ENGL Blog Post

What objectivity? After reading Fine and "106 Science Claims [...]" I don't trust anything I've ever learned about science. Fine has countless examples of researchers skewing the conclusions of data to fit their bias and what they want the data to reveal. Now anytime a friend tells me about some study I demand for more information than "some guys concluded this". Without details, empirical data, or repeated experiments conclusions mean nothing. I feel that the general public doesn't scrutinize scientific claims nearly enough and that can be very dangerous because people start believing incorrect data as fact. It's scary what people will believe and how easily.

Now I'm not saying there aren't any reputable scientists, they're the ones that keep to themselves and don't try to spit propaganda through faulty science. The problem is they aren't the ones reaching out to the masses and changing social policy. I also feel a big part of the problem is caused when research is accommodated and the uncertainty researchers have of direct correlations gets completely thrown out the window. Even if the researcher had objectivity in the beginning, the results of the study get into the public and carried away. I remember in grade school we would play this game where one person whispered something into another student’s ear, then that student passed the message to another student, and so on and so forth. By the end of the line the message was horribly altered into something not even close to relating to the original message. I find this to be a very appropriate example of what the general public ends up doing with scientific claims.

Every day I hear information that people claim as “true” that I know for a fact to be incorrect just by doing a tiny bit of personal research. One of my favorites is the use of Taurine. First time I heard about it my friend said, “oh yeah that stuff in Red Bull comes from bull testes, that’s why they call it that.” In reality Taurine was first extracted from bull bile (Marshall, ML. "Taurine." Nutritional Perspectives: Journal Of The Council On Nutrition 32.4 (2009): 33-34. CINAHL with Full Text.) and that “fact is that the taurine in Red Bull is produced synthetically by pharmaceutical companies and is not derived from animals” (Red Bull’s website). That took me a whole fifteen minutes to find out for myself and now I’m that much less ignorant.

Basically, people need to be more aware that scientists have agendas too and not to immediately credit what anyone says. A questioning mind is a healthy mind.