{"id":2830,"date":"2010-11-12T09:06:12","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T14:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/?p=2830"},"modified":"2010-11-24T09:47:57","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T14:47:57","slug":"mythbusting-popular-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2010\/11\/mythbusting-popular-science.html","title":{"rendered":"Mythbusting popular science"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mythbusters\"<\/a>
Are they helping or hurting science? (Photo by Roger Jones on Wikimedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Science has an image problem in this country.\u00a0 In everyday culture, it’s gone from being an arcane art to being a popularity contest.\u00a0 It’s commonplace to see surveys asking people on the street if they believe <\/em>in evolution or if they believe <\/em>in global warming\u2014as if somehow science was subject to democratic majorities.<\/p>\n

The danger is that much of what people believe about science is shaped by the media.\u00a0 Yet the media is motivated by attracting eyeballs more than conveying the nuances of a topic.\u00a0 Hence, an interesting bit of research by a scientists at Cornell gets turned into the headline:<\/p>\n

Scientist proves that humans are psychic<\/a><\/h3>\n

All of which would be fascinating, except that’s not really what happened.\u00a0 The study shows a data correlation that could be explained by people having precognitive abilities, but may have other explanations.\u00a0 After all, science is about understanding why and how something happens, not just that it does.\u00a0 Otherwise a scientist might observe the data correlation that supermarkets are more crowded on Saturdays, then conclude that clearly people are more hungry on the weekend and call it a “proof.”\u00a0 Fortunately, science goes a bit deeper than that.\u00a0 The burden for calling something a scientific proof is actually pretty darn high.\u00a0 But most people don’t really know that.\u00a0 They don’t really understand the scientific process.<\/p>\n

Science has been popularized by television shows like Mythbusters where the cool side of applied science usually involves blowing something up.\u00a0 While this has been a great boon for making science more accessible, it also does a disservice by creating the perception that a couple of guys in a well stocked warehouse can scientifically prove something given a few hours and an ample supply of duct tape.\u00a0 While these experiments are great entertainment, they are not scientifically accepted proofs.\u00a0 And this is a distinction lost on many of the viewers.<\/p>\n

This issue is not particularly limited to the field of science.\u00a0 Politics often has similar situations such as when popular polls are held asking how to fix the economy, as if the economy will yield to a majority vote.\u00a0 Perhaps the better question is, why are we so keen to take complicated fields, boil them to their essence, and then claim mastery of the discipline?<\/p>\n

Part of this problem is based on our slide into the populist ideal where everyone is thought capable of everything.\u00a0 The notion that the only thing distinguishing me from a corporate CEO, a concert pianist, or a Nobel laureate is just that I haven’t yet chosen to apply my considerable talents to that field yet.\u00a0 It’s not that hard, there’s nothing special about people who do that.\u00a0 I could be President.\u00a0 I could be a climate scientist.\u00a0 I could be a rock star.\u00a0 I just haven’t chosen to be.\u00a0 We’ve drunk the Kool-Aid we give our young children in an effort to encourage them and give them self-esteem, and somehow it’s convinced us that nothing is very complicated or outside our grasp.<\/p>\n

Maybe the world really is an abstruse place.\u00a0 Maybe experts really do add value.\u00a0 And while it’s great that you’re interested, maybe following along in the news doesn’t quite give your opinion on the matter quite the same weight as professionals working in the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve drunk the Kool-Aid we give our young children in an effort to encourage them and give them self-esteem, and somehow it’s convinced us that nothing is very complicated or outside our grasp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[57,42,26,24],"class_list":["post-2830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-madscience","category-politics","tag-evolution","tag-global-warming","tag-mythbusters","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2830"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2936,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830\/revisions\/2936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}