Entering the Conversation

In Mark Liberman’s blog post, We Need More Bad Science Writers, he discusses the issue that science writers fail to be careful when transferring information from scientific studies to popular writing articles. While this can be for numerous reasons, such as misunderstandings of the results or carelessness in translating scientific lingo, the UPenn professor wants to show everyone how much of an issue it is. Liberman questioned in his blog post “So how can the "health correspondent" for a serious intellectual newspaper be so incredibly careless?” He, along with many other readers in society, cannot begin to fathom why these bad science writers insist on publishing these “spectacularly bad” articles.

            Liberman shows readers how people can take a scientist’s experiment and results and publish an idea that has no evidence behind it. People who publish popular science articles often even completely portray the experiment wrong, saying that the opposite results occurred. This can be an issue for the general public because when given so-called credible sources, they don’t know which to believe. Some people choose to believe the things that they read because it’s very appealing to believe that a pill or some other easy solution can solve their problems.

            Liberman goes on to discuss how one scientist posted completely wrong information about how omega 3 supposedly increased cognitive levels in 11-year-old boys. The article that claimed that fish oil pills helped school children concentrate more in school actually caused rates of fish oil pill sales to increase, even though there was no evidence supporting these claims. There was actually evidence supporting the opposing side. Experiments have shown that the omega 3 actually does not help with concentration, and in fact causes slower reaction times in the experimental groups.

            It is not always easy to distinguish false information from fact but one place to start is to evaluate the source that published the information according to its credibility. This can be tricky though, because as Liberman said, authors can maintain a good reputation and keep their careers even if they continually publish “spectacular failures.” Liberman revealed a reason to be relieved though because it is becoming more popular for bad science articles to be accompanied by an article that shows the truth behind them.  Counter articles that are created to put writers in their place are a good way to determine what is true or false in a report. Another solution to dealing with false published science is to do background research when you think that a claim an author makes is fishy.

            Liberman’s blog post goes to show that you can’t always believe what you read, even if you think the source is credible. Sometimes even people with good reputations publish things when they have no clue what they are talking about. Writers are under a lot of pressure and will sometimes twist the truth in order to create an idea worth writing about that people will read. Maybe the solution is just to get these people fired. I don’t think it’s that simple.