Episode Transcript
Interviewer: There are a lot of uncertainties in science and that's okay. We'll talk about why it's important to acknowledge that, up next on The Scope.
Announcer: Examining the latest research and telling you about the latest breakthroughs, "The Science and Research Show" is on The Scope.
Interviewer: I'm talking with Christie Aschwanden, lead science writer for FiveThirtyEight. Christie, there seems to be this insatiable appetite for science news, at least on the internet, which you think would be a good thing for science and scientists, but it turns out it's kind of a problem. What's going on here?
Christie: Yeah, I don't know that I would say that it's a problem that there's so much news. I mean, the problem is that we sort of have too much and so it's hard to sort through. But I think, you know, just the fact that there's science reporting isn't a problem in and of itself. You know, that's great. I like science. I'm glad that people are covering it. But I think the problem here is that the way that science is portrayed too often is in sort of a way where it's oversimplified and giving the public sort of a false notion about how it works.
Interviewer: So give me an example of that. How do headlines kind of flip-flop from week to week or month to month?
Christie: Sure. I think that, yeah, the sort of famous ones about coffee, "This week, coffee is good for you." Next week, it's bad for you. Those sorts of headlines are probably sort of the worst offenders here. But it's kind of this idea that gets put up there that science is this magic wand and that a study provides the final word. And here's the Truth, with a capital "T." And so this magic wand of science is eliminating the truth.
And then if another study comes along and overturns it, then it means the first one was terrible. And so it's kind of this dichotomous view where science is both this magic wand that yields truth, you know, everything that it touches. But then, on the other hand, the idea that, well, it's all sort of crap and anything that you're told now might be wrong. And therefore, the whole enterprise is sort of flawed.
Interviewer: So what exactly is the problem with that? I mean, as a savvy consumer of news, I might just assume that it's a little far-reaching to say that coffee prevents cancer, for example.
Christie: Right. I think you bring up a really good point and that is, I think that the public sort of intuitively knows that you can't do one study and then decide for a fact that cancer is healthy or not, that it's oftentimes more complicated than that. And I think the really important and fundamental thing to understand here is that science is sort of a process of uncertainty reduction. So no single study provides the final word. You can never be absolutely certain. But what you can do is take all of the evidence that you have in its totality and that will often yield a very good answer.
And so it's not that you know for sure that the answer is coffee is healthy or coffee is bad, but you're sort of looking at all of the studies. And so, for something like that where it's flip-flopping, the answer may be that, well, there's not a very strong effect. Or if it's there, it's not strong enough to be consistent so it's probably not something to worry about. And yeah, that could give you assurance, right?
Interviewer: So whose responsibility is it to do that? I mean, if I'm looking at the news every day, I'm certainly not going to get that long-term view. Who's going to put that out there? Or how should we be changing how we talk about science?
Christie: Yeah, I think some of it rests with journalists. It also rests with scientists as well, sort of anyone who's communicating about science. And that is the sort of, when we're talking about science, to really talk about it in the context of, "Okay, so here's this new study that we're going to write about, we're going to talk about right now." But instead of just ending there, then saying, "Okay, how does this fit with the other evidence? What does this, add? How is it different? Where does it rest in sort of all of the evidence put together? And what does it tell us? Given all that, what is sort of our over-reaching answer given all of that context?"
Some of it really goes to educating the public and trying to shape and change the way that they look at science so that they're not seeing it as the sort of black and white thing where something's either one way or another, but understanding that it's a process and that there are a lot of uncertainties along the way. But even in the face of those uncertainties, you can make decisions and you can look at the evidence that we have, but not expecting that any single study or any single piece of news will be the "be all and end all."
Interviewer: I think part of what you're saying is that science is very uncertain and that if you have a particular answer this week, that it may change in six months, depending on other factors that you include in your new study or kind of the base of knowledge, how that's changed over time. I mean, I think that's something that we all need to understand, right, that science changes and that's okay.
Christie: Yeah, that's right. And I think, yeah, this is particularly important right now. We're sort of in this age of denialism, or in a time where there are a lot of vested interests who really are seeking to exploit that uncertainty as a tool to sort of fan false doubts. And a good scientist is always skeptical. You always want to doubt things and be sure that you're thinking things through.
But what can happen is if the public thinks that science is very, very certain, and that any study sort of provides the last word and that's it and if it gets overturned, it's because science is a horribly flawed enterprise and researchers are terrible people who are just trying to make money, and all of these things, then they're really susceptible to these doubt-makers and these people who are exploiting legitimate uncertainties in many cases to really tarnish whole fields of science.
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