[Stoves] Leading questions mislead (Re: Ronal Larson)

Tue Aug 30 15:38:20 CDT 2016

Dear Paul:

Thank you for indulging me. I don't think I would advocate anything on the
basis of technical design and performance. Nobody would or should believe
me.

Yes, I was naughty. But you also noticed I gave an alternative to preparing
the fuel - purchasing it at an indicative price, say USc 10 per kilo.

I agree wholeheartedly with you "when something is new or unknown to
someone, do not expect that person to intuitively independently understand
what is new.  Therefore, we "instruct" and "market" and "lead" and
"demonstrate" etc to spread knowledge, with the hope that the unknowing
person might understand and at least consider and maybe even adopt what is
new."

True, "Not all leading questions mislead. " And I am prepared to even
mislead, if it somehow means getting better and effective solutions, in
this case stoves and fuels that people want.

My interest, plainly put, is simply this -- what is the role of public
budgets in supporting new cooking technologies desired by the poor and what
is the rationale?

If not the stove - for a variety of reasons, competitive subsidy to stove
producers does not seam feasible - the fuel can be subsidized. Hence my
question about purchasing at "USc 10 per kilo."

While I know nothing about stove design, perhaps it is too much to expect a
single stove design to adapt to all types and qualities of solid biomass
throughout the year. It may be easier to separate out a niche for TLUD
market potential where purchased fuel is competitive with current and
expected alternatives.

In short, what is worth subsidizing, how and by how much, how long, to what
end? I have seen no real delineation of geographic market and competition
for any country in the world, not even with otherwise fairly sensible
consultant reports to GACC. So it is impossible to even get started on a
sensible policy discussion. Just hoping that some donor somewhere would be
tired enough or pressed enough to throw a couple of hundred million dollars
into RD&D or loan guarantee funds isn't much of an answer. There is a
market, a vibrant "economy and culture" in constant change at the farm,
village and household levels. What should a government do?

I write erratically, because I don't have an answer to many, many questions
and I refuse to accept answers proffered in terms of saving trees or
climate, or reduction of premature mortality. Least of all on the basis of
what Cecil calls the "fundamental foolishness of expecting abstract ISO
standards, metrics, and household stove performance tests to lead the
stovers and stove producers of the planet into a paradise of smokeless
pollution free biomass cooking and space heating."

This iSO enterprise doesn't even bother to ask leading questions. They are
armed with the weaponry of models and fiction of unrepresentative
behaviors.

As Marie Antoinette might say, "Let'em Boil Water!" :-)

Thanks, again. I will comment on your other post later.

Nikhil

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(India +91) 909 995 2080
*Skype: nikhildesai888*

On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 3:53 PM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:

> Nikhil wrote:
>
> I have already said I know nothing about TLUD or for that matter design of
> biomass stoves.
>
> and his suggested question:
>
> 3. Do you [the stove user] like to cut your wood in fine pieces?
>
>
> Now THAT is a leading question!!!!
>
> The issue of small pieces of fuel is NOT about the preparation of small
> pieces by the stove user (because some fuels are already that size and
> because fuel preparation can be a useful livelihood for some people who
> solve the fuel preparation challenges, such as by refinery operators making
> LPG and companies that produce pellets).
>
> Instead, the issue of small pieces of fuel relates very much to their very
> good functioning in some stoves (TLUDs) about which the stove users might
> have no knowledge (and that includes Nikhil).
>
> So, when something is new or unknown to someone, do not expect that person
> to intuitively independently understand what is new.  Therefore, we
> "instruct" and "market" and "lead" and "demonstrate" etc to spread
> knowledge, with the hope that the unknowing person might understand and at
> least consider and maybe even adopt what is new.
>
> I have great faith that when Nikhil does understand TLUD stoves that he
> could become an advocate.  We know a lot of people (including some stove
> designers) who have greatly increased their interest in TLUD stoves in the
> past few years, after many years of denial or even strong resistance.
>
> And many of them still do not appreciate the char-making attributes of
> TLUD stoves.
>
> There is much instruction and marketing yet to be done about so many
> topics and to so many people.
>
> Not all leading questions mislead.
>
> Paul
>
> Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
> Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu
> Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072
> Website:  www.drtlud.com
>
> On 8/30/2016 9:10 AM, Nikhil Desai wrote:
>
> Moderator: I changed the subject line.
>
> Ron:
>
> Thank you for indulging me. I wonder if I thoroughly lost you with my
> blabber on "leading questions". I learnt the term in drafting legal
> testimonies, but the issue is also relevant to survey design. See
> http://survey.cvent.com/blog/market-research-design-
> tips-2/survey-design-pitfalls-leading-questions-and-loaded-words.
>
> The real question is, who is the survey for and what are you trying to
> sell?
>
> Seeking convenient answers is a human weakness; pollsters do it all the
> time. No sin, just possibly an error.
>
> Product design and testing, marketing, selling, providing after-sales
> service and taking care of both legal and illegal risks, is a serious
> business. Even some parts of academia deal with it.
>
> But it seems we have an overabundance of scientism - unwarranted beliefs
> in unscientific assertions just because they are uttered by bureaucratic
> scientists (I trust ExxonMobil scientists more than USEPA scientists, but
> you probably know that already) - and under-enthusiastic customer base.
> This is ok, even normal, but not when 50 years of selling to donor
> bureaucrats has produced repeated failures,
>
> Oh, well. We sell best what we are good at - promises - to our eager
> customer base - ideologues of environmentalism. From saving trees to lives
> to climate, we latch on to the fad of the decade. (I have done that too, so
> please don't take this personally.)
>
> Today we seek to satisfy the priests of USEPA/GACC cult via catechism of
> Protocols of Water Boiling Tests in Laboratories. Tomorrow we could write a
> White Paper on Biomass Stoves and Planetary Health. (You see, Lancet would
> publish anything, so long as enough heads nod. Look up its reports of
> Commission on Climate Change or Commission on Planetary Health.) Why, in
> five years you and I could prepare a Progress Report on Biomass Stoves'
> Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals of 2035. With enough money, I
> could even write a paper that developing countries' transition to cooking
> with electricity from modern coal-fired plants (with USEPA-approved BACTs)
> reduces the chance of sea level rise by 22 cm in 2200.
>
> I wish I led a cult too. I wouldn't hesitate a bit in writing, "TLUD
> stoves save trees, grow bigger gardens, reduce global warming, and make
> cooks happier and richer."  I could cite customer surveys in support.
> Convenient facts always trounce inconvenient truths. Just need to ask the
> right leading questions; there are suckers eager to be misled.
>
> Just about as scientific as the Global Burden of Disease report - with
> assignation of a single cause of death to some 50+ million deaths a year,
> whether or not what doctors' certificates exist and what they say, then
> concocting allocation of premature mortality to diseases and risk factors -
> but we would need another Bill and Melinda, at least another Harvard.
>
> And certainly more scientific than the USEPA/GACC technique of predicting
> exposures, disease and death from lab tests of boiling water on the one
> hand and pretentious accuracy of "relative risk" predicted from, well,
> questionable surveys, dubious sampling, meta-analysis and all that academic
> jazz.
>
> But I digress. Back to TLUD.
>
> I have already said I know nothing about TLUD or for that matter design of
> biomass stoves. I wish any seller success so long as the buyer is a happier
> cook.
>
> And I don't mean cooks of fancy feasts of self-righteousness for the rich
> donors with rich theories.
>
> Who is your customer? What is your service standard? What is the
> objective? I raised those questions the very first post this time around,
> and I haven't heard a thing from anybody.
>
> Whose problem - and what problem - is sought to be solved, by whom and why?
>
> On that some other time. You asked me to revise your questions, not raise
> my questions.
>
> Let me state questions I would like to be asked as a buyer of any
> stove-fuel technology. I resent having to answer questions in order to make
> some donor and his research consultants happy, but I know we all have to
> serve our ladies and lords.
>
> And if you have to sell to governments like our Chaiwalla Prime Minister -
> whose picture is on nearly every petrol pump in India, on huge billboards
> announcing his LPG scheme for empowering women - you may have to ask
> different kinds of questions. If I were his finance minister, I might ask
> you, "How many votes can you swing in five years?"
>
> Oh, sorry. Not my questions again. Your questions, assuming you want to
> sell something to a cook, with enough money to be able to buy some food
> items and fuel for a month at a time (not get them every day or three times
> a week), and has enough time for cooking (and not worry about another job
> outside home or any household chores or time to read to a child or watch TV
> at a neighbor's).
>
> 1. How much does charcoal sell for around here? How would you sell it if
> you sold it?
>
> 2. Do you want to leave a stove unattended for an hour? What times and how
> often?
>
> 3. Do you like to cut your wood in fine pieces? Or would you buy your fuel
> at 10 USc a kilo?
>
> 4. When it gets warmer around here, what do you do - get out of the
> kitchen?
>
> 5. What does your garden fetch you? How do you fertilize it? How much is
> it worth to you if your cooking produced just the fertilizer you want
> (because I say so)?
>
> I too wrote in favor of cooking solutions for the poor in terms of
> co-benefits of GHG reduction and health in order to please donors and their
> research consultants. I will readily do so again if I got a half million
> dollars to help move a few billion dollars to the poor to help them buy
> fuels and stoves of their choice. I have no problem beseeching the donors,
> misleading USEPA bureaucrats; after all, they only have their careers to
> worry about, and "happier cooks" are only an incidental co-benefit.
>
> Who knows, if we liberated tomorrow's mothers from the drudgery of cooking
> and instead invest in their and their children's education, we might have
> some more environmental regulators. Win, win, win!
>
> Nikhil
>
>
> Nikhil Desai
> +91 909 995 2080
> Skype: nikhildesai888
>
> On Aug 30, 2016, at 12:16 AM, "Ronal W. Larson" <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
> wrote:
>
> Nikhil:
>
> I made six positive claimed points about TLUDs.  How about your rephrasing
> each to help (or restrain) we who are trying to sell a (claimed) improved
> stove?Same request to Cecil.
>
> Ron
>
>
> On Aug 29, 2016, at 10:01 PM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ron:
>
> I know nothing @TLUD, but I won't think much of answers to these questions
> one way or another.
>
> But I do consider these to be "leading questions" meant to elicit a biased
> answer.
>
> It is tragic to see people falling in the trap of believing themselves by
> getting convenient confirmations by means of leading questions.
>
> Am I not correct? :-)
>
> Not that I want to be.
>
> I salute unshakeable faith as the method of 21st Century "science".
>
> Now ask me when I stopped lying.
>
> Anybody out to measure intelligence and desire knows neither. S/he is just
> one blind among many in the zoo trying to define an elephant.
>
> Please excuse my impudence. I have no desire - for a biomass stove - nor
> intelligence.
>
> As always, wrong questions guarantee wrong answers.
>
> N
>
> Nikhil Desai
> +91 909 995 2080
> Skype: nikhildesai888
>
>
>
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