If science is done by humans and they fail, how can you trust it? – 06/29/2023 – Fundamental Science

As of August 2021, the United States Federal Health Agency, the FDA (Food and Drug Aadministration), posted an unusual tweet, mixing humor and despair: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously guys. Stop it.” The tweet linked to an FDA page explaining why ivermectin should not be used to treat COVID-19.

The reason for the appeal was simple: many people were taking the medicine for veterinary use, despite dozens of warnings about side effects in humans and the lack of proven effectiveness. A real fever in several countries, the race for this medicine started from studies full of biases and methodological errors, having been aggravated by the way science is transmitted to society.

The ivermectin case is just one example of the misinformation pandemic that is confusing people and challenging the credibility of science. How the scientific process operates is not usually taught in schools or widely reported in the media. Far from the classic view of the scientist making a single discovery that will change the world, researchers work in teams that develop hypotheses, and these hypotheses are tested in experiments that often lead to contradictory results.

Often, only the repetition of experiments in different contexts helps to form a scientific consensus on a given topic. Furthermore, if the hypothesis is not correctly formulated, if the experiments are not well conducted, and if the analyzes are biased, we will have results that do not reflect reality. Unfortunately, part of the scientific production consists of articles developed along these lines, which only increases the confusion.

Scientists are human beings liable to make mistakes – something that is understood and analyzed in the scientific process. And that is precisely why results submitted to scientific journals are first evaluated by other scientists in the area. This does not prevent errors from occurring, as raters are not immune to them either, but it can work as a sieve, to a greater or lesser extent.

And here comes another complicating factor: there are scientific journals that are not motivated by the quality and impact of the findings, but only by financial profits, with little or no scrutiny of the results – the so-called predatory journal. Researchers may end up writing for these journals out of ignorance or on purpose, as traditional academic performance metrics take productivity into account: the more articles published, the greater the chances of career development.

If evaluating the degree of reliability of scientific articles and journals is already a difficult task even for teams of upstanding and well-trained scientists, how can we guarantee that people outside the academic environment are able to differentiate between good and bad articles? And more: how do you ensure that a complex issue or public health decision is not based on just a single article?

While science is dynamic and driven by contestation, people want quick and simple answers to complicated questions: is eggs good for you or bad for you? What is the best medicine for covid-19? It’s easy to find specific answers among the thousands of scientific articles published every year, but what really matters is arriving at the most appropriate explanations based on an analysis of the best available evidence.

It is not uncommon, however, for science to be used to bolster one interest or another. It’s what we call cherry pickingan allusion to the act of picking the biggest and reddest cherries, in an attempt to claim that all existing cherries are like that.

Showing only the research that interests us and mischaracterizing studies promotes pseudoscience and strengthens denialism and certain political agendas, further confusing the population. The distorted use of evidence interferes with government decision-making and puts world well-being at risk, as it constitutes a threat to public health.

Science is the most efficient human strategy for knowing the world, and it must continue to project confidence, even recognizing that it operates in a certain degree of uncertainty and with countless challenges. Making academic nuances increasingly known to society will help society understand that definitive conclusions are not simple and that, far beyond attachment to an isolated article, support and confidence in the scientific process will help us to arrive at the best answers and solutions. for Humanity.

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Rossana Soletti has a PhD in morphological sciences and is a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

The blog Ciência Fundamental is edited by Serrapilheira, a private, non-profit institute lucrative, what promotes science in Brazil. Subscribe to the Serrapilheira newsletter to follow the institute and blog news

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