Guest column (part one), “energybiz” website, May 30, 2013

On May 16, 2013, Ken Silverstein interviewed me by telephone about a controversy regarding the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Had the plant’s owner, Southern California Edison, been warned in advance about a possible steam generator problem? If so, should the company have redesigned the system, and should it have told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission? And later, when the problem materialized, led to radiation leaks, and forced the plant to shut down, did it lie about whether it had been warned? I later followed up with an email, focusing on the case against keeping secrets. Both Ken’s May 17 Forbes story and my email are online.

On May 29, Ken sent me a link to a follow-up story he had posted on the “energybiz” website, and asked for further comment. When he read the email I sent in return, he requested my okay to post it on “energybiz” as a two-part guest column. Part one considers what sort of risk communication Southern California Edison should be doing to address the issue, and whether it is a “crisis” or merely a “controversy.” Part two argues that while the company may deserve criticism for how it handled the steam generator warning, we shouldn’t criticize any company merely for having “warnings in its files about possible problems it decided not to fix.” A reader's comment on Part two provoked me to add a comment of my own, addressing the “near miss paradox”: whether near misses should be seen as evidence of safety or of danger.

Guest column (part two), “energybiz” website, June 2, 2013

On May 16, 2013, Ken Silverstein interviewed me by telephone about a controversy regarding the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Had the plant’s owner, Southern California Edison, been warned in advance about a possible steam generator problem? If so, should the company have redesigned the system, and should it have told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission? And later, when the problem materialized, led to radiation leaks, and forced the plant to shut down, did it lie about whether it had been warned? I later followed up with an email, focusing on the case against keeping secrets. Both Ken’s May 17 Forbes story and my email are online.

On May 29, Ken sent me a link to a follow-up story he had posted on the “energybiz” website, and asked for further comment. When he read the email I sent in return, he requested my okay to post it on “energybiz” as a two-part guest column. Part one considers what sort of risk communication Southern California Edison should be doing to address the issue, and whether it is a “crisis” or merely a “controversy.” Part two argues that while the company may deserve criticism for how it handled the steam generator warning, we shouldn’t criticize any company merely for having “warnings in its files about possible problems it decided not to fix.” A reader's comment on Part two provoked me to add a comment on my own, addressing the “near miss paradox”: whether near misses should be seen as evidence of safety or of danger.

Podcast for the “Atomic Insights” website, May 31, 2013 (with Rod Adams, Margaret Harding, Meredith Angwin, and Suzy Hobbs-Baker)

Rod Adams runs a website called “Atomic Insights” that promotes nuclear power. In early May 2013 he discovered my approach to outrage management, and put posts on his own website and on an American Nuclear Society website urging nuclear power proponents to learn outrage management. The responses to his two posts led Rod to invite me to do this podcast.

The podcast itself runs 1 hour and 42 minutes. Most of it is a basic introduction to risk communication and then to outrage management: the hazard-versus-outrage distinction, the components of outrage, the three paradigms of risk communication, the key strategies of outrage management, etc. But I did try to focus especially on what the nuclear power industry and its supporters get wrong – for example, imagining that their core communication mistake is failing to sell their strengths effectively, whereas I believe it is failing to acknowledge their problems candidly. There are recommendations for nuclear communication throughout the podcast, and a Q&A at the end with Rod and fellow proponents Margaret Harding, Meredith Angwin, and Suzy Hobbs-Baker. The plan is to follow up with a second podcast, a more narrowly focused roundtable discussion among the five of us on nuclear power outrage management.

by Neil D. Weinstein, Peter M. Sandman, and Susan J. Blalock
From: Health Behavior and Health Education, 4th. ed., edited by Karen Glanz, Barbara K. Rimer, and K. Viswanath (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008), pp. 123–147.

The Precaution Adoption Process Model (PAPM) was developed mostly by Neil Weinstein, with some help from me. It is an attempt to identify the stages people must pass through on the way to adopting a new precaution: unaware, uninvolved, undecided, decided to act, acting, and maintaining action. It also tries to identify the interventions most likely to move people from one stage to the next. This 2008 book chapter summarizes the PAPM – how it differs from non-stage theories and competing stage theories of health-protective behavior; the justification for the stages specified; the advantages of stage-matched interventions; research testing the PAPM and research using it; etc. Two earlier articles applying the PAPM to a specific example, radon risk, are also on this website: “A Model of the Precaution Adoption Process: Evidence From Home Radon Testing” and “Experimental Evidence for Stages of Health Behavior Change: The Precaution Adoption Process Model Applied to Home Radon Testing.” This chapter is a better introduction: more recent, broader, and less quantitative.

by Ken Silverstein
Posted on the Forbes website, May 16, 2013

On May 16, 2013, Ken Silverstein of Forbes interviewed me by telephone about a controversy over whether Southern California Edison had withheld information about problems at its San Onofre nuclear power plant. I didn't know anything about the specifics of the controversy, but I was happy to talk about the generic question of why companies shouldn't keep damaging information secret. In an email later that day, I elaborated on some of the points I had made on the phone.

by Peter M. Sandman
Excerpts from an email to Ken Silverstein, May 16, 2013

On May 16, 2013, Ken Silverstein of Forbes interviewed me by telephone about a controversy over whether Southern California Edison had withheld information about problems at its San Onofre nuclear power plant. I didn't know anything about the specifics of the controversy, but I was happy to talk about the generic question of why companies shouldn't keep damaging information secret. In an email later that day, I elaborated on some of the points I had made on the phone. Both Ken's online article and some edited excerpts from my email (only some of which Ken used in his story) are online.

by Peter M. Sandman

This is a sequel to my April 8, 2013 column, "H7N9: A Tale of Two CDCs." My focus then was on the ways the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was over-reassuring the public about the possibility of an H7N9 pandemic -- even avoiding the word "pandemic" as much as possible. As this follow-up column documents, the CDC has become much more candid about the pandemic risk posed by this newly discovered influenza virus; other officials and experts around the world are being similarly candid. The column then discusses two remaining concerns about H7N9 risk communication: the failure to be candid about the likelihood that we'll face the pandemic, if it comes, without vaccine; and -- more important still -- the failure to make any attempt to involve the public in pandemic preparedness. The column also documents that public interest in H7N9 has already declined from its (modest) peak in early April.

by Peter M. Sandman

I can't prove it, but I fervently believe that as communicators have become more and more preoccupied with making everything short, simple, and interesting, they have lost track of the need to keep the audience oriented. Individual sentences may be clear enough, but the overall thread of the argument too often isn't. So I decided to write a column on signposting -- on how to keep readers and listeners from getting lost. The six signposting tips in this column aren't specifically about risk communication. They're basic communication ... but you can't do good risk communication without them.

by Peter M. Sandman

As I write this on April 8, 2013, I have no idea -- nor does anyone else -- whether H7N9 will launch a devastating pandemic, or become endemic and minor, or disappear without a trace, or what. What we all know so far is that a strain of flu never before seen in humans has made a sudden appearance in eastern China, where it has infected 24 people and killed seven of them so far. This column reports on the first week of H7N9 messaging of two national health agencies: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States. China CDC was surprisingly candid in its prompt release of information and its avoidance of the temptation to over-reassure the very anxious Chinese public. The U.S. CDC, faced with a much less anxious (and perhaps even skeptical) U.S. public, chose to go along with the mood of mild, casual interest. It didn't withhold any information that I am aware of, but it certainly didn't seize the opportunity to warn people to prepare for a possible pandemic. Its first H7N9 press briefing sounded much less concerned than I believe its experts actually are.