If it seems like the world is overrun with bad information that’s because the world is overrun with bad information. The reasons are becoming well-known but the knowledge might not stem the ceaseless flow of bullshit.
Alex Hutchinson wrote at his Runner’s World SweatScience blog about how the word of mouth from medical interventions with good results far outpaces the word of mouth from bad results. So even if most of people’s experience with health products and services is not positive, most of the word of mouth still is.
The Hutchinson post reminded me of something that Cass Sunstein wrote for Bloomberg View when the new iPhone 6 launched last September. He wrote how most of the new features on updated products never get used. They are mostly designed to excite users and not really change the day in, day out experience customers have with their products. If those new features really did change the customer experience, well then there would be a new product.
Sunstein was also an author of a November paper in Harvard Business Review that explained how the wisdom of crowds does not apply when the crowd is made up of dumb people.
To recap, people who tell us stuff are full of shit. And companies that want to sell us stuff are full of shit. And collective intelligence is often collective bullshit. If only there was a set of trustworthy individuals who seek out what’s true and tell us about it.
Too bad those people are often not journalists, at least not many of the journalists who try to explain what’s new (and often quite complex) in health science research. The blogger GrrlScientist, writing in The Guardian, ripped science journalists for incorrectly (and lazily) analyzing a recent Johns Hopkins cancer study. Journalists gave the researchers credit for an insight (that cancer is often a product of random cellular events) that does not exist.
British doctor and author Ben Goldacre has long been a vocal debunker of the way public health information is presented. Vox interviewed him at the end of last year:
JB: Over a decade, you’ve debunked everything from ear candling to the anti-vaccine movement, and poorly designed education and health policies. Have you seen any progress?
BG: I think the really big change has been the Internet. What was really frustrating when I first started writing [in the Guardian in 2003] was you would see mainstream media journalists and dodgy doctors and scientists speaking with great authority and hopelessly distorting research in a way that was dangerous and scaremongering. There was no way to talk back.
When I started writing the column I felt like I was talking back on behalf of this enormous crowd of disenfranchised nerds and nerdy doctors. Now with blogs, Twitter, and comments under articles, what you can see is everybody can talk back. On top of that, not only can people more easily find a platform to put things right when they’re wrong and also explain how they’re wrong and how to understand science better, but also anybody who is interested in something, who is sufficiently motivated and clueful, can go out and find out about it online. That’s an amazing thing. It wasn’t the case ten to 15 years ago. People now are now much more empowered to fight back against stupid stuff, and to read about interesting stuff.
There is a common thread among Hutchinson, Sunstein, GrrlScientist and Goldacre. They are all highly educated and put their expertise into what they tell audiences. And they want the bullshit to stop. They are role models for what I am trying to do in understanding sports and science. They have earned the attention readers give them. I hope that I do too.
The Best Things I Read Last Week:
- The Case for Studying Sports Pacific Standard … The writer Sam Riches will have a regular column covering sociology and sports. I’m intrigued.
- Bowling & Growing HawkeyeSports.com … The University of Iowa football team takes advantage of the college football season to develop players.
- The science behind evolution of Andrew Luck Indianapolis Star … Andrew Luck did not become Andrew Luck by accident.
- Rog’s documentary, “The Southampton Way,” for NBC Sports is now available online. MenInBlazers.com … 41 minutes in-depth on how Southampton FC does talent assessment and development.
- Researchers Use Nanotechnology to Engineer ACL Replacements Northwestern University, McCormick News … Northwestern is home to some of the world’s finest bioengineers, and one of them works on materials that could dramatically improve ACL recovery.
- Dan Pfaff on competition-time coaching World Athletics Center … The competition-time coach has, ironically, little to do. The coach’s work is the time preparing the athlete in advance of competition.