Are you science literate? Find out!

Science has been under attack late­ly. People seem to have become very dis­trust­ful of sci­en­tists and of the sci­en­tif­ic process. Unfortunately, the skep­ti­cism expressed by so many (much of it in the form of social media posts) stems, not from prob­lems with the sci­en­tif­ic process itself, but from a com­plete (or at least par­tial) lack of sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy. When our pop­u­la­tion is not sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly lit­er­ate, they are eas­i­ly misled. 

When I taught high school sci­ence, we spent the first few weeks of the school year on the top­ic of sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy, regard­less of the course. We specif­i­cal­ly focused on how to read/watch infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in news arti­cles, TV shows, social media posts, op-eds, etc., and deter­mine if it was sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly valid and what it actu­al­ly had to say. 

There were four areas on which we spent most of our time: def­i­n­i­tions of com­mon­ly used sci­ence words, anec­do­tal evi­dence, draw­ing cau­sa­tion from cor­re­la­tion, and cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship of research and infor­ma­tion dissemination. 

This is not a high school class­room. We are not able to have a live­ly, mind-open­ing dis­cus­sion of these top­ics. But maybe I can do a rea­son­ably good job of recre­at­ing what my stu­dents and I dis­cussed for all of those years. 

Let’s start with some basic def­i­n­i­tions that are often mis­used, mak­ing it hard for peo­ple to under­stand what they mean. The first term is “hypoth­e­sis.” You may remem­ber from your own school days that a hypoth­e­sis is a pro­posed expla­na­tion based on evi­dence or an edu­cat­ed guess about the rela­tion­ship between phe­nom­e­na. The key terms there are “based on evi­dence” and “edu­cat­ed.”

Hypothesis

A hypoth­e­sis is more than just an idea you came up with based on some­thing that hap­pened to you. It must be based on evi­dence and edu­ca­tion. Hypotheses lead to sci­en­tif­ic research by gen­er­at­ing ideas for study. That does not mean that they will wind up being cor­rect. In fact, in actu­al sci­ence, sci­ence nev­er declares that some­thing is “true” or “proven.” There can be evi­dence that sup­ports an idea and evi­dence that rejects an idea, but the idea is still not cer­tain. Science always main­tains a healthy amount of skepticism. 

A few days ago, I saw a par­tic­u­lar­ly vibrant red-wind­ed black­bird. Later that same day, I had a bad headache. If I decide that see­ing real­ly bright-col­ored birds leads to headaches, have I come up with a hypoth­e­sis? No! This is not based on evi­dence and is not educated. 

Now, rates of mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis are sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er in health­care work­ers than in the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. Previous stud­ies have shown a cor­re­la­tion (that just means a rela­tion­ship) between expo­sure to volatile organ­ic com­pounds and mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis. The mate­ri­als used to make scrubs give off volatile organ­ic com­pounds. If I decide that wear­ing scrubs reg­u­lar­ly might increase my risk for devel­op­ing mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis, have I come up with a hypoth­e­sis? Yes! I have come up with a pro­posed expla­na­tion based on evi­dence or an edu­cat­ed guess about the rela­tion­ship between two things. That pos­si­ble expla­na­tion can be stud­ied with exper­i­ments, and we can find out if there is evi­dence to sup­port the idea. 

Theory

This term is so mis­used that its real mean­ing has got­ten com­plete­ly lost. A the­o­ry is a well-sup­port­ed expla­na­tion of some­thing in the nat­ur­al world that is based on a huge col­lec­tion of repeat­ed­ly con­firmed facts, obser­va­tions, and exper­i­ments. Your ideas about why your neigh­bor comes home so late on the week­ends is not a the­o­ry. My notion that wear­ing scrubs might lead to mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis is not a the­o­ry. For an idea in sci­ence to become a the­o­ry, it must have tons of evi­dence sup­port­ing it and none that con­tra­dicts it. 

Remember that “healthy amount of skep­ti­cism” I men­tioned? If gen­uine evi­dence obtained through valid sci­en­tif­ic meth­ods rejects an idea, even one that has pre­vi­ous­ly been well-sup­port­ed, sci­ence says, “Wait a minute! We have to reeval­u­ate this.” 

Science doesn’t just ignore incon­ve­nient evi­dence. It uses that evi­dence to fur­ther the under­stand­ing of things like the­o­ries. Evolution by nat­ur­al selec­tion is a the­o­ry. General Relativity is a the­o­ry. They are expla­na­tions about how some­thing works that have over­whelm­ing evi­dence sup­port­ing them. They are very well-estab­lished sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples. But if evi­dence aris­es that rejects them, they will be revised accord­ing­ly. Isn’t sci­ence beautiful?

Theories dif­fer from laws in that they attempt to explain why things hap­pen. Scientific laws are state­ments of what hap­pens, with­out get­ting into the “whys” or “how comes.” Newton’s Laws of Motion tell us what objects do when they move. Laws can be revised, too. But because Laws avoid the stick­i­ness of “why” and stick to “what,” it isn’t that common.

Correlation vs causation

Sometimes things hap­pen togeth­er. For exam­ple, shark attacks and spikes in ice cream sales tend to hap­pen in the sum­mer months. This is cor­re­la­tion. Sharks don’t attack because peo­ple are eat­ing ice cream, but the two tend to occur at the same time of year. Sometimes one thing caus­es anoth­er to hap­pen. For exam­ple, if you push the but­ton next to my front door, the box on the wall in my hall­way makes a noise. This is cau­sa­tion. One of these things only hap­pens (the box on the wall makes noise) when the oth­er hap­pens. Causation is basic cause and effect. Correlation and cau­sa­tion are not the same thing. Sometimes the rea­son two things are cor­re­lat­ed is that one caus­es the oth­er. But oth­er times, two things are cor­re­lat­ed with­out one caus­ing the other. 

If you have ever read the Little House on the Prairie books (not the TV show, but the actu­al books writ­ten by Laura Ingalls Wilder), there is a sto­ry about a time when Charles took the girls to pick berries in a low-lying area. Caroline did not go with them. Charles and the girls all got malar­ia. They had also eat­en water­mel­on dur­ing this time. Caroline con­clud­ed that water­mel­ons cause malar­ia and refused to eat them. 

You might be laugh­ing at her silli­ness, and yet this is exact­ly what inter­net char­la­tans do when they tell you that the rea­son your chil­dren have trou­ble in school is because you got them vac­ci­nat­ed or fed them infant for­mu­la. Maybe your child did drink for­mu­la, and maybe your kid does strug­gle in school. But just because those two things hap­pen to both be true does not mean that one caus­es the oth­er. When you do not account for the oth­er things going on dur­ing a cor­re­la­tion, you often jump to con­clu­sions about cau­sa­tion that sim­ply aren’t true.

Another exam­ple comes from an arti­cle that had been released dur­ing some of my first years teach­ing. A local news­pa­per shared the results of a study (I will use this term loose­ly, since this isn’t an exam­ple of good research) in which researchers exam­ined sev­er­al hun­dred school chil­dren and “proved” that mul­ti­vi­t­a­mins make kids smarter. They based this dec­la­ra­tion on the fact that of the chil­dren in the study, the ones who took a mul­ti­vi­t­a­min every day per­formed bet­ter in school (bet­ter grades, bet­ter behav­ior, bet­ter stan­dard­ized test scores). 

My stu­dents always had fun with this one. We had live­ly dis­cus­sions about whether or not this con­clu­sion is valid. After all, the kids in the study who took mul­ti­vi­t­a­mins did per­form bet­ter in school. The data doesn’t lie. So why is this bad sci­ence, and why is it an exam­ple of mis­tak­ing cor­re­la­tion with causation? 

Let’s pic­ture all the young chil­dren who are giv­en a mul­ti­vi­t­a­min every sin­gle morn­ing. Is it pos­si­ble (or even like­ly) that all of those chil­dren also have oth­er things in com­mon. Perhaps they all have some­one mak­ing them a nutri­tious break­fast. Maybe some­one reads to them each night. Perhaps they come from a home in which school and good man­ners are val­ued. In oth­er words, if you don’t take into account all of the oth­er things these chil­dren have in com­mon, you can’t point to a vit­a­min and say, “See! Causation!” 

Real sci­ence doesn’t work that way. 

Anecdotal Evidence

Everybody knows some­body whose father’s sister’s sec­ond cousin’s hairdresser’s son was in a car acci­dent and the only rea­son he sur­vived is that he wasn’t wear­ing his seat­belt. Everybody knows some­one who let their kids eat gluten (or any one of the lat­est evils accord­ing to the snake oil sales­men) and one of their kids devel­oped some rare dis­ease like abetal­ipopro­teine­mia (no, don’t look that up, it is genet­ic), or even a very com­mon one like strep throat, and the par­ent con­clud­ed that it was the gluten (or oth­er inter­net evil) that caused the prob­lem and now that they have banned it from their home, their kid is all better. 

We love anec­do­tal evi­dence. We love hear­ing from a friend of a friend of a friend who solved all of his/her prob­lems by tak­ing this blend of pond algae they bought from Temu. We love anec­do­tal evi­dence because it is usu­al­ly very per­son­al. We don’t know the peo­ple in a big research tri­al that took place in anoth­er state. We (sort of) know the peo­ple we inter­act with on social media. 

But the real rea­son (in my opin­ion) that we love anec­do­tal evi­dence is that we often don’t like what the experts have to say. 

• Eat less processed food
• Eat less sat­u­rat­ed fats
• Eat less sugar
• Vaccinate your children
• Get more exercise
• Wear sun­screen
• Put on your seatbelt
• Don’t spend all day star­ing at a screen

These types of advice (though well backed by decades of research) are not fun to hear. We don’t like to hear that our own poor choic­es lead to our own bad out­comes. We want that mag­ic bean that will come and fix every­thing, or at least the mag­ic poi­son we can blame. It is more pleas­ant to look at your poor health, fatigue, high stress lev­els, etc., and say, “This can’t pos­si­bly be my fault. It must be because the gov­ern­ment is spray­ing tox­ins out of com­mer­cial planes.” 

It is much more com­fort­able to look at your poor­ly behaved, behind-grade-lev­el, over­weight child and say, “Well, it must be the gluten, and the pas­teur­ized milk, and the red dye 40, and the non-organ­ic Pop-Tarts. It can’t pos­si­bly be because of any less-than-stel­lar deci­sions I have made as a par­ent in terms of his/her diet, exer­cise, screen time, etc.” 

Anecdotal evi­dence has its uses. If I want to try a new prod­uct, like per­haps a new kind of hand lotion, I will like­ly seek anec­do­tal evi­dence to help me make my deci­sion. I will ask friends and acquain­tances to share their expe­ri­ences with the prod­uct. Anecdotal evi­dence is okay for rel­a­tive­ly non-impor­tant things like hand lotion. But if I want to know if a par­tic­u­lar med­ical treat­ment is best for my can­cer diag­no­sis (I don’t have one, this is hypo­thet­i­cal), I am not ask­ing my Facebook friends. I am going to ask my oncol­o­gist. If I want to know if my car needs a new engine, I am not going to ask my Facebook friends (or my oncol­o­gist). I am going to ask my mechan­ic. And when the count­less research stud­ies tell me one thing, I am not going to take the one anec­do­tal exam­ple a friend of a friend of a friend heard about over the well-estab­lished infor­ma­tion available. 

Anecdotal evi­dence is also great for help­ing to gen­er­ate hypothe­ses. Take Caroline Ingalls’ idea. If a researcher had done a legit­i­mate study on water­mel­ons and malar­ia, they would quick­ly real­ize that one doesn’t cause the oth­er. Anecdotal sto­ries can give researchers ideas that might need to be exam­ined. Then actu­al research can be con­duct­ed and yield evi­dence to sup­port the idea or reject it. The prob­lem comes when peo­ple con­scious­ly choose to reject the actu­al evi­dence and instead cling to the anec­dotes (sor­ry folks, vac­cines don’t cause autism). 

Corporate sponsorship of research and control of information 

This top­ic has got­ten lots of press late­ly, and for good rea­son. When a com­pa­ny stands to gain from the results of a study, you have to be very care­ful in view­ing the results. An exam­ple I used with stu­dents was a com­mer­cial for tooth­paste. In the com­mer­cial, it is stat­ed that nine out of ten den­tists sur­veyed rec­om­mend that par­tic­u­lar tooth­paste. Since the com­pa­ny mak­ing the tooth­paste did the sur­vey, the results should be viewed with skep­ti­cism. They might be biased in favor of the company’s product. 

Is it pos­si­ble that sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies may also be biased when they are paid for by large cor­po­ra­tions? Sure. But it is unlike­ly. Those same large cor­po­ra­tions are less inter­est­ed in fak­ing data and more inter­est­ed in find­ing the cheap­est, most effi­cient ways to make mon­ey. They don’t want skewed data because that data may neg­a­tive­ly influ­ence the bot­tom line. 

Many social media influ­encers point to “Big Pharma” as the evil vil­lain out there try­ing to influ­ence research so they can make more mon­ey. This just doesn’t hold up to scruti­ny. Let’s look at two exam­ples straight from social media. 

First, let us think about a new med­ica­tion that must be eval­u­at­ed for safe­ty. Social media influ­encers would have you believe that Big Pharma is going to secret­ly fudge the data to make the drug seem safe when it is actu­al­ly real­ly dan­ger­ous and has lots of harm­ful side effects. If this were true, the truth would come out even­tu­al­ly, like­ly with very unfor­tu­nate con­se­quences for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny (lawyers love to sue over health­care out­comes). So, yes, these cor­po­ra­tions are going to try to over­charge you (and because you live in the United States, they are allowed to). They are going to per­suade physi­cians to pre­scribe you med­ica­tions whether you need them or not. But they are not going to fake data to put dan­ger­ous sub­stances on the mar­ket. The mon­e­tary risks are too high for them. 

Now let’s look at the high­ly tout­ed notion that it is the greedy phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies that want you to get vac­ci­nat­ed, even though a friend of a friend of a friend has already told you that vac­cines are the dev­il. Of course, says your favorite influ­encer, the com­pa­nies do this to make bil­lions of dol­lars off the sale of these vac­cines. Sorry, but this doesn’t add up either. 

If you take your child to get a vac­ci­na­tion, pen­nies change hands some­where out there in the busi­ness world. But if your unvac­ci­nat­ed child gets the measles (and then sub­se­quent­ly gives the measles to the five kids in their school who can­not get the MMR vac­cine because of aller­gies or med­ical con­di­tions), thou­sands upon thou­sands of dol­lars change hands. There is sim­ply no mon­ey to be made in vac­ci­nat­ing the pub­lic. But an unvac­ci­nat­ed pub­lic that gets very sick from pre­ventable ill­ness­es is a gold­mine. Companies make bil­lions from our ill­ness­es. There are med­ica­tions, hos­pi­tal stays, tests, and doc­tors’ visits. 

Corporations don’t make mon­ey when we are healthy. They make mon­ey when we are sick. So while cor­po­ra­tions are indeed out there try­ing to get rich off our suf­fer­ing, it isn’t from encour­ag­ing us to be a healthy pop­u­la­tion. It is from encour­ag­ing us to be unhealthy. 

So we can (hope­ful­ly) agree that cor­po­ra­tions don’t ben­e­fit from mess­ing up research so that they wind up with crap­py data. Great. They also don’t ben­e­fit from feed­ing you infor­ma­tion that would risk them suf­fer­ing neg­a­tive con­se­quences (like pro­mot­ing med­ica­tions or pro­ce­dures that are high­ly risky). So, when would cor­po­ra­tions stand to gain from feed­ing you untrue (or at least biased) infor­ma­tion? When it doesn’t cost them anything! 

Look at the big fuss being made over switch­ing from high fruc­tose corn syrup to cane sug­ar in sodas. From a nutri­tion­al and bio­log­i­cal stand­point, this makes absolute­ly no dif­fer­ence. But do some very big cor­po­ra­tions stand to make bil­lions from this change? Absolutely. Those cor­po­ra­tions have a very good rea­son to show you biased infor­ma­tion about why cane sug­ar is bet­ter. They gain bil­lions with no risk. Cane sug­ar is no worse for you than HFCS. You won’t sud­den­ly have a bunch of new health prob­lems because of it. These cor­po­ra­tions can tout the switch to cane sug­ar with no risk to their own bot­tom lines. You get to feel bet­ter about your health choic­es, they get to rake in the mon­ey, and nobody gets hurt. 

There is also a lot of mon­ey to be made from sell­ing you prod­ucts based on pseu­do­science. Think back to COVID. Lawmakers were active­ly telling peo­ple not to take the vac­cine or social­ly dis­tance, all the while mak­ing mon­ey on the sale of prod­ucts like iver­mectin that don’t actu­al­ly treat viral infec­tions. There is a lot of mon­ey in delib­er­ate­ly steer­ing the pub­lic away from actu­al cures and treat­ments and towards pseu­do­sci­en­tif­ic non­sense. Supplements, elixirs, cleans­es, etc., avail­able from inter­net celebri­ties usu­al­ly come with clear dis­claimers that say their effects have not been eval­u­at­ed and are not meant to treat any dis­eases. If I sell you these prod­ucts and you don’t sud­den­ly get cured, I have tak­en no risk. You can­not sue me. 

So, what have we learned? Maybe noth­ing. Or maybe we have learned that sci­ence is your friend. It is here to help you. It exists for no oth­er pur­pose than to under­stand the world. It isn’t good or evil, because it has no moral­i­ty. Does that mean it can’t be trust­ed? Of course not. Does that mean it should be accept­ed with­out scruti­ny? Of course not. 

Be an informed con­sumer of sci­ence. Understand its ins and outs and how to eval­u­ate it ratio­nal­ly. Be sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly lit­er­ate. It can be done!