Who has time to be a scientist?

(Reliable sources of information).

One of the problems with the scientific method is that all that data gathering and analyzing takes time. Much as many of us would like to be “scientists” on every subject, this is clearly impossible. But in a democracy, we are expected to vote on many different subjects which would ideally require us to be scientifically knowledgeable on them. Given how busy our lives are, how can we do this?

One answer is to establish reliable sources of information. These are places that have proven to use the scientific methods of collecting information and correcting errors.

The flip side of this is ruling out those sources that have proven to be unreliable sources of information. In particular, if a source had access to information showing their idea was incorrect, but ignored this information, they clearly are not being scientific, so we should not be relying on future things they tell being correct.

A very visible case in point would be the missing Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Both the US and UN inspections in Iraq publicly concluded that there were no weapons present or even any research programs being done. Similar results also came from other intelligence reports. Yet when a report came in relying on a single informer, this was used as proof. When further evidence proved this one source incorrect, faulty intelligence was blamed, not biased selection of results. Clearly, there is no scientific approach happening with this group of people. So reliance on their future claims would be foolish indeed.

Another way to rule out the most unreliable sources is to consider their self-interest. Of course, everyone is looking out for themselves to some extent or another, but we can easily find cases where an information source is never going to admit errors. Advertising and public relations firms are one clear example. These people are getting paid to promote a company or its products, so obviously they are not going to be putting effort into finding faults that need improvement. Similarly, politicians also use public relations principles when making announcements (especially during election year). They are primarily in the business of promoting themselves, not in getting accurate information out. So most of these statements can also be discounted as not having a large error-correction component.

Most of the major news sources, on the other hand, can usually be relied on to get the facts right. Their business relies on being accurate sources. If they make too many mistakes, consumers will go to a competitor for information. That they care about accuracy can be seen in their behavior when false information is identified. Virtually always a retraction is issued immediately. In the most famous cases, not only is the offending reporter punished, but there is also significant effort made to make sure the situation does not recur. Any news source which is reluctant to do this sort of correction, or changes the minimum amount to avoid criticism, is not a reliable as one which makes a serious effort.

Research scientists are also sometimes accused of being biased and unreliable by those who disagree with their results. But does this hold up? If we look at past scientists who have made false claims, such as Hwang Woo Suk’s false claims about stem cell research or Pons and Fleishman’s claims about cold fusion, what we see is that scientists who make these sort of mistakes are found out by other scientists and lose their jobs. So the science community as a whole is a relatively reliable source of information.

On the other hand, we are all human and make mistakes and have biases whether we are aware of them or not. How to compensate for these biases, both in yourself and others, will be dealt with next.