Complex Numbers

Misinformation

Today's somewhat more serious link is courtesy of Elisa the Bunny Stik . She's running a blog contest next month (this isn't a part of that) which you should totally enter if you blog, or if you're thinking about starting. It's found at "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+].

Denialism and misinformation are obstacles in both sci comm and ag comm  

Let's put aside for the moment now the completely unnecessary and annoying abbreviations at the end of that headline. Yes, I noticed. Yes, I care. But I think it communicates the information adequately, and if it doesn't, the article itself makes it clear.

What do science communication and agricultural communication have in common?

In the lede, at that.

A lot actually, as science and agriculture overlap in so many ways. Agriculture is a field where science and innovation meet tradition and passion.

Okay, look, I'm not completely ignorant of agriculture. But it's not the only occupation that mixes science with "tradition and passion."

Those of us in ag can learn and build from the challenges of science communication, which mirror our own struggles.

But I'm more familiar with "sci comm" as she calls it.

First thing that came to my mind when I read this far was: "you know, this is the perfect opportunity to blast the anti-GMO crowd. Let's see if she does that."

One of the biggest hurdles in any type of science communications — whether that be in the medical, climate, or agricultural fields — is denialism. Science denialism is the rejection of facts and scientific consensus in favor of controversial or radical ideas.

She's giving denial too much credit there, I think. It isn't "controversial or radical" to, for instance, insist that the Earth is flat, vaccines make your dick explode, or that anthropogenic climate change isn't happening. It's just ignorant.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it would be about the prevalence and damage misinformation can cause.

No, it would be about how there is no way we'll ever do the right thing as a society.

The general lack of knowledge and familiarity with modern agriculture along with pseudoscience is the root of many anti-agriculture ideologies: from anti-GMO to animal rights activist groups.

Ah, good. Good. There it is.

It’s definitely not a matter of intelligence. It can be very difficult to separate the facts from the fiction without much background knowledge or familiarity on the topics at hand.

On this, we can agree. As I've harped on several times here, intelligence is not the same thing as knowledge. A person can know a lot of trivia and spout it at a bar to win the prize, but all that means is they have a great memory. Which is part of, but by no means all of, "intelligence."

And there is a lot of information out there, even if we stick to good information. No one person can be an expert -- or even an apprentice -- at everything.

Science is more than just fun facts about how the world works. It’s a continuous structured process of discovery. It relies on observation, experimentation, and the testing of hypotheses against the evidence gathered.

That's as good a working definition of science as I've ever seen.

There is also a lot of money to be made off of fear and misinformation. “Organic” and “natural” branding is a $350 billion business, and by convincing people there is something wrong with modern agriculture or conventional food — livestock care and more — it quickly leads to greater profits for certain food corporations or more donations to vegan animal-rights groups.

I'm not going to come down against "organic," though I've long objected to the term as being confusing, as anything based on hydrocarbon chains is "organic." Some people want lab-created-pesticide-free foods; I get that. I have, however, railed on the use of "natural" in here before, and probably will again. As a label, "organic" actually has a specific meaning when applied to food. "Natural" does not.

However, I find it extraordinarily unlikely that eight billion of us can all be fed using "organic" techniques. Conventional agriculture just yields more food, and there's a finite supply of farmland.

Not all studies are created equal. Sometimes bad science occurs — and is even published. Whether an outdated method was used or too small of sample a size. In some cases, the conclusions drawn by the research team may not fit the data or may overstate the data. Confounding variables or using cell or animal models to draw definitive conclusions about humans can contribute to this as well.

I've alluded to this sort of thing before, too, especially the part about sample size. I'd also add that statistics can be massaged to a desired outcome, like the much-hyped studies that show that chocolate is good for you (funded by candy makers) and those that insist that alcohol is bad for you (okay, okay, those might actually have some merit, but I don't care).

That’s why it’s important to fully read the study and see if it makes sense.

Record scratch.

I've read scientific studies. Inevitably, I have to show them to my housemate, who's a scientist, to understand the lingo. Even there, if it's not her field (biology), she's often at a loss. Point being that even I don't have the necessary background to completely understand a scientific paper; how can someone who doesn't have a technical education hope to grok it? Also, "sense" doesn't always apply. There's nothing about quantum physics, for example, that makes any kind of everyday logical sense, and yet I'm told it's one of the most successful scientific theories ever developed, in terms of predicting the results of quantum experiments.

This is one reason I innately distrust "common sense."

I'll grant that agricultural science isn't nearly as complicated as quantum chromodynamics, but then, what is?

Poor reporting, misleading headlines, celebrities, and people trying to sell you something all contribute to the spread of misinformation. They may exaggerate the claims of a study or misinterpret it all together (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not). Media can spread bad science, even after it has been retracted and refuted.

As I've been saying. Sometimes I catch these and post them in here. If you've been following along, you've probably seen a few.

Unfortunately, this runs the risk of spreading bad science. People might remember the articles but not my snark. But ignoring them could be worse.

Many of the misconceptions we deal with in the agriculture space are connected to a societal disconnect from science. This disconnect can make science and scientists feel inaccessible to the general public. This reflects the same disconnect of farmers and other agriculturalists may feel. This disconnect breeds distrust in authority and expertship, not just in science, but in agriculture. However, too much skepticism can be as damaging as too much trust.

There was a lot of hype a while back about a pair of identical male twins. After an absolutely horrifying and cringe-inducing circumcision accident, the people whose job it is to make such a decision decided that they'd just turn the one twin into a girl. I'm doing this from memory, but you can check it out if you need to. Some scientist reported on it. It was widely reported that the "girl" twin was successfully socialized into liking frilly shit and Barbie dolls and whatnot. A whole lot of people jumped on this, pointing to it as "proof" that gender is entirely a social construct.

There was just one problem.

Well, lots of problems, really. The first was the vanishingly small sample size of one. But the major problem was that the scientist in question made shit up, exaggerating the altered twin's predisposition to "girly" things. In reality, both kids wanted to play with toy trucks and water pistols and other "boy" things.

Of course, by the time this came out, the damage had already been done and people were already screeching about how gender is all nurture, not nature. Lots of people remember the original study; few remember, or even found out, that it was more biased than a Russian election.

Okay, fine, you made me look it up. Here's   a better-researched summary. Goddammit, they both offed themselves. That's fucked up.

None of the above is intended as any kind of commentary on trans people. Just on biased researchers who do unethical shit to promote their pet hypotheses even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It happens, especially when someone has a particular wish that something were true and is willing to distort the evidence to "prove" their point. Science tends to weed these out eventually, but again, the general public often doesn't catch on soon enough. See also: anti-vaxxers, who owe most of their existence to a disgraced former scientist who claimed -- falsely -- that vaccines cause more problems than they fix. His study was debunked long ago, but the stench remains, like when you smoke a cigarette in an enclosed space.

Anyway. The "ag comm" article is much more detailed than the excerpts I've pasted here, of course, and it's absolutely worth reading -- though my inner cynic insists on reminding me that it won't have any real effect.