Bad Science

I'm just about to finish the book Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. It's a very good book and very thought provoking about the way science is reported in the media.

There's a fair amount about the general fact that journalists are typically arts/humanities graduates while the scientists are scientists. C.P. Snow and all that.

One of the main concerns of journalism is fairness and balance. When reporting on something it's considered important to give both sides a fair hearing.

However, this often does not work so well with science!

Science is about building up an understanding of the world around us. How it works and the rules that govern it's behaviour.

The are the 'hard' sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology. Either an apple falls or it does not. Why does an apple always fall. What is rust? How do plants obtain energy from the sun?

Then there are the softer sciences. Usually the ones involving very complex things like animals or people.

Is climate change hard or soft? Firstly, I'm happy that it's real. The main problem is that it's hard to get any double blind, placebo controlled experimental data! Even so, scientists are trying to understand a big, complex system.

Science looks for the theories and models that consistently describe the universe and everything in it. Those theories and models that are work are kept and added to the big body of scientific knowledge. Those that do not are dropped and science, generally, moves, on. Some are not known either way and varying amounts of work continues.

In science, you can be right, wrong or unsure.

I think a lot of people feel unconfortable with the 'unsure' aspect of science. People like answers and do seem to be happier with a wrong answer rather than a correct don't know. For many people certainty is better than accuracy.