NewScientist Magazine, 17th September 2005
By John Adams, professor of georgaphy at University College London and author of Risk (Routledge, 1995)
Snippets taken from the print edition, article is available online here (subscription required)
"Risk is all in the mind. It is a word that refers to a future that exists only in the imagination... To take a risk is to do something that has a possibility of an adverse outcome. Why should anyone want to do such a thing? Because, as well as possible adverse effects, risks also bring rewards... We now live in a risk-blame-litigation-compensation culture, where the level of mitigation against the downsides of risky behaviour means te possible rewards now need to be much bigger... Underpinning the increases in litigation and compensation is the growth of the blame culture. Why are we collectively so much more inclined to blame than we used to be?
We imagine the future, arriving at the subjective probabilities of both positive and negative outcomes, by using instinct, intuition and our experience of circumstances that appear similar to those that we have encountered before. But we are now imagining the future differently. Large armies are employed in the production of risk assessments, whose purpose is the identification and avoidance of all conceivable sources of misfortune.
But whatever the risk assessors might want from the world, the future remains uncertain. To the extent that these assessments influence behaviour, they discourage the pursuit of the rewards of risk - whether from school trips or trips to the moon."