Can You Trust Science Too Much?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 30 лип 2024
- Science is a human-created process that is undergoing constant revision and it is the best tool we have for uncovering truth. It's not a bunch of facts, it's not an ideology. It's imperfect and influenced by bias, but it is also very good at decreasing the affects of bias.
Forcing science to stand up next to systems that use entirely different rules is super frustrating, and I have been very disheartened by how effective that has been for getting people to abandon expertise for some guy who has opinions.
But I am also frustrated by people who treat science like it's an ideology...who take whatever is the current consensus and attack people who want to add to it or challenge it as if they are anti-science or a political opponent.
The nice thing is that we do have lots of randomized controlled trials for several different vaccines so, like, let's definitely do that. But we also need to keep investigating anti-virals and treatments for sick people because, like, we're not out of the woods yet...
Sources:
A good general article to read if you want to know more:
theconversation.com/a-major-i...
Latest and most robust analysis shows ivermectin is not a good COVID Treatment: academic.oup.com/cid/advance-...
(this only looked at randomized controlled trials, which compare people in the same situation who got either a drug or a placebo and no one knew who got what.)
Observational Studies find Promising Results: www.sciencedirect.com/science...
(observational studies give people the experimental treatment to see how they do, but they don't test that against a placebo, just against the general background, which makes them much less reliable.)
Ivermectin Study Used Faulty Data: www.theguardian.com/science/2...
Big New Ivermectin Trial: www.principletrial.org/
----
Subscribe to our newsletter! nerdfighteria.com/nerdfighter...
And join the community at nerdfighteria.com
Help transcribe videos - nerdfighteria.info
Learn more about our project to help Partners in Health radically reduce maternal mortality in Sierra Leone: www.pih.org/hankandjohn
If you're able to donate $2,000 or more to this effort, please join our matching fund: pih.org/hankandjohnmatch
John's twitter - / johngreen
Hank's twitter - / hankgreen
Hank's tumblr - / edwardspoonhands
Book club: www.lifeslibrarybookclub.com/
When I met my neurologist, one of the first things he said to me was “the brain is complex and we don’t understand a lot about it” and that made me trust him even more.
I only trust doctors who are able to acknowledge this/srs /gen
One of my favorite quotes used in Civilization 5 comes up when you research Biology. "If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't."
"Oh I hate questions about the brain, ask me something easy like the beginning of the universe."
- Dr Karl Kruszelnicki 30/1/03 during an interview on Triple J Radio.
@@liampremo6798 entry pop
Better than my neurologist who, when I asked him questions and expressed a desire to research a little before choosing a treatment, asked sarcastically "Are you a neurologist?" Needless to say, I have a different neurologist now.
I mean, an allergist who presumably holds an MD (or other advanced degree) once said in all serious, "Sneezing isn't normal. I never sneeze."
But that allergist is right, they ARE science
Dude. What are you talking about? Sneezing isn’t normal.
Everyone who thinks sneezing is normal is actually trying to get you to mistrust science.
What's a sneeze? Is it that weird spasm I see some abnormal people do at the salad bar?
You sneeze? I thought that was an invention of the Marvel Film industry.
"Being wrong on cable news isn't illegal, it seems to be encouraged" that was savage, you should write two books about this topic.
Lmao
That's a remarkably beautifully specific suggestion.
:D
+
@@exeggcutertimur6091 it's an inside joke.
the thing about science being a process and not an ideology is the thing a loooooot of people misunderstand. like yeah there are gaps in our knowledge but the scientific method is the best tool we have to fill in those gaps 💫
Way too many people misunderstand it that way. I often hear people say something like, "Science doesn't have the answer to X."
It's almost like they forget that science is not a person or group of people claiming stuff.
I think the issue is when science is used to push a certain ideology, or at least if it seems like it does. From what I hear from my friends it’s less of a trust in science but more so a mistrust in the companies and organizations that are responsible for it.
@@omranhashim1028 treating covid symptoms is how to end pandemic but media hate that fact, masks only kick can down the road, WHO smear canceling holiday travels during early stage of pandemic while biden supporters did lunar parades with riots but they all blame in dining just like a cult one month later,
many so called health officials now hate Tamiflu protocol which requires to treat patients during early stages of condition because they want to sabotage clinical trials by wasting 2 weeks before doing anything to patient using ivermectin
There are still flaws in it that need to be accounted for, such as big companies financing studies and academia shooting down papers about some spicier topics. We can never know how much they push to skew the results one way or the other. But if there's lots of studies showing similar results, then yeah, it's just about the best method we have of knowing if something is true.
Yes nici. Nicely put.
"I'm a bit of a science guy"
*Hank Green the Science Meme*
Hank! Hank! Hank! Hank! Hank!
... so now this is running through my head to the tune of the "Bill Nye the Science Guy" Theme, so, thanks for that.
ok, but how come you are everywhere!?
This should be Hank's new Twitter bio
I'm imagining Hank's intro song and video...and the Humpy Hank showed up
Takin shots at AFC Wimbledon… its fair but it stings
So goes the life of a AFC Wimbledon fan
It's a good thing AFC Wimbledon are used to having lots of shots taken against them then
I continue to be amazed at Hanks ability to drill into the facts and make hard topics understandable and approachable...I give Hank Greens discussion on Science 5 stars
Reference humour is the lowest hanging fruit. But it tastes alright to me when mixed with genuine vanilla appreciation skills from within the petals of beautiful orchid talents :)
Please excuse my purple corny flowery tonguing scratching imitating* xD
*tonguing scratching imitating > writing on a computer keyboard < language writing surrogate *
You think? Ivermectin given in this study.. wasn’t given correctly. Everyone is upset about how the study was done (giving it on an empty stomach) yet he didn’t talk about that right?
He gave you zero context. He just said stuff he wants you to trust.
Do masks work?
"I fucking love science." "It's a process, not an ideology." - Hank Green (excerpted from the song)
You are the best, Hank!
My favourite teacher as a kid was my science teacher in middle school and he always said, "Science isn't like religion it's a process. Good science changes and good scientists are open to that change. The best question in studying science is 'Why?' and the best answer is 'I don't know... But let's try to find out!'"
I've held on to those lessons my whole life and any time I realize I'm being asked to believe in something outside the process I pull myself up short and start looking for the Why. Hasn't steered me wrong yet, though giving in to the ideas and conspiracies and emotions outside of that process have done a world of damage over the years.
Science is a process. It's ever adapting and changing and evolving as data becomes available. If you start treating it like canon, you're doing it wrong.
i will never stop respecting /good/ teachers, they make me so excited. im glad you had a teacher who stuck with you, its a wonderful thing
The biggest arguments/debates I have had with people especially over the last two years is explaining that yes, yes it *is* possible for scientist to have thought one thing and then changed their mind because they learned something else. That that is all of what science is. Believing something until you learn something else.
"Fit your beliefs to the latest data, not the data to your long-held beliefs" is a very important motto that far too many people disagree with.
and it's especially frustrating because everytime a scientist *does* change their mind, everyone suddenly thinks they were BRIBED or CORRUPTED
That burn on AFC Wimbledon was unnecessary, I loved it
I would argue that all burns on AFC Wimbledon are necessary.
'I'm a bit of a science guy' gave me the thrilling/terrifying thought that there's a whole generation who probably sees Hank the same way I saw Bill Nye.
* slowly raises hand on behalf of the generation *
😂😂😂
Check his TikTok followers
Hank! Hank! Hank! Hank! Hank Green the Science Guy!
Except unfortunately, I have not seen Bill Nye humping various landmarks across Missoula, Montana.
"Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility." - Carl Sagan
Nah bro - trust the science or I'll have you kicked off social media and deplatformed from payment processors
I mean, that's philosophical skepticism, not necessarily science, although the two can work in tandem but the latter is more complicated.
Also I was really disappointed in Sagan's understanding of this matter. I finally got around to reading A Demon Haunted World and Sagan makes a number of mistakes in his understanding of science and history.
For example, he champions Hippocrates as a man who practiced science in medicine but immediately after decries the "anti-scientific" thinking of medieval doctors who used blood letting as a cure. He doesn't seem to understand that those doctors were operating under the medical paradigm of the Four Humors which was developed by none other than Hippocrates. This ahistorical understanding of science and culture is rampant in the book and I believe it's one of reasons folks' understanding of science is so warped.
@@alexgaggio2957 I want to start by saying I have not read any of Sagan's work. Its possible in the context of what he wrote your point becomes clearer and so I could be out of line with this. However, your provided example does not undermine saying that Hippocrates practiced science in medicine while claiming medieval doctors as unscientific. While Hippocrates was wrong, that doesn't mean he did not apply what would eventually become scientific principles to his study of medicine. Medieval doctors using the paradigm of the Four Humors could be seen as accepting these concepts as a dogma rather than spending the time to critically examine what may have just been accepted as truth. Again, have not read the book so I could be completely wrong, but I can see how those two points could be made with a historical understanding of their contexts.
@@DoctorBobnarAwesome the problem is that's EXACTLY how science works. Following a paradigm until that paradigm becomes unworkable. Medieval doctors weren't any less "scientific" than Hippocrates, just their paradigm was wrong. It's inacurrate to assume people in the past were less logical, less capable of following evidence, and had less desire to practice skepticism, they just operated under a different paradigm than we have today about how the world works. The belief that these times were "dark and unscientific" comes not from actual history but from enlightenment thinkers trying to make themselves better by projecting their biases into the past. I'm assuming this is where Sagan gets his ideas since he doesn't cite any modern historian about this period but instead one from the 1700s.
Medieval doctors weren't any more dogmatic than 1800s who denied proper hygiene until it became undeniable or modern doctors. If you want an actual historical understanding of how science has operated and continues to operate read Kuhn not Sagan.
@@alexgaggio2957 I appreciate you taking the time to explain your point and provide further context, it helped to make your point clearer for me, so thanks for that. I certainly wouldn't argue that people weren't clever at any point in humanity's history, we consistently manage to do impressive things throughout time. I'd disagree that the labelling of the dark ages as such comes solely from enlightenment thinking. The limits in available sources to construct a picture of a specific period of time is a constant problem in history that makes creating anything approaching an objective view challenging. That coupled with the historiography of the historians discussing a period leads to wild differences in interpretations. In the specific context of the dark ages, that term was way before the enlightenment, we're talking the 14th century, from Petrarch if I'm not mistaken. Its meaning varied by time and historian and is now largely regarded as a misnomer, which I would personally agree with. I think in the end, not having read either Kuhn nor Sagan myself, I would suggest reading multiple authors both with varying view points and a basis in the topic itself to try and get a better understanding of any historical context of a given subject rather than elevating a single author as the monolithic voice of defining a historical subject or period. But again, I lack context so take what I say with a grain of salt.
the comedian Dara O'Briain summed it up really well in one of his shows
"It really gets to me when people say 'oh well science doesn't know everything'. Science KNOWS it doesn't know everything, otherwise it'd stop!"
I feel like a big part of how the medical system fails patients is that if their symptoms don't follow any known diagnosis, they might just not get treatment, instead of being studied to further increase knowledge
Or if we don't respond to treatment, we're just wrong.
@@knitterknerd treating covid symptoms is how to end pandemic but media hate that fact, masks only kick can down the road, WHO smear canceling holiday travels during early stage of pandemic while biden supporters did lunar parades with riots but they all blame in dining just like a cult one month later,
many so called health officials now hate Tamiflu protocol which requires to treat patients during early stages of condition because they want to sabotage clinical trials by wasting 2 weeks before doing anything to patient using ivermectin
@@ninianstorm6494 I have no idea of what you are talking (politically) I am just here for the first sentence. I don't think "treating covid symptoms is how to end pandemic" is true, and as the video says it is unscientific, you are just claiming something without evidence. Also in my opinion it seems illogical, therefore it needs harder evidence, as they say "outstanding claims need outstanding evidence".
In my opinion to end the pandemic you need to stop the spread, nothing else is important for that (I might be wrong but I am not claiming it is a fact as you do). Of course treatment is helpful in order to not let people die, but the definition of pandemic does not care about deadliness of a disease. You could say that treatment reduces spread, but that would need evidence too.
Doctors can't just experiment on patients they don't have the answers to. That is incredibly unethical.
@@Uhlbelk there is a difference between being studied and just experimented on.
As one of my favorite comedians, Dara O'Briain, once said: "Science knows it doesn't know everything, otherwise it would have stopped."
I love Dara...
+
That was literally the first thing that came into my mind at the start of this video. That is such a good routine
As a STEM student I took a college course about Indigenous scientists and the western lens that science has, Hank I would love to see a popular science educator like you to give a platform to Indigenous scientists so more people can learn about science being influenced by the backgrounds of the scientists
+
++
I honestly don’t know what the « indigenous » in « indigenous scientists » can bring to Science. I am not saying that scientists don’t have biases, but different scientists have different biases and the fact that they check each other out is one of the reason the scientific system works. Do you think that indigenous scientists have specific biases that are needed in the current scientific landscape? Do you have any examples?
@@EmmanuelPerez-os9pm mate, if you don't think science is heavily biased towards white patriarchal western materialistic views, I don't know what to say to you.
+
One thing this pandemic has unequivocally shown is that our science literacy in this country (USA) is abysmal. Science doesn't deal in absolutes, it isn't the 100% universal truth - it's the culmination of the best designed studies, best asked and answered questions, and a hell of a lot of work. Sometimes, we just haven't asked the right questions, or studied the right patients or circumstances. Hopefully we encourage the next generations to be critical thinkers and understand scientific method a little bit better than current generations...
You have a *belief* that they are the "best designed studies, and the best asked and answered questions". You want to believe this. The only way to *know* if they are indeed the best asked and answered questions is for you yourself to ask those questions, or go in search of other dissenting voices asking pertinent questions. You're relying on other people doing this for you, and you're demonstrating your faith in those people (whomever they may be), not the process itself. And Hank is defending the scientific establishment (which involves LOTS of money and conflicts of interests), and not the scientific process itself. Because the process doesn't need defending. Its results speak for itself.
@@frankdayton731 "You have a belief that they are the "best designed studies, and the best asked and answered questions". You want to believe this. The only way to know if they are indeed the best asked and answered questions is for you yourself to ask those questions, or go in search of other dissenting voices asking pertinent questions. "
Nope. The thing about science is that it's open and public in the vast majority of cases. You don't have to just take anyone's word for it on faith, and you certainly don't need to challenge that idea by looking for other people who say different things. You can go find the studies, look at the research, see the data and experimental setups yourself. You don't have to just "believe" that someone did it right and got the right answer, you can *see for yourself what they did and how they got that answer.* Peer review and reproduction are cornerstones of the scientific method.
@@IceMetalPunk you have got to be kidding me! You know how many incredibly flawed studies that's out there?? Peer reviewed doesn't mean that *every* researcher in that field has looked at something, or even mean that most have. Just that some influential people have okayed a paper. Many many papers get retracted after being peer reviewed. You're banking on ignorant people not actually knowing how the peer review process truly works. And those people therefore rely on faith in the system because they're ignorant. But not everyone is ignorant.
@@frankdayton731 "Peer review and reproduction" is what I said. Thank you for proving my point by mentioning that after peer review *and* reproduction, sometimes studies get retracted, because the scientific method works to weed them out.
@@IceMetalPunk suuure, the average person has the money to conduct a vaccine study with thousands of participants. They can just fit it in after they've finished doing their nuclear fission experiments in their basement.
No one is denying the value of scientific research and the necessary expertise and resources required to conduct it. I'm saying that there are inherent corrupting influences involved in the system. And the conclusions that are often derived from research is hardly "objective". I don't have to be a scientist in order to point this out, I just need to not be stupid. Or naive.
Note the distinct difference between "the existing body of scientifically supported knowledge" and "science." We frequently use 'science' as a shorthand, but these are two fundamentally different concepts, and when we don't differentiate between the two, we leave ourselves open to a lot of fallacious logic. Whether it leads you to trust scientifically supported knowledge too much or trust science itself too little (which I see much more often, especially in religious circles), it's dangerous to conflate the two. Be skeptical, think critically, and show kindness! Much love, Hank! 💜
Yeah, I went through that process while waiting for the video to buffer "Trust science too much? No. Trust 'the collection of things that we think we know due to science" too much? Yes. And then it's the first thing Hank says, lol
+
If people thought critically they would question conflicts of interests. The biggest lie being told is that most scientific research, let alone the researchers themselves, are "objective". It is anything but.
“Science is not a set of facts, it’s not an ideology, it is just a system that humans created that is really really good at uncovering truth.”
That’s exactly it. Science isn’t a thing, it’s a process. It can be well and it can be done poorly, but it’s still the best tool we have for studying the word around us.
You got it riiight up until you claimed that it’s the best tool for studying the world around us.
I hesitate to agree because I question whether or not science can be used to test that statement.
That's the more interesting question here. Can we trust the scientific method too much as a way of knowing? Broadly I would say no, but at the far-fringes of what is knowable one has to wonder if the precepts break down. Prime example is the seemingly fundamental mystery of the "hard problem" of consciousness, i.e. how can awareness arise from presumably unaware constituent parts? (This of course doesn't mean that any of the existing dualistic "explanations" are at all convincing.) These may be things which are fundamentally unknowable, but even if that is the case, they are in some sense true/real.
@@Tyler-Hoskins why question? Test and see. That is the beauty of science anyone can do it. And if you happen to be right someone half way across the globe can test it and get the same results. And if you are wrong the same results will show.
Stop asking what if and just try it.
@@Bob-jn8jt how do you use the scientific method to test whether or not science is reliable? Do you see the conundrum?
@@Tyler-Hoskins That is the beauty of the scientific process. We humans understand that we are not perfect and that our senses are not perfect so we need to devise methods that can verify information independently from ourselves. That is why repeatability is so important as a tool in the scientific process. But that’s just one important factor. Many scientists know that the scientific process is not perfect that is why we have to keep researching testing and questioning if the methods we have are accurate.
There is currently a repeatability crisis happening in the scientific community mainly in the fields of psychology, medicine and social sciences. It has exposed that scientific methods used in the past can not be repeated. Therefor old studies and assumptions/truths would need to be re checked and tested.
And the only reason why this crisis is happening is because of one of the tools of the scientific method which is repeatability/reproducibility. In short the scientific method is pretty good at identifying its own wrongs and correcting them. The scientific method is not a paradoxical. It can easily be used to check it self and correct its self.
I love that the hankschannel video yesterday was you working out your frustration so that you could make a calm, cool, collected video today instead of being a giant squid of anger.
🐙🐙🐙
It's probably a bit concerning that many people regard "being into science" as a personality trait. In an ideal world we would all be "into science," in the sense that that's what you should get most of your facts from (or at least the facts that matter), as opposed to mass-hysterical conspiracies. Or, god forbid, Facebook. It shouldn't be a trait.
Strong agree. It should be expected. That being said, I am proud to have it as a personal trait because I believe that individuals setting the example is the only way we can move towards the ideal scientifically literate world you’ve described.
I think that's what you get when "science" is a class in school you have to pass instead of a way of life.
@@AK-jt9gx i get what you're trying to say, but you don't bring about change by reinforcing the status quo. We want to normalize science, yes, but maybe avoid embracing it as a "quirk" or "trait", so to speak. People shouldn't get the impression that it has anything to do with personality.
@@goji5887 we are in total agreement, I think I just worded my point poorly. I certainly don’t mean acting like me or anyone else is *special* for being scientifically literate, just that we can all make a point to embrace scientific discussions when appropriate and therefore normalize it. 🙂
@@afroceltduck good point, but is it, though? I think you mean physics. A high school class on the basics of science might not be a bad idea, who knows. And yeah, it would probably help if schools do make sure the students understand that it's not just a "topic of potential personal interest" in the same way as something like biology or music class is.
As a very spiritual person, I am frequently very frustrated with people (religious or not) who consider spirituality to be necessarily incompatible with science. There are lots of ways to understand things. They have different uses in different contexts. Science is very useful for observational and predictive interactions with the world! Spirituality is very useful for managing the experience of being human and dealing with randomness and uncertainty. And I can understand the world in multiple ways at the same time! The sun can be a deity and it can be a giant ball of gas and it can be a light source. Ideas are better than ideology.
Ah yes the particle, wave, diety triality... I'm a big fan too! Multiple truths possible simultaneously, appropriate by context. Love it so much.
The problem is that spiritual beliefs almost always make claims about the world external to one's own perceptions. Claims that had no basis outside one's own beliefs/subjective experience.
"Science is not a set of facts, it's not an ideology, it is just a system that humans created that is really, really good at uncovering truth" - that's a great definition, Hank.
Knowledge is power but, almost more importantly, critical thinking is power!!! I think we too often forget that.
+
When I say moderna had 7 vaccine prospects and all of them failed to pass trials, people tell me to stop thinking critically, and this vaccine is the one out of 8 that they got right somehow.
@@newvocabulary Ah, the process of trial and error that allowed a valuable, trustworthy vaccine to be made. Science is great, critical thinking is trusting when science does something right.
@@YUHFoxGaming but.. it never passed trials.... wtf are you talking about? You understand that you're in the trial, right?
Science also actively tries to disproof itself time after time. It’s the main reason not only the results, but the methods are published and specified, so we can go on and try them again again, to find it’s veracity or it’s errors. I also think that the sponsors of the study should be public as well, like right at the beginning, under the names of the researchers.
I think that being to trustful of science, or it’s methods, it’s more of an epistemological dilemma than a social one, tho.
I think that a lot of alternative systems are also more effective at 'appealing to emotions' because they feel more customized/localized to individual situations than the large standardized allopathic science systems. The standardization part of science may be a double edged sword.
Hamburger furby (hamburgy?) is staring directly into my soul every time Hank moves to the right
Furburger
why …… why did you point this out ….. i was living perfectly fine not paying attention to the background ……
Furbies are a blight on humanity that must be destroyed.
LMFAO I KNEW HE HAD IT THANKS TO TIKTOK BUT I DIDN'T NOTICE
@@chloeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee yeah a friend knows I really don't like the furbys (have multiple variations of the word muted on twitter) and it's slightly less bad blurred out? but I'm just gonna look at comments instead of watch like I normally would... I feel bad for those who get badly triggered by it
“i’m a bit of a science guy” is the understatement of the year
+
Hank missed a mark. He should have said "... science nerd..."
HANK HANK HANK HANK Hank Green the Science Guy
The "I'm sorry" at 1:30 😂😂😂
i just got a job as a middle school science teacher and i can’t wait to tell my classes that we don’t know most things! :D
This really should be the first thing you say when you step into class with your students.
Just as soon as you step in / the class settles you stand there a minute and announce calmly and with authority : "We don't know most things"
Good luck with that job!
If I remember correctly, middle school was about the time I began to suspect adults didn't know ANYthing.
Good for you! As a middle school English and History teacher for 5 years, I have always told my kids that I will teach you what I know, but that I don’t know everything. We are a community of scholars who learn from each other. I’m there to keep the order, focus our lessons, but we are a cohort of teachers and learners.
"I'm going to be teaching you science this year. Fun fact: if we knew everything, there'd be no science left to do, so we definitely don't know everything! Isn't that exciting? Let's learn how we figure out more things!"
Also, I genuinely thank you for your career. Here's hoping the system doesn't burn you out and turn you into a teacher who just grades from a gradebook and teaches the curriculum without instilling a sense of respect for the scientific method in your students!
the big problem here is how people are dying and family members are searching for anything that can maybe possibly somehow make them stop dying. These emotions get in the way of the truth and understanding we need to have about this virus.
We don't need to have shit. Everyone dies. Get over it. This pandemic has shown me exactly what kind of cowards we are, and it's pathetic. We are not a species worth saving.
@@newvocabulary Right? anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers are cowards. I just hope that the people with common sense can vaccinate enough to protect those who are too stubborn.
@@YUHFoxGaming I'm not taking a mRNA vaccine on principle. I'm not afraid of it, I'm just not taking it is all HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
@@newvocabulary and you think that makes you superior than anti-vaxxers? At least they’re not getting it because they believe in something
@@newvocabulary how misanthropic of you congratulations
I love it when a hankschannel rant turns into a vlogbrothers video!
It's all a part of the process...
Just a very pedantic point, PRINCILE isn't going on in "England" its a UK wide trial. My Welsh granda is currently a participant.
England, Britain, and the UK. When will Americans ever learn?
Best wishes to your granda!
@@Xatzimi , oyyyy, sorry, we’re trying (in multiple senses of the word)…
hell yeah go granda!!
You just said the same thing 3 times...
I think I'll explain science like a language, I can't "trust" a language, I can use language as a tool to get information. If I am methodical and careful, I can get good information. If I am not those first two things, I could get bad information.
It's a tool that is used, not an idealogy.
Thanks Hank!
EDIT: I made a video about how Among Us helps with Science Literacy ua-cam.com/video/s4sMjwfpmCg/v-deo.html as a follow up to this idea.
As a linguistics nerd with a BS I love this and fully agree with the analogy!!!
@@Drowninginantimatter thank you for sharing :). I'm glad it works for you!
I mean, yes, this is why science has its own languages :) Formal logic and math :)
I think my usage of the word "vibe" is about to increase by like 300%
the sociologist in me has so much to say on this topic, and this video is amazing. Also random thing, data is bits of information that are objectively true, facts are selected data points used to tell a specific story.
Huh. Interesting. I never thought of it like that! Although, I'm not sure I fully agree. You can select data points to tell stories which aren't factual at all, for instance.
@@IceMetalPunk Thats the misconception, that facts are always objectively true. But the roots of both words mean that data is objectively a completely unbiased truth where as facts are the story that we use those truths to tell. So this is more of a linguistic statement rather than how people use the word. But still its an interesting way to frame it. Also love your point btw that's why I was thrilled to learn in my masters about the difference between those two words.
@@maluse227 On the other hand, language is descriptivist, not prescriptivist, so if most people assume the word "fact" implies an objective truth, then it does :) Otherwise communication breaks down and language becomes useless.
@@IceMetalPunk I would whole heartedly agree and have found myself on your side for many discussions. However since these two words are very close in meaning for a lot of people showing people where these words comes from does more to get them to think about not only how they use words but how they use/engage wiith data . And while I am not one of those academics who believe that objective truth is unknowable, getting people comfortable with the notion that all facts are inherently narrative based regardless of truth (yet still built upon truth) would probably do a lot of good for the general world.
@@maluse227 I think it does more harm than good, actually. People already conflate the various definitions of things like "faith" and "theory" to erode both understanding and trust in the scientific method. Going around saying "well, technically, facts are just a story someone is telling you, and they don't have to be necessarily true" is just adding more fuel to that common conflationary arsenal against scientific literacy.
Hearing from Hank that even he, Mr. Science, doesn’t know all too much about the world in the grand scheme of things is surprising comforting and inspiring
The thing about science is that it understands it will be wrong sometimes and has systems to re-write itself when it occurs
What’s frustrating is when it does and people shout about how “wrong and deceptive and flip floppy” science is by misunderstanding how the process works. Ugh, I feel like science literacy is extremely lacking for as technologically dependent we’ve become.
Even more than that, science is *designed* to find when an idea is wrong and weed it out. Basically the entire scientific method is "here's one way I could be wrong about this, and here's how we're going to see if that's happened; here's another way I could be wrong about this, and here's how we're going to see if *that* has happened" etc.
Yes, yes, so yes. It's like jokes they tell about how wine is good or bad for you, coffee is good or bad for you, just wait and the advice changes. But it changes because we keep doing studies, different ways of looking at the same substance, and figuring out ESPECIALLY in medicine, that one size fits all is not a Thing.
With those particular kinds of studies though(wine and chocolate) corporate sponsors can severely taint the scientific process because they have financial incentive to produce a certain result. So yes, good science can lead to flip flopping in the accepted truth, but with the specific examples you gave, bad science is also at fault.
@@cubeofcheese5574 that goes beyond corporate sponsors. Always follow the money.
In Tim Minchin's 9 minute beat poem called Storm, he describes it thusly:
"Science adjusts its views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved."
This is not true when you look at the actual history of science
I remember when I learned 95+% of microbes aren't culturable in labs, and it kind of blew my mind. Its definitely hard to remember sometimes just how much we don't know.
Haha was about to comment about the retracted paper and then you mentioned it!
We should also acknowledge that there is a lot about the system of science that is left to be desired. Publish or perish and major constraints on funding based on whatever "hot topics" there are have led to not always the best practices occurring and many questions going un-studied or studied poorly. The constraints that science has to identify truth in the ideal sense are not consistently followed in a practical way. There is a major crisis of replication particularly in the life/ medical sciences. Much needs to change about the system of science in order for science to live up to its ideals.
The edge of knowledge is fuzzy, truth feels undefined. (Thoughts from a Cancer Sciences PhD Candidate)
I will say this every time I get the chance: We teach "science" as the stuff scientist have learned by using the scientific method while glossing over the philosophical debate between rationalism and empiricism and how the scientific method reconciles the two. Not understanding this limits the understanding of inquiries that fall within the purview of the scientific method as well as inquiries that don't.
At the end of the day, we have to remember that science is as flawed as the people doing the science. Everyone has biases and flaws.
It’s also important to remember that knowing the outcomes of experiments and such is itself placing your trust in someone. It is a form of faith. Now I think science has shown itself to be worthy of my faith, but it is definitely worth checking on things for myself and seeing if some human fallibility is at play.
Kind of, but also... not really. Yes, science is flawed because the people doing it are flawed. But that's the *entire point* of the scientific method: admitting there will be flaws and systematically weeding them out.
Scientist: "I have an idea, but it could just be something I want to believe."
Science: "Do an experiment!"
Scientist: "I did the experiment, but maybe I'm just interpreting the results the way I want to?"
Science: "Here are statistical analytics tools!"
Scientist: "Okay, looks good, but maybe I made a mistake?"
Science: "Peer review to check your work!"
Scientist: "Cool, but what if we're all making an assumption that means we missed something?"
Science: "Reproduction!"
Believing in science isn't having faith that some people did an experiment right. It's trusting that the entire scientific method, the whole process from start to finish, has weeded out any ways in which the humans may have done it wrong.
These are some of the best points to counter the "you believe in science, so your religion is science" people.
For me it's always been Dara O'Brian's line "Homeopaths get on my nerves with the whole "well science doesn't know everything" Well science knows it doesn't know everything, otherwise it'd stop. Just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy-tale most appeals to you"
Complex conversations like this are one of the many reasons that I keep loving this channel. Thanks for this, Hank.
THANK YOU! You have so eloquently and energetically explained something I've been attempting to convey by yelling at my screen in fits and starts.
I loved that last sentence. It put in words what I have been thinking for a long time but couldn’t formulate. - science isn’t a facts or an ideology but a human-made system that is good at finding truth!
I appreciate Hank bringing up the fact that doctors still sometimes claim there's no disease/condition if they have no idea what's wrong.
That has been happening to me for 6+ years now in regards to my chronic pain.
There's also a gendered element to it because they can get away with saying that a woman or afab person is just being too dramatic or emotional.
“I’m bit of a science guy” legend has it that if you say that three times into a mirror, Bill Nye will materialize right behind you.
Just today I had a nurse try to tell me that a set of objective facts I've documented about my own body didn't happen because she didn't know why they would )^:
I'm glad that you mentioned that this type of thinking is occuring in the medical field - it's hurting patients with rare diseases!
Thankfully I found a doctor who was able to admit that researchers don't know everything and that there are possibilities beyond the current body of research, especially in the relatively new field of neurology. I met with a doctor early on in my illness journey who claimed that there was no possible way to have a neurological condition when there was no physiological evidence of one on imaging. She told me that my (clearly neurological) symptoms were purely psychological based upon the fact that I have (relatively mild and manageable) depression. 🤦🏻♀️
I was later diagnosed with a rare neurological condition... that doesn't show up on imaging. Go figure. 😂
That AFC Wimbledon burn!
That was a good one!
Are you saying "it's a process, not an ideology?" F***ing love it.
HANK! I’m just reading A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor (I’m like 75% done) and OMG your mind ASTONISHES me!!!!! I am impressed. Congrats on writing such an amazing book
I love this! If someone uses an alternative treatment for something and believes it works, that doesn't automatically make them wrong/mean it's only a placebo. It just means that it's something there should be studies on. I think a big thing that needs scientific attention is traditional Eastern medicine. For a long time, it was automatically assumed that it was completely wrong and useless, but now there's a lot of scientific data on meditation being incredibly helpful for various conditions.
(For context I’m a biologist) it drives me crazy when I talk to the general public about something and I say that we don’t really know, that we don’t have good data, etc and they take that to mean that science in general is guesswork or that I don’t know what I’m talking about in general. It makes me feel like I have to sound sure when I’m not in order for people to trust me when the opposite should be true; you know you can probably trust me because I’m telling you I don’t know.
To quote a lyric I really like:
It's a process, not and ideology, and I fucking love science.
For those of you who immediately wanted to watch the song, here you go :)
Clean version: ua-cam.com/video/IC0m31P_qyk/v-deo.html&ab_channel=vlogbrothers
Uncensored version: ua-cam.com/video/RECuQaaGGfA/v-deo.html&ab_channel=hankschannel
Could you do an explainer on line 3 and how it’s construction will affect the environment?
+
+
I can appreciate touching base with this idea.
It feels like a lot of modern society tries to view science as the end all be all without room for questions. It makes for a bit of a nasty combination when accounting for some of the minor issues like people intentionally being wrong, being right but just being louder about it, and not wanting to encourage people to re-try things that we already consider right.
All that being put in a bit more of a childish tone to the reality that they represent, obviously.
Another weekly existential crisis sponsored by the one and only Hank Green.
Obsessed with the use of the word vibe here
Yes, I think the word "vibe" is extremely important, and also that we need to understand that it's kinda a stand in for bias.
@@vlogbrothers yeah I've noticed that I use the word vibe when I am trying to express that my thoughts have no concrete basis like "she has great vibes" is not "she demonstrated kindness x y z" or follows x y z experts fashion advice she just appeals to my biases
@@vlogbrothers That was an amazingly important line to hide down in the replies to comments
couldn't remember why recognized ivermectin until you said "horse dewormer" and I was like, oh the stuff my dog takes!
Hank’s and John’s voices and inflections have always sounded distinctly different to me but when he said, “In fact, it appears to be encouraged,” he sounded so much like John. 😂
oh god Hank please move the roast beef Furby....he's staring at all of us....
Me: *reads title*
Also me: This is gonna be interesting :D
"Being wrong on cable news is not illegal; in fact, it appears to be encouraged."
You have never sounded more like John than you did in that moment.
I thought the same thing!! Like the voice intonation and everything was very John like haha
These guys are the most creative people dude they haven't run out of video ideas since UA-cam started🔥😝
1. Beefby staring into my soul this entire video..... cursed
2. When you said “in fact, it appears to be encouraged” I had a whole moment bc of how much that reminded me of John in terms of delivery and mannerisms, and ah yes, you are indeed brothers.
This video deserves a medal, but until that day (the day where I personally select and hand out medals) - until that day; you may have a thumb.
What a coincidence! I was just watching Jubilee's video - "Flat earthers Vs Scientists: Can you believe Science? "
That was the perfect amount of “Much”. Thank you , Hank!
"vibing with reality" is my new favourite phrase
Science might be wrong sometimes, but that doesn't mean that anyone else knows more than the experts.
wow, VERY well said
It doesn’t mean the experts are smarter either
@@Rollacoastertycoon Depends on what you mean by smart. If you are going for smart as in IQ it's a slight chance that you are right. If you are talking about smart as in who knows more about epidemiology and viruses, you are definitely wrong.
@@isetor correct
"Vibing with reality" is a phrase that just blew me away, and then the immediate AFC Wimbledon burn killed me 💀
+
My favorite Vlog Brothers video yet! At least according to my current data set. I haven't seen all of them, so more research is needed.
Science is also extremely expensive, and often paid for by corporations with vested interests in the outcome. Just another thing to keep in mind, along with the amazing points made in this video.
Scientific institutions made a mistake early on when they dismissed the medicinal practices of older cultures. Those cultures may not have had good explanations for their practices, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have any merit at all necessarily.
My boss (who calls himself a covid-19 vaccine skeptic) said he got some horse Ivermectim in the mail and wondering aloud how he was going to go about administering to himself. I just sat there biting my tongue thinking "you could walk across the street to Rite Aid, get the JnJ shot right now, AND NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT OD-ING ON HORSE MEDICATION!!!"
Also, as a scientist: one article claiming a thing, is not enough evidence for policy. If it is repeated or a slight deviation on something done before, now were talking
i appreciate the accurate hank-like use of "like" in the description.
also!! this is something i've been thinking about, in a way, lately. mostly concerning things like the covid vaccine bc most of my family is pretty adamantly against getting it. my mom has good reason, she is someone who almost always has sucky reactions to the flu shot so i get why she personally doesn't want it. but the rest of my fam (one of whom works in healthcare) is like "it was rushed" "5G man" and the like... but as someone who thinks science is pretty cool and is usually right about these kinds of things in recent years (but not always, as science never stops growing and changing) i just can't understand why everyone chooses to ignore the science.
Minor quibble: It sounds like you're claiming that we all can trust science too much, but you are also quick to clarify that the thing people are trusting too much and are calling science is not actually science but a series of conclusions that science has led us to believe.
I don't want to misrepresent myself here. Science is one method of discovering information about the world, and other methods are viable (e.g., Philosophy, Mathematics), so it is easily possible to ask too much of science. But trusting the method and trusting the facts derived by the method are two different things!
Actually real scientists would rather be proven wrong - it is far more interesting because then is the time you found new stuff out.
I suggest any of Richard Feinman's books or lectures for a more elaborate and funny explanation about this.
As someone whose very existence as a person is currently heavily medicalized in every major influential nation in the world, classified as a mental illness, and most doctors who meet me take it as a total presupposition that me being a person at all is a condition that should be "treated" such that I cease to exist, I love how wrong I was based on the title about the direction you took this video. Thank you for understanding science better than any practicing doctor I've met.
This is an incredibly important video but I'm mostly just here for the shot at AFC Wimbledon because it was such a brotherly thing to do, I loved it :D
I don't know how much I can trust you, given the monstrosity on the bookshelf.
On the same note, we need to not treat honest, healthy skepticism as blasphemy.
YES, YES, YES. 100%
So much good critique of the way we treat science here.
Two things to add:
1) Science is really good at uncovering truth, and we built it for that purpose, but that is why academic integrity matters so much. All it takes is one scientist of poor integrity, the whole conversation is tarnished. (Example: Dr. Andrew Wakefield as his influence on the anti-vaxx movement)
2) The fact that we don’t know a LOT, is, I think, a reason for doctors to practice good empathy. There are a lot of patients in the world who more likely to be misdiagnosed or improperly treated because they belong to a minority that wasn’t included in the sample size within the research that informs our modern-day understanding. (See: underdiagnosis of ADHD and ASD in women, poorer medical care for African Americans, etc)
Science doesn’t exist outside the context of history, and history is so much more recent than we think. Look at research around mental health; that data, comparative to almost every other field of medicine, is so, so, freaking new.
I think certain people groups are disillusioned with science and medicine, and we tend to ridicule them as “wilfully ignorant” or “non-compliant”. But they are not disillusioned without reason, and scientists MUST take the responsibility of their job seriously; we must have empathy for those that our progress is too slow to help, because their quality of life cannot wait for the technology of the next decade. And we must guard our integrity tightly, precisely because we try to reveal what is true - if a wise man tells you a lie, your faith in wisdom will be tainted. In the field of science and medicine, that mistrust is so, so dangerous.
Lots of great points here. But science involves empirical methods of investigation and there are legitimate questions (like "what is a morally good life?" "what is the nature of causation?" and so on - the questions of philosophy) that require an 'alternative' approaches to science because they cannot be settled with only empirical tests. However, it is wrong to say that people working on those questions "just claim stuff" or that they aren't methodical, or they don't produce robust, respectable theories. I know that those kinds of investigations weren't the target of this video, but some of the claims made in this video sound too general because of what I've said above. I do agree with the spirit of what you're saying though!
I feel like people who at least have too much faith in science are far better than people who have too much faith in, say, the press or ridiculous conspiracy theories. Not to say that I'm encouraging it. But I do feel like I'd rather live in a world where people have too much faith in science rather than conspiracy theories and psychic readings.
One of the most humbling things is to realize that humanity's current understanding of things will appear just as outdated to people in the year 2100 as the accepted theories of 1900 are to us.
Hank, you slowed down a bit for this one and I LOVED IT! Sometimes you talk way too fast for my brain. Thank you for this one.
The essay "The Relativity of Wrong" by Isaac Asimov examines the topic of science being wrong as to say in incomplete.
It's such a great read and if your not in the mode for reading it yourself you can the audiobook here on YT
It's scary how on point he was about the rise of anti-intellectualism too.
I was just re-reading that last night!
@@RainaRamsay I just read it again too. I really like how he reverse the readers expectations, when showing that we are also wrong if assuming our planet is a perfect sphere, when it's actually more pear shaped, even if only ever so slightly - thus underlining the point that even if we are wrong we are relatively less wrong than our predecessors.
Good Science is not knowing the Answer.
Good Science is asking the Question.
"Trust the Science" lead to so much self imposed misery and death. If only humanity didn't have the collective attention span of a goldfish they'd be able to connect the dots of what's happening.
"It's a process, not an ideology" - Hank Green, 2014
Wow a Marble League event and a Vlogbrothers video pretty much back to back is the dream. Watching on my lunch break 😋
Seems like a big difference between "is not an effective treatment" and "may not be an effective treatment". The first sounds like a statement of fact, when the way you are using it sounds like it's intended to be a statement of the absence of facts.
+
You may be correct, but there are two problems. First, most audiences can't tell the difference between those two phrases, and the news will invariably conflate them anyway when reporting on it. Second, if one were to be properly specific and say "is not an effective treatment given the current information from existing studies and our current understanding of the processes involved" the majority of the audience will glass over and make flailing motions.
Being accurate and precise in communication are (seemingly) inherently at odds with our anti-intellectual society and sound-bite-driven profit-motive entertainment news system as well as engagement-based advertising "social" media platforms.