Just like Michael Shermer said, “Science is not a thing, it’s a verb. It’s a way of thinking about things.”
What I want to talk about is not the horrendous inaccuracy of so much of science journalism [1], but rather, certain rules of thumb to take note when reading about science (or anything in general). This is fortunately, a short post.
The problem is that there is so much science journalism; ‘logical’ abstractions made by journalists who more often than not, know little to nothing of the subject, or over-simplify the findings of real scientists. Finding out the correct information, and then applying it to our daily lives, can become a very complicated task indeed.
However, the final problem lies in the fact that we as laymen simply cannot stand for complicated explanations. There is so much information in the world; we cannot possibly know everything.
Why do this?
Following the last sentence, despite the fact that we cannot know anything, everything (or many unknown things) can possibly affect you.
The reason we have the AIDS epidemic in certain African countries [2] is because of ignorance (not always) on the part of the citizens. The list of things to potentially watch out for is an infinite list; the list of the unknown can never be completed.
Of course, I need only to remind you of September 2008 and the sorry state of the world’s economy to tell you of the dangers of the unknown. In the health context, what you didn’t know about your health status could be silently killing you.
An Example
I will very much like to criticise the total incompetence of the medical workers in many states, but that would be a point left better tackled by the people who actually have the power to make a change. Instead, I should begin to talk about something that could concern everyone.
The topic revolves around Vitamin D, and anyone interested should watch this excellent presentation (its long though) by Dr Michael Holick, as well as pick up his book, ‘The UV advantage‘. I will be talking about this in a different post, but it would be sufficient to say that what we did not know about Vitamin D 10 years ago is now known, but not by many. This isn’t going to stop them from getting into a Vitamin D deficient state. We obviously would benefit from being in-the-know.
What to Do
The best advice would be to follow David Deutsch’s advice, that “The rational thing for the layman to do, is to take seriously the prevailing scientific theory.”
This goes back to the original problem: what can we believe.
As much as I would like to go about bashing various publications for publishing absolutely misleading and useless information. We must remember what ways journalists and scientists differ. Namely, journalists need to make money, and the way they do that is by reporting stories. Scientists need to make money too, but the way most do is by keeping their tenure in an organisation supporting their research. Simply put: journalists are in a hurry, scientists, not so.
So what we need to do is to read only for what something is worth. The talk by Dr Holick is a good example of what to belive. It is full of data, full of results and tested hypothesis that should now be considered fact. Then there are the stories, I saw this example in my Google News reader recently: Comfort food reduces stress: scientists
Decent study, nice headline, but by no means an excuse that eating comfort food is in any way desirable.
My best advice is: Follow the prevailing scientific theory, but only take in theories from Scientific Sources. (not the New York Times) If the person is not sure (more research is needed), accept it as that. Uncertainty brings on a testable hypothesis, not a justification for action.
Yes, it is better to be cynical in this regard. Always Be Questioning, and don’t hold strange beliefs, and we should be fine.
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Notes:
[1] Science journalism is not science publication. Science journalism is what you see in TIME. Science publications are like the New England Journal of Medicine.
[2] If you visit this site showing AIDS and HIV statistics in Africa, you will see how different the rats of AIDS are. Richer states like South Africa have a 18.1% HIV/AIDS rate in the adult population. Equally confounding is that such a state as Mauritius then has a rate of 1.7%. War torn Congo and famished Ethopia then have lower rates in the mid single digits as well.
My point is simple: Generalisations can never be made. Trust the data and only the data, but only after you can affirm that you trust the source of the data.
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