Defending Science - The Framing of Your Statements

When We Try to Answer the Wrong Question

In many discussions, a question is posed that shapes the conversation’s framing. We often don’t realise that this framing only serves one side of the discussion. If we don’t challenge this framing immediately, the discussion becomes extremely difficult.
Two examples. When the REACH regulation came into force, the chemical industry complained that it threatened up to 2.7 million jobs. They framed the debate with the question: “Jobs or even more EU bureaucracy, which do you want?” If this question is accepted as the guiding principle of the debate, then we can only be against REACH. A different question should guide the debate, such as: “Human and environmental health versus regulatory costs for companies: Is it worth the effort?” With this kind of framework, a constructive discourse can emerge.
Another example is the farmers’ protests of recent years, which were fought fiercely and irrationally, particularly in our adopted home of the Netherlands. Despite its small land area, the Netherlands is one of the world’s largest meat exporters. The agricultural industry converts imported animal feed into exported meat, resulting in significant environmental damage. The framework that allowed the farmers to get their way in no time, outside of parliamentary processes, was: “Environmental regulations or famine, take your pick.” Once this framework is accepted, it becomes almost impossible for politicians to contradict the demands: Who can be responsible for empty plates for the voters? A different framework would have allowed for a genuine debate: “What kind of food system do we actually want?” This framework would have raised entirely different questions, such as how we can feed many people with limited land, how we can protect nature and health while simultaneously providing farmers with an income.

Numbers are less precise than we think

In 2017, Chancellor candidate Martin Schulz cited rising poverty in Germany as the reason for the reforms he was advocating. Chancellor Angela Merkel countered that poverty was, on the contrary, decreasing. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) even accused Schulz of spreading fake news. So who was right?
Merkel and Schulz were both right. In a dataset as complex as population-wide income and wealth distribution, we can read almost anything we want into it, depending on which indicator we focus on. In this case, only the FAZ was wrong: it was merely a matter of framing, not fake news.
A popular tactic in public debates is to make numbers appear large or small. Let’s try this with the chemical industry. Is it an environmental problem or an essential part of the solution? To make it look bad, we could use emissions per worker, which are naturally high in a resource-intensive industry. The industry would already look much better if we considered the direct value creation per employee, which is high in knowledge-intensive industries. If we also include indirect value creation, the picture becomes even rosier: considering how many products rely on chemistry as a starting point, the environmental impact appears relatively small. An even more positive outlook emerges when considering the timescale: while Germany’s second-largest industrial sector was responsible for significant pollution a few decades ago, we can now swim in almost all of Germany’s rivers, with or without a chemical plant on the banks.

Address the framework immediately

Once we allow the other side to establish the framework within which the discussion can unfold, we have hardly any means of steering it. Furthermore, we suffer from an additional occupational hazard. Our scientific training conditions us to present our statements cautiously, which is often interpreted as uncertainty. So make it a habit to start with the framing of the discussion right away, something that can happen even before the conversation: Who is invited, with whom are appointments made, and who can only accept or decline them? Who is in the audience? How will the event be reported? Addressing the framing directly has the added advantage that there are far fewer negative emotions involved at this stage than when both sides have already become entangled in their arguments.
The framing we fact-seekers use must, of course, always be well-supported by data. Does this mean we can only use dry numbers, even when speaking to a lay audience? No, we shouldn’t allow such a restriction. Those with a scientific background, just like everyone else, can use powerful metaphors and other figures of speech, as long as these can be supported by data at appropriate points. For example, to emphasise the importance of peatlands for the climate, people often speak of ‘Europe’s rainforests’. Within the context of climate, this is actually an understatement, which can easily be substantiated: peatlands store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined, even though they cover only a tenth of the area. In this case, the metaphor of ‘Europe’s rainforest’ evokes a much stronger emotional connection without distorting the issue.
We must understand the framework as the essential basis of any discussion, not merely as a rhetorical decoration. If we insist on a clear framework and speak out against distortions early on, then we have a chance of being heard, even in heated debates.

This article is the sixth in a series and examines the role of science in society in broad terms. We will address the tools available to scientists who communicate effectively and make a positive contribution to our society, as well as the potential pitfalls.

This article was first published in Nachrichten aus der Chemie (issue 06-2026). See here the German original.

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