Category Archives: Science communication

Unproven medicine : an alternative name for alternative medicine

In the media, Medicine, Science, Science communication, Skepticism, The scientific method, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Alternative and complimentary therapies”. They sound so nice. So warm and fuzzy. Surely they augment the cold clinical scientific approach to regular medicine, and have a more holistic approach catering to the soul and spirit as well as the flesh?

I argue not. Hear out my logic…

Any treatment that has proven to provide reliable benefit, is automatically added to the canon of ‘western’ medicine. Therefore the only treatments left available for ‘alternative’ to claim, are those that are unproven, or worse, treatments known to be actively harmful.

Promoters of alternative medicine will argue that western medicine is still woefully weak, and not tuned into holistic and spiritual matters and that such things defy proof. This is clearly claptrap. If you do a well designed double-blind, placebo-controlled test of an ‘alternative therapy’ and the outcomes are no better than for the placebo, then the participants who got the treatment are no better off, spirit or no spirit.

I personally prefer the sort of benefits that can be detected!

How did this situation come to pass, where unproven medications have such a grip?

I think there are three main ingredients:

  1. People make money from other people’s fear (in both western and alternative medicine) and that causes folks on both sides to hide or twist the facts – and also erodes the public’s trust.
  2. The fact that complimentary medicines do actually offer benefits – the well-known benefit of care and attention and also the benefit of the placebo effect – muddies the waters.
  3. It is however the human weakness of putting far too much value on anecdotal evidence that assures the future of unproven medicine.

I think that people who understand this do a disservice to our communities by giving this bad medicine the label ‘alternative’ or ‘complimentary’, so I would like to propose the term ‘unproven medicine’. I would however welcome some more lyrical suggestions!

Evil: a baseless construct

Atheism, In the media, Psychology, Science, Science communication, The scientific method, , , , , , , ,

This morning on BBC Radio 4’s “Though for the day”, the Right Reverend James Jones claimed “Evil triumphs when the imagination is inebriated with evil”.

So as a logician I would like to know what exactly “evil” is. Can it be measured (like energy)? Or detected by our (5) senses? Does it conform to the known laws (models) of physics?

For something so darn vague it is amazing how much we use it day to day. We blame so much on it, and justify so much in its name.

But in a strange dichotomy, if you pay close attention the the professions (medicine, law, engineering, etc) you will find scant mention of this concept – it does not help in the treatment of criminals or the mentally ill it does not explain earthquakes or building collapses – it seems has no use in the real world, but is used by politicians and preachers like a moral blank-cheque.

I therefore suggest that the concept of evil is a relic from a mystical past in which gods were invoked to explain thunder and demons to explain crop failure.

Surely all talk of someone being ‘evil’ or an act being ‘evil’ has no place in our secular world?

The psychology of submission to authority

Psychology, Science, Science communication, , , , , ,

What does not surviving a plane crash have to do with the “medicalisation” of childbirth? I would argue that they are both examples of how we are losing our ability to take our fate into our own hands.

When a plane crashes, some passengers die because they are waiting to be saved while those that act to save themselves are more likely to survive [1]. 

Why? Because when people hand control over of others, they find it hard to take it back again. 

So it is as you queue on the phone to buy plane tickets, you queue to check in, you queue through security, you walk down long corridors, you queue again.

To some real extent, this process is a bit like being brainwashed – it is a series of mental triggers that you are in a system, you are a subject, you are not in control. You have become a sheep.

This in itself is not a bad thing. It helps the systems to work if the people can be controlled, and certainly nothing sinister is intended; however it does mean that if the plane crashes we will be more inclined to wait for instructions than fight our way to the door.

A similar effect can play out during childbirth.  Mothers who undergo cesarean subjugate themselves to the system and in handing over responsibility, may well find taking the child back after it is cleaned-up more psychologically challenging, and are thus more likely to turn to authority (nurses, midwives etc) for help with routine things like breastfeeding and washing the baby, rather than assume responsibility; their confidence is thus eroded by the process of subjugation.

I propose therefore that both on air flights and in the maternity ward, we should do what we can to keep people in control – or at least thinking they are…

_______________________

[1] I read this claim in last week’s Sunday Times, but can’t find a reference online. However, this article hints at similar claims: 
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1053663,00.html

Gravity explained in 761 words

Cosmology, Education, Mathematics, Physics, Relativity, Science, Science communication, The scientific method, Things Explained, , , , , , , ,

People seem to be harbouring the impression that there is no good theory of Gravity yet. I asked a few friends – most thought Newton had explained it, but couldn’t explain it themselves. This is rather sad, 80-odd years after a darn good theory was proposed.

Of course there is still some controvery and the odd contradiction with other beloved theories, but the heart of the General Theory of Relativity really does a great job of explaining gravity and it is really wonderfully beautiful, and can be roughly explained without recourse to jargon and equations.

This is a theory that’s just so darn elegant, it looks, smells and tastes right – once you get it. Of course, the ‘taste’ of a theory doesn’t hold much water; for a theory to survive it needs to make testable predictions (this one does) and needs to survive all manner of logical challenges (so-far-so-good for this one too).

This is not a theory that needs to remain the exclusive domain of physicists, so for my own personal development as a scientist and writer, I thought I might try an exercise in explaining what gravity is – according to the general theory of relativity.

For some reason, my wife thinks this is strange behaviour!

============

The story really got started when Einstien realised that someone in an accelerating  spaceship would experience forces indistinguishable from the gravity felt back on Earth. 

He or she could drop things and they would fall to the floor (assuming the spaceship is accellerating upwards)  just as they would fall on earth.

So perhaps that’s all gravity is… some sort of accelleration? Let’s see.

In the spaceship, it’s clear to us that the objects would appear to fall to the floor, but in reality, it is the floor of the spaceship that is rushing up towards the objects – this explains why things fall at the same speed whether heavy or light, matching Galileo’s own test results when he dropped various things, supposedly from the leaning tower of Pisa. It further implies that things will ‘fall’ even if they have no mass at all… such as light beams.

The thought experiment goes thus: Consider if you had a laser-beam shining across the spaceship control room; it would curve slightly downwards, because the light hitting the opposite wall would have been emitted a little time ago, when the spaceship was a little way back, and going a bit slower (remember, its accellerating).

We know the light is not bending, it is just that the source is accellerating, resulting in a curved beam. Imagine a machine-gun spraying bullets across a field – as you swing the gun back and forth the bullets may form curved streams of bullets, but each individual bullet still goes straight.

So Einstein suggested that perhaps light beams will bend in this same way here on earth under a gravitational field. Now Newton’s theory of gravity says light beams may also bend if they have ‘mass’, but the mass of light is a dodgy concept at best (it has inertia but no rest mass, but that’s a whole different blog posting). Anyway, even it it does have mass, it would bend differently from what Einstien predicted. So the race was on to see how much gravity could bend light…

This bending of light prediction was proven by a fellow called Eddington who showed that during a solar eclipse, light from distant stars was indeed bent as it passed near the sun, and by exactly the predicted angle.

Einstein went further though, suggested that light beams on Earth are, just like on the spaceship, really travelling straight, and only appear to bend, and that this can be so if space-time itself is curved. They are going straight, but in curved space.

We know that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but if that line is on a curved surface, supposedly straight lines can do strange things – like looping back on themselves. Think of the equator. This model therefore allows things like planets to travel in straight lines around the sun (yes, you read right).

The model has been tested and shown to work, and gives good predictions for planetary motion.

So what can we take home from all this?

Well mainly, if this model is right, we need to let it sink in that gravity may not be a force at all, but an illusion, like the centrifugal ‘force’ you experience when you drive around a corner.

Secondly, it is an open invitation to think about curved space and its marvellous implications!

Information: what exactly is it?

Education, Mathematics, Physics, Science, Science communication, Things Explained, ,

I was walking to the tennis courts in Battersea Park a few years back, when I heard something on my Walkman radio. It stuck with me for years, and until tonight I haven’t followed up on it, read about it or written about it. Though I have told everyone at my work, which has resulted, as usual, in groans about how nerdy I am (and genuine amazement at how I could spend valuable time pondering these things).

What I heard was a very short anecdote about someone who wrote a little regarded paper in the 1940’s (see ref below) in which he made an attempt to define a ‘measure’ for information. Although I never read any more about it (until today), what I heard was enough to set me thinking…

————–

Now, if you know lots about this subject then bear with me. Those readers who don’t know what he came up with: I challenge you to this question:

  • what contains more information, a phone-number, a ringtone or a photo?

Are they even comparable?

Bits & Bytes…

In this computer age, we already have some clues. We know that text doesn’t use up much disk space, and that photos & video can fill up the memory stick much quicker.

But what about ZIP files? These are a hint that file-size is not a very accurate measure of information content.

So what is a megabyte? Is it just so many transistors on a microchip? Happily, its not, its something much more intuitive and satisfying.

Information: what is it?

If you go to Wikipedia and try to look up Information Theory, within a few seconds you are overrun with jargon and difficult concepts like Entropy; I hope to avoid that.

Let’s rather think about 20 questions. 20 Questions is the game where you have 20 questions to home in on the ‘secret’ word/phrase/person/etc. The key, however, is that the questions need to elicit a yes/no response.

To define information simply: the more questions you need in order to identify a ‘piece of information’, the more information content is embodied in that piece of information (and its context).

This helps us to answer questions like: “How much information is in my telephone number?”

Let’s play 20 questions on this one. How would you design your questions? (Let’s assume we know it has 7 digits)

You could attack it digit by digit: “is the first digit ‘0’? Is the first digit ‘1’? Then changing to the next digit when you get a yes. If the number is 7 digits long, this may take up 70 questions (though in fact if you think a little you will never need more than 9 per digit, and on average you’ll only need about 5 per digit – averaging ~35 in total).

But can you do better? What is the optimum strategy?

Well let’s break down the problem. How many questions do we really need per digit?

We know that there are 10 choices. You could take pot luck, and you could get the right number first time, or you might get it the 9th time (if you get it wrong 9 times, you don’t need a 10th question). However, this strategy will need on average 5 questions.

What about the divide and conquer method? Is it less than 5? If yes, you have halved the options from 10 to 5. Is it less than three? Now you have either 2 or 3 options left. So you will need 3 or 4 questions, depending on your luck, to ID the number.

Aside for nerds: Note now that if your number system only allowed 8 options (the so-called octal system), you would always be able to get to the answer in 3. If you had 16 options (hexadecimal), you would always need 4.

For the decimal system, you could do a few hundred random digits, and find out that you need, on average 3.3219… questions. This is the same as asking “how many times do you need to halve the options until no more than one option remains?’

Aside 2 for nerds : The mathematicians amongst you will have spotted that 23.3219 = 10

Now, we could use 4 questions (I don’t know how to ask 0.32 questions) on each of the 7 digits, and get the phone number, and we will have improved from 35 questions (though variable) to a certain 28 questions.

But we could take the entire number with the divide and conquer method. There are 107  (100 million) options (assuming you can have any number of leading zeroes). How many times would you need to halve that?

1. 50 00o 000
2. 25 000 000
3. ….
…
22. 2.38…
23. 1.19…
24. 0.59…

So we only needed 24 questions. Note that calculators (and MS Excel) have a shortcut to calculate this sort of thing: log2(107) = ~23.25…

OK, so we have played 20 questions. Why? How is the number of questions significant? Because it is actually the accepted measure of information content! This is the famous ‘bit‘ of information. Your 7 digit number contains about 24 bits of information!

Epilogue

As you play with concept, you will quickly see that the amount of information in a number (say the number 42), depends hugely on the number of possible numbers the number could have been. If it could have been literally any number (an infinite set) then, technically speaking, it contains infinite information (see, I’ve proven the number 42 is all-knowing!).

But the numbers we use daily all have context, without context they have no practical use. Any system that may, as part of its working, require ‘any’ number from an infinite set would be unworkable, so this doesn’t crop up often.

Computer programmers are constantly under pressure to ‘dimension’ their variables to the smallest size they can get away with. And once a variable is dimensioned, the number of bits available for its storage is set, and it doesn’t matter what number you store in that variable, it will always require all those bits, because it is the number of possibilities that define the information content of a number, not the size of the number itself.

————

I hope that was of interest! Please let me know if I’ve made any errors in my analysis – I do tend to write very late at night 😉

References:

1.  Claude Shannon, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” 1948

Celebrity Dynamics

Economics, In the media, Science communication, The scientific method, ,

Celebrity Dynamics. 

The list of people we all ‘know’ isn’t that long, yes, it probably thousands – politicians, actors, singers, historical figures, sports stars – but in a country like the UK, it is still a remarkably small fraction of the populace.

Of course, there are ‘spheres’ – people interested in politics know more politicians, sports fans have more sporting heroes – we here in Cornwall have our local ‘Cornish’ celebrities.

However, if we remembered every celebrity, we would soon run out of space in the public ‘memory’, so we have to be selective.

The media know this – they constantly face choices of which story to follow, and the decisions will often be arbitrary; two minor celebrities did two things today, and we only have 45 seconds of time to fill in our variety news programme – which shall we choose?

This decision process is simple – the editor will pick the celebrity who has more recent ‘hits’ in the news.

Why? Because they know that the audience is more likely to recognise the name – and they know that if the audience hear that name twice it reinforces the memory.

This simple logic creates a very interesting system in which the rise to fame becomes ‘autocatalytic’ – a self-perpetuating, accelerating process. All you need to do is pass some ‘critical point’ of news coverage and you may be in for a ride!

However, we can only hold so many names in the list, so anyone who is out of the news for a time drops off the radar pretty fast, even if they did once enjoy high exposure.

If you are like me, you’ll be thinking of exceptions – folks who just stay famous regardless – do they buck this logic? I don’t think so.

Such people most likely still get exposure, even if its not them in the news – perhaps we see their CD on our shelf, or we talk about their ‘field’ (Thatcherism, Darwinism, Keynesian economics,), and this may be accentuated if their field gets in the news – as has recently been the case for Keynes.

So what value does this theory have?

I think it explains:

  • why so many great deeds don’t lead to fame
  • why often only one person from a high achieving team is ‘selected’ for fame
  • why there’s no such thing as bad publicity
  • local fame does not easily turn to national fame

It also suggests that if you want to be famous, you should:

  • a series of newsworthy events in succession is probably better than a single highly newsworthy achievement
  • if you are in a group/team/band, you need to be the leader or public face of the group
  • you should associate yourself with a newsworthy field, ideally become the posterboy/girl for the field, always dragged out when the field is in the news

And if you want to stay famous once you are you should keep in the public eye:

  • associate yourself with newsworthy events
  • differentiate yourself from other celebrities in your ‘space’ or
  • gang together with other celebrities to create newsworthy events
  • become the posterboy/girl for a newsworthy field/subject, the one dragged out when the field is in the news

Aside:  There seems to be another way to maintain fame:- create mystique, the image of privilege, of some higher plain of existence away from the mundanity of everyday life. People say they like down-to-earth celebrities – that’s because they are very rare – you have to be ‘proper’ famous to stay famous without this tactic! 

Of course, this all assumes you want to be famous! You can equally use the theory to keep a low profile 😉

Good luck either way!

Analogies not equations, please!

Education, Mathematics, Physics, Science, Science communication, The scientific method, , ,

Have you ever noticed how equations look far more complicated and hard to understand than the concept they represent?

I sometimes get myself stuck having to read other people’s work (it’s the ‘peer review process’) and when I first read it, I am often utterly confused, like a person stumbling around a dark room they’ve never been in before. However, because I am expected to make intelligible commentary, I soldier on until I understand what is being said.

Once you understand something, it is hard to remember what you felt like before you understood it. How did that equation look the first time you saw it? I have been thinking about this…

Let’s consider ‘equations’ – a common part of many technical documents. I have found that I always overestimate how clever or useful the equations really are when I first see them. So what does this mean?

It means that using equations to help teach people we risk turning them off by giving them the impression that the work is harder than it is.

Let me give an example:

Maxwell’s wave equations. These are considered (rightly) to be an cornerstone of physics, as they model the behaviour of waves in the inter-related electric and magnetic fields. When I first read them, they were ‘greek’ to me, literally. Here’s a small one:

maxwell-faraday-equation

Obviously, you need to know more to understand what they are about. You need to know what each symbol represents – and you need to know what the operators (the × in this case) actually do. For anyone who has not specifically studied maths at university would then need to backtrack quite far, because in this case the ‘×’ is not the ‘×’ most folks know and love, its the ‘cross product’ which applies to vectors. That even leaves most science graduates cold, draining the joy of discovery for a few hours or days while you go away to learn (or remember) what the heck that means.

But is it all worth it? Is the complexity of partial differential equations and matrix multiplication really required in order to understand what the equation is describing?

Of course not!

So why are equations always wheeled out to ‘explain’ phenomena? This is a failure of teaching. Of science communication. Surely concepts can be explained much better by the use of anecdotes, metaphors & illustrations?

Scientists working at the bleeding edge of science have to be very precise in their logic, and when communicating with one another, equations are undoubtedly very efficient ways to describe hypotheses. And so, while they are good ways for experts to relate, they make it harder for newbies to “break in”, and are dreadful teaching tools.

The Maxwell equations really just describe how waves propagate in a medium – and really its just the full 3-d version of waves in a slinky, or ripples in a pond. The equations, while drawing on complex (and difficult) maths, are describing something the human brain already has an intuitive grip on, because we’ve seen it!

I’m not suggesting we could do away with equations – they are valuable in the predictions they make for those who already understand what they represent – I am just suggesting that equations should be de-emphasised, and only dragged out when the student starts to feel the need to describe the phenomenon mathematically.

So my message to all university lecturers and text-book writers is: describe a phenomenon with the use of analogy, please!

Skeptical society, the logical next step from secular society

Science communication, Skepticism, The scientific method, , , , , ,

Yes, it’s true, I’m one of those science nerds who thinks that a good scientific understanding of the world should underpin government. And education, healthcare, the law, etc.

However, I have set myself up for disappointment, because our society doesn’t work like that. It is simply much easier to use anecdotes to sway opinion, to spin data, and to manipulate with a vast arsenal of marketing tricks.

Politicians, salesmen and journalists all know that the full details (of anything), with all ifs and buts included, will not make a catchy headline or slogan, will not catch the eye or tug the heartstring.

Emotions matter more than facts. People vote with their hearts not their heads.

No amount of simple campaigning for ‘better conduct’ by will ever make a damn of difference, as the causesand incentives remain. To move on, what we need is a society that thinks for itself. A skeptical society.

Science’s image problem; an essay

In the media, Science communication, The scientific method, , ,

This was originally posted by me on the Skeptic Forum in February 2006. I wanted to keep a copy, so I have popped it up here with some edits following the advice of the forum readers.

Science’s Image Problem 
Jarrod R. Hart 
January 2006    

Science, technology and the whole idea of modernity has developed an image problem. 

To illustrate this trend lets pick a year some will remember well: 1969. 

Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin have just walked on the moon, microwave ovens have started to appear in kitchens and nuclear power seems to hold the key to unlimited energy. 

Communication has been revolutionised by the satellite, women’s lives have been revolutionised by the contraceptive pill and the quality of life is sky rocketing: labour saving devices such as automatic washing machines, food processors and lawn mowers are finding their way into the homes of the masses. Confidence in science is at an all time high. 

Now it is 2006. In the minds of many the term ‘science’ is associated with things like animal testing, genetic engineering, global warming and nuclear war. People are even starting pay a premium for food made in ways that avoid modern technology (so called ‘organic’ foods). So what changed? 

There are many answers to this question and I am sure many readers will have powerful examples from their own fields of experience; I will however put forward theory that I feel holds water. 

Events 

When Harold Macmillan, the then Prime Minister of the UK was asked what could steer a government off course, he answered “Events, dear boy, events!” And, as I now suggest, a handful key events has been largely responsible for starting the rot. 

Public opinion is a strange beast. It is wildly reactionary and often auto-catalyzes in a frenzy of irrationality. Although its true that amazing faith can develop with little or no evidence (the latest wonder-diet for example!), this is usually born from a strong desire to believe. Far more often, it is much easier to destroy public confidence than to build it. 

Three Mile Island (1979), Bhopal (1984), Chernobyl (1986), and the Exxon Valdez oil spill (1989) all had profound effects on the public psyche. Not only did the dark side of industry rear its ugly head, but also, for the first time, the man on the street began to realise “hey, I have an opinion on this!” The general public did not immediately turn against technology, but rather, they started to ask questions. 

The Media Machine 

I would like to suggest that the rot only took hold when the media sensed this insecurity. In a fair world, an honest, open, questioning attitude is a good thing. But this world is not fair. 

Technology had, until the early 80’s, been presented in a very positive light in the media. Big business had for a long time used the public’s confidence in technology to ease in new products and services. All a marketing team needed to do was describe their product as “modern” – and this immediately implied an innate superiority. For some reason, old was bad and new was good. 

In the 1980’s something changed. People’s level of exposure to the media hit a critical level – just enough to make people think they were ‘well informed’. This new level of exposure meant, for the first time, that people were having news of industrial disasters piped into their sitting rooms. And since the public knew about it, the public would have an opinion about it. But who would decide what that opinion would be? This leads us to the ultimate downfall in the public image of technology, for too often, it would be the media that would decide for us. 

To illustrate, simply ask yourself what makes better reading – “Scientists develop drought resistant crops” or “FRANKENFOOD!” 

In the simple battle for the public’s attention, scaremongering has prevailed and its not surprising at all – its so easy! Science has this nasty habit of dealing with unknowns: questions, hypotheses and statistics. It rarely (if ever) deals in cold hard facts. This makes science a sitting duck. 

The nineties bear this trend out, and issues like the vanishing rain forests, global warming, cancer from cellular phones and genetic engineering all took their toll. 

To most people, something is either good for you or bad for you. Radiation is bad, vitamins are good; bacteria are bad and exercise is good. The media like this simple worldview – it makes for good sensational headlines and ensures that articles aren’t too full of ‘complicated science’. 

The need for shock value naturally leads to half-truths. While any chemist knows “the poison is in the dose”, most people don’t, and the media takes full advantage of this. 

Radiation (sunshine!), just like vitamins, can be good (in moderate doses) and bad (in excessive amounts). Bacteria, exercise, alcohol and almost anything for that matter is usually good and bad depending on how much, when and for whom. As Oscar Wilde said, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple”. 

To make matters worse, once a piece of misinformation is out there, it is hard to stop and even harder to bring anyone to account. 

A good example was the hullabaloo surrounding research by Dr Andrew Wakefield of the Royal Free Hospital in London. In his 1998 paper Dr Wakefield highlighted a “possible” link between the MMR jab (the combined Mumps, Measles and Rubella vaccine given to many children routinely) and Autism. Although it was only suggested as a possibility, needless to say the media had a field day, cleverly leaving out the ifs and buts: for example: “Child Vaccine Linked to Autism” (BBC News, 27 Feb ’98). This simple irresponsible action lead to several years of reduced vaccine take-up, with possibly fatal consequences. 

This type of misinformation is particularly dangerous because is parades as ‘proper science’. The media, by referencing a scientific paper in a reputable journal (The Lancet) are lending themselves credibility, but then the simple act of removing a single word (“possible” in the above case) they have degraded the science and greatly harmed its reputation. 

Statistics: The Media’s WMD 

Society used to simply trust the expertise of authority without question. People suffered from some sort of inferiority complex that made them think that ‘scientists’ would know best. As we have seen the media has eroded this with scaremongering, sensationalising and misreporting. However, they have one more killer tool in the toolbox: Statistics. 

The world is a complicated place. There is far too much information to possibly report it all, so we need to distil all the facts into key elements, ‘salient points’ if you like, that give a fair representation of the whole. In order to do this correctly, science produced the statistical method, a rational system for describing sets of data. It provides ways of letting the human mind grasp the important information held in large lists of numbers. The ‘average’ is a good example a player’s batting average is a faster and easier way to judge him then a long list of all the swings he or she ever took. 

So, statistics are essential to the media, who routinely inform us, sometimes well. However, few people out there realise how easily statistics can be coloured and spun. This problem is compounded by the problem that most people have coping with very large numbers (the same trick the lottery uses to fool people into thinking a lottery ticket is a wise investment). 

Rather than do a poor job of examining this, I refer you to a good analysis on the subject: “Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists” by Joel Best (2001, University of California Press) 

Attacking Science 

Another damaging phenomenon worth noting is the new tendency for the media to attack science directly. Recently, especially in the global warming debate, certain parties (with vested interests) have used the media to accuse science of dealing in uncertainty. 

The very pillars that form the foundation of science, things like theories, scepticism and debate are being held up as evidence that scientists cannot agree on anything. Is the world heating up as the result of human activity? According to some, ‘possibly’ is the best answer that science can offer. 

Scientists are rightly incensed by this slander, but what can they do? It is proving very hard to explain to the masses why this uncertainty is good and right. 

It will be even harder to explain to the people that even when most scientists do agree, they are often later proved wrong, which many will cheerfully accept, changing their position in the light of the new evidence. But this great strength is seen as flip-flopping by the public, another sign of weakness. 

The Future 

In this short essay, I have tried to examine why the reputation of science has been taking a hit in the public’s eye. We have seen how certain terrible events like Chernobyl were associated with science and how the media has misreported on the debates of the day. We have also touched on the trouble statistics cause and the difficulty in selling uncertainty. So what does this all mean? 

Is science doomed? I don’t think so. For even though the scientific community has lost ground in the struggle against the tides of ignorance, there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

Big business will continue to tell us whatever sells products, journalists will continue to write whatever sells papers, politicians will continue to say whatever wins votes; but these truths are not malicious forces bent on the destruction of science, they are simple evolutionary forces in the pool of life. And I think, that just like mankind, science will simply evolve and move on. 

References: 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/60510.stm (article at start of MMR scare) 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2038135.stm (more recent article summing up MMR scare) 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520219783/ref=pd_sim_b_3/103-2618564-5123866?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155 
(Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists)