Thursday, March 7, 2013

Do you know what you're being fed? Truthiness or Fact?


As much as I would like to say I am not a victim of "truthiness", unfortunately I think all of us at some point are forced to rely on nothing more than our gut feeling about something.  We are constantly bombarded with contradictions about what is healthy or not.  One day high fructose corn syrup is the worst thing possible and the next day it's just syrup made from corn - it has to be healthy, right?  So with all the information that is being shoved down our throats on a daily basis we have to learn to sort that in some way.  We usually do this through our intuition about the facts.

Science writers may sometimes choose to tell the truthiness simply because they believe the information that they are providing.  I would hope that the intent would not be to mislead but instead to offer the best possible explanation for what may be a very confusing array of information.  In this case the writer is providing what they think is the most accurate fact, even if they are using their intuition in order to arrive at this fact.  I would suggest that the writer would also have to do research and provide additional sources with this fact in order to arrive at their gut instinct instead of the other way around.

If information began to be replaced by truthiness in the media I honestly don't think the majority of people would notice.  That may seem like a bleak outlook at the human race, but honestly with our scientific literacy in this country, I find it unlikely that the average person is doing background research on anything they hear in the media anyway.  Most people take information that they hear in the media (be it, television, news, twitter, radio, etc) and accept that information as fact with a second question.  There are several "fact" based sites that you can follow on stumble upon or twitter in order to obtain strange or uncommon facts; these facts do not come with a side of sources or data, and thus most people take them as honest fact when in reality my little brother could have a twitter called "THE MOST AMAZING FACTS" and be tweeting anything that pops up into this 11-year-old head.  I therefore make the sad claim that: the average person would NOT notice if they were being fed truthiness or fact.  

Vaccine-autism advocates: illiterate or mislead?

     I do not think it is accurate to claim that vaccine-autism advocates are scientifically illiterate, perhaps confused would be a more accurate term.  With all the controversy surrounding the relationship between vaccines and autism it makes sense that people would be confused when scientists can't even agree.  Although the relationship between early vaccinations and autism has not been proven, it is important to note that it has also not been ruled out as an option.  Autism is a complicated disease that deals with the developing brain and unfortunately this is when children are being exposed to these vaccines.  This is what makes studying this relationship so difficult and explains why scientists are having a hard time 
    An important fact to consider is the government's seemingly controversial role in vaccinations. If vaccines aren't harmful then why is it that the CDC tried to cover up the harmful nature of ingredients included in vaccines?  Why was the CDC using an invalid study (in which the "researcher" disappeared with the $2 million he supposedly spent on research) as it's source for proving mercury based vaccines were safe for children? Why did we remove Thimerosal if the toxic nature of the preservative was originally denied?  If vaccines aren't harmful why are we shipping them off to third world countries instead of using them on Americans?  Why did Bill Gates call vaccines a form of population control in third world countries when he said
                    "Let’s take a look. First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion 
                   people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job 
                  on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower 
                                                        that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent

in a Ted Talk about his philanthropy foundation's work with vaccines?
     All of these questions still remain unanswered, at least to the general public.  Without sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I would like to put forth that there are still unanswered questions about vaccines and their risk/benefit factors.  Perhaps, they aren't causing autism, but the fact is that we cannot say that with absolute certainty.  
     As a science writer, taking all this into consideration, I think it is important that the proper research be done in order to clear up this muddy subject and hopefully end the spread of misinformation.  Knowing that people can be so easily persuaded by misinformation, it is important as a writer that intends to spread honest information that you check your sources.  We learned from several of these autism studies that it is important to background check studies for things such as: funding for research, sample size, methodology, replication of data, scientific validation in the community, and more.  As a science writer, we cannot also take research for granted.  It is our duty to find the correct information and make sure that is what is being spread.

Science for the Common Good

     I read an interesting book lately, not a science book, but a book written by a journalist who was interested in the relationship between science and art.  The journalist is Jonah Lehrer and his book is titled Proust was a Neuroscientist.  The book posited the idea that art - in its various forms - discovered secrets about the brain before "neuroscience" ever even existed.  Lehrer talks about Walt Whitman and how he united the mind/body duality through his poetry by showing how we are one with our bodies.  We can see an example of this in his epic poem, "Songs of myself," when he says: “I am the poet of the body, / And I am the poet of the soul".  This example shows how Whitman was able to discover the relationship between the mind and the body long before we had the technology to look into the human mind.  Lehrer uses many other examples to show how through various means of art we have been able to discover facts about the brain before neuroscience.  
     Lehrer wrote this book because he was interested in the relationship between art and science.  I think it takes this type of passion to go out and write about something that you find interesting.  I learned many things from this book that I did not know previously, even as someone who is studying in neuroscience.  Science is something that should be given away for 3 main reasons: 1. Because you did the research/discovered something yourself, 2. Because you are interested in the research 3. Because you think the information is relevant and should be more widespread.  If a writer feels compelled by any of these reasons they should pick their topic and write about it in order to spread the wealth of knowledge.  This benefits the common good by making science knowledge more accessible and adds to the general scientific literacy.
     I do not think that there should be one set way to write about science, that being said, there is no one way to write something that is going to interest everyone.  You could present the same information in 10 different ways and each way is going to appeal to a different type of person.  In order to write about science that is going to appeal to the most amount of people you have to turn it into a story.  This is what makes it interesting and relevant to the reader; this is what Jonah Lehrer did.  In order to give science away in a manner that is going to reach the most people in the most effective way the facts have to be presented in a creative way as to almost trick people into learning.  You want the reader to crave more knowledge at the end of your story so that they are intrigued enough to go out and seek additional information on their own.  A science writer should be able to effectively do this in order to spread science information for the betterment of our nation's scientific literacy.