No wonder Homeopathy et.al are making a comeback.
Science’s Biggest Fail
81–90 of 260 posts
Re: Science’s Biggest Fail
#82"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 think you are greatly underestimating the impact of two things: one, the explanation based on science is often subtle and also often requires a significant amount of intuition for probabilities and statistics; and yet, two, there are people out there who loudly yell easy answers that prey on our biases.
My point: I find it difficult to talk about "earned trust" when not also acknowledging that the truth is often confusing yet boring, and there are people who actively espouse a simple, exciting, yet false alternative.
Re: Science’s Biggest Fail
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
The view on Fat moved a lot less than you might think. People used to eat a lot of fat which we still think is a bad idea. More recently we found that eating too little fat was also a bad idea. As to dietary guidelines, if you pick a target for a 2,000 calorie diet and someone on a 5,000 calorie a day diet tries to hit that same target there is a clear miscommunication going on. And yes, you can eat a relatively heal…
Your post is full of the science that people no longer trust. There is plenty of evidence that fat doesn't cause weight gain or heart attacks, and that exercise doesn't lead to weight loss because it makes you hungry. I don't know the correct answer, but I know there is a lot of uncertainty now, and there seemed to be no uncertainty in the food pyramid days.
The current science does suggest eating too much fat is still bad.
EX: "The American Heart Association’s Nutrition Committee strongly advises these fat guidelines for healthy Americans over age 2: •Eating between 25 and 35 percent of your total daily calories as fats from foods like fish, nuts, and vegetable oils."
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/Cholesterol/Prevent...
Note both the lower and upper bound. Eating say 75% of your daily calories as fat is generally a bad idea for most people. But so is limiting yourself to 1%.
PS: This is one of those cases where oversimplification can be harmful. But, while looking at people with extremely high fat diets demonstrated a problem the translation from limit to eliminate is what most people heard.
Re: Science’s Biggest Fail
#84The problem is, most scientists say "We have evidence today to suggest ..." and most average-joe's hear "This is the absolute truth and everything else is wrong". Science is an evolution. What's "right" today might be proven wrong tomorrow (after more studies and research are done) -- and science is one of the only fields that admits that they got it wrong previously. Average-joe's just want someone to tell them "wha…
> The problem is, most scientists say "We have evidence today to suggest ..." and most average-joe's hear "This is the absolute truth and everything else is wrong".
Well, the problem is perhaps more precisely that scientists say "We have evidence to suggest...", and then marketers and propagandists say "It is proven that...", and that "Average Joes" mostly never hear what scientists say, only what the marketers and propagandists say.
Re: Science’s Biggest Fail
#85"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…
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…
Well, the NSF, in order to assist with this effort, is now making 'outreach' a 20% graded portion of all grants. This is a HUGE step in the right direction, I think, galvanized by the shutdown 2 years ago. Finally, the eggheads saw that Sarah Palin decrying fruit fly research was not something to laugh at, but to be scared by.
That said, I am taking a grant writing course here in grad school, and have been specifically told that the 20% outreach portion is 'complete bull.' The grants are still graded on the feasibility portion and not much else. The PIs teaching the class were, to me at least (take it with a grain of salt), disdainful that they had to ever go out and justify their research to the general public whatsoever. I got the impression that they felt it was a gimmick to appease Washington. Their general reaction to the public, at least in one meeting, was of disinterest verging on contempt. Again, this was my read, and may be totally offbase.
Re: Science’s Biggest Fail
#86Earlier 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…
If I understand you correctly, you're saying that it's not the media's fault, because the media just blindly repeats whatever they're told. This is exactly why it's the media's fault!
If a journalist doesn't have the skills to understand what they're reporting on, then they shouldn't be reporting on it. We wouldn't put up with a report on Afghanistan that says the place is full of Arabs because the reporter was told that by some nutcase and couldn't be bothered to check the CIA World Fact Book before he went on the air, but we're constantly exposed to the scientific equivalent.
The world is an inherently confusing place. Media's job is to filter out the noise and present us with the signal. Instead, they just amplify it all, and we all know that amplifying a noisy signal doesn't really help.
Re: Science’s Biggest Fail
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Insufficient repetition is a huge problem in medical science. There is no incentive to replicate existing studies, as it doesn't advance your career. A related problem is that there is no incentive to publish negative results.
Exactly. Science isn't broken, but it seems that way because the incentives that drive it are wrong. Especially with medical science.
"Science isn't broken, but it seems that way because the incentives that drive it are wrong."
Which sounds pretty similar to "science is broken", from an outsider's perspective.
Re: Science’s Biggest Fail
#88Despite the criticisms, the outcomes have been amazing. People are living longer and healthier lives than they did 20 years ago. Is Adams also forgoing vaccinations?
My impression is (but someone with actual knowledge please contribute here) that modern medicine and science have achieved what no other institutions or ideas in human history have achieved, significantly extending human life and curing diseases that cursed humanity since the dawn of time. It is a miracle, and it continues -- life expectancy continues to improve and more diseases are coming under control of prevented (except measles, of course).
Scott Adams' cartoons are insightful; he does not seem to apply the same depth of thought to his writing. This piece is poorly thought through. "Science" has told him nothing, unless he reads the research himself. News about science, and the public's poor grasp of uncertainty, risk, and the significance of scientific research (i.e., is this one study? settled science? etc.) are what generate confusion.
Re: Science’s Biggest Fail
#89Taking a step back.
The rate at which science has moved forward ever since there has been science has increased far, far more than the average human life span.
Say, a few hundred years ago, it took science an average of X years to move forward enough to know that it was wrong about something. X was on the order of many human lifetimes.
Today, science is moving so much more quickly. It 'finds out' it's wrong, over and over again, about a given topic, during a human's life span.
Add to that the increased number of humans who are science literate.
Add to that the total amount of 'bandwidth' between 'science' and people.
Here is yet another area where technology has left biologies ability to cope in the dust.
In this case, there are some possible solutions, mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Understanding what science actually means has never been more important.
Here are my basic assumptions. Everything I believe is going to be proven wrong, multiple times, over the course of the next decades. All we can do is go forward, making sure what we do base our decisions on, every day, is the on our best and most honest efforts, for this moment in time.
Note, I don't really think everything I believe will be proven wrong, in all likelihood. It's just a starting point.
I understand my comments are skipping over a whole lot of important, relevant and fundamentally broken things, many of which can and need to be fixed.
Re: Science’s Biggest Fail
#90"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…
Very good point about mercury. What are people supposed to think? "Mercury is so bad I'm barely allowed to purchase or handle it, but then I'm supposed to then inject it into my baby?"
Yes there's a lot of nuance here, and a lot of cost/benefit analysis around the risk of a tiny amount of mercury (in excretable compound form) vs. the risk of nasty diseases. But it becomes harder to communicate that nuance and be believed when you've just been telling people to eat margarine (artery plaque) for 50 years.