Science is about observation and insight. There is a difference between how the public thinks science works, and how it actually works. This is fundamental to the question of good science vs bad science. In both cases an observation is made and then a hypothesis is created to explain the observation. This is the point at which good science and bad science differ. A good scientist will then look for other evidence that either confirms or denies his hypothesis. S/he may then do experiments to test that hypothesis. If a test confirms the hypothesis, they are not finished. They may go through many cycles of experimentation and testing before they feel comfortable in publishing their results. Good scientists have to be ready to accept the fact that further testing may prove their hypothesis wrong. That is part of the process; it is essential to the process.
Bad science is
where after making your observation and coming up with a hypothesis, you only
look for other data that supports your hypothesis and ignore anything that runs
counter to your hypothesis. You see that Jane wears a blue shirt on Tuesday and
come up with the hypothesis that Jane always wears a blue shirt on Tuesdays.
The next Tuesday you see Jane wearing a blue shirt confirms it! But maybe you
weren’t looking that hard on a Tuesday when she wasn’t wearing a blue shirt. Or
maybe you stopped looking after you got your one point of data that confirmed
your hypothesis, patting yourself on the back and saying, “my work here is
done.” Of course this may not be true at all. On any given Tuesday, Jane might
wear any color she wants, but you go around telling everyone that you have
solved the mystery of Jane’s Tuesday wardrobe.
People who make
drugs have to follow the scientific method. It is required, so the new drug
will be safe and effective. Even after all those safeguards, they sometimes
get it wrong, because it is difficult to do experiments on humans. Nowadays, drug makers manufacture drugs from the molecule on up.
But in the olden days it was simply based on observation. You notice that after chewing on that spiraea
twig, your headache went away. You might then wonder if it was something in the
spiraea that did it. If you were a good scientist, you would then test that hypothesis,
lining people up with aches and pains and having them chew on the twigs. If the
results seemed positive, you would do more testing, maybe on other parts of the
plants and other similar plants, cataloguing which method led to the best
results. In this way the drug aspirin was derived. But there were and are many,
many anecdotal remedies that have not stood the test of science. Just because
you do X, and it relieves Y, doesn’t mean that X is the cure for Y. Anecdotal
evidence is not scientific evidence. Thus, we had (and have) snake oil
salesmen.
Most general
new media companies do not understand how science works. This is why you will
hear these stories that “scientists have found . . .” that seem to be
contradicted by the next news story that claims “scientists have found . . .”
it is because they do not understand the difference between a preliminary study
and an actual scientific result. News people want headlines. They want to draw the reader or viewer in. The news sites are publishing the results
before they have been proven or disproven by the scientific method. Just like
snake oil.
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