How do you encourage scientists to study the alternative topics though? In order to prove or disprove, or potentially find something very interesting? Instead of being biased towards working on the establishment's interests? (Or instead of defaulting to studying what their PI wants or enjoys talking about)
Kombucha for example. I like the taste and the fizz - that's why I drink it. Quite simply it is refreshing. It has a whole culture of "it's good for you" surrounding it though, much of it new-age woo woo, that I do not like so much. Very unfortunate. Little scientific research on the culture, either way. It is a very ripe area for study. A very complex bio culture. And many centuries old. Where's the hard research interest in it? I'd say most bio types don't even know what it is, let alone the public. I cultured it in the local diybio lab which had a steady stream of local biotech professionals (quite easy as a project), so I know first hand that the subject area is still very "underground". It is complex enough chemically and biologically that it could be an entire lifelong publication career for a research scientist.
Kimchi is another example, it has more publications, not as many publications as it has every day consumers though.
Why mention so many food examples.. because food is the simple bio material which 100% of us take daily, hopefully nutritional, and they're easy examples. Multi-vitamins - as recently dethroned - have a history of both traditional and alternative proponents - such as doctors claiming they take 5000 mg (!) of Vitamin C per day themselves.
This discussion group provides evidence that biologists may be as biased as the public in many regards. Synbio startup types who want to invent cowless meat rather than optimize a tomato for both nutrition and commercial viability (that's a reference to the previous synbio tomato project by George Church).
Resveratrol as just mentioned is a pretty controversial subject. Many in this discussion group and in local labs have denounced it as having value. Would it even be of any interest, if it wasn't found in a popular legalized drug with huge commercial revenue? (i.e. Wine.)
About the podcast linked below. Its good and the points are valid. However it could be much more beneficial to create a standard scientific response to the pseudo-science people. Rather than "just refuse to debate the pseudo-science" it could be better change the topic: rather than debating the subject, point the audience to the proper references. Basically only speak on the topic as: "RTFM, and here are the textbooks to read." This is why and how FAQs work. I've seen it work too many times to discount it's power. Groups will debate topics back and forth and often not change their minds, just as the podcast explains. Publish a FAQ however, and the conversation is changed: "RTFM, here's the FAQ." Debate ends and the level of discourse is raised. Many pseudo-science believers simply don't have the correct references, they're reading the wrong books and watching the wrong youtube channels. PLoS makes this much easier - find the easier to read articles and spread their links. The other part of the podcast addresses "reporters". Journalists are so biased or used to producing misinformation it is ridiculous. The only way around this too, is to insist in writing that the journalist include a link to the related scientific papers. The psychology of "myth stickiness" has been published at length by good studies recently. Myths are hard to debunk once published even if hard facts are presented. Misinformation is sticky. This explains part of why pseudo-science is so hard to eliminate and why it can be so frustrating.
Kombucha for example. I like the taste and the fizz - that's why I drink it. Quite simply it is refreshing. It has a whole culture of "it's good for you" surrounding it though, much of it new-age woo woo, that I do not like so much. Very unfortunate. Little scientific research on the culture, either way. It is a very ripe area for study. A very complex bio culture. And many centuries old. Where's the hard research interest in it? I'd say most bio types don't even know what it is, let alone the public. I cultured it in the local diybio lab which had a steady stream of local biotech professionals (quite easy as a project), so I know first hand that the subject area is still very "underground". It is complex enough chemically and biologically that it could be an entire lifelong publication career for a research scientist.
Kimchi is another example, it has more publications, not as many publications as it has every day consumers though.
Why mention so many food examples.. because food is the simple bio material which 100% of us take daily, hopefully nutritional, and they're easy examples. Multi-vitamins - as recently dethroned - have a history of both traditional and alternative proponents - such as doctors claiming they take 5000 mg (!) of Vitamin C per day themselves.
This discussion group provides evidence that biologists may be as biased as the public in many regards. Synbio startup types who want to invent cowless meat rather than optimize a tomato for both nutrition and commercial viability (that's a reference to the previous synbio tomato project by George Church).
Resveratrol as just mentioned is a pretty controversial subject. Many in this discussion group and in local labs have denounced it as having value. Would it even be of any interest, if it wasn't found in a popular legalized drug with huge commercial revenue? (i.e. Wine.)
About the podcast linked below. Its good and the points are valid. However it could be much more beneficial to create a standard scientific response to the pseudo-science people. Rather than "just refuse to debate the pseudo-science" it could be better change the topic: rather than debating the subject, point the audience to the proper references. Basically only speak on the topic as: "RTFM, and here are the textbooks to read." This is why and how FAQs work. I've seen it work too many times to discount it's power. Groups will debate topics back and forth and often not change their minds, just as the podcast explains. Publish a FAQ however, and the conversation is changed: "RTFM, here's the FAQ." Debate ends and the level of discourse is raised. Many pseudo-science believers simply don't have the correct references, they're reading the wrong books and watching the wrong youtube channels. PLoS makes this much easier - find the easier to read articles and spread their links. The other part of the podcast addresses "reporters". Journalists are so biased or used to producing misinformation it is ridiculous. The only way around this too, is to insist in writing that the journalist include a link to the related scientific papers. The psychology of "myth stickiness" has been published at length by good studies recently. Myths are hard to debunk once published even if hard facts are presented. Misinformation is sticky. This explains part of why pseudo-science is so hard to eliminate and why it can be so frustrating.
## Jonathan Cline ## jcline@ieee.org ## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223 ########################On 4/7/16 11:40 AM, Dennis Oleksyuk wrote:
To proponents of science based medicine. Try to stop yourself and just ignore people who are proactively pushing non-medicine, either directly or under pretext of being 'open minded'. Your time is better spent spreading scientific knowledge to people who are not active promoters of non-medicine. Once you convert someone to the scientific way of thinking they very rarely come back. You can count that as a solid win against ignorance.
Those who are pushing non-medicine usually have too much invested into the argument to give it up. They either make public claims, which makes it really hard to backtrack and don't look bad. Or their livelihood literally depends on it because that is how they make their income.
Also take a look at this article/podcast. It says the same thing but in much better way. I relisten and reread it time to time to remind myself to resist the urges to fight the anti-science claims.
On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 8:44 PM Jake <jakestew@mail.com> wrote:
Such a spirited discussion... But you know what is really controversial... gene drive systems for population knock down.--
Traditional medicine says it's too radical, and mainstream scientists say it's just too dangerous to not do nothing.Just eat your Kava kava and milk thistle extract and you'll be fine!
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