Surely learning long words is a prerequisite of doing a PhD? In which case today I’m doing the PhD right. Agnotology is my new word of the day – I had to look up both how it is pronounced and what it is. It’s pronounced ag-nuh-TOL-uh-jee and means the study of culturally and politically constructed ignorance, or the creation of doubt and confusion, often intentionally. Classic examples of this are the tobacco industry – an internal memo famously said ‘doubt is our product’ or the fossil fuel industry looking to downplay or problematise the scientific consensus. Those are examples are where the doubt and ignorance are intentionally created to cause delays in people taking action. However agnotology can also happen unintentionally, and it feels like a good description for an area in retrofit I’ve been thinking about for a while.
I’ve been reflecting on the impact of the lack of clarity within the retrofit sector on what approach is needed to environmental improvements. Some suggest there should be a technology agnostic approach – that government shouldn’t be picking winners. While others advocate for specific approaches, from fabric first to fabric fifth, Enerphit to heat pumps, or maybe heat pumps plus solar and/or a battery. Case studies which suggest heat pumps will only work in highly insulated buildings to examples suggesting they are fine in uninsulated buildings. Although maybe they are fine from some perspectives like carbon but not so much from the perspective of comfort levels.
One of the things that I’ve been increasingly interested in is the extent and ways in which that lack of clarity impacts on people. People can feel frustrated that they have followed advice which has then changed, like they’ve been taken for chumps and wasted time and money trying to do the right thing, that now seems like the wrong thing.
It also affects the supply chain too. A lack of clarity in the messaging means that there needs to be more in-depth advice architecture which affects business models and costings for delivery. In all of the calls for government to take action and mandate ‘it’ – if there isn’t agreement about what the ‘it’ that needs to be mandated is then that makes the call to action much more diffuse.
That isn’t to say there necessarily needs to be an over-simplification of what needs to be done, but I do wonder if that lack of clarity contributes to a lack of action. Looking forward to exploring that further, to try and get clearer about whether or how uncertainty impacts on what people do or don’t do.
