An evidence-based approach to decision making is the right prescription for the uncertainties we face in the next decade, says Joshua Howgego.
Over the last decade science has begun to impact our lives in a very real way. With an ever increasing grasp of how the world really works, scientists have begun to develop a bewildering array of ways to ‘make things better’, and these seem to be invading the consciousness of the general public more and more. Cosmetic companies have used advances in biology to smooth the wrinkles from our skin with ‘pentapeptide complexes’, new drugs like Tamiflu have trounced ‘flu epidemics and new technologies have been rapidly emerging to help fill our renewable energy needs.
With all these advancements it has seemed like science is moving so fast, that we haven’t had time to stop and question the new discoveries and the products they lead to. The tide of science was so broad and moving so fast that we were getting swamped.
Some unscrupulous individuals took the opportunity to make money out of our general confusion in the face of all this consumer science. If they could make their product sound scientific, companies could bamboozle people into believing the product was worthwhile.
However, in a post modernist kind of way, towards the end of the last decade we did begin to question some of the ‘science bits’ in cosmetic adverts, sneer at some of their more see-through claims and question the ethics things like nuclear power.
Let’s take the simple example of detoxing products; timely, since many of us might be putting ourselves through a bit of post Christmas abstinence at the moment. ‘Detox’ is actually a made up word, with no accepted definition. Thus we can get carried away with what companies promoting detox products decide they want us to think it means. Generally that is to periodically get rid of the toxins that build up in our bodies over time.
Can we trust detox products like this 'detoxing footbath'?
The only toxic things our bodies come into contact with (excepting serious external poisons, which detox kits certainly won’t help you with) are produced as part of our own metabolism, like urea for instance. We have a pretty efficient system for dealing with these already, it’s called the excretory system, and it removes toxins from our bodies constantly. They don’t build up.
It’s a silly example, but this is just the tip of a large and unpleasant iceberg. Luckily, some scientists have begun to fight the propagation of all this misinformation. Dr. Ben Goldacre published his well-known anti-quackery guide Bad Science in 2008, and charities like sense about science coordinate efforts to shed light on the pseudo-science that seems to surround us on a daily basis.
The government also seem to recognise the fact that the general population need to have some discernment when it comes to dealing with science in everyday life. In schools, for those students who don’t have a natural flair for equations and turn frigid at the thought of a statistical distribution, Labour have introduced the new Twenty First Century Science GCSE (run by the examination body OCR). This diverts the learning focus away from solely the fundamentals, and rather promotes engagement with how the applications of science will impact on the lives of the next generation. Importantly, it also encourages students to use evidence to evaluate new scientific claims as they come to light.
This is absolutely the right course of action. In order that science isn’t used as a smokescreen hiding truth from the uninitiated, we all need to learn how to evaluate scientific claims. This is about more than whether Loreal’s creams are worth paying for. There are complex issues of ethics and survival facing humankind in the next century and an evidence-based way of dealing with these is essential if we are to come out the other side happy and healthy.
Before we can all start engaging with this process though, we need the right tools, and these come in the shape of the published work of scientists in peer-reviewed journals. But despite the efforts of projects like the public library of science (PLoS) this material is mostly very expensive to access. Before we can move on properly, this will need to change.
