Whoa, guys, I was just reading the news, and did you know the universe might be a hologram?
Humans originated as a hybrid between chimps and pigs?
Everything you need to know about popcorn but were afraid to find out?
Could the Large Hadron Collider spawn a planet devouring black hole?
Squeezing breasts can prevent cancer?
Alcohol more harmful than heroin?
Woman becomes pregnant in the mouth with baby squid after eating calamari?
fast-lane to autism: living near freeways.
Science figures out how cats drink.
Semen is an antidepressant?
Oh, quantum physics proves there IS an afterlife.
I know what you're thinking, those sound like something out of The Onion, but unfortunately
those are all real science headlines that I found, and I didn't have to look that hard.
Some of them are a bit over blown, and some of them are pushing an agenda, and some are
actually just complete BS.
Figuring out what's good science and what's bad science when you're reading science news
is one of the best skills that you can put right here in your thinking machine.
It will serve you for your whole life.
With that in mind, I'd like to give you my tips for how to read science news.
Is the headline of the article a question?
This one really ruffles my feathers for some reason.
Although, it occurs to me that sometimes we do it for YouTube videos, but it's different
for the news!
Don't start your article off with a question.
I'm here to ask you questions, I am the one who is wondering things, and you are the one
who is going to give me the information.
It's really a very simple deal.
When you start your article with a question it makes me wonder if you even know what you're
talking about.
What's with all those weird quotes people use in the headlines?
Zebra stripes mystery "explained", like was it actually explained or was it like "fake"
explained or was it a fake zebra?
I don't understand the quotes.
After considering #1, maybe it's just best if we skip the headline altogether.
Yeah, skip the headline.
Do you know the difference between a press release and journalism?
Really, do you?
One is hopefully fact-checked, and balanced, and analyzes both sides of the story, and
the other one, is well, it's marketing material.
There's a lot of websites out there that package press releases to look like real news and
it's important that you know the difference.
Press releases aren't untrue by design, but it's important that you take them with a big
grain of salt.
I mean you wouldn't go to a car dealership and take the salesman's word for everything.
You've gotta go home and do your research.
I just want to reiterate, because I see this stuff shared all the time, press releases
are not news!
Look for "warning words".
there are the words that will tell you if there's bit of uncertainty in the article
or maybe they don't know quite as much as they're letting on.
Link, correlation, possible, study suggests, or my favorite, "scientists were baffled".
Scientists are baffled all the time, but they don't write research papers about it and they
certainly don't sit around with reporters going "you know I was just totally baffled
right now, do you wanna write an article about it?"
Is the scientific method being applied?
Take tie to check if what you're reading has been peer-reviewed.
Or was it presented at a conference, or is this just some scientist talking on a street
corner?
While far from perfect, our peer review system for publishing science is far from perfect,
it's worked out pretty well considering, and good journalists and good writers, they'll
treat a research finding like a hypothesis, and they'll scour that work and the work of
others for data that supports or refutes it.
They'll look to outside sources as sort of controls.
Good science writing applies the scientific method.
Ask yourself, does someone stand to gain financially from me reading this article?
If you're reading that news on any commercial news website with advertising or subscriptions,
then the answer is yes, somebody wants you to read that.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, people need to make money to support their operations
and pay their writers, but that desire had better be outweighed by the desire to inform
you.
Did the person who wrote the article actually do any research of their own.
Are there quotes from the actual researcher?
Or did it say something like "according to the press release".
More importantly, are there quotes from someone besides the researcher?
Now some science is so complicated that it can help to have someone just explain it to
you, and that's actually my favorite kind of science to both read about and write about,
but that should never be all that they do, they should still apply a critical eye.
Honestly, if someone just rewords the press release, they are the WORST.
Is the story about a new breakthrough, OR is the story trying to scare you?
The media has always been obsessed with these kinds of stories because they know you're
going to click on them.
But their ratio of truthiness to hype sometimes leaves a little to be desired.
Frankly, most stuff isn't as scary as it's made out to be.
But some stuff is scary, like antibiotic resistant bacteria, knowing to tell the difference between
hype and reality is pretty hard.
On the other hand, breakthroughs are pretty rare, which is why we give big awards for
them and stuff.
Here's one: Possible cure for cancer found in mice.
Now, curing cancer in mice isn't the same as curing cancer in humans, so is that a breakthrough,
ehhh?
We've cured a lot of cancers in mice, and unfortunately not so many in humans.
Now maybe one day one will lead to the other, but for a lot of cancers your best bet is
to turn into a small furry creature.
Remember, when it comes to scare stories and breakthrough stories, just because a lot of
people have read something, doesn't make it any more true.
Does this story fit in nicely with commonly held beliefs or stereotypes?
Ok, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but does it fit in a little TOO well with commonly
held beliefs and stereotypes?
Recently a paper came out about mapping brain connections in male and female brains.And
they found some differences, which is fine, but then they applied those differences to
things like men being better at reading maps, or women being better at organizing the house
or something.
Be wary of papers that want to fit a scientific story into a nice neat social construct, because
that's not how science works.
This also works with science that challenges previously held beliefs and stereotypes, because
a lot of times controversy can make an easy substitute for accuracy.
It's like that old saying "does this sound too good to be true?" because a lot of times
well, it is too good to be true.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't true.
You should approach every story with a balance of curiosity and skepticism, as Michael Shermer
says "you should have an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out".
The internet is big and its accessible, and its given us access to more information than
we ever thought possible, and that's clearly a good thing, but it also means that anybody
who wants to donate 2 cents can pop that in the piggy bank of human knowledge.
As traditional media continues to cover less and less science than ever before, this is
clearly a very good thing.
Or it can be a bad thing, for all those reasons that I talked about before.
Unfortuantely, the S&%t flows uphill, as they say, and the more that writers, journalists,
facebook pages and tumblr pages get things wrong, then society loses trust in science
as a whole, it's like a modern version of the boy who cried wolf.
Chances are, you're not an expert, and journalists aren't experts either, it's just that the
good ones operate under a set of guiding principles that let them become temporary experts, and
find real experts when that doesn't work.
Some people are way better at this than others.
I'm gonna put a list of my favorites down in the description, people who are good at
getting things right, pointing out what's wrong, and being entertaining while they do
it.
Please feel free to leave your favorites down in the comments.
You know every science story should really end with something like 'Now we just have
a tiny bit more information about science, but we're gonna have to do a lot more experiments
to figure out if any of it's really true, and come to think of it, nothing in science
is ever really proven true, it's just continually supported by new evidence, and actually maybe
it's best that we don't draw any life-changing conclusions from all this and we just enjoy
the process.
Yeah, let's do that."