We are in an extraordinary situation; there is fear, anxiety, curiosity, a lot of time at hand, and access to all sorts of information. The latter is extremely dangerous for a society that is not used to the rigours of scientific thinking. It is easy to fall for news articles or short texts that bring hope. In reality, part of the problem is in the way scientific findings are published – they are difficult to access, and to comprehend by individuals from non- scientific backgrounds. Let’s try to make sense of science scientifically !
Marketing Science
Science doesn’t happen in a day, and scientists are trained to accept failure, rejection, and criticism. These reflect in the way scientists present their data – they are no journalists. Tall claims, pre-mature declarations are a tell-tale sign of bad science. For example, let’s say a news piece reads: company X or laboratory Y are working on a drug candidate or a vaccine for coronavirus infections – this is exciting, isn’t it? It brings hope, helps the institution gain some PR, but from a purely scientific point of view, it means -it’s a start of an experiment to test a hypothesis!
There is more chance that it will fail than succeed—that’s the harsh reality of most scientific studies: they fail. Good scientific articles are self-critical, they come with caveats, declare their weakness, and suggest alternate possibilities/scenarios that may go against the spirit of their research. Science is always bigger than the scientists, and they know if they lie, they ‘ll be called out.
Get Your Sources Right
Scientific results must be reproducible, study designs must be robust- without any biased data or methods and the findings must be vetted (often repeatedly) by their peers! When all of these checks are met, a scientific study is published. However, there are also predatory journals that may publish anything for cash – sometimes without adequately reviewing the quality of the science. Scientists and non-scientists also often blog, write an opinion piece, publish hypothesis, or just type random rubbish to gain public attention; it is important to check the credentials of the author, always.
Remember, even the top scientists are experts in very narrow areas. If something seems too good to be true – perhaps it is. Unlike social media posts, a scientific article is not measured by the number of times it is viewed, but an ideal indicator is the no. of times it’s cited or referenced by other scientific articles suggesting the article’s contribution in furthering the field.
Cause, Effect And Associations
There is light when the moon comes out that seems like an association, right? So does the moon cause the light? No, but the moon does reflect the sunlight, therefore just presenting an association without identifying the cause may mean nothing scientifically? An association is not always the cause; it could be just a random pattern in one dataset. Even a placebo (dummy product without the drug) may show a positive trend in clinical studies- sometimes more than an active compound, just like a broken watch shows the correct time twice a day. It is important to distinguish the cause, the effect, and the association.
Science on a completely unknown area evolves very rapidly, what seems to be an exciting find today- may turn out to be an artefact. The hypothesis has to be reproduced or rejected, and a perfect clinical compound may suddenly present unwanted side effects, an association that made sense may turn out to be untrue when the sample size changes, and so on.
Question Everything
Scientific thinking is all about asking the right questions. Do not trust anything or anyone on their face value, ask for the source, verify the data yourself- repeatedly! A rumour is nothing but unverified science! When in doubt use google scholar for example, it’s a specialized search that lets you fish keywords from indexed scientific articles, search the author- check their bio, website, etc.
If nothing works, do not hesitate to write to a researcher directly with your doubts -most of them would be happy to help explain. Remember, every scientist in every field is a little superhero- for they always know an insignificant something that nobody else in the world knows!
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed a lot of common people to read up and follow scientists, debate the role of asymptomatic carriers if herd immunity would work, how to flatten the curve, vaccine development timelines, and so on- questions commonly asked by epidemiologists and clinical scientists. Science, for once, is influencing the dinner table discussion and the economic and political discourse of the world.
As a scientist, I have no doubt humanity will push the limits of science again to get over the current pandemic. Let us continue to believe in science, think logically, ask the right questions, verify your source of information and be open to criticism- for the fundamental duties enlisted in Article 51A(h) of the constitution of India encourages every Indian to have a scientific temper.