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I'm a psychological scientist, and in the autumn of 2018 I was recruited to Helsingfors university and entered a position as a research leader for a three year project: to investigate the future of Finland's food production from a perspective of entrepreneurial thinking.
It turned out to be a very complex assignment. That's because food production is a very complex topic. And even though farmers are experts of the most common process used to produce food as well as long term investment calculations and planning, there are still questions about optimal ways to produce food, and what our species should eat to develop and sustain physical and mental mental health.
In parallel with the start to exploring the future of food production, the climate issue boomed when a young Swedish girl launched the so called 'School strike for climate' movement during the infamous election to the Swedish parliament. Because the manifestation was performed every Friday, it evolved to something called Fridays for the future.
Thirty three steps from my office was the office of the chair for Finland's IPCC panel, and in the room next door of mine was Finland's most notorious proponent of the vegan agenda. Ergo, the project had all the ingredients to become a thriller.
Despite the fact that most of my colleagues had earned a Ph.D., which means they had gone through years of academic training, the head of department never introduced any critical discussions about the girl's manifestation and veganism. Instead, he encouraged people at the department to conform to the climate/vegan agenda. On the department's Christmas dinner (2018), he ordered only vegan alternatives to real food, without disclosing his decision beforehand. This kind of management behavior is known to suppress what is known as work climate for creativity (Ekvall, 1996; Österberg, 2012), a key aspect for any academic organization (Ekvall and Ryhammar, 1998). The effect was detrimental; four women at the department suffered from Iron deficiency and one person, an associate professor, even sent a group mail, suggesting we should all follow the girls' demand, and go on a strike for the climate every Friday. In August 2023, Finnish tabloid Helsingin Sanomat reported that the research at the University of Helsingfors had collapsed (see the dark blue line in the picture below):
Included in the climate narrative was the Amazonas. The people who conformed to follow the school-strike-for-the-climate girl and the vegan narrative, also conformed to the idea that Amazonas was Earth's lung, producing a staggering 25% of Earth's oxygen. This meme was a common topic among people at the University of Helsingfors.
Because I had a different viewpoint about the matter, that Amazonas produces ~6% of Earth's oxygen (Shellenberg, 2019; Zimmer. 2019), I proposed a bet with a colleague who was very convinced of the Earth - lung - hypothesis. We agreed that the person who was wrong should buy the winner a bottle of wine. We shook hands and then went to our respective offices to investigate the matter. Soon I got a mail from my colleague where he admitted that he had lost the bet.
Where did the idea of 25% originate from?
It turned out to be part of someone's media campaign, and people famous for other things than their achievements in science spread the message. And when famous people say someone, most people, including people with academic training, seem to fall for it, or?
Of course, most sane people understand that:
- a sixteen year old school student who failed to complete high school, and who according to her mother has mental issues, does not have an understanding about a complex matter like the climate.
- people with academic training should be able to tell facts from factoids, and abandon polemics and argumentation in favor of reasoning (Heider, 1958; Mercier and Sperber, 2011; Pinker, 2011 a). In defense of my former colleagues, they weren't trained as scientists but economists. That included the chair of Finland's IPCC panel, the notorious proponent of veganism, and the proponent for the idea that Amazonas produces 25% of Earth's Oxygen.
As early as 1956, other social psychologists found that people who have been deceived by a con artist tend to remain loyal to the idea after the con was revealed (Festinger, Rieckn, and Schacter, 1956/2008). On page three they wrote:
“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.”People who had proselytized to join the school strike for the climate, veganism (~1%), and the idea that Amazonas produce 25% of Earth's oxygen, also subscribed to the idea of deforestation. According to this narrative, the Amazonas are vanishing due to massive deforestation. Whereas its true that many trees are cut down in the Amazonas to make way for soy production (used for vegan products), it's also true that deforestation has decreased significantly since 2003, and that that trend started already in 1988.
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| Trend line showing the decrease of deforestation. |
In areas where the forest was taken down, ruins of buildings emerged. And when investigating the soil, they realized that this is not the kind of soil one would expect to find in a more than thousand year old rain-forest; Paradoxically, the soil in a rain forest lacks many of the micro-organisms needed for plants to grow. But the soil in the Amazonas had the qualities that you would expect to find in soil prior to the introduction of mono cultivated production maximization. They call this soil Terra preta, meaning Black Earth.
In 2019, investigative journalist Graham Hancock, published America before. There he wrote:
“In my 2019 book America Before I devote seven chapters, more than 90 pages, to the implications of recent remarkable discoveries in the Amazon rain forest. These include great cities overgrown by the jungle, immense earthwork mounds and henges, astronomically-aligned megalithic sites, evidence of sophisticated agricultural techniques and evidence of advanced scientific knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants.Five years later, Science magazine confirmed Mr. Hanock's claims:
In Chapter Fifteen, “Sacred Geometry”, I draw particular attention to “clusters of monumental earthworks… shaped as perfect circles, rectangles and composite figures” that have been revealed by LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) surveys in the Brazilian Amazon. Now, far to the south in the Bolivian Amazon, a new LiDAR survey has unveiled further networks of mysterious monumental structures” (Hancock).
Link to source
Ergo. The story we have been taught about the Amazonas was not accurate. But because that knowledge has become habitual, meaning it's ingrained in our long term implicit memory, most people have a hard time accepting new evidence. But remember, it's not about academic training, but about personality style. On the one hand - the desire to be overwhelmed, and on the other - the inability to abandon a factiod that is traded within a specific community.
“Self-deception is a powerful but overapplied theory. It is adaptive only when a deception-detecting audience is in the loop, not when an inaccurate representation is invoked as an internal motivator. First, an inaccurate representation cannot be equated with self-deception, which entails two representations, one inaccurate and the other accurate. Second, any motivational advantages are best achieved with an adjustment to the decision rule on when to act, not with a systematic error in an internal representation” (Pinker, 2011 b).Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden) or MobilePay (Finland).
More about my expertise:
Executive coaching for CEOs/managers and workshops to facilitate Organizational Performance, Learning, and Creativity for Problem Solving | Lectures: Nutrition for physical and mental health | Course/lecture: children's emotional and social adjustment and cognitive development | Language training - Swedish | Academy Competency | CV | Teaching skills and experience | Summary of research project | Instagram | Linkedin | YouTube-channel | TikTok | Twitter
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