44:35):
Yeah, I think that's actually whatyou said. That that chimes with
something again going back to the bookby Taylor and Sunstein, is chimes of
something there. You say, youknow this idea that oh, you ask
people, they would probably say,no, I don't think that's a good
idea. That's going too far.This is one of the principles they bring
up they call it the publicity principle. Let me just there's just one sentence
here. The publicity principle bans governmentsfrom selecting policy that it would not be
(44:59):
willing to defend and publicly to itsown citizens. Now that sounds to me
like quite a good principle. There. Would you be willing to defend this
publicly? That's a good question toask, I think, what do you
think? Yes, I just thinksome debate of any kind about the ethical
Yes, these things will be good. And as you demonstrated when you asked
(45:19):
me about the British Psychological Society,there as over the last few years since
the start of the code event beingthis quite extreme reluctance to even discuss these
approaches, we even question them,not just the British Psychological Society, but
various key individuals and the prominent theable scientists don't seem to want to debate
(45:39):
the ethics of these things. Wetried later on in twenty twenty one to
get the again, I can't rememberwhat the name of the committee is.
The acronym was PACC, which islike a cross party group of MPs or
do these in depth independent inquiries?We actually formally asked them to do one
(46:00):
on the ethics of state funded nudging, but they declined the COVID nineteen inquiry
in terms of reference have no mentionwhatsoever be able to science or indeed messaging
it all within its remit, youknow. So there is this real active
avoidance of the topics. So someopen debate, including sides you would be
(46:22):
welcome. It would be welcome actuallyto have it on a national level of
parliamentary debate about it, so it'scompletely in the open as through what people
consider to be acceptable for government tobe doing their representatives and did he to
be doing with respect to the citizenry. I think I know you could argue,
well, that would then undercut theeffectiveness, but I'm not sure that's
true. I think there will bea sufficient distance between, you know,
(46:43):
the policy was actually being enacted andthe debate that was being had. But
I think if people had the opportunityreally to understand this and an object and
have input to it, I thinkit might make it slightly more palatable.
Yeah, I think you're right.I think you're right, and if I
could in the last few minutes,I would like It's okay Julian just to
(47:04):
mention the research that I've been doinginto this recently. It's what I wanted
to ask connect, So please dothese nudges are everywhere, go on,
give us an idea of this.Yes, I'm halfway through a research project
at the moment which is looking intowhere the responsibility lies for the tone and
content of some of the most scaryCOVID adverts, and we focused in particular
(47:30):
on the look them in the Eyescampaign, which I'm sure many of your
listeners will remember. We're pretty harrowing, showing close ups of dying patients in
hospital with full protective gear on avoice over ominously saying things like look them
in the eyes and tell them youare doing everything you can to reduce the
(47:52):
spread of coronavirus. So these werereally kind of shaming theory of walking adverts.
So we've been digging in to who'sresponsible. I'm pleased to say we
got the paper published in the Selfand Society Journal, which is a journal
of humanistic psychology here in the UK. It's quite excited about publishing the results.
(48:19):
Maybe I could forward give a linkto that later during and please do.
It's very detailed, but some ofthe headlines just very very quickly from
that research key finding one, nudgesor everywhere in the United Kingdom. They
are not just in the advisory groupslike the SPIB, not just in the
nudge unit be of an insight team, but they're embedded in certainly the large
(48:44):
majority of government departments within the UKgovernment infrastructure. They are embedded in the
Government Communications Service, their entity withseven thousand paid communicators, and they're embedded
in the advertising agencies that are contractedin, so they're everywhere. For example,
(49:07):
there's twenty four fully fledged be ablescientists at the moment who are employed
within the UK Health Security Agency.Back in twenty nineteen there were fifty four,
fifty four in the Revenue and Customs. So every answert about life,
whether it's travel, because it's somein the Department of Transport as well,
(49:29):
whether it's travel, whether it's health, whether it's filling in a tax form,
whatever. We're being furtively influenced byour own government. So I think
it's worth bearing in mind. Itis and yes, and they actually have
these units and teams within their departmentcalled the Behavioral Science Team, Behavioral Scientists,
Behavioral Science and Insights Unit. Actuallywithin these departments don't they. That's
(49:53):
right, Yes, they're in house. So it's not just the advisors we're
seen during the COVID event, ornot just the behavial insight team we were
contracted in and were contracted in ina big way during the COVID event or
multimillion pound contracts. But in additionto that, we have all these in
house nudges. They are they areliterally everywhere. Some of the other key
(50:17):
findings got very quickly. We managedto identify which key individuals were responsible for
the Loved Them and the Eyes videosand posters. For instance, the senior
civil Servants, a guy called ConradBaird who was a director of Campaigns and
Marketing at the Cabinet Office. Theactual behavial scientists, interestingly directly responsible for
(50:44):
the look Them in the Eyes weren'tthe SBIB or the Beavial Insight team.
It was the Cabinet Office in houseresources or team of being scientists operating from
the Cabinet Office. As we mentioned, the mulln Ar was the advertising agency
that was involved in putting them together, and perhaps un surprisingly, the Minister
(51:08):
who signed off and therefore I guess, was ultimately responsible for the love Them
in the Ice campaign was everybody willhave guessed it, Matt Granny Hancock,
you know, sign off, eventhough you know, the prominent be able
(51:29):
scientists like David Alpen and Susan Mickeyroll all claiming that they'd never used fear
and they never used these and ethicalnudges. If you actually sift through,
which we did, all their documentedoutputs during the COVID events, I'd argue
this overwhelming evidence that they did encouragethe use of all the key or ethical
(51:50):
nudges that I've mentioned. Well,this is the thing, Julian. The
fourth major finding, because this Ifound astonishing, and you know I have
been I've been researching this for along time, was the actual Cabinet Office
justifications or unleashing they loved them inthe eyes materials which they knew, in
(52:12):
their own words were harrowing, gripping, disturbing other words that they used right.
And the actual justifications included the existenceof a so called and a quote
complacent minority, the fact that youngerpeople perceived themselves to be at less risk,
(52:35):
which could they work factual subject Andthirdly, this idea that in January
twenty twenty one, which was aroundthe time of the second lockdown and the
time at which they loved them inthe eyes campaign was launched. The levels
of fear in January twenty one werenot as high as they were in March
(53:00):
twenty twenty. People were still fearful, it says, but they were less
panicky, and that was one ofthe justifications for unleashing these kind of disturbing
upon all the British people. Andyou have to remember we're talking probably there
then, that the majority of Britishpeople are already overly scared by this point,
(53:22):
right, right, which goes backto your point that there is ample
evidence that this was policy and thatthese behavioral scientists were drawn into trying and
achieves yes, and the fifth findingvery quickly no ethical inputs at all.
Right, there was no oversight ofthe production of these materials. In the
(53:42):
words of the Cabinet Office, theydidn't think that it was needed. They
didn't think that any kind of ethicaloversight was required in this instance. Do
you know it doesn't surprise me actually, because when I had looked at that
influencing behavior the mind space Way articlethat I mentioned earlier, I was looking
in front it did a little searchthrough for ethical moral and it doesn't come
(54:05):
up at all. There's nothing aboutit in there. No, that's right.
It's just this is how to doit, but not whether you should
do it or to what extent youshould do it. No, this is
just how you do This is thescience and that's that. Yeah, that's
right. So yeah, the lackof ethics, I guess wasn't surprising,
but it was. It was usefulto confirm it from the Cabinet Office his
own words, through freedom of informationrequests that and I believe through freedom of
(54:29):
information you found out or somebody foundout that the Cabinet Office approved a lot
more money for the advertising, marketingcommunications during COVID than it was officially said,
Is that right? And I thinkit was two hundred million or something.
It was a lot more than that. Yeah, there was some astounding
figures for that where they can't rememberon the top of the head what the
level was, but it was multimillions of pounds spent on COVID advertising,
(54:52):
of which a lot of it wenttowards these COVID infused adverts like the the
Eyes campaign. So we're paying ourtaxes for those taxes to be then spent
scaring us to death. Well,we're paying through our taxes from the dominant
to the influence our behavior for ourown good. Of course, that would
(55:15):
be the only thing, woun't it'sfor our own good. It's responsible for
the greater good. That's the collectivistkind of man, that's right. Yes,
yes, So somebody high up makesthe decision as to what the greatest
good is, and you just haveto trust them. They always make the
right decisions because they're not going toask you. Yeah, indeed, well
(55:37):
you say, we've got to closevery soon. But I just wanted to
finish with this little quote and askyou a last question. You say in
one piece, Regrettably, for ordinarypeople, conscious deliberation prior to decision making
is rapidly becoming a rare commodity,and we are being furtively nudged on an
unprecedented scale to obey the doctrines ofthe world's elite. I'll add in there
(55:58):
what I think you mean, theso old world's elite. So this is
a global problem. It is growing, and it is reducing our agency to
make decisions in everyday life. Ifwe're not aware of this, I think
a lot of people are not awareof this. So really what's your advice,
What can we do about this totry and improve this situation? Well,
yes, that's a key question.Isn't it a million dollar question?
(56:21):
Yeah? Helpless? I know Ido at times, but then I go
through phases when I get more optimistic. There are grounds for optimism. I
think the dominant narrative, certainly aroundpublic health is being challenged from a number
of sources at the moment. Andif we don't challenge the use of nudges
per se, they will continue tobe used in other areas, not just
(56:44):
under public health banners, but underbanners for climate change, war collution,
often for the fulfillment of goals thatare contentious indeed and need to be openly
discussed. Change it. My bottomline with this, Julian is always what
(57:05):
will ultimately change is more and morepeople visibly dissenting to what's being done to
them. They don't have to bea majority, I don't believe. I
think, you know, if weadd consistently fifteen to twenty percent of the
population visibly dissenting to, for example, the use of these nudge techniques,
(57:25):
that would be sufficient to halt it. And by visibility center, I don't
mean being on march is necessarily certainlynot obviously advocating any violence so disrupting in
that regard, but but just voicingdissent at every opportunity, whether it's you
(57:45):
know, in the pub to family, friends and the airdressers. Opportunities arise
more and more I'm finding actually dropsome information in and if we have more
people who can feel empowered to dothat by being more aware of what's going
on, and that's guess what effortslike my own are aiming to achieve.
(58:06):
Anything else on top of that suppordusif you can get like I'm trying in
the second half of the research toproduce like an optimal framework, ethical framework
to constrain government's use of these techniquesin the future, and to try and
get some government accountability using input fromlegal experts, et cetera, et cetera.
If we get any success with that, that'd be great. But obviously
(58:29):
that's a big ask trying to getgovernment of these things. But it's got
to track. The bottom line is, you know, would be something on
the record and the written record forfuture generations about what they did to us.
But also hopefully we can inform increasingnumber of people about what's going on
and what's continuing to happen. It'snot over by any stretch of in my
(58:52):
generation. If that encourage them tobe a bit more kind of dissenting in
a visible way, not hiding behindan anonymous identity on twitterslut actually you know
in yeah, yeah, And somethingI've heard recently from a number of people
is it is turning up to councilmeetings and invoicing your opinion. Very often
(59:12):
counselors are going what what people areturning up? We didn't expect anybody to
turn up to our meeting. Youknow, they've got so used to so
being so complacent that nobody bothers aboutlocal things that are going on. And
now you're getting dozens of people turningup saying, oh, we don't want
this to be a low traffic neighborhood. Let's talk about this, you know,
talk about it. You've got tobe kidding. So it does have
an impact into a few local councilsmeetings here you've had that kind of response,
(59:40):
Yes, definitely, well definitely peoplejust kind of the surprise at the
turnout that's won a couple of weeksby just doing our local town when far
more people turned up than they expectedefficient number of chairs. You know,
they're all expecting the numbers to startwith, and within those numbers there were
(01:00:01):
some vocal dissent. Excellent Black hereis still fifteen minute cities kind of idea,
and right some of the local governmentstuff. But so yeah, I
can identify with that. Yes,were you smeared as right wing by any
chance? Well not publicly. Okay, everything's leveled right wing. Indeed,
(01:00:22):
the moment isn't really doesn't fit itis, it's nonsense. Yeah, indeed.
Okay, Well, I'm very consciousof the time we've just overrun,
actually, and I'm very grateful toyou for spending this time with us.
Thank you ever so much. Thoughtto Siddley for for having this conversation.
It's fascinating and interesting to really interestingto hear about your latest research and how
that's going and how that's informing aboutyou know, the situation as it is
(01:00:44):
now, not just COVID, whichis now kind of behind us. But
we're still learning those lessons that way, I hope, and remembering those lessons.
And it would be great if possibleto have another chat with you.
You said, you know about masks, You could you could chat about that
in itself. Maybe we could dothat sometime if you'd be up for that.
Would for that, definitely doing thepresentation in Edinburgh on Thursday night about
(01:01:04):
masks and the actual key people responsiblefor masking the UK and that flip flop,
you know, where all the expertschange within the space of about two
months from don't wear masks if you'rehealthy in the community to massive mandates.
So yeah, I'd be more thanhappy to talk about that. Excellent,
Yes, indeed, and to mindbecause not only were they symbolic at the
(01:01:29):
time of you know, do asyou're told and all that sort of thing,
well they are they stand now Ithink of a symbol of that time
and a symbol of that approach,and so I think it's it's useful to
keep that in mind as we,you know, as we look at the
situation as it is today as well, even if they're not currently being used,
they are a symbol of what's happening. Most insidious of all the restrictions
in my view, I came toagree with that over time. Yes,
(01:01:52):
yeah, okay, thank you everso much for speaking with us. It's
great to have spoken to you.Thank you, Thank you. Julie,
thanks for having me. Show Notesfor this program can be found at the
Mind Renewed. theMIND Renewed dot compodcast, music by the brilliant Anthony Rayjakoff,
attribution non commercial share like four pointzero International. You have been listening
to me, Julian Charles, I'mmy guest doctor Gary Sidley, and I
very much look forward to speaking toyou again in the near future.
Hello everybody. Julian Charles here oftheMIND Renewed dot com, coming to you
as usual from the depths of theLancashire countryside here in the UK, and
today I'm very pleased to welcome tothe program doctor Gary Sidley, who is
a retired NHS consultant clinical psychologist herein the UK and a member of HEART
that is Health Advisory and Recovery Team, which is I'm going to quote here
(00:33):
from the website, a group ofhighly qualified UK doctors, scientists, economists,
psychologists and other academic experts which cametogether over shared concerns about policy and
guidance recommendations during the COVID nineteen pandemicend quote. Since August twenty twenty,
doctor Sidley has been running the CoronaBabbel Blog that's coronababbelblog dot com, which
(00:56):
I'll probably spell out later, whichis a website dedicated to careful critique of
government policy during COVID, and hecontinues to be active today as a freelance
writer, trainer and blogger. DrSidley, thank you very much, need
for coming on the program. It'svery good to be speaking with you.
My pleasure, Julian, thank youfor inviting me on. Thank you ever
so much for agreeing, because I'vebeen many times visiting your Corona Babble blog
(01:22):
over the last few years. Ifind it very helpful, and so it's
very good to be speaking with you. And I'll take the opportunity to spell
that out. Actually, so it'sc O R O N A B A
B B l E Corona babble.What's the actual address at coronababble dot com.
That's it, coronababble dot com.Okay, well, why just before
(01:42):
we go on, why did youcall it Corona babbel. I'm not sure.
I suppose I was looking for aterm that my grab attention and some
of the original ideas to sound itvery kind of, I don't know,
a bit formal, a bit tooacademic, and so I wanted to suppose
a more populist appeal. And ofcourse, you know, you can look
(02:06):
at it both ways. Corona babblekind of suggests talking nonsense in some ways
the official sources often have been talkingnonsense. But I guess the people are
on the other side of the argumentmight say that Corona babble is an a
name because I'm talking rubbish as well, I don't know. Suppose it's swings
roundabout thing right, Yes, Iget the picture. Yes, I thought
(02:29):
it might be something like that.Yeah, oh very good. It certainly
sticks in the mind. Okay,So we're going to be talking about well
kind of three things mainly today.So you wrote a recent article called Nudges,
Nudges Everywhere. We're going to betalking about nudge techniques, which of
course we talked about on this program, has been talked about a lot,
but it's perhaps broader and wider thanmany of us realize. So we're going
(02:53):
to be talking about something to dowith the how the UK government and other
governments of course during COVID use thebehavioral psychologists to secretly influence public behavior.
So we'll go back over that tosome extent, and I want to ask
you to what extent you conceive ofthat behavior, or any behavior using nudge
techniques to be ethical or not.And there's a series of questions to do
(03:15):
with that's very interesting. And thirdly, to do specifically with this paper you
wrote, the extent to which nudgetechniques are still being used by government today
more broadly with respect to various areasof public policy and that's going to be
not only interesting, I think,but also quite concerning for all of us.
(03:36):
Really, we'll get into that ina few minutes, So let me
ask you first, Dr Sidley,a bit more about your background. I
understand that you started your career inpsychiatric nursing, but then you moved into
clinical psychology and then did a PhDindeed in psychology. Can you tell us
a bit more about that. Yes, I went to university in the late
(03:57):
nineteen seventies and graduate with a Biochemistryof physiology degree. So the proper sidenes
what you are, but my interestin mental health was always there, So
in nineteen eighty I got a jobon a local psychiatric ward. After I
graduated, working as a nursing assistanton an acute psychiatric unit. Then went
(04:20):
on to do my psychiatric nurse trainingin the early nineteen eighties, qualified in
nineteen eighty four, then worked invarious positions as a psychiatric nurse up until
nineteen eighty seven, when I wentoff to do my clinical psychology training and
qualified in nineteen eighty nine and thenpracticed for It was thirty three years in
(04:45):
total in the NHS, that includesthe nursing period as well. My doctorate,
as you mentioned, was obtained inthe year two thousand and that was
into looking at some of the psychologicalunderpinnings of suicidal behavior and self harm behavior,
and I was lucky enough to getthe opportunity to retire early in two
(05:09):
thousand and thirteen. Continued to beactive in the mental health field after that,
mainly campaigning against the dominant model inmental health, which is the biological
pschiatary model. The idea that humandistress is primarily caused by some biochemical imbalance
(05:30):
I think is flawed and very unhelpful, and so I was involved in campaign
groups then working to try and changethings in mental health. Published a book
in twenty fifteen called Tales from theMadhouse, and was happily working away with
my campaigning work right up until twentytwenty when the COVID event commenced very quickly,
(05:58):
It's true, very quickly. ByFebruary March to twenty I was expressing
and writing about concerns about the directionof travel. I viewed it as kind
of tyrannical kind of campaign really,and not too dissimilar from biological psychiatry,
and that was the irony just abigger timordy biological psychiatry I critiques because it
(06:20):
was very much dominated by medication andchemicals that it often seemed to ride rough
shod over human rights, with drugcompanies were essentially involved. So the kind
of lot of parallels in the workI was doing back then and this twenty
twenty onwards COVID event where I sawvery similar threads running through it, albeit
(06:46):
on a much larger scale. Butsadly, Julian, very few of my
mental health campaigners seemed to see itquite guided a few days, but most
were very much pro narrative. Likemany people. It's been unfortunate that some
of quite long standing colleagues and rathermore distant from now a couple kind of
(07:12):
became quite adversarial. On the positiveside of developed a new set of companions
known about yes, yes, indeed, I'm just wondering how you're saying about
this sort of biochemical approach to psychologicalissues, and you said how you saw
some parallels. And one of thethings that sprung into my mind that concerned
(07:35):
me in the very early days waswhat we were being told was, you
know, we've we've got this socalled pandemic and we've got a lockdown,
et cetera, and the only wayout of it was to wait for the
so called vaccines. That was ared flag to me quite early on,
Right, So this is the onlysolution. Did that chime with you with
respect to what you were saying,Yes, most definitely. I've researched very
(07:59):
deeply over the last few decades intothe often egregious acts of the pharmaceutical companies.
I think they currently deserved the tigersbeing the most corrupt industry in the
world. And that's not just heresaying and conspiracy, that's just based on
what they actually find guilty of.Conviction sheet is very very long, predating
(08:22):
COVID for new distorting evidence and bribingstakeholders, not the actual word used in
the criminal case, bribing stakeholders.They have a long, long history,
so I was suspicious of their kindof involvement and the power that they wield.
(08:43):
As you're probably aware, you know, a lot of our institutions are
very much dependent upon big farmer money. I think there are other reasons as
well why I became concerned about theCOVID events. Having worked in mental health
sometimes alongside those colleagues in the infectioncontrol departments, particularly when I was nursing.
(09:07):
My sense was that on many occasions, although they were well meaning,
they could be let's say, monofocused, can not see the bigger picture,
and some of their guidance was,shall we say, a bit unrealistic.
I was also mindful, like yousay, a big farmer, but
also as well around risk and riskaversion. It's I was a topic I
(09:28):
was particularly interested in my doctorate,and was very aware of how poor we
generally are at comparing different levels ofrisk and weighing them up, and how
risk aversion can be a very destructivething when we're trying to eliminate every possible
risk involved in our day to daylife. Yes, and we've had this
(09:52):
big time, haven't we. Thisnot understanding the full scope of risk with
all these lockdowns and trying to avoidone risk and giving rise to risks that
were arguably even more serious. Amassive amount that we could discuss in that
area alone. Let's return to thisissue of the nudge techniques, which is
to say, people will be familiarwith, but I do think it's really
(10:13):
important to go back over some ofthis to some extent before we get onto
the fact that This is much broaderthan perhaps many of us realized. So
let's go back to the use ofthese techniques and the use of the pavioral
psychologists during COVID. I think perhapswe should start with a definition of nudge.
This is something that was popularized,I believe by the book by Richard
(10:37):
Taylor and Cass Sunstein. Best sellingbook Nudge caught on and influenced policymakers.
Indeed, so how would you definenudge for us today? Well, nudge,
I would say probably the more straightforwarddefinition. A layer person's definition would
be that it's a range of psychologicaltechniques of persuasion that often act below are
(11:03):
a level of conscious awareness. Theseare means of trying to change other people's
behavior, where these techniques act upontheir targets in a way that the targets
are often unaware that they are beinginfluenced, so they've been covertly shaped in
their behavior. The mind Space documentfrom twenty ten which you mentioned, this
(11:26):
was the year that the Behavioral InsightTeam, sometimes referred to as the Nudge
Unit, came into existence in theCabinet office of David Cameron back in twenty
ten, and this mind Space documentwas published alongside that. One of the
co authors of the mind Space documentwas Professor David Halpen, the kind of
(11:50):
chief of the Beavile Insight team,the Nudge Unit, And in the mind
Space document they talked about just beingkind of be able strategies and our quote
that achieve low cost, law painways of nudging citizens into new ways of
acting by going with the grain ifhow we think an act. So that
(12:15):
was their conception of what nudge was. These techniques that exploit the way that
our kind of minds work be useful. Jew They're just very briefly talk a
little bit about fast brain and slowbrain when I've been in two technical but
I think it is indeed that wouldbe great. Actually, just before you
(12:37):
do that, can I just clarifybecause I think a lot of people will
be thinking in terms of propaganda.Now the two things are very very close
together. But would you agree thatpropaganda I'm thinking here of what Jacques ell
All wrote about propaganda. You knowthat the propaganda is still to do with
trying to change behavior, but ittypically does so by going through the mind.
(12:58):
Whether these are fallacious arguments or whatever, just through the mind to try
and change behavior. Whereas nudge tendsto be more direct by changing your environment,
for example, just putting lines onthe floor so you move in one
way rather other. You see anarrow on the ground, so you go
that way, changing the context inwhich you make decisions. So in some
ways it's even more direct and moreinsidious. A really, because you don't
(13:20):
even know what's going on. Wouldyou agree with that? Yeah? To
some extent, I think, andI suppose the way I asked be able
to sign strategies and nudges is thatit's one element of the proper ganda machine.
Right now, there are a lotof other techniques that are used and
are continuing to be used to silenceor shape the views of the general population.
(13:41):
Which is one of them. Butobviously alongside that there's unprecedented levels of
censorship, people being canceled and smearedselective information and being broadcast via instream media,
et cetera, et cetera. Soit's one element. I don't want
to all of us the importance ofbeing able science. It is just one
(14:03):
kind of weapon in the armory propagandist, but it's an important weapon. Yeah,
So you're telling us about these twoaspects of thinking. Can you tell
us about this, Yeah, justvery briefly. This is obviously augusimplification,
but the way the mind works canoften be viewed as being in two parts,
a fast brain sometimes referred to assystem one thinking, and a slow
(14:24):
brain system two. The fast brainsystem one brain is effortless. It's got
pretty much limitless capacity. It happensautomatically. Essentially very useful for allowing us
to cope with the complexities of life, because it means is that the large
majority of decisions that we make inour day to day life are done without
(14:48):
any deliberative thought to do them automatically. So, for example, if somebody
asks you what's two plus two,you wouldn't add to use your deliberate the
brain. You would immediately give theanswer five. These days, i'd have
to say five. Yeah. Ifyou're driving on a quiet road that you
were very familiar with most of thetime, you've being fast brain. You'd
(15:11):
be an automatic pilot. And alsosome of those subtle things like picking up
a kind of aggressive edge in afriend's tone of voice would probably be the
fast brain. So we had thiskind of fast brain that's limitless in capacity,
effortless to use and in control mostof the time. And that's opposed
(15:33):
to the slow brain, which isthe deliberative thinking bit, which is the
conscious thinking things through, which iseffortful, very limited capacity, often described
as lazy, as we try andminimizeever possible. So if somebody asks,
you know, what's twenty seven timesthirty eight, you would probably have to
(15:54):
use your deliberative type two thinking,your slow thinking the answer. And that's
what we'd normally expect public representative tobe on TV or something appealing to our
reason and making a case. Butso system one, this is all the
automatic stuff, So this is goingon with the nudges rather than system two,
where you're being addressed as a rationalhuman being so that you can make
(16:17):
a reasonable decision about things. Wellthat's right dealing. Yeah, And the
thing is we are on automatic pilottype one fast brain thinking ninety nine percent
plus of the time, probably ninetynine point nine percent of the time.
And that's what the be able scientistsexploit because we're continually using these heuristics,
(16:37):
these rules of film, these shortcutsto make our moment by moment decisions,
which, as I said, isvery useful because we didn't do that would
be paralyzed with indecision most of themost of the day, and let's be
fair, most of the time ourfast brain gets things right. Sure,
you know, if I leave myhouse this evening and two hundred people running
(17:02):
and screaming in the same director,I find myself following them because my fast
brainer has made that decision that willprobably be a wise decision. Yes,
So then the natural endowment of thismental faculty is actually useful. But the
problem here is that it's been identifiedand tapped and misused as something that can
(17:22):
be powerfully manipulated. And this isthe problem with this, isn't it.
And of course again I just saythat what you're saying here is something that's
out in the open. I mean, I have on my browser here a
very famous article. David Halpern isone of the authors. It's called Influencing
Behavior the Mind Space Way. I'msure you're completely familiar with this article in
the Journal of Economic Psychology, andthey discuss exactly this system one and system
(17:47):
two, the different ways of thinking, and how they're reflexive, controlled,
effortful, rule based, slow,conscious rational thing is what we normally think
of. But art there's the otherone whereas automatic, uncontrolled, effortless,
associative, fast, unconscious and effectivemight be useful for well, basically manipulating
people the respect to government policy.And it's there. Anybody can go and
(18:07):
read that article. Yes, it'sall in plain sight. The original Mindspace
documents and the various many other articlesthat that spawned, they're all out there.
This is not make believe, absolutely, because as I said before the
interview, I have heard people saying, you know, the mind Space document,
it's a conspiracy theory, which well, there you go. No it's
not. Go and read it foryourself. I'll put a link to it
(18:30):
in the show notes. So howinfluential was this book Nudge by Richard Thaylor
in cas Sunstein. You've got aquote from some PR person saying that it
was very influential. Is that representativeof the industry. Yeah, it's a
very influential, But there's been anothernumber of key players. The man Space
document is arguably the most cited documentsI think in the UK nudge literature.
(18:56):
But Nudge just go back a longtime, at least of the nineteen four
what is it just gained impetuous andaccelerated in twenty twenty the onset of the
COVID events. But it's been aroundfor a long time and obviously used in
industry and by private companies and salesas well. These same techniques are quite
(19:17):
ubiquitous. But it's what changed intwenty twenty I think was the intensity and
the breadth of its use, particularlyby the state, which I think puts
it more completely different domain. Yes, yes, and because it had taken
route, as you said before,in twenty ten with the UK Cabinet Office
starting the Behavior Insights Team, andit was around that time. This is
(19:38):
the quote that you have for oneof your pieces by a PR person called
Julia Bainbridge from I think It's Freud'sand she was talking about how Richard Taylor
was giving a lecturer about his bookand they loved it. She said,
was a good quote here, Weloved it, to rapturous applause. People
rose from their seats to tell Taylorhow his book, his speech, his
(19:59):
ideas had made them think of backcommunications and behavior in an entirely different way.
The paradigm had shifted, so obviouslyat that point there wasn't there was
a shift. There's a lot ofinterest in this, but did you say
ten years later it kicks into thathigh gear, doesn't it. That's right,
Yeah, And Bembridge goes on tosay that now it's kind of embedded
in the advertising agencies. One oftheir core methods, and the agency that
(20:22):
she works for, which is Freud's, is one that the government do commission
on a regular basis. I believethe advertising agency centrally involved in the look
Them in the Eyes campaign. Itwas a different one called Modern Law,
but there's no reason to believe thatthey will be any different with regards their
(20:42):
personnel and their methods. Yes,I remember that campaign. It's very effective
and effective. Look at it.You do feel guilty, which I presume
is what it's trying to induce.Really. Yes, I think the adage
shane to the previous reliance on fearinflation to make people feel shamed and guilty
(21:07):
if they should deviate from the dominantnarrative and the restrictions that were being passed
down from government. Yeah, we'llcome on to the ethics of all this
in a few minutes. The otherthing was spy Bee that was very famous,
so the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group onBehaviors I believe, which was a
subgroup of the famous SAGE, whichis Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. Now,
(21:33):
David Halpern was part of this,is that right? That's correct?
Yeah, this was a subgroup ofAGE that and this was the okay,
so this was the mind Space documentcame from them? Is that correct?
No? No, okay? DavidAlpen was one of the co authors on
mind Space, the four authors,and David Alpen is the lead of the
Behavioral Insight Team otherwise nudging it.David Alpan also sat on the SPIB,
(22:00):
the SAGE subgroup. He was amember how long, with many others,
including very prominent be able scientists.Okay, so let's go. I've got
the wrong publishers of this, butthe same sort of crew, the same
sort of set here. So okay, So the mind Space document itself is
in fact an acronym, isn't it? Of various aspects of nudge that can
(22:22):
be employed by government to achieve variouspolicy outcomes. So each one M,
I, N D. Space standsfor a different approach, different set of
techniques. Could you give us certainidea of what those are? I know
you concentrate on four of them,but what's the full list? Right?
Yeah, well you'll probably test mymemory now, because the avial science is
riddled with acronyms of this type.And this is quite confusing because it means
(22:45):
that some similar techniques come under differentlabels. Yes, yes, it's unfair
of me actually just to say itlike that. So let me say what
they are and perhatus you give usan idea of what each one has to
do with. So the first oneof mind space is m obviously, what's
that all about it? Yeah,Messages about the source of the information will
have a significant impact on whether it'sheeded or not. So, for instance,
(23:11):
if the source is an authoritative one, somebody who's perceived as an expert,
or if it comes from a sourcethat sounds very much like ourselves,
so like a regional accent that correspondsto lantur in my case, you know,
somebody with a languire accent. Ifthe source has those kind of qualities,
then the idea is that it wouldbe much more likely to be taken
(23:36):
seriously and heeded, and that's backedup by research presumable. Yeah, but
I suppose in the COVID event itwas you we were looking at how it
was put into practice, then thedaily press conferences were experts, you know,
you know we're giving the information.They were viewed as being sources that
were reliable top of their profession kindof thing. The NHS logo, because
(24:02):
it's highly trusted, was that's abit less so these days, you know,
the NHS lawgo was everywhere. Alot of the adverts, for example,
the ones pushing masks. You rememberI wear my covering to protect my
mates, that kind of thing thatwas done in different regional accents. I
noticed that, Actually, yes,it depends what you're trying to say in
(24:22):
which audience you're trying to address,as to what you might might choose.
I remember a nurse. I thinkshe was talking about COVID injections or something,
and yes, she had a veryfriendly she probably wasn't even a nurse.
She was already playing the part ofa nurse in this advert, and
she was very, very friendly anddown to worth, like the person next
door, and a regional accent.I thought, well, to me,
anyway, it was just obvious thatwas manipulaity. Yeah, I suppose the
(24:47):
other three. There's a lot ofthese nudges. But in addition to the
messenger, there's another three that I'dlike to highlight really because I think these
are the ones that are ethically questionablein a big way. And of course,
yes, these correspond to your mindspace letters. The E in mind
space is for ego, ego andnudge, which exploits the fact that we
(25:11):
all strive to maintain a positive selfimage. We'd like to be ourselves as
a good, decent, virtuous person. So what happened in the COVID event
was that a lot of the messagingsuggested that following the restrictions and taking the
vaccine was akin to being a goodperson. You know, that's what virtuous
(25:34):
people did. And obviously the reverseof that is that if we didn't do
that, you're in the bad personbox. Whi's not a comfortable place to
be. So you mantus like stayhome, protect the NHS. Saved lives
is an ego in foreign nudge,because you know, serving the NHS and
(25:55):
saving lives is obviously a worthy thingto be doing. Vaccination protect us all
it's another kind of ego nudge becauseyou know, if you don't go for
a vaccination, you are putting otherpeople at risk. So the argument went,
no one is safe until we're allsay, don't kill your gram Mat
(26:17):
infamously recorded saying so that's that's ego? Yes, yes, some others one
that I wash my hands to protectmy family. You know not that's not
a good idea, wash hands,wash your hands. But no, no,
it's got this moral dimension to whichmakes you feel good if you do
it and bad if you don't.Same with I make space to protect you.
I remember that one. I foundthat offensive. Actually, you know,
(26:41):
I make space to protect you.Well, these are just lines on
the ground, you know. Howhow dare you manipulate me like this?
This is something to do, yousay, with something called fundamental attribution error?
Is that? What you? Whatis that? How does that go?
This is again one of the manycognitive biases that we all have,
which is a tendency to attribute positiveoutcomes to ourselves and negative ones to other
(27:06):
other things, other things and otherpeople. Right, if I get a
glowing result for a university exam,I'm more likely to attribute it to my
harder work intelligence, et cetera,et cetera. Whereas if I if I
kind of feel badly that the exam, and rather more likely to attribute it
to a bad lecture, a badlecturers the exam particularly difficult that year.
(27:32):
I see, yes, and ofcourse that might be true, but you're
saying there's a as a bias hereto do that, so that you will
you will make errors like this evenwhen it's not true, And I kind
of think that's right, yes tome self esteem really, to maintain our
positive self image. We mentioned message, you had mentioned egos to just very
quickly if I made union, Ithink please do, please do on his
(27:55):
affect, which is the air inmind space, which is about motion,
and there could be any emotion,and that impacts on the way it make
sense of our world. The mostrelevant aspect of that is, of course,
fear inflation. When we're frightened,we process information in a very different
way, so we tend to focuson threatening things in our environment. Our
(28:21):
memory to past frightening events becomes muchmore impactful, and we're inclined to interpret
things in a much more threatening way. So it's kind of self propagating in
a way. So when somebody isin a state of high effect fear,
they are more likely to see dangerwhere danger isn't necessarily There is this the
(28:45):
mood congruence thing is that the onethat's right, Yes, that's right.
You know again, there are multipleexamples during the COVID events, you know,
the daily death stats that were ofour screens, the images of very
acutely unwell patients in intensive care units, you know, bodies in the streets
(29:06):
of Wuhan and Ecuador. On thestats particularly, I always thought was rather
egregious. Yes, that's right.Every day on primetime TV. It was
terrifying, and I think a lotof people were absolutely scared out of their
wits by this. Yeah, quite, you know, and non contextualized,
(29:26):
you know, they didn't they alwaysfailed to mention, for example, that
every day in the UK, onaverage, sixteen hundred people die every day
in the UK, so you know, when you were seeing these kind of
death counts coming up without putting itinto some kind of perspective, also without
(29:47):
talking about how indiscriminate the PC artistwas with massive false positives were a period
of time Julian where if you diedwithin a fortnight a positive policy artist,
she went down as a COVID death. So whereas positive on this rather dubious
test, which like I said,was fun and accurate, and then was
(30:10):
involved in a real traffic accident tendays later, I'd go down as a
COVID death. It was absurd foranybody who was thinking about it as you
were, as I was. Manypeople were, but not the majority.
I think. Did you start tothink, well, this none of this
really means anything anymore. You know, these words are being used and they're
(30:32):
scary, but what does any ofit mean? But if you're not thinking
rationally about it, if you're justencouraged to be fearful, then these are
just going to go straight through,presumably into a portion of you know,
I'm not a psychologist, but aportion of your mind where you're just reacting
rather than thinking about what does itmean. There was a very famous thing
you bring this up where Balance andWitty quoted. I think I think it
(30:52):
was a prediction of fifty thousand newcases because there's another thing, isn't it
cases rather than death? Fifty thousandnew cases per day or on the guards
you know, sooner? That waspretty terrifying. It was, and it
was this kind of modeling at work. There wasn't it right? A modeling
player disprotortionate role in my view insome of the predictions, the idea that
(31:15):
you know, you assume the worstand assume a rather distortedly high fatality rate
for the stars called two virus,and then feed that into your your equations.
Then the model inevitably comes out withthese worst scenarios, you know,
which predict all these many many deathsand many many infections, which we knew
(31:36):
from an early stage was grostly inaccurate, but they kept on pushing them and
just very quickly. The other nudge, which I think is ethically previous one
and was used widely, is theend the normative pressure and norms. Yeah,
before you do that, I've gotto just remind people about that.
Now, I want to check withyou. Was it the spy Bee meeting
in twenty twenty where they say therewasn't enough. Yeah, they needed the
(32:00):
threat to be the perceived level ofthreat needs to be increased. Was it
then that did that. Yes,that was the SPIV subgroup in their minute
of March twenty twenty, which wasone of the most kind of latent examples
of fear perpetuation and the affect nudge. Yeah. I just had to bring
(32:22):
that up because obviously what they saidwas he did yes, right. Interestantly,
they've kind of denied since then thatthat was actually advocating the use of
fear, which is rather really youknow, as you said, no quote,
a substantial number of people still donot feel sufficiently personally threatened. The
(32:45):
perceived level of personal threat needs tobe increased among those who are complacent using
hard hitting emotional messaging. Don't thinkyou get any more any clear? Really,
No, I'm not sure what youwhat other words you would do really
to bring that about? Yeah?Okay, yeah, go on the norms.
(33:06):
What's the noormative pressure is? Its? Like, again, exploits the
fact that we don't want to bein a minority. I believe ourselves to
be in a minority group. It'squite uncomfortable to think that what we believe
or how we behave doesn't correspond towhat the majority of people are doing.
It exploits that inherent desire to followthe crowd. You know, there's sometimes
(33:30):
it might be going off the edgeof a cliff, of course, but
for example, you'd hear things likeover ninety percent of adults have already been
vaccinated, out to be untrue ifit turns out, but that's kind of
given the impression that everybody else isdoing that. Ninety eight percent of people
are fully on board with the restrictions. Yeah, most people are following the
(33:52):
rules. And there was a lotof footage, wasn't there a people disobeying
the rules, and of course alot of condemnation of those people, you
know, they were on the beachor some oh these selfish people of it.
So I suppose that's the sort offlip side of it, achieving the
same thing. Oh, that's howyou shouldn't behave get into the ethical aspects
of there on you because in everything, if you, if you kind of
(34:13):
highlight this minority group of people whowere deviating from the norm and then by
other ego nudge labeled them as badindividuals. It's hardly surprising that you can
get this vilification of these minority groups, whether they be people who've opted not
to take the vaccine, or whetherit's people who are not wearing masks,
(34:36):
or whether it's people who are notkind of following the restrictions. Kind of
not rocket science, that is it? You know that if you yeah,
yeah, so those were the mostethically dubious and nudges, then I'd say,
Juli, okay, yeah, solet's not go through them all.
Okay, so the ethical question let'smove on to that. Now. Interestingly
enough, you wrote a letter earlyin twenty twenty one, and I think
(35:00):
it was forty seven co signatories thisletter to the British Psychological Society Ethics Committee,
and you were asking them to respondto some questions that you had about
the ethics of what happened during COVID, whether their code of ethics had been
followed or not by members that hadto do with this society. Can tell
us what you asked them? Yes, in brief we put it to them
(35:23):
that there were members of their organization. Talk about the British Psychological Society now,
which is the professional body that istasked with overseeing the practice of all
psychologists in the UK. Now,of course some of the prominent behaval scientists
are also prominent members of the BritishPsychological Society. So professors Susan Mickey,
(35:46):
Stephen Reiker, Robert West, youknow, they out they're all British Psychological
Society members, and of course,like any other professional body, they have
a code of ethics. And sowe wrote to them saying they're championing these
methods, these nudges, and wethink that they are ethically dubious to be
(36:07):
covertly influencing the populace without their explicitconsent, using techniques that strategically I deliberately
increase emotional discomfort to achieve their goal. We've put it to British psychological society
that there was a pretty dubious activitieson an ethical basis, and the other
(36:31):
element of the ethical questioning of coursesaround rather contentious goals to say the least,
you know, uh, you know, lockdowns, putting non evidence counterproductive
masks for healthy people never done before. So using these techniques surely raised ethical
(36:52):
kind of questions that you would havethought that the professional would have been very
interested in. Yes, because LongsteroDulian they came. They came back in
strident stat right really defending their psychologists, saying they were doing a wonderful,
wonderful job, that consent was neededright ours this was on a population level,
(37:15):
suggesting that people's level of fear wasperfectly rational, you know, to
the objective risk posed by the virus, and saying that their psychologists were all
behaving in a quote socially responsible quotewhere you know, so that that was
that was their kind of attitude backin twenty twenty one right, as far
(37:36):
as aware, hasn't really changed sincehow has it not? Has it not?
Yeah? I noticed that they seemedin a way to avoid your point
about fear and scapebursing, because Ithought you were making the point that they'd
been involved in stirring this up,and they kind of ignore it, saying,
well, yeah, it was adifficult time, they wonder people were
scared, and that's not the point. That's not that's the what you were
(37:57):
saying, was it. And theindividual psychologists involved they try and defend themselves
by saying they weren't scaring people.Know, they weren't inflating fear. What
they were doing is giving people arealistic appraisal at the risk that they were
exposed to. The fifty deaths today, well exactly. That's one of
(38:20):
the most ridiculous parts of their responsereally, because the evidence that we were
an overly scared population is overwhelming.You know. Back in twenty twenty one,
there's a professor guy called Spada worksin one of the London universities who
researched this in depth and estimated thatsomewhere in the region of around sixty percent
(38:42):
of the population at one point hadlevels of anxiety that were in the clinical
range, you know, that werethe kind of range that you'd be seeking
psychological treatment for, you know,and people just grossly overestimating how many people
have died from COVID. You know, I think at one point it was
not uncommon for the average person inthe street to think seven million UK citizens
(39:07):
have already died. You know.So this idea that the population we're not
overly scared is just total nonsense,you know, absolutely in so many ways,
and just once popped into my amountof people wearing masks outside nobody around
them, for yards and yards andyards and lit will be months and months
after COVID is no longer a thinganymore, obviously, with this legacy of
(39:31):
fear living with it. Yeah,that's quite Don't get me started on masks,
no, ye second to do that. All I'd say about masks at
this point, very quickly is themasks as well as having very little robust
evidence to favor them, and wholerange of harms. But one of the
(39:53):
key things for our discussion today isthat the mass strength and three of those
nudges, they perpetuate fear. Youknow, we're wearing a mask perpetuates fear.
They also play strengthened into the egonudge because it's a way of people
to demonstrate their virtue. We canspot the good guys and the bad guys.
(40:16):
And of course it's very powerfully nandsthis normative pressure the normal nudge,
you know, because you can instantlydifferentiate between those individuals who are the rule
followers in those individuals who aren't.And I'm sure I'm not on my own,
and I can say, if youwant to experienced directly what normative pressure
(40:38):
to conform can feel like is justtry going without a mask in a room
pack full of masks individuals. It'snot a comfortable place to be. No.
No. And indeed, as Isaid on this program many times,
that was the time when it reallyhit me that I was being told I
had to buy law put that wretchedmask back on, and I was thinking,
(40:59):
you know, I've got to thispoint now where I'm totally aware this
is a signaling device. It's gotnothing to do with viruses going in and
out of the fabric. It's asignaling device. And at that point I
just couldn't do it on a matterof principle. I'm surprised that so few
people seem to to realize. Well, I suppose a lot of people did
realize that's what it was at thetime, but not everybody unfortunately. Yeah,
(41:20):
so we're running out of time here, But I did want to ask
you whether you think nudge awareness issomething that's always wrong for government with respect
to their policies. I mean,something that Taylor and Son Science say in
their book is that, you know, we can't say these insights should never
be used because you know, youwouldn't want people to learn that they shouldn't
(41:42):
walk in front of a bus.You know, we're just by experiencing it'd
be better to have a sign atthe side saying, you know, watch
out for the bus. You know. So presumably there's a case for some
level of nudging. Yes, Iagree, And also from a realistic perspective,
the genius well than truly out now. So given what wish to eliminate
these things, that's not going tohappen. But I think what we can
(42:05):
do is look at these more ethicallydubious ones like fear inflation, like shaming,
like scape through normative pressure, andreally try and put some constraints on
the government's use of these things,yes, because I think there are some
major ethical issues surrounding them, andI think what we need to look at
(42:27):
is things like four things really veryquickly, methods. You know, I
think there's a question of should ourgovernment be using these strategies which strategically inflate
emotional discomfort in their targets? Shouldour government be using those kinds of strategies
to get to follow rather dubious goals. And of course you get into that
(42:52):
one even more with the methods becausethe collateral damage better phrase that the fear
innomated for example, well that cana whole raft of negative consequences in itself,
with people being too fearful to attendhospital, with non COVID people dying
of loneliness, people in care homesbeing deserted by the care staff because they
(43:16):
were too terrified to stay with them. There's plenty of documented evidence of that.
So the whole range of things,I think we have to look at
the methods. Secondly, I thinkwe have to look at consent. Even
David alpen And is in the mindSpace documents and in his Inside the Nudge
Unit states very explicitly that these techniquesshould not be used without the explicit permission
(43:42):
that the British public. He saysthat in his writings, and yet none
of this was discussed or there wereno kind of democracy kind of attempts or
anything. And the goals I thinkin the third area, you know,
you're asking before these techniques ever acceptable. I think personally, I think as
they probably are. You know,whether we're using these techniques for instants to
(44:07):
try and reduce the lighthood of youngmen stabbing each other, you know,
using violence in gang related and Ithink probably I'm guessing, but I think
most people in the country probably,Yeah, fair enough, that's that's fine.
But to be used in the pursuitthese contentious, non evidenced and potentially
hugely destructive goals, masking Lockdown's school, et cetera, I think is ethnically,
(44:35):
Yeah, I think that's actually whatyou said. That that chimes with
something again going back to the bookby Taylor and Sunstein, is chimes of
something there. You say, youknow this idea that oh, you ask
people, they would probably say,no, I don't think that's a good
idea. That's going too far.This is one of the principles they bring
up they call it the publicity principle. Let me just there's just one sentence
here. The publicity principle bans governmentsfrom selecting policy that it would not be
(44:59):
willing to defend and publicly to itsown citizens. Now that sounds to me
like quite a good principle. There. Would you be willing to defend this
publicly? That's a good question toask, I think, what do you
think? Yes, I just thinksome debate of any kind about the ethical
Yes, these things will be good. And as you demonstrated when you asked
(45:19):
me about the British Psychological Society,there as over the last few years since
the start of the code event beingthis quite extreme reluctance to even discuss these
approaches, we even question them,not just the British Psychological Society, but
various key individuals and the prominent theable scientists don't seem to want to debate
(45:39):
the ethics of these things. Wetried later on in twenty twenty one to
get the again, I can't rememberwhat the name of the committee is.
The acronym was PACC, which islike a cross party group of MPs or
do these in depth independent inquiries?We actually formally asked them to do one
(46:00):
on the ethics of state funded nudging, but they declined the COVID nineteen inquiry
in terms of reference have no mentionwhatsoever be able to science or indeed messaging
it all within its remit, youknow. So there is this real active
avoidance of the topics. So someopen debate, including sides you would be
(46:22):
welcome. It would be welcome actuallyto have it on a national level of
parliamentary debate about it, so it'scompletely in the open as through what people
consider to be acceptable for government tobe doing their representatives and did he to
be doing with respect to the citizenry. I think I know you could argue,
well, that would then undercut theeffectiveness, but I'm not sure that's
true. I think there will bea sufficient distance between, you know,
(46:43):
the policy was actually being enacted andthe debate that was being had. But
I think if people had the opportunityreally to understand this and an object and
have input to it, I thinkit might make it slightly more palatable.
Yeah, I think you're right.I think you're right, and if I
could in the last few minutes,I would like It's okay Julian just to
(47:04):
mention the research that I've been doinginto this recently. It's what I wanted
to ask connect, So please dothese nudges are everywhere, go on,
give us an idea of this.Yes, I'm halfway through a research project
at the moment which is looking intowhere the responsibility lies for the tone and
content of some of the most scaryCOVID adverts, and we focused in particular
(47:30):
on the look them in the Eyescampaign, which I'm sure many of your
listeners will remember. We're pretty harrowing, showing close ups of dying patients in
hospital with full protective gear on avoice over ominously saying things like look them
in the eyes and tell them youare doing everything you can to reduce the
(47:52):
spread of coronavirus. So these werereally kind of shaming theory of walking adverts.
So we've been digging in to who'sresponsible. I'm pleased to say we
got the paper published in the Selfand Society Journal, which is a journal
of humanistic psychology here in the UK. It's quite excited about publishing the results.
(48:19):
Maybe I could forward give a linkto that later during and please do.
It's very detailed, but some ofthe headlines just very very quickly from
that research key finding one, nudgesor everywhere in the United Kingdom. They
are not just in the advisory groupslike the SPIB, not just in the
nudge unit be of an insight team, but they're embedded in certainly the large
(48:44):
majority of government departments within the UKgovernment infrastructure. They are embedded in the
Government Communications Service, their entity withseven thousand paid communicators, and they're embedded
in the advertising agencies that are contractedin, so they're everywhere. For example,
(49:07):
there's twenty four fully fledged be ablescientists at the moment who are employed
within the UK Health Security Agency.Back in twenty nineteen there were fifty four,
fifty four in the Revenue and Customs. So every answert about life,
whether it's travel, because it's somein the Department of Transport as well,
(49:29):
whether it's travel, whether it's health, whether it's filling in a tax form,
whatever. We're being furtively influenced byour own government. So I think
it's worth bearing in mind. Itis and yes, and they actually have
these units and teams within their departmentcalled the Behavioral Science Team, Behavioral Scientists,
Behavioral Science and Insights Unit. Actuallywithin these departments don't they. That's
(49:53):
right, Yes, they're in house. So it's not just the advisors we're
seen during the COVID event, ornot just the behavial insight team we were
contracted in and were contracted in ina big way during the COVID event or
multimillion pound contracts. But in additionto that, we have all these in
house nudges. They are they areliterally everywhere. Some of the other key
(50:17):
findings got very quickly. We managedto identify which key individuals were responsible for
the Loved Them and the Eyes videosand posters. For instance, the senior
civil Servants, a guy called ConradBaird who was a director of Campaigns and
Marketing at the Cabinet Office. Theactual behavial scientists, interestingly directly responsible for
(50:44):
the look Them in the Eyes weren'tthe SBIB or the Beavial Insight team.
It was the Cabinet Office in houseresources or team of being scientists operating from
the Cabinet Office. As we mentioned, the mulln Ar was the advertising agency
that was involved in putting them together, and perhaps un surprisingly, the Minister
(51:08):
who signed off and therefore I guess, was ultimately responsible for the love Them
in the Ice campaign was everybody willhave guessed it, Matt Granny Hancock,
you know, sign off, eventhough you know, the prominent be able
(51:29):
scientists like David Alpen and Susan Mickeyroll all claiming that they'd never used fear
and they never used these and ethicalnudges. If you actually sift through,
which we did, all their documentedoutputs during the COVID events, I'd argue
this overwhelming evidence that they did encouragethe use of all the key or ethical
(51:50):
nudges that I've mentioned. Well,this is the thing, Julian. The
fourth major finding, because this Ifound astonishing, and you know I have
been I've been researching this for along time, was the actual Cabinet Office
justifications or unleashing they loved them inthe eyes materials which they knew, in
(52:12):
their own words were harrowing, gripping, disturbing other words that they used right.
And the actual justifications included the existenceof a so called and a quote
complacent minority, the fact that youngerpeople perceived themselves to be at less risk,
(52:35):
which could they work factual subject Andthirdly, this idea that in January
twenty twenty one, which was aroundthe time of the second lockdown and the
time at which they loved them inthe eyes campaign was launched. The levels
of fear in January twenty one werenot as high as they were in March
(53:00):
twenty twenty. People were still fearful, it says, but they were less
panicky, and that was one ofthe justifications for unleashing these kind of disturbing
upon all the British people. Andyou have to remember we're talking probably there
then, that the majority of Britishpeople are already overly scared by this point,
(53:22):
right, right, which goes backto your point that there is ample
evidence that this was policy and thatthese behavioral scientists were drawn into trying and
achieves yes, and the fifth findingvery quickly no ethical inputs at all.
Right, there was no oversight ofthe production of these materials. In the
(53:42):
words of the Cabinet Office, theydidn't think that it was needed. They
didn't think that any kind of ethicaloversight was required in this instance. Do
you know it doesn't surprise me actually, because when I had looked at that
influencing behavior the mind space Way articlethat I mentioned earlier, I was looking
in front it did a little searchthrough for ethical moral and it doesn't come
(54:05):
up at all. There's nothing aboutit in there. No, that's right.
It's just this is how to doit, but not whether you should
do it or to what extent youshould do it. No, this is
just how you do This is thescience and that's that. Yeah, that's
right. So yeah, the lackof ethics, I guess wasn't surprising,
but it was. It was usefulto confirm it from the Cabinet Office his
own words, through freedom of informationrequests that and I believe through freedom of
(54:29):
information you found out or somebody foundout that the Cabinet Office approved a lot
more money for the advertising, marketingcommunications during COVID than it was officially said,
Is that right? And I thinkit was two hundred million or something.
It was a lot more than that. Yeah, there was some astounding
figures for that where they can't rememberon the top of the head what the
level was, but it was multimillions of pounds spent on COVID advertising,
(54:52):
of which a lot of it wenttowards these COVID infused adverts like the the
Eyes campaign. So we're paying ourtaxes for those taxes to be then spent
scaring us to death. Well,we're paying through our taxes from the dominant
to the influence our behavior for ourown good. Of course, that would
(55:15):
be the only thing, woun't it'sfor our own good. It's responsible for
the greater good. That's the collectivistkind of man, that's right. Yes,
yes, So somebody high up makesthe decision as to what the greatest
good is, and you just haveto trust them. They always make the
right decisions because they're not going toask you. Yeah, indeed, well
(55:37):
you say, we've got to closevery soon. But I just wanted to
finish with this little quote and askyou a last question. You say in
one piece, Regrettably, for ordinarypeople, conscious deliberation prior to decision making
is rapidly becoming a rare commodity,and we are being furtively nudged on an
unprecedented scale to obey the doctrines ofthe world's elite. I'll add in there
(55:58):
what I think you mean, theso old world's elite. So this is
a global problem. It is growing, and it is reducing our agency to
make decisions in everyday life. Ifwe're not aware of this, I think
a lot of people are not awareof this. So really what's your advice,
What can we do about this totry and improve this situation? Well,
yes, that's a key question.Isn't it a million dollar question?
(56:21):
Yeah? Helpless? I know Ido at times, but then I go
through phases when I get more optimistic. There are grounds for optimism. I
think the dominant narrative, certainly aroundpublic health is being challenged from a number
of sources at the moment. Andif we don't challenge the use of nudges
per se, they will continue tobe used in other areas, not just
(56:44):
under public health banners, but underbanners for climate change, war collution,
often for the fulfillment of goals thatare contentious indeed and need to be openly
discussed. Change it. My bottomline with this, Julian is always what
(57:05):
will ultimately change is more and morepeople visibly dissenting to what's being done to
them. They don't have to bea majority, I don't believe. I
think, you know, if weadd consistently fifteen to twenty percent of the
population visibly dissenting to, for example, the use of these nudge techniques,
(57:25):
that would be sufficient to halt it. And by visibility center, I don't
mean being on march is necessarily certainlynot obviously advocating any violence so disrupting in
that regard, but but just voicingdissent at every opportunity, whether it's you
(57:45):
know, in the pub to family, friends and the airdressers. Opportunities arise
more and more I'm finding actually dropsome information in and if we have more
people who can feel empowered to dothat by being more aware of what's going
on, and that's guess what effortslike my own are aiming to achieve.
(58:06):
Anything else on top of that suppordusif you can get like I'm trying in
the second half of the research toproduce like an optimal framework, ethical framework
to constrain government's use of these techniquesin the future, and to try and
get some government accountability using input fromlegal experts, et cetera, et cetera.
If we get any success with that, that'd be great. But obviously
(58:29):
that's a big ask trying to getgovernment of these things. But it's got
to track. The bottom line is, you know, would be something on
the record and the written record forfuture generations about what they did to us.
But also hopefully we can inform increasingnumber of people about what's going on
and what's continuing to happen. It'snot over by any stretch of in my
(58:52):
generation. If that encourage them tobe a bit more kind of dissenting in
a visible way, not hiding behindan anonymous identity on twitterslut actually you know
in yeah, yeah, And somethingI've heard recently from a number of people
is it is turning up to councilmeetings and invoicing your opinion. Very often
(59:12):
counselors are going what what people areturning up? We didn't expect anybody to
turn up to our meeting. Youknow, they've got so used to so
being so complacent that nobody bothers aboutlocal things that are going on. And
now you're getting dozens of people turningup saying, oh, we don't want
this to be a low traffic neighborhood. Let's talk about this, you know,
talk about it. You've got tobe kidding. So it does have
an impact into a few local councilsmeetings here you've had that kind of response,
(59:40):
Yes, definitely, well definitely peoplejust kind of the surprise at the
turnout that's won a couple of weeksby just doing our local town when far
more people turned up than they expectedefficient number of chairs. You know,
they're all expecting the numbers to startwith, and within those numbers there were
(01:00:01):
some vocal dissent. Excellent Black hereis still fifteen minute cities kind of idea,
and right some of the local governmentstuff. But so yeah, I
can identify with that. Yes,were you smeared as right wing by any
chance? Well not publicly. Okay, everything's leveled right wing. Indeed,
(01:00:22):
the moment isn't really doesn't fit itis, it's nonsense. Yeah, indeed.
Okay, Well, I'm very consciousof the time we've just overrun,
actually, and I'm very grateful toyou for spending this time with us.
Thank you ever so much. Thoughtto Siddley for for having this conversation.
It's fascinating and interesting to really interestingto hear about your latest research and how
that's going and how that's informing aboutyou know, the situation as it is
(01:00:44):
now, not just COVID, whichis now kind of behind us. But
we're still learning those lessons that way, I hope, and remembering those lessons.
And it would be great if possibleto have another chat with you.
You said, you know about masks, You could you could chat about that
in itself. Maybe we could dothat sometime if you'd be up for that.
Would for that, definitely doing thepresentation in Edinburgh on Thursday night about
(01:01:04):
masks and the actual key people responsiblefor masking the UK and that flip flop,
you know, where all the expertschange within the space of about two
months from don't wear masks if you'rehealthy in the community to massive mandates.
So yeah, I'd be more thanhappy to talk about that. Excellent,
Yes, indeed, and to mindbecause not only were they symbolic at the
(01:01:29):
time of you know, do asyou're told and all that sort of thing,
well they are they stand now Ithink of a symbol of that time
and a symbol of that approach,and so I think it's it's useful to
keep that in mind as we,you know, as we look at the
situation as it is today as well, even if they're not currently being used,
they are a symbol of what's happening. Most insidious of all the restrictions
in my view, I came toagree with that over time. Yes,
(01:01:52):
yeah, okay, thank you everso much for speaking with us. It's
great to have spoken to you.Thank you, Thank you. Julie,
thanks for having me. Show Notesfor this program can be found at the
Mind Renewed. theMIND Renewed dot compodcast, music by the brilliant Anthony Rayjakoff,
attribution non commercial share like four pointzero International. You have been listening
to me, Julian Charles, I'mmy guest doctor Gary Sidley, and I
very much look forward to speaking toyou again in the near future.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.