Emma Burlow explores why sustainability professionals shouldn’t spend all their energy trying to refute every piece of misinformation or resistance they encounter.

Brandolini’s Law states that:

“The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

That imbalance makes endless fact-checking exhausting, and it can hand control of the conversation to the person making the claim.

In this episode

• Why misinformation takes far less effort to produce than to refute, introduced at 02:36

The common forms of pushback captured by FLICC:

• Fake experts
• Logical fallacies
• Impossible expectations
• Cherry-picking
• Conspiracy theories

How to recognize and name the type of resistance you’re hearing at 06:14

• The “not me, not like this, not now, and too late” pattern of delay arguments at 09:21
• Not me (shifting responsibility)
• Not like this (half-measures)
• Not now (the downsides)
• Too late (giving up)
• Why confident pushback can feel like a threat, even when it’s only one person’s unsupported claim at 10:10
• Why debating every point can leave the rest of the room remembering the myth, not the correction
• How pre-bunking helps people expect misinformation and respond with curiosity instead of confrontation at 12:53
• Why repeating a myth, even to correct it, can make it more memorable at 13:48
• How naming patterns can take the heat out of difficult conversations at 18:35

Key takeaway

You don’t have to spend all of your energy debunking unsupported claims. Name the pattern, ask what evidence supports it, and give everyone else in the room the skills to stay curious without being dragged down the rabbit hole.

Links:

• Brandolini, A. (2013). Original post on X (then Twitter), 11 January 2013.
• Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Ecker, U. K. H. et al. (2020). The Debunking Handbook 2020. https://sks.to/db2020
• Cook, J. (2020). A history of FLICC: the 5 techniques of science denial. Skeptical Science. https://skepticalscience.com/history-FLICC-5-techniques-science-denial.html
• Lamb, W. F. et al. (2020). Discourses of climate delay. Global Sustainability, 3, e17. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.13
• Schmid, P. & Betsch, C. (2019). Effective strategies for rebutting science denialism in public discussions. Nature Human Behaviour, 3, 931–939. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0632-4

Book a Power Hour with Emma

https://calendly.com/emma-lighthouse/power-hour

Connect with Emma

Website

Email

Emma Burlow | LinkedIn

Not Sustainable