Hello and welcome to CHI - the Contemporary History Intervention - this week's video is
about one of the nastier tasks that we have as academic historians - fact checking - securing
the realm of legitimate debate and going for what is actually the limits of certified knowledge.
This is always a task that we historians have but maybe it's a task that has grown in importance
in the last years in light of, well, the political environment that we are in - facts are back
and facts matter.
Now there is a risk in these debates about fact checking that these debates tend to become
arcane pretty quickly and there are two reasons why these debates become arcane.
The first is that quite simply facts are complicated - it's about checking sources, it is about
checking details, it is about checking the right angle.
It is about a complicated world and the fact that our knowledge remains incomplete on so
many issues.
So, there is a natural tendency in debates about facts become complicated and hard to
see through for people who are not insiders.
There's a second problem about fact checking - we always are behind as historians - facts
do not become an issue unless somebody spreads a lie, a half-truth, biased information, so
we're always a little bit behind and trying to certify things that are already out there
in some kind of flawed way.
So, I thought with this broadcast I would go get ahead of the curve and provide you
with a test for upcoming reporting where you can check by yourselves - is this a report
that is actually based on certified facts?
In six weeks on April 26, we'll have the 35th anniversary of the
Chernobyl explosion the explosion of a nuclear reactor in
Chernobyl then Soviet Union nowadays Ukraine
and if experiences any guide we will see quite a bit of reporting on such an
anniversary so how do you know when you watch one of
these reports how do you know that they have actually done their
homework that they are based on the best available knowledge well here
is my hint watch out for the number of victims
there is an official number for the people who died from
the Chernobyl explosion that is 54.
that is the number of the men who received a lethal dose of radiation
in the immediate aftermath of the explosion when it was about
extinguishing the fire and starting the clean-up in fact this
number 54 is part of what one could consider a
master narrative of the Chernobyl event at least
when it comes to media reporting, they typically start in
the control room late at night when the fateful
decisions were taken that led to the explosion that is about the
explosion about the fire it is about the attempts to quantify the
heroic first responders who show up at the site
at the site of the explosion and then show up again in hospitals struggling
with radiation sickness which is one of the nastier ways to die and just
when you have had enough of black skin and all the other
terrible things that radiation does to humans then
the narrator will tell you actually it was just 54 people who died and
maybe go on with comments about an exaggerated toll well
the number of 54 is contested there are numbers in circulation that
are much higher let me just decide the number from the UN Chernobyl forum of 2005
which estimated that were
between 2 000 and 9 000 future deaths from cancer and if you look at
the numbers from Greenpeace they are in the
six digits so who is right what does the academic
historian say about the real number of
casualties well there is an answer that we can give to that question and it is
we do not know we do not know the number of victims because soviet
leaders never bother to check what we do have is a book that made an
attempt as a retrospective assessment that book is Manual of Survival by
Kate Brown and I’m proud to say that this is a woman historian because this
video will go online on March the 8th which is the
international woman's day Kate Brown's book is a real detective
story fact checking at its best with work in many archives with
investigations on the ground numerous freedom of information requests
and conversations with eyewitnesses people who were there
in 1986 and for many of them Kate Brown was the first person
that they had to talk through their experience
in those days and weeks, the picture that emerges
is one where there is no real effort to monitor the number of deaths
or to monitor the health problems that resulted from
the explosion and the widespread nuclear contamination
because there was a lack of resources because
monitoring always creates liabilities and the state was not eager to
accept those and because we are in the final stages of a sclerotic regime that
would collapse five years later there's also something
else that is chronic this book is named manual for survival for a reason because
working on manuals was what the soviet bureaucracy
was doing in the aftermath of the disaster they put out numerous manuals
on what to do about contaminated meat contaminated
timber contaminated wool etc etc manuals for survival
that provided instructions on what to do to
limit or slow the spread of contamination
that is what the bureaucracy focused on it's not like nobody cared about the
health effects these are people that Kate brown
looks at in detail everyday heroes people on the ground often under
pressure from superiors to just let things go easily but people who
showed a spine and said these things should not happen because they
are dangerous and very often Kate Brown is
the first person that showed an interest in hearing their
stories so why do we still have that 54 number
in play here well of course part of the
reason is that Kate Brown's book only came out in 2019
now it will be mandatory reading for all the journalists who are
watching this I’m sure that will do their homework and make sure that the 54
number is out there but if you still see it
well, it's about sloppy journalism but it's also
about modernity's love affair with numbers numbers are a human coping
mechanism we need them to process awkward situations and a
crisis like the aftermath of general is certainly a
huge crisis that asks for some kind of copay
mechanism the book to turn to here was written by Theodore Porter Trust in Numbers
this is a book from historian of science who looked at
the responses of scientific disciplines of
expert systems and how that dealt with numbers and he found a striking
correlation expert systems go for quantification
not when they're rising not when they're booming but when they get
into trouble when there are the pressure when they do not have
answers that is when experts reach for numbers and offer them as
a measure of objectivity in order to profit from this
aura of precision that comes with numbers numbers
are a way for experts under pressure to regain confidence and authority and it's
particularly in demand when things are in flux
like in this aftermath of disaster so the numbers game
about general victims is not just about journalists who do not do their
mandatory reading but it's about the real nature of the
Chernobyl disaster which is about more than victims
more than terrible diseases it's more about
finances though the costs of Chernobyl were huge and it's certainly about more
than contamination it is about how such a disaster is
corrosive in everyone for state authority for the authority of
experts for social cohesion a disaster like
Chernobyl disaster without precedent without a
narrative a disaster that leaves us speechless and clueless and without
something to say but you can always get away from the situation
by going for numbers