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Science’s Biggest Fail

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Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#71

Post by api »

aetherson wrote: post #59
TTPrograms wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blame is misplaced here, though. There's no real avenue for science to interact with the public currently (except for /r/AskScience, which is a terrific development). A vast majority of the misleading described is perpetuated by news headlines ending in question marks and "doctors" with mail order degrees trying to sell books. If there's any blame to be placed on scientific institutions it's not that they are bad…

I think that this is deeply wrong. "The Media" is a popular punching bag, but the media largely repeats what large institutions tells it. Journalists don't (for the most part) have the skills necessary to dive deep into scientific literature. For every big "scientific" view that has an agenda behind it that either vastly overreaches the available research or lags decades behind the available research, you can general…

I've wondered if GMO fear mongering isn't an attempt to brand certain foods as premium and therefore charge a lot more for them.

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/foodgentrification-and-culinar...

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#72

Post by derefr »

wutbrodo wrote: post #39
api wrote: post #11

"I think science has earned its lack of credibility with the public. If you kick me in the balls for 20-years, how do you expect me to close my eyes and trust you?" I'm really happy to see that someone else sees this. I've been harping on this for a long time -- that the reason people believe things like anti-vaxx propaganda is not because they are idiots but because scientific authorities, the media, and the medical…

> Believing such things and perpetuating them is an act of (often subconscious) protest -- akin to things like calling yourself a "Satanist" in protest against fundamentalist religion. You might call these kinds of things "protest beliefs." This is fascinating to me. I've read ample studies about how people do this, and I can't understand it as anything but the worst form of petulant childishness. Changing which FACT…

It makes more sense if you notice that the facts they're rebelling against are also things most people "don't actually believe ... but just say they do." Humans hold all sorts of crazy far-mode beliefs (especially about religion and morality) that completely fail to influence how they react to situations in their day-to-day lives.

Unless you're a member of the space program or know someone who is, whether the moon landing happened or didn't won't change your predictions about anything else. And precisely because of this, it's something that can be debated on either side to signal allegiance to some greater ideal.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#73

Post by Filthy_casual »

ohazi wrote: post #13

"How do you make people trust a system that is designed to get wrong answers more often than right answers?" You can start by teaching kids how real science is actually done in order to get them to understand and trust the process rather than the we-only-deal-in-absolutes pop-news headlines.

In which case the fault shifts to media and schools for not explaining how things are.

In Linux distribution terms, OP and the public want the stable distribution while in fact due to the nature of the field you can only get rolling updates.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#74

Post by asynchronous13 »

gadders wrote: post #23
dragonwriter wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet, for a while now, the general "scientific consensus" has been "fat is bad for you", No, it hasn't. The general scientific consensus may have been that most Americans are consuming fat in general, and certain varieties of fat in particular, at levels which are unhealthy , and therefore that most Americans would be better off reducing fat intake in general, and certain common varieties of fat intake in partic…

>>The general scientific consensus may have been that most Americans are consuming fat in general, and certain varieties of fat in particular, at levels which are unhealthy, and therefore that most Americans would be better off reducing fat intake in general, and certain common varieties of fat intake in particular. Unfortunately, Ancel Keys etc were recommending vegetable based fats over animal ones, and ironically…

>and ironically it's the animal based fats that tend to be healthier

Got any sources to back up that claim?

The Yerushalmy and Hilleboe paper is usually the study that people quote when they try to debunk Ancel Keys. In that study, they show that there is a distinct correlation between fat as a percent of total calories and heart disease. And they show that animal fat is more highly correlated than other types of fat. (That paper said that Ancel Keys screwed up on methodology, and they re-did with proper methods and found essentially the same result)

Big thing to keep in mind is that the data showed (and still shows) a distinct correlation between animal fat and heart disease. One theory suggests that the true cause is simply how wealthy a given nation is. i.e., wealthier nations eat more animal fat, and wealthier nations have better health care which prevents other types of deaths.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#75

Post by xrange »

normloman wrote: post #14

Science changes it's mind in light of new facts. That's why science is great. I don't understand what the author wants from science? To make up it's mind? That's not how science works!

...wait a minute, I thought "the science was settled"...

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#77

Post by jawns »

fidotron wrote: post #31
Synaesthesia wrote: post #22

The major problem is the influence of big corporations in funding studies and promoting certain points of view for their own benefit. This is a huge problem in the food industry and also the drugs and medicine business. If you look at the history of the popularity of vitamins, orange juice, the promotion of carbohydrates and sugars over fats and proteins etc. Not a problem with Science per se.

It's not just corporations. Science funding, generally, is far too tied to producing results that fit with the preconceptions of the group with the money. Combined with peer review being a frighteningly effective mechanism for enforcing the status quo, and it's unsurprising that once an idea is entrenched moving away becomes nearly impossible. The underlying problem is an insufficient diversity in sources of funding…

This was essentially the argument Bill Maher used to defend his anti-vaccination stance a few years ago: The government is heavily pushing vaccines, and heavily funding vaccines, and he doesn't trust the government. (Of course, one could counter that you don't need to trust the government to know that vaccines have demonstrable efficacy and a very low incidence of serious side effects.)

It's also the reason why I was, at first blush, rather suspicious when the Gardasil vaccine came out a few years ago. It was heavily, and extremely aggressively, marketed. And I know that vaccines don't tend to be moneymakers in the way that blockbuster drugs are, but it definitely raised my eyebrows that Gardasil was being marketed so aggressively, because of the reputation of Big Pharma, where money often comes before ethics and due diligence.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#78

Post by msandford »

jerf wrote: post #24
dragonwriter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And this has been shown to be unproven, right? On the specific issue of saturated fat and heart disease (saturated fat isn't the only problem fat -- trans fats are also an issue), its been shown to be more complicated than earlier thought; there's pretty strong evidence that certain high-saturated-fat foodstuffs are associated with higher risk of heart disease, but some large scale studies that seem to indicate tha…

But you've given away Scott's point. We've been listening to how bad saturated fat is for my entire lifetime pounded into the public with the maximum volume science has available to it at the highest governmental and science authority levels, and now, oops, mea culpa, it's more complicated than we thought, and right now it's not exactly out of the question that "saturated fat" will be entirely removed from the "bad t…

Further one doesn't need to look very hard to find "proof" that the "fat = bad" message is prevalent in society.

Go to the grocery store. Go to the dairy isle. Look at the various products. If you can't find "low fat" or "light" versions of most of things there, I would be dumbfounded.

If major corporations have picked up on the "low fat" movement then I think it's fairly safe to say that it's prevalent in society.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#79

Post by raverbashing »

api wrote: post #11

"I think science has earned its lack of credibility with the public. If you kick me in the balls for 20-years, how do you expect me to close my eyes and trust you?" I'm really happy to see that someone else sees this. I've been harping on this for a long time -- that the reason people believe things like anti-vaxx propaganda is not because they are idiots but because scientific authorities, the media, and the medical…

I too am glad this is being realised by some people

As an example with vaccines. Mercury containing substances have been phased out (thiomersal). Doctors and news outlets keep pumping information about the bad side of Mercury, etc, etc (which are true for the most part, but maybe exaggerated)

But thiomersal is still used in a lot of vaccines. So people get all the negative messages about Mercury but they're supposed to think "it's OK to be used in vaccines"?!?

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#80

Post by samspot »

themagician wrote: post #48

The problem with the "science" around food and fitness is that there is an underlying assumption that is wrong, and that assumption is this: There are things that are inherently good for us. Nothing belongs anywhere, and nothing exists on purpose. Nothing is "designed" for us. So many diets and fitness fads tap into this idea of what is "natural" and try to implicate that there are certain things we are supposed to d…

This begs the question of why we consider the science of evolution to be so trustworthy, while considering nutritional science untrustworthy. At least we can experiment on nutritional science. Evolution has all the same headline-grabbing power as nutrition.

Nutrition is actually what I think of when considering this. I am supposed to take their word for it on this complex topic, but we can't even decide if eggs are good or bad for us?

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