Real risks

The burden of inter- pretation shifts to the individual: accept the message as issued or interpret the infor- mation in the larger context of risk in their lives and in society. [...] In the middle of this stands the public, who are at once the object of the discussion, its subject, and the principal determi- nant of the outcome. [...] The complex behavior of the system is a result of the network of inter- actions among the parts. [...] New risks require a more involved process, where the event is broken down into contribut- ing parts and each part is studied mechanistically; at the end, the understanding of the individual parts is combined through a model to predict the behavior of the whole. [...] Back to statistical thinking The foregoing review was intended to give some perspective on the multifaceted subject of risk and to help show the place of individuals in the bigger picture of risk in society.