Curios of the week #45

Clippings, endnotes and other ephemera

Image via AI

---

So far, it has been an extremely wet summer in my part of Australia. This is despite predictions of one of the driest summers ever and an elevated bushfire risk accompanied by dire warnings from Australia’s Climate Council that such dry weather reinforces the need to move away from fossil fuels. What does the unusually wet summer therefore reinforce? Is this also due to climate change? If so, are all possible outcomes explained by climate change?

I accept the consensus position on climate change — that the climate is warming and human activity is the main cause — which is one reason why I am interested in the way nuclear power may help the transition from fossil fuels. However, I am deeply uncomfortable with climate campaigners who try to use every weather event to nudge us into further action. Nudges of this kind are ineffective because when the predictions they are based on prove to be obviously false, this breeds scepticism and is counterproductive. It is an attitude bred of feeling we are superior to a public who needs to be manipulated rather than the equal of a public who needs to be persuaded.

Anyway, the heavy rain has had the bonus of making Victoria’s volcanically-formed waterfalls even more spectacular than usual, so my family has been taking time in our summer break to visit some of them.

This week’s Curios include ‘teachers’, errors, good intentions, man stuff and much more.

Good intentions of the week

A key and often overlooked principle of social policy is that good intentions are not enough. Policy motivated by good intentions can even have negative effects. The textbook example is the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study that ran from the 1930s-40s and in which boys at risk of later criminal activity where identified and given a mentor. The outcomes for these boys were compared against a matched group of boys who did not have the intervention. Surprisingly, the boys who had mentors fared worse in later life.

Similarly, nobody could doubt the late Camila Batmanghelidjh’s good intentions towards disadvantaged children in London, Bristol and Liverpool. These intentions, plus her big personality, secured funding and influential fans, such as former UK Prime Minister, David Cameron. Her star was so bright it outshone more conventional charities and organisations. Unfortunately, her approach was somewhat erratic and her charity, Kids Company, faced bankruptcy, holding insufficient funds to pay staff while constantly seeking the next donation just to stay afloat. According to Janice Turner in The Times, this is an example of ‘founder’s syndrome’ where the strong personality of a founder distorts and misdirects the efforts of the organisation he or she founded.

Unfortunately, the boring stuff, such as good accounting and a dispassionate weighing of evidence are equally, if not more, important than good intentions, no matter how beguiling a personality is involved.

‘Teachers’ of the week

One of my more constant sources of irritation is the tendency for journalists to source quotes from the press releases of teaching unions and refer to the views expressed as ‘teachers say…’