Bad Science

In a previous post I mentioned 'bad science' and wanted to clarify exactly what I meant by that.  When you pursue scientific study, there is a method you are supposed to follow - the scientific method.  There are a few stipulations that are made about what you can and cannot do when you follow that method.  One of the stipulations that people often disregard is the principle that you cannot assert a negative statement as true.  If you attempt to do that then you are not following the scientific method, and you are ultimately expressing a belief, not a conclusion that is backed by evidence.  Likewise you cannot present evidence to back up a negative claim, these are fundamental principles of scientific endeavour.

Bad science can easily be identified when sweeping statements are made which express a negative.  "X does not exist" - this is not a statement you can ever make if you follow the scientific method, in reality to convey a scientific standpoint you should state "There is no evidence that X exists" - you can not rule out the possibility that it does just because there is no evidence to support it, by doing so you are fundamentally undermining the scientific process because you are making a statement which you have no evidence to back up - which is a belief not a conclusion.

Bad science is perhaps at its most difficult to spot when it seemingly follows the scientific method but the conclusions drawn are fundamentally flawed but not enough information is given when the conclusions are reported for you to be able to assess its validity, this is where scepticism is most important, and why it is important to find multiple sources that can verify a claim as opposed to relying on one alone - that is of course at odds with journalism and the main stream media's obsession with breaking news, being first, and getting the scoop as it were.

If you follow the scientific method, your goal should always be to find evidence that reinforces a theory, or to disprove the evidence that has been presented that is claimed to support that theory.  In other words if someone claims X exists and cites evidence for that claim, then you take that evidence and examine it and find reason why the conclusion drawn was drawn in error, or you find evidence that contradicts the claim so as to discredit the position.  Again this is often at odds with mass media as it is intended to be consumed quickly and there is a price placed on brevity; publications seek to push out work that is long enough for search engines but short enough for people - which says a lot about our sometimes toxic relationship with technology.

The trouble with both of these approaches to evidence discovery is that they are defined by the pursuit of something in particular, in other words you know roughly what it is you are looking for before you set out to look; that approach in itself is vulnerable to cognitive bias - where you pay more attention to the things that you are looking for and less attention to the things that contradict it.  This is one of the reasons why those scientific theories that are considered to be most sound are those that are subjected to peer review, they are presented in journals where other members of the scientific community take what is published and examine it further.

Bad science is something that has become more prevalent in modern society, and whilst it is easy to point to mass media as the cause for this, I think this is misguided.  I think mass media is a symptom but not the cause of this issue; for me personally I believe the reason for the rise of bad science is what I refer to as "authoritative refugees" - namely people who were once religious or hold a religious mindset, that is the desire to defer judgement to that of an authority figure.  This mindset is further defined by the belief in things which either cannot be proven or which followers accept even with evidence to the contrary, simply because the authority figure asserts it to be true - in other words, beliefs that require faith rather than evidence.  The abandonment of religion by many people has not caused a shift from these religious mentalities to that of a scientific mentality, instead it has simply caused the focus of the individuals to shift from a religious interest to a scientific interest, their bad habits and thought processes which were incompatible with the scientific method have come with them and have not changed, instead they infiltrate the scientific community and slowly move it closer to what they once knew in religion.

This doesn't solely apply to people who were a member of a religion and are no longer, it also applies to people who were never religious to begin with but who probably would have ended up being so eventually due to the way they approach the concepts of belief and reasoning.  Finding a solution to this problem is difficult, it requires limitation of those who can profess to be scientific authority figures.  I am not proposing that science be exclusionary, instead I am proposing that there be greater control over what is considered to be a scientific resource - this requires those who control the dissemination of information, namely the mainstream media, to prescribe to a list of sources that can be considered credible.  When you are a student who studies any scientific subject, one of the things you are told quite early in your studies are which sources are regarded as reputable and those which are not.  Some Universities for example will flat out refuse to accept citations from certain sources entirely.

The scientific method itself can be used in compiling that list, and keeping it peer reviewed would allow greater transparency, and allow it to grow over time.  There have been some attempts at doing this through browser extensions to combat fake news by guiding users with metadata about the site they are viewing and advising them whether it is generally considered to be trustworthy - this is not without its flaws admittedly and it has already run into a few legal hurdles as some large media outlets in the UK for instance challenged the fact they were listed as unreliable and managed to get delisted, despite the fact those particular media outlets have been openly criticised and shown to have reported many things that were complete fabrications. 

Beyond this concept however, there is also far too much exposure through mass media given to "Think Tanks" and "Policy Studies" that do not conform to the scientific method in their research and time and again have been proven to show bias in their conclusions, still of all they appear on mainstream media as credible sources of information which in turn misleads the public.  Their conclusions are reported as facts, without context, and without challenge.  These influences are at their most insidious when they centre around political issues, particularly those which are contentious issues.  Worse still, there are those outlets that claim to be scientific such as Wikipedia, which no person of a truly scientific mindset would ever take seriously, yet they serve as the first point of reference for the majority of the general public, and despite better resources existing, those such as Google who direct people to these resources and make no effort to countermand the inaccuracy.  Therein lies a greater problem with Google - it finds an answer to a question, it makes little to no attempt at all to check the answer is actually true, only that the majority of people accept it, or that it comes from a source that the majority of people use - neither of which guarantees even a modicum of accuracy.  Admittedly Google has at least tried to add some level of verification but the problem is that almost all interaction people have with Google is automated, if you've ever tried to find a contact number for Google you'll know how difficult it can be to actually speak to someone, better yet, you will know how difficult it is to counteract false information - an example of something trivial here would be a Google Map listing with incorrect information, something I personally know was an issue for a small charity in the UK whose listing showed information relating to a watch company in the USA and took several months to rectify as the information was being pulled by an algorithm, not something manually input into the listing.

If you are interested in the ideas that have been raised in this post, there is a book dedicated to the subject aptly titled 'Bad Science' by Ben Goldacre which explores the concept.  Also at this point to pre-empt any of the ire that may be directed at me I would like to reassert what I have said many times before - I do not expect you to take anything written on this blog as gossip, I do not claim it to be exhaustive or an authority on anything; my posts are written to share my thoughts and my interpretation of the world, my posts are intended only to make you think, and inspire you to go beyond and learn more for yourself, there will inevitably be a myriad of conclusions and interpretations expressed here that are wrong or misguided, this isn't a scientific blog - if were intended to be, I would put a lot more effort into it.