I don’t have the official Skunk Works ballcap and t-shirt personally autographed by Kelly Johnson, so I’m just thinking with public knowledge and persuasion principles, but if this

is our missing Beast of Kandahar, I’ll personally escort Mr. Ahmadinejad to Al’s Beef in Chicago and pay for every inch of beef sandwich plus peppers that he cares to consume. Sure, we’ve got to check all the possibilities including an Iranian Dr. Evil; that’s due diligence. But, this has got to include a large measure of PT Barnum because of the combination of two persuasion concepts: 1) the Queen of Tomorrow and 2) the Rule, There Are No Laws of Persuasion and If There Were Why Would I Tell You.

If indeed the Iranians took over the guidance of the drone, why have they done this just once and then told everyone that’s what they did? Good grief, talk about a major competitive advantage. Why would you reveal this ever and especially over one event? It makes no sense. Even if they simply got lucky and captured the drone’s guidance system through chance, you would never reveal that stunning possibility.

Indeed, if the Queen of Tomorrow had figured out how to do this, She’d invent a different cover story. Maybe She’d smile about a turncoat in the US surveillance program hiding in the flu vaccine program. Maybe She’d do a major PR event showing the burning and shattered remains of the Satanic spy plane that was actually Mr. Ahmadinejad’s old Mercedes limo. Maybe She’d say nothing and let us listen to all the other voices. She, however, would not shout out, “I took your plane with my magic!” which is what the Iranians are doing.

The only reason you’d make this play is because you’ve got some Other Guys in mind. Consider the Iranian Local. The Arab Street knows about these high tech planes. They also know about destructive computer programs in form of those virus-rigged uranium centrifuges that blew up the Iranian nuclear program awhile back. All of the Iranian persuasion connects to that naïve level of knowledge and understanding. Hey, we’ve got computer engineers, too, and iGizmos, and hey, the government’s been shutting down communication networks of those crazy protesters. The Iranian story is not implausible to the Arab Street. And, even with those in Arab Spring, sticking it to the Great Satan is delightful even if at the hands of the masters those lovers of Springtime seek to overthrow.

Consider, too, the implications of this for domestic Iranian politics. It says that the government now has a new invisible hand of justice it can lay on anyone, including Americans, anytime. If you are pro-government, that moves you. If you are anti-government, it still moves you, just in a different direction.

Now think about different streets, the Main Streets of the West. Sure, it’s highly unlikely that the Iranians did what they say they did because Westerners tend to have a lot more experience with technology gone bad and have no doubt that a zillion dollar spy plane could suddenly lock up (the blue screen of death; embarassing reply to all; can you hear me now?). But, whatever the circumstances, we lost the plane and the Iranians have it and are holding press conferences at our expense and worst still our failure is setting up all their punch lines. We’re hearing bad echoes.

They even managed to provoke President Obama into asking for the plane to be returned in a manner like the parent of a kid who hit a ball into the mean neighbor’s porch. Can you imagine President Bush doing that? The contrast between Obama and Bush says a lot about how you do persuasion. While things were not good with Iran and Bush, the Iranians did not look for ways to taunt Mr. Bush like they do with Mr. Obama. Hey, they read the newspapers, too, and find our comparisons between Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama useful in their own way.

Thus, they can make persuasion plays that violate the Rules of Persuasion, yet are still successful. Sometimes you can pretend to be the Queen of Tomorrow Who knows all the Laws and get away with it.

It all depends on the Other Guys.

Consider these two statements.  First . . .

OCCUPY BOSTON RAIDED
On December 10, 2011 at 5:00 AM #OccupyBoston’s Dewey Square encampment was raided by the Boston Police Department and other officials. Thirty-five peaceful protesters were arrested on the Rose Kennedy Greenway just two days after Mayor Thomas Menino issued a notice of eviction.  Eight others were arrested in the streets and sidewalks surrounding Dewey Square, and three were detained in South Station.  Throughout the two-hour period in which the arrests occurred, #OccupyBoston members remained resolute and non-violent in the face of a disproportionately large police presence: at least 100 officers were counted inside Dewey Square at 5:30 AM, some estimates place the count at greater than 200.  Credentialed press, citizen journalists, academic researchers, and #OccupyBoston media members were repeatedly corralled and moved to surrounding areas 50 feet away or more, prohibiting many from thoroughly covering the raid.  From pointing lights in photographers’ lenses to targeting the two official #OccupyBoston USTREAM live videographers for removal, officials went to great lengths to block media access.

Second . . .

“There’s a great group of kids down there at Occupy Boston,” said Boston Police Superintendent William Evans. “When we needed help, I called them, they called me, and together we were able to get situations that could have gotten out of control back to normal.”  Evans gave his personal cell phone number to some of the group’s core members to use the past two months, and even as police moved in this morning, arresting about 46 protestors who refused to leave, their aim was to keep the bond alive.  “A lot of them we became very friendly with and a few we pleaded with them to not go in the wagon, but unfortunately some of them wanted to get arrested down there,” Evans said.

Apparently Boston’s finest are reading the Persuasion Blog and the (modified) Rule:

You Can Get Farther With A Compliment and A Raid Than You Can Get with Either Alone.

A Peitho nomination!

The scientific devil is always in the details and those details typically involve math and simple, but hard, thinking. To illustrate these perils, consider this expert report that recommends universal cholesterol screening for children 9 to 11 (page S27 in this pdf). You need to read the report carefully to see the scientific science despite the fact that virtually everyone involved in the report would call themselves scientists. When you see the bad science, you then can begin to see how persuasion principles explain the outcome better than math and simple, but hard, thinking.

First, read the damn paper, most particularly Section 9 on Cholesterol. Think carefully and skeptically about it. In other words, think like a scientist and not a member of a high prestige group. Meanwhile consider this quotation from an expert not on this particular expert panel.

Rita Redberg, a cardiologist at University of California, San Francisco, expressed skepticism. “I don’t know of any data that screening children ages 9 to 11 is of any benefit to them,” she said. “We don’t need to do cholesterol tests to advise children to eat fruits and vegetables, watch their weight and get regular physical activity.”

Or this from an expert from a different expert panel on the same topic of cholesterol screening.

. . . the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, concluded in 2007 that not enough is known about the possible benefits and risks to recommend for or against cholesterol screening for children and teens. One of its leaders, Dr. Michael LeFevre, a family medicine specialist at the University of Missouri, said that for the task force to declare screening beneficial there must be evidence that treatment improves health, such as preventing heart attacks, rather than just nudging down a number — the cholesterol score.

Maybe Redberg and LeFevre are idiots who don’t read the relevant research literature. They are in that terrible position of claiming there is no needle in the haystack. Asserting Nothing against a group that asserts Something is a losing persuasion proposition. Of course, it is easy to prove Redberg or LeFevre the idiot. Just produce the evidence of science. You have to do that heavy lifting for yourself.

Still, those two quotations permit a shortcut if you don’t want to read the report and figure it out for yourself. Some experts claim there is no good scientific evidence to support the recommendation for universal screening with 9 to 11 year olds. Yet, this NIH panel of experts made such a recommendation. How is this possible?

I think persuasion answers the question better than science.

Realize the social context of the panel. Appointment to the panel is a huge status hit; you have to be well connected to get there and you are a big deal to earn this merit badge. The panel has no power; recommend at your pleasure and nothing will change as a result, a case of the politics of the unelectable or actions without consequences. There are no agreed upon standards of judgment; bring your expertise to the Table of Brother and Sister Hood. Majority voting applies, so coalitions are more important than, say, scientific evidence.

If you read section 9 on cholesterol screening you see an incredible amount of detail, expert quotation or citation, elaborate decision trees, and tables and tables of topics, criteria, and evidence summaries. The report looks serious, scientific, and objective when it is only the majority report of a faction with self interest, exactly what the Federalists warned about in their Papers. It is the text version of a high color figure of a brain scan: Lots of misleading detail that hides more than it reveals.

Now, make the contrast between this process and the one involved in the US Task Force on Preventative Health for prostate cancer. You might recall that another group of health experts reviewed the scientific literature on prostate screening and recommended against it. Other experts howled. Why the difference?

Realize that the US Task Force operates more like a jury with a predefined set of rules and procedures. They operate under the same standards for all issues. Now, compare this to the operation of this NIH panel on screening kids for cholesterol and the howling prostate cancer experts. The other experts employ something quite different from that jury metaphor. They review and evaluate different kinds of evidence with different kinds of standards, then make a public declaration that has absolutely no legal or practical impact.

You see the same kind of outcomes in the peer review literature. Even if you are not that kind of researcher or scientist, you’ve read enough examples in the Persuasion Blog to know that peer review does not ensure any kind of Truth much less consistency. Standards of judgment vary with the reviewers, the writing style, the trendiness of the topic.

Thus, you are always still dealing with Experts, but how they decide is very different. A process like the US Task Force on Preventative Services operates under a very different kind of WATTage compared to the other Expert groups whether in panels, committees, associations, or just individuals trying to get published in peer review. Everyone always has some kind of Bias operating on them. That’s why external rules, procedures, and standards are so useful and effective. The problem isn’t with the science – it’s with the scientists.

And, yeah, just to stay consistent . . . see how this inflates the Bubble.

You think you’re smart.  Handle this.

The Obama administration is wrestling with the thorny question of whether scientists should inject healthy children with the anthrax vaccine to see whether the shots would safely protect them against a bioterrorism attack.

You remember anthrax.  Some knucklehead released that hound from hell in 2001 shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks demonstrating yet another weapon of mass destruction.  We’ve got a vaccine for anthrax that works pretty well with adults, but we don’t know about kids.  Consider these sequential practical persuasion problems.

1.  Persuade parents to volunteer their healthy kids right now before an attack.

2.  Wait until an attack then persuade parents why we didn’t test the vaccine on kids before and why we don’t know right now what will happen to their kids if they get the vaccine.

Don’t you just love the ambiguity, uncertainty, and risk?  This is just one more reason why academic research is sometimes so prissy.  You can avoid the consequences of situations like this; shootfire, you don’t even have to think about them much more than reading this blog post.  By contrast, if you’re in the Fed, you’ve got to deal with these terrible choices as an unavoidable part of your work.  If you think you’ve got the science to handle this, I’ve got a job for you!

Think about the dissonance properties for the scientists actually facing these choices.  You’re supposed to be smart and figure it out, but there are no correct answers and no matter what you decide you can be sure that the reality, when it arises, will play out differently than you expected.  But, you nonetheless made a thoughtful and deliberate choice that will nonetheless find aversive consequences.  That puts you on the dissonance path.  Dissonance reduction will then tuck you tighter to your earlier decisions, making it that much more difficult to see your failures and how to change.

And, of course, during all of this you are still trying to change the Other Guys, all those parents to either risk their kid now or to accept your refusal to test before the attack.  Jeepers, persuasion is hard enough when you only worry about what you are doing to the Other Guys without the situation doing something to you.

There Are No Laws of Persuasion.

But, sometimes you’ve still got to do it and be effective.

I learned about Warren Buffett when I was in high school and read “Adam Smith’s” pop best seller, The Money Game, first published in 1968.  Even way back then, Adam Smith identified Buffett as the outstanding money manager of his generation.  And from that lofty peak over 40 years ago, Buffett has done the impossible and continued to climb higher.  How’d he do it?

One obvious key to his achievement is found in the Rule from the Chicago School philosopher, Al Capone, whom I paraphrase:

You Can Get Farther with a Kind Word and a Gun Than with Either Alone.

Buffett illustrates this in his artful combination of persuasion and power with this financial move.

Buffett is in Big Blue. Warren Buffett said today he’s bought about $10.7 billion worth of IBM stock, or more than a 5% stake, after building his holdings through much of the year.  But you wouldn’t have known about Buffett’s buying from checking out his quarterly snapshots of his stock holdings. Check out the footnote to Buffett’s latest disclosures of his investment holdings released by the SEC: “Confidential information has been omitted from the Form 13F and filed separately with the Commission.”  In other words, Buffett got permission from the SEC to keep some of his stock holdings secret. This isn’t unusual for Buffett.  Most big investors have to publicly reveal their stock investments every three months.

Buffett persuaded the SEC to allow him to accumulate IBM stock, but not report it in required public filings.  The SEC doubtless allowed this exception because of Buffett’s fame.  When people hear he’s making a move they tend to jump on the bandwagon thereby making it harder for Buffett to continue making his move.  The SEC bought this line of reasoning and gave Buffett temporary relief from the reporting requirement.

Thus, you cannot believe a word that Buffett says, even in required and government approved paperwork, because you never know why he’s saying what he’s saying, what he’s leaving out, and what he wants you, the Other Guy, to think.  Let’s now recall his recent opinion that wealthy people should be taxed at a higher rate than others and that he supported proposals from the Obama Administration to this end.

But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.  My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

This on August 8, 2011 in a signed opinion at the New York Times.  This exactly during the time Buffett sought and received permission from the Obama Administration SEC to hide legally various financial moves from public view.  Realize in that editorial and in other public comments, Buffett made many statements in support of higher taxes on the wealthiest, but his opinion had no action consequences to it.  He didn’t pay more taxes himself or bully his rich friends into paying more taxes even on a perfectly permissible voluntary basis.  He couldn’t change any tax law himself.  He didn’t lobby Congress or lean on his Congressional representatives.  Buffett just said nice things in support of the Obama Administration during a time with Buffett wanted relief from required reporting standards.

Of course, I’m just doing Persuasion CSI on an imaginary persuasion scene, trying to figure out what happened.  A few clues here and there, a fragment of persuasion DNA, statements from various witnesses; there’s no crime here, but certainly something happened.  But, did it happen like this?  Did Buffett play the President to get SEC relief?  Did he cut a smoky backroom deal, a little Buffett quid in the NYT for SEC quo on paperwork?  Or, is it just the random confluence of give and take in the mess of life?

As expert on all things Persuasion 2.0, I admire the hell out of Buffett and see nothing wrong in his actions, even assuming my analysis of his motives is correct.  He follows the Rules!

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

All Persuasion Is Local.

Persuasion Is Strategic or It Is Not.

There’s a Difference between Persuasion, and Smoke and Mirrors; With Persuasion the Illusion Lingers.

P.S. Man, if I’d put all my savings in Buffett’s company starting in 1970, I would not be writing this Blog, but would be living in the south of France watching Melanie play in the Mediterranean in her little blue bikini.