Joe and I recently wrote a piece called Jujitsu in Action - The Smart Way to Fight Smears Against Obama. In it, we reflected upon the Obama campaign’s new Fight The Smears website, and proposed what we argue would be a more effective way of responding to false allegations.

This approach is also relevant to progressive businesses, which are often challenged when their practices run counter to underlying assumptions about business. The stories we tell when we face such challenges can be critical to our prospects for success. I’ll provide a brief example after the fold.

Advocates of electric vehicles are sometimes criticized through the following misleading argument:

Electric cars really have a long tailpipe. They rely on coal and other types of power plants that emit carbon dioxide to produce the electric power used to charge them. Advocates for electric cars are simply deluding themselves and others into thinking that they are better for the environment than the oil we use now.

A common response is simply to try to set the record straight by presenting the facts. This approach was taken in a blog post by Tesla Motors’ chairman, Elon Musk. After pointing out that our power grid can provide power from many sources, including some that do not generate carbon dioxide emissions, Musk calculated the distance that several types of vehicles could travel with a given amount of energy. Specifically, he compared two types of Honda natural gas vehicles, a Toyota Prius, and an electric Tesla Roadster charged by power generated by natural gas, which he identifies as “the most popular fuel for new US power plants in recent years.” According to the analysis he presents, the Tesla roadster generates the least carbon dioxide emissions per mile of the four cars, nearly two-thirds less than the Prius. It would also do significantly better than the other vehicles even if it were charged by power generated from a mix of sources, equivalent to the average of U.S. power production.

There is a drawback to this approach, as indicated by a Washington Post article that Joe and I cited in our Jujitsu piece. Describing recent research findings, Shankar Vedantam writes in the Washington Post:

“The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths.”

Some readers of the blog post by Tesla’s chairman may later mistakenly recall the myth about the dangers of the long tailpipe as a fact. They might even falsely “remember” Tesla Motors acknowledging that its vehicles produce more carbon emissions than cars that run on internal combustion engines. While this might seem farfetched, a recent study found that some readers of a flier from the Centers for Disease Control that attempted to dispel health myths later made just such an error, mistakenly recalling a debunked myth as a fact provided by the CDC.

An effective response to a misinformation campaign needs to recognize the ultimate goal of the misinformation and tell a truthful story that places the focus on those who are attempting to deceive. This rule applies whether the subject of the misinformation is Barack Obama, the climate crisis, or electric cars. A compelling story, such as that presented in Who Killed the Electric Car?, explains the source of the misinformation in a way that is accurate and memorable.

For more, see our article.

Evan

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