Thompson Takes Risk with a Cartoon Textbook

“I like cartoons,” proclaims Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) professor and risk analyst Kimberly M. Thompson.

In fact, Thompson likes cartoons so much that she has compiled hundreds of her favorites on the subjects of risk and health into a new book called Risk In Perspective: Insight and Humor in the Age of Risk Management.

Thompson, Associate Professor of Risk Analysis and Decision Science at HSPH, says the book will be required reading—along with articles and case studies—for her WinterSession class at HSPH on environmental health risk.

Risk in Perspective is every student’s dream textbook. It contains a broad spectrum of “funnies,” from biting political cartoons, to sophisticated sketches from The New Yorker Collection, to knee-slapping strips like Garfield, FoxTrot and Calvin and Hobbes.

But the book’s topic is no laughing matter. “We have to manage the risks and the benefits, and we have to make good choices,” Thompson says. “We’ve realized that there are unintended consequences that go along with [decisions] and costs that go along with benefits and we have to figure out how to evaluate those.”

According to Thompson, humans are living in a new phase of life called the Information Age or the Age of Risk Management. In the book’s introduction, she describes this phase as “a time in human history where we recognize that life is full of risks, choices often involve tough trade-offs, and good data and risk analysis play a critical role in the decisions we make as individuals and collectively.”

Each of the book’s 12 chapters addresses one risk associated with this new age, such as “Risk in the Media” and “Health care in the U.S.” Thompson begins the chapters with her own words of wisdom about assessing and managing the risk, followed by relevant and insightful quotations from scientists, authors, politicians and other famous people including Albert Einstein, Maya Angelou, Mark Twain and Sir Winston Churchill.

The rest of the chapter is comprised of cartoon bliss. The exercises at the back of the book are the only indicators that Risk In Perspective really is a text for a university course.

The cartoon on the cover of the book, “Today’s Random Medical News from the New England Journal of Panic-Inducing Gobbledygook” by Cincinnati Enquirer cartoonist Jim Borgman, shows a newscaster at his desk with three multicolored wheels-of-fortune at the top of the screen. After pressing a button on the desk, the newscaster prepares to report the following random result: COFFEE can cause DEPRESSION in TWINS.

“I love the cartoon on the cover because sometimes it really does feel like there is a medical news story of the day,” Thompson says. “For many people, they have to realize that the information that’s coming doesn’t have that context and my hope is that the book will help empower health consumers to really ask better questions and to start to realize that the choices that they make and how they get information and how they use it is really important for their health.”

Thompson says she wanted the book to be accessible to a general audience because her job as a researcher is to “get the public back into public health.”

“My hope is that the book will be a friendly and fun way for people to learn about some of these things,” she says. “It will help people have a better understanding of concepts like uncertainty and variability, which are two major themes in the book.”

In 1999, Thompson created a consumer’s guide called “Taking Charge of Health Information,” which appears at the beginning of Risk In Perspective. The original guide included four cartoons, and its publication sparked the idea of assembling an entire book of cartoons.

Thompson says she has been a fan of cartoons since she was a child and has collected science-related cartoons for the past 10 years. At HSPH, she incorporates cartoons into her lectures because “I just find them to be so powerful.”

Thompson’s colleagues are raving about Risk In Perspective. Harvard Medical School Professor of Pediatrics Jean Emans called the book a “useful adjunct” to more theoretical, evidence-based materials.

“It is a unique approach and is sure to draw a smile from any reader, especially as they complete their assignments for the evening!” Emans wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson. “Great end of the day reading when one is weary of e-mail and the usual course textbooks.”

Howard Raiffa, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, who is recognized as one of the founders of the field of decision sciences, said professors in all subject areas could use the quotations and cartoons from the book to illustrate points in their own lectures.

“[The book] spices up the subject matter,” Raiffa said by telephone from his home in Tucson. “It’s a light but still a profound set of materials.”

In addition to teaching, Thompson is the director of the Kids Risk Project at HSPH. The project seeks to improve the lives of children by finding cost-effective strategies for better managing the risks that children face each day.

Thompson’s recent research about increasing violence, sex and profanity in movies has grabbed the attention of parents and entertainment industry executives. Last week, she was honored in Palm Springs with the 2004 Society for Risk Analysis Chauncey Starr award, which is given annually to an outstanding young risk analyst.

For all of the serious research that she conducts, Thompson still knows how to laugh. “For me,” she says, “humor makes living in the Age of Risk Management much more fun.”

—Staff writer Andrew C. Esensten can be reached at esenst@fas.harvard.edu.