<<  <  >  >>

No. 335

March 4, 1999

CARS, CHOLERA, AND COWS

The Management of Risk and Uncertainty

by John Adams

Executive Summary

Everyone takes and manages risks, balancing potential

rewards against uncertain losses.  Experts provide advice

about managing risk, but with limited success.  Part of

their difficulty stems from an incomplete appreciation of

the different kinds of risk and part from their inadequate

consideration of the different mindsets with which people

respond to risks.

Directly perceptible risks are managed instinctively

and intuitively.  Professional attempts to manage them are

thwarted by people who insist on being their own risk man-

agers.  Risks perceptible with the help of science include

infectious diseases.  Quantitative estimates of such risks

are frustrated by the reflexivity of risk.  Virtual risks

include mad cow disease and suspected carcinogens.

Scientists do not know or cannot agree about the nature or

magnitude of these risks, and nonscientists argue from

preestablished beliefs, convictions, and superstitions.

Imaginary or not, virtual risks have real consequences for

individuals, corporations, and governments.

This paper examines the cultural filters through which

people view virtual risks and describes some of the long-

standing debates about virtual risks that arise because of

those filters.  Understanding our ignorance of the risks

and filters is a precondition for civilized debate about

virtual risks.

____________________________________________________________

John Adams is professor of geography, University College,

London, England.  He is the author of Risk (1995) and "Vir-

tual Risk and the Management of Uncertainty," in the Royal

Society's Science, Policy and Risk (1997).