This article is an excellent example, I think, of why so many people feel justified in being skeptical of scientific results. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-think-we-know-the-truth-about-salt.html?hp
Despite the caricature of "the method" often diagramed in textbooks, science is never simply a question turned into a hypothesis, followed by relevant observations, giving rise to definitive answers. First, the answers are always tentative and liable to be modified or even reversed by future research (even venerable ones like the alleged link between salt intake and hypertension). Second, there is never a straight path from scientific results to the public. There are any number of corporate, government, and media filters, none of which may have the dissemination of "Truth" as their first and only priority. Third, the science itself, these days, is all too often sponsored (and thereby controlled) by interested corporate or gov't parties. As a New England Journal of Medicine editor put it a few years ago, the medical journals have become little more than branches of pharmaceutical companies' marketing campaigns. Fourth, the explosive rise of fraud cases in science makes everyone wonder whether a result that is too good (or bad) to be true might, in fact, be just that. We are all familiar, by now, of how corporations promote the idea of certain conclusions remaining "controversial" as a tactic to keep people from making advisable changes in their behavior. (If you are uncertain about this, immediately read Conway & Oreskes' _Merchants of Doubt_ about the (linked) coroporate campaigns to call into question the links between tobacco and cancer and between CO2 emissions and climate change. Repeat until your uncertainties fade.) One of the paradoxical outcomes of this is that when there really is controversy about a certain scientific conclusion, parties that are interested in there *not* being any question can intimidate doubters by threatening to publicly accuse them of being part of a corporate "doubt" campaign (which is what seems to be happening with putative salt-hypertension link now). All this makes it virtually impossible for all but those who spend their lives and careers learning all there is too learn about one of these topics (viz., scientists themselves) to know who to trust when there are a bunch of competing claims in the public arena. (What is amazing is that I have found many scientists to be just as clueless about topics outside of their own areas of expertise as anyone you might meet in business or politics. The PhD does little to inoculate one against nonsense.) The vast majority of people do not (nor will they ever) read scientific journals. They won't even read Scientific American. You'll be lucky if you can get them to read the science sections of newspapers. And now that no one watches TV news anymore, but simply picks out the stories they are interested in, according to headline, on the web, you can't even forcefeed them 30-second science stories anymore, unless they want to know about it in advance. What are we (who believe in the potential of science give us answers) to do? Chris --- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada [email protected] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=18159 or send a blank email to leave-18159-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
