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Getting The Public To Listen To Good Science
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "We all know that false or misleading science headlines are all too common these days and that misleading media combined with an apathetic and undereducated public lead to widespread ignorance. But the real question is, how can this trend be reversed? At a session at the recent AAAS meeting, a study was discussed indicating that what matters most is how the information is portrayed. While people are willing to defer to experts on matters of low concern, for things that affect them directly, such as breast cancer or childhood diseases, expertise only counts for as much as giving off a 'sense of honesty and openness,' and that it matters far less than creating a sense of empathy in deciding who people will listen to. In other words, it's not enough to merely report on it as an expert. You need to make sure your report exudes a sense of honesty, openness, empathy, and maybe even a hint of humor."
The Toronto Star, the largest daily circulation newspaper in Canada, ran a story a few weeks back about an "inventor" who has discovered a method to get energy out of nothing, with a few electric motors and magnets.
The idiots at The Star ran the story with a straight face, including the financial backing that the "inventor" has raised. Now, I don't know if the "inventor" is an honest kook or a fraudster, but the sad fact is that a major newspaper has no one on staff who ever took a physics course or has any scientific knowledge. YOU CAN'T GET ENERGY OUT OF NOTHING!!!
Sadly, the idiocy at The Star is not limited to science. And this "inventor" is going to bilk quite a few idiots out of their savings and/or venture capital.
At some point you have to say there's one born every minute.
Wow, I rarely get to see so many strawman arguments in one post.
Anyway, this does raise an interesting question: is it ok to use such sensationalism even though it's based on good science? It seems to be the only way to get people to listen.
End transmission.
ResidntGeek
Uh huh. Sure it is. Got any real references? You talk about "scientific realities" but I don't see any peer reviewed references. Even if you come up with a bad vaccination that might do harm to a small minority of recipients, occasionally (which happens - we just had a bad batch of mumps vaccine during an outbreak about three months ago), that is a LONG way from showing that getting vaccinated in general is a bad idea. Please note the conspicuous absence of polio (which can cause paralysis to the point where the victim may not be able to breathe unassisted), rubella, (which causes all sorts of nasty effects if a pregnant woman gets it), smallpox (which kills or maims), measles (estimated to have killed 200 million worldwide in the last 150 years), and mumps (can cause infertility and hearing loss). Yes, those are wikipedia articles. Yes, each one references the important statements with multiple peer reviewed sources.
Take mumps for example (probably the least dangerous of the group). In that outbreak I mentioned, with the tainted vaccine, there were three people who had mild allergic reactions. No long term damage. The nasty side effects from mumps are fairly rare, but without a vaccine the disease used to be VERY common, so those rare complications affected a good number of people. Far more than are hurt (even in minor ways) by the vaccine itself.
I realise I'm probably wasting my time replying, but you never know.
You are making the very mistake that you are accusing the uninformed general public of.
There is actually good and strong science behind such inferences.
Imagine felines are a completely unknown family
Say you have only a tooth fragment of a bobcat. That piece of information alone isn't much to go on, but if you also have a more or less complete skeleton of a house cat, and a skull and left hind foot of a lion skeleton, these three pieces of information together now tell you a lot about the likely size and general shape of the bobcat, and from the size relative to the lion and the house cat, you can probably draw general conclusions about the kind of prey the bobcat could hunt.