Sunday, April 7, 2013

Scientist claims vaccines cause gay, I propose truthiness causes ignorance

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/vaccines-produce-homosexuality-gay-gian-paolo-vanoli_n_2992953.html

In the article linked above, an Italian scientist, Gian Paolo Vanoli, claims that vaccines are a direct cause of homosexuality.  First of all: WHAT?!  In a Huffington Post article, they outline Vanoli's argument as to why he think this links exist.  His reasons are as follows: vaccines cause homosexuality because they "prevent the formation of one's personality."

I was completely outraged when I read this article.  Here we are in the midst of major human rights battles all over the world, in multiple countries, striving to give humans (yes, we are all humans) the basic rights they deserve, yet we are still seeing this level of stupidity.  It is one thing to claim that there is a possible interaction  that perhaps needs to be researched, but to make a claim that vaccines directly cause people to be gay is just absurd and absolutely ignorant.

One question I have for Mr. Vanoli: if vaccines cause people to be gay, then how do you explain ALL OF HISTORY?!  Being gay is not a new thing.  Vaccines are. Homosexuality (for both males and females) dates back to the earliest history recordings.  Vaccines do not.  I fail to see the connection here and his argument rests solely on this causal chain!

Also, speaking on a strictly scientific basis, where is his evidence?  Vanoli makes claims but provides zero evidence as to how vaccines would alter personality.  He mentions mercury but says nothing as to how it effects the brain.  There is some evidence that specific brain structures, such as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, (sorry, neuro major here) vary in size between homosexuals and heterosexuals but this research is somewhat controversial and definitely out of date (1990).

Truthiness, my friends, is what we have here.  A scientist who has clout decides to take a moral belief and insert than into a non-scientific "truth."

Friday, April 5, 2013

Fairly balanced or misinformed: how do you take your daily news?


It seems to me, that a person that was exposed to "fair and balanced" news would be more knowledgeable than someone who was exposed to an altered media source.  This seems to be the case with Fox News.  They are notoriously conservative and hence write their stories with that persuasion  Thus, it follows that strictly Fox News viewers, would have less knowledge of, perhaps, the scientific truths to global warming or fracking.  

We have seen this appear in several clips that we have watched in class from Fox News, where their explicit bias resulted in a skewing of the facts.  In this particular video, Fox investigates the cause of contamination resulting from fracking.  Poor well construction is the scapegoat here for water contamination in a specific well in Pennsylvania, and no mention of any other cases of contamination are mentioned.  The video also cites an "environmental group" as saying "fracking doesn't pollute water wells."  This environmental group, the Environmental Defense Fund, turns out to have just as controversial motives as we saw with the EPA.

As we can see in this short clip, a news source's political background influences every aspect of how they present a story.  This includes everything from where they get their sources, how they interpret what their sources say to how they cite their sources.  All of these factors are unfortunately, easily manipulated by underlying biases and intentions.

Are all facts worth the same weight?

“Then there's the problem of "balance"--the idea that reporters must give roughly equal space to two different "sides" of a controversy. When applied to science, especially in politicized areas, this media norm becomes extremely problematic. Should journalists really grant equal time to the small band of scientists who deny the causal relationship between HIV and AIDS when the vast majority of researchers accept the connection between the two? Should they split column space between the few remaining global warming "skeptics" and scientific experts who affirm the phenomenon's human causation? Again, experienced science journalists will know best how to cover such stories and will be aware of the scientific community's very justifiable abhorrence of unthinking "balance". - Chris Mooney

I believe that in the above quote from Chris Mooney, a scientific journalist, has several good points about science journalism.  1) not every fact has equal weight to bear, 2) we should strive for the truth rather than balance, and 3) the importance of reporting the FACTS in order to share information with the community, not confuse them.

All facts and claims are not of equal value.  If one scientist in the UK discovered that boogers are the ultimate cure for acne, we are likely to be a little skeptical.  Has anyone else done research on boogers? Is it everyone's boogers - or are just some people born endowed with noses of gold?  If the study has not been backed up, no matter how important the findings may be, there is always the chance for a fluke case.  A "miracle."  

In science, peer review is crucial.  It is necessary for research to be backed up by other scientists and the results to be validated in order to deem the study relevant.  Therefore, these studies that have gone through this process, should hold more weight.  

Truth: this should be the ultimate goal of any news story.  Before media attention, before balance, before anything, the truth should be what is reported.  If that means not including Madame G's famous "proven" cure in an article about excessive sweating, I think we can all survive the omission.

An important point to consider is the audience of most science journalists: normal people.  People that work 9-5 so they can pick up their kids after school and rush them to soccer practice.  Not people that have time to do their own research about whether or not we are causing global warming and "oh my god what do I do about the hole in the ozone from the entire can of hairspray I used this morning?!"  These people need the facts; not back and forth information that, as Mooney said,will only leave them with whiplash.  

Journalists need to focus on getting the story out there in the most concise and informative way possible.  That means only writing about stories that are relevant and backed by other scientists.  

Stereotypes in science? The irony of first impressions

Prior to this blog, we did an exercise where we were prompted to gather drawings of what we thought a scientist looked like.  We did our own drawing and then asked for a few from different family/friends.  Most of my drawings were of males with lab coats and a various array of apparatus including: googles, flasks and weird exploding liquids. They were also all white - or at least no one made an effort to color in their scientists to render them a different ethnicity.

What does this say about how we view science?  A lot.  As we talked about in class recently, there seems to be a disconnect between laymen and scientists.  That disconnect seems to stem from the layman's portrayal of the scientist as elitist. 

The language barrier seems to be a key factor here.  Scientists use jargon and terms that the average person has probably never even heard, let alone understand their meaning enough to make it through an already dry scientific article.  

Another factor here is trust.  This may yet prove to be the biggest problem.  It is hard to trust someone that is so wavering in their conclusions - which is sometimes the case in preliminary scientific research. As research progresses, the scientist can only theorize about the data that is produced from their experiments and in an early study, this theory is likely to be altered several times, or even completely thrown out.  

Where this gets misconstrued, is when the popular press gets a hold of a promising result, or a scientist gets too cocky about their results, and word is spread.  People get excited about the newest way to "burn fat fast" or "grow hair so strong and shiny Fabio would be jealous."  And there it begins.

Naturally, more studies are going to be done and come up with conflicting results.  This is where the problems occur.  We saw this firsthand when we researched into vaccines and hydraulic fracking.  It is overwhelming to read 10 different articles on a topic and come out feeling very confused and with way more questions than answers.

As for the myths, they are not to do as much with the scientists themselves, but rather the portrayal of their research and the spread of their results.  We, as students, budding scientists, and writers, must learn to take everything with a grain of salt and realize that what we are reading could be the "quickest way to grow your hair back" but, more likely, it's just a can of spray paint.