The Problem With Science Communication
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
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Huge thanks to Carlo Rovelli: t.co/FF5ohRQB8R
And Geraint Lewis: www.geraintfle...
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Images and references:
Holographic wormhole, via Nature - ve42.co/Hologr...
‘Did physicists create a wormhole in a quantum computer?’ by Davide Castelvecchi, via Nature - ve42.co/Nature...
Traversable Holographic Wormhole by Sarag Wells, via Vice - ve42.co/ViceWo...
‘Quantum teleportation opens a ‘wormhole in space-time’’ by Martijn Boerkamp, via Physics World - ve42.co/PWTele...
‘Physicists Create a Holographic Wormhole’ by Natalie Wolchover, via Quanta - ve42.co/Quanta...
‘the Smallest, Crummiest Wormhole You Can Imagine’, via The New York Times - ve42.co/NYTWor...
‘How Physicists Created a Holographic, via Quanta - ve42.co/Quanta...
Quantum computer imagery, via Quantumai - ve42.co/Quantumai
‘Nuclear fusion breakthrough’, via Sky News - ve42.co/SkyWor...
‘NASA scientist explains why images from new telescope astounded him’, via CNN on UA-cam - ve42.co/CNNWor...
‘Neutrino Faster Than Speed of Light’, via Associated Press - ve42.co/APWorm...
‘Michio Kaku on Quantum Computing’, via PowerfulJRE - ve42.co/JRE
AskScience AMA Series, via r/askscience on Reddit - ve42.co/Climat...
‘Professor Andrei Linde celebrates physics breakthrough’, via Stanford - ve42.co/Andrei...
‘Gravitational waves turn to dust’ by Ian Sample, via The Guardian - ve42.co/Waves2...
‘The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor’, Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, Young-Wan Kwon, 2023, via arXiv - ve42.co/Superc...
‘What's the buzz about LK-99?’, via Global News - ve42.co/Global...
Meissner effect, via @andrewmccalip on Twitter - ve42.co/Meissner
‘Will LK99 Superconductor CHANGE THE WORLD?’, via Breaking Points on UA-cam - ve42.co/Breaki...
‘Superconductor Breakthroughs’, via WSJ - ve42.co/WSJSup...
LK99 claims forum post, via Spacebattles - ve42.co/KL99Forum
Copper graph, via Handbook of Electromagnetic Materials - ve42.co/Copper...
LK-99 Superconductor showing levitation - ve42.co/Levita...
‘Unreliable social science research’ by Cathleen O’Grady, via Science - ve42.co/Social...
Tiny Neutrinos article by Dennis Overbye, via The NYT - ve42.co/NYTNeu...
‘The Crisis in Cosmology’ by Astrophysics in Process, via Medium - ve42.co/CosmoC...
‘Some scientists speak of a “crisis in cosmology.”’ by Adam Frank, via Big Think - ve42.co/BigThi...
‘Why is there a 'crisis' in cosmology?’ by Paul Sutter, via Space - ve42.co/SpaceC...
‘Breakthrough in nuclear fusion, via PBS NewsHour on UA-cam - ve42.co/PBSBre...
DOE National Lab press conference, via U.S. Department of Energy on UA-cam - ve42.co/DOEPress
‘Nuclear fusion breakthrough’ by Catherine Clifford, via CNBC - ve42.co/CNBCFu...
‘US officials announce nuclear fusion breakthrough’, via CNN - ve42.co/CNNFusion
Nuclear fusion article, via CNN - ve42.co/CNNNuc...
Climate catastrophe article by Robin McKie, via The Guardian - ve42.co/Guardi...
Nuclear fusion article by Nicola Davis, via The Guardian - ve42.co/Guardi...
Fusion breakthrough article, via Imperial College London - ve42.co/Imperi...
Wednesday briefing by Archive Bland, via The Guardian - ve42.co/Guardi...
Sky Sport News Bulletin, via Sky Sport NZ on UA-cam - ve42.co/SkyBul...
Alien Probe Ignored Us article by Ed Maz - ve42.co/AlienP...
Attempts to scan the mysterious Oumuamua 'comet' article by Shivali Best, via MailOnline - ve42.co/Oumuamua
‘Have Aliens Found Us?’ by Isaac Chotiner - ve42.co/NYTAliens
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Written by Derek Muller
Edited by Peter Nelson
Filmed by Derek Muller
Produced by Derek Muller and Han Evans
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images and Storyblocks
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I do want to revisit one of the examples that's mentioned in the video: I actually have massive respect for the faster than light neutrinos people. They put their paper out there not with a press release saying they'd found faster than light neutrinos, but with an appeal to the community. In the material surrounding the paper, they said that they'd been looking for an error for months and hadn't yet found one, so they were publishing in an effort to get help from the community to find their mistake. In the conclusion to their paper, they specifically said that they refused to speculate about the implications because they thought the result was a mistake. Now, this is largely consistent with your broader point that science reporting and science communication has a problem with overhyping things: If even a paper released with multiple statements from the researchers that it's probably wrong and that the only reason they're publishing is to make sure they're in a position to get as much help as possible from the community gets reported as proof that physics as we know it is wrong, and then a few months later when the researchers do find their mistake the correction doesn't get the attention it needs, well, that's a problem.
But I do want to give all credit to those researchers, because they did the right thing. They were fully transparent. They were using the scientific publication system to try to have a conversation to solve a problem, which is one of the things that it's supposed to do.
Appreciate the clarification -- as a mathematician myself I had no idea, knowing about the news only through the usual mass media.
Thanks for bringing this up. I actually remember this story too. I was an MSc student in Theoretical Physics at the time.
Yeah. Also, skipping ads in the middle of the video is getting a little annoying.
On a completely unrelated note: that is a cool toy in the end of the video. Where can I buy one?
Thanks for shining light on this.
+
Can’t wait for this video to appear in a news article saying “Theoretical physicist confirms that iPhones are more powerful than a quantum computer.”
That would be true though. Quantum supremacy has not been demonstrated on any non-trivial problems afaik.
well currently that is the case
@@TheUnlockedquantum computers were not built to calculate what we calculate anyways. It is better at calculating things which our devices can't. Bit it sucks calculating things out devices can.
Actually, iPhones ARE quantum computers!
@@deusdev7111electrons?
This is actually one of your most important videos
👍
Good👍💯 video. Thanks
Ok it's important ok
Nice
The "problem" with Science communication is that you communicate BS included in with actual science. Exactly like what Politicians do.
Scientists : "Our discoveries are useless if taken out of context"
Journalist : "Scientists claim their discoveries are useless"
Part of the problem is that to communicate, science requires someone of the field and background. Journalists are usually of a different background an expertise than they are required to report on.
Bruh I’m dead 😂😂 it’s sad how this works tho
@@CoreyANeal2000 journalist are usually dumb , An intelligent high school students usually go for science , engineering and medical, average and below average students go for BA and journalism
@@CoreyANeal2000 Given that some journalists can report a 10 degree Celsius increase as equal to 50 degree Fahrenheit one (yes, really) it's the ability to count and do basic units of measurement that is missing. I think a major threat to human survival is exactly this: creeping incompetence.
@Matthew.Morycinski With what happened with Fox News, I wouldn't trust a News Network with any technology that could make it so they could avoid accountability.
As the Lawyer for Dominion said lies have consequences.
I love that “overhyping” has apparently become the formal term for this phenomenon
You can look at the gaming scene for that one. A game gets overhyped, turns out to be a piece of crap, and people get angry.
Interesting 🤔
While that is true, most AAA games have released recently with suspiciously terrible performance. Others have been quite buggy or unfinished. I cannot decide if this is somehow nvidias influence on the market to lead the market to accept it's fate and cave for the 40series ect. From 3 years ago, we have LESS price to performance in the $200-500 range where most people buy. This tells me Nvidia has made every move possible to keep from dropping prices including flexing their relationships with key developers.
That's sugar coating it. It's called lying. Fake it, til you make it. It's 2023 and 50% of people, if not more, have no clue how much of what they believe is a lie. Popular lies win every time.
if people learn, "skepticism" should be the feedback, otherwise we literally slip more into the divergent 'stupid' universe
You are so right. Medical research reporting is the same: the more nonsensical, the more hype, the more publicity.
A byproduct of the chronically underfunded NIH. You gotta sell your research as the next cancer/opioid addiction/whatever cure
Eeyup. It has devastating repercussions on the stock-market with emerging Biotech startups. There's one stock I follow what started at like $0.65 and shot up to like $14 a share inside of 3 months. After things cooled down, the stock sunk down to almost $7 a share, going even further one day. The power of media and press releases is a powerful thing.
@@amanawolf9166and yet people think only crypto is speculative. All of investing is bunk monopoly money gambling and manipulation from the media.
Safe and effective! 🤔
Completely agree...I have edited medical research papers that were overly hyped by the universities...such papers, even before they are published by a reputed journal (have only been uploaded on bioRxiv), become the talk of the town and before you know it, 12 other universities are spending funds on over-hyped projects.
If I remember correctly, the faster than light neutrino was published with the strongest possible warning. They basically said "this is probably wrong but we checked every way we can possibly think of so there's nothing left to do but publish it and hope someone else can figure out why we're wrong."
And someone did.
That's what science is…😎
@@PerspectiveEngineer Yes, but he lumped it in with things that scientists should not have done. This was a perfectly legitimate publication that was handled correctly, unlike the other examples. It was still a little overhyped by the "what if it is true" media. But not as much as the others because of the precautions they took with their extraordinary claim.
@@Sam_on_UA-cam Many of the examples used did similar. It's the media both social and mainstream that hype this stuff up. In some cases the authorities like the U.S government. There are sometimes big differences in how people cover a story and how the researchers put out thier data.
@@Sam_on_UA-cam to be fair I remember the media around that and it was not a *little* overhyped, it was absurd. "Einstein was wrong!!!!" all over the place. But yeah usually the paper itself is fair in its claims, the issue is how people read it.
Not someone, they! They found their mistake some months later and produced a new measurement consistent with lightspeed
This exact thing happened to me personally a year ago. I am studying mechanical engineering and last year I partecipated to a competition where me and my team proposed a way to improve energy production at gas pressure reduction facilities, using waste heat.
We won the first round of this competition in Prague, then a second one in Munich, and finally we were also invited to present our idea to representatives of the EU parliament. Everyone liked our idea and we were so hyped!
Then, when we actually visited a pressure reduction station and made deeper calculations together with real engineers, we got to the conslusion that our idea was not that efficient and there was no prospect of a real application:(
I think this story is the perfect example of the problem of hyping science discoveries... but hey, I enjoyed my stay at the EU parliament:)
This is wild
Wow hahah. Thats okay youll get it next time
The problem with "Breaking News!" is that sometimes, it actually IS broken.
Sorry about your outcome, but thanks for sharing your story.
which come to a fact, nowadays science had reach to the top that small unit of team will not achieve new discovery.
I have been a research physicist for over 50 years, and one lesson I have learned is that most of you ideas that sound good are flawed in some way. It looks good at first blush, but then when you put in all the details, you see the problems. One of the most important skills for a scientist is to be sufficiently critical of your own ideas so that your find the weaknesses of new ideas and don't waste too much time on them. But you can't let this deter you from the next idea. It is a little brutal, but when you have an idea that works, that is great.
As a cancer physician dealing with patients who see these types of overhyped news articles of a “cancer breakthrough” as literally life or death it is incredibly difficult managing expectations that arise from these sorts of science (mis)communication. I encourage us all to deliver the needed peer review in comments sections of these sorts of articles!
That's fighting the flood after the dam has broken. It's science "journalism" that must be reigned in. You'll never correct the problem by trying to correct their misinformation after it's been spread.
How would you advise a lay person to sort through news articles like these? Because they are exciting to read about but one does not want to be disappointed either when they turn out false.
Yeah, same for Alzheimer breakthroughs that are announced every few months. Only dummies invest in Alzheimer drugs.
HPV vaccine was a cancer breakthrough that hardly anyone talks about. I think the problem is actually breakthroughs stop getting hype because they actually work.
@@klmklmklm2581 Look for the words "entered human trials" that is when it'll be possible to figure out if it works, after that expect another 5-10 years before it's available to you.
If you have cancer, and you read about a potential treatment, you won't make it. Sad and simple truth.
You can always ask if there are any medical trials you can take part in as well,
This reminds me of a video essay by Angela Collier, titled "String theory lied to us and now science communication is hard." The thesis of the video was in line with what Carlo Rovelli said here about how fields are overhyped by popular science personalities. It's really a spectacular video essay; I went into it blind because I was intrigued by the title, and I think anyone who's interested in this kind of discourse should watch it.
Angela also has a ton of other great videos about physics and science communication in general. I highly recommend her channel :)
Love Angela's videos
Yeah she's good
The thesis of the video I think you don't understand what a thesis is...
But I hope you got a lot of candy tonight
@@PerspectiveEngineer ?
Researcher here. I did some experiments a while back where we took ash from waste incineration and created zeolites from it, which could be used as NOx reduction catalysts in cars. Long story short, we did it, but the zeolites right now perform only at about 10-20% of the efficiency of commercially used zeolites.
I wrote my paper specifically making sure to say this is MAYBE a first step, but a lot of work needs to be done if we want to actually use this. My supervisors and coauthors all rejected that because "it sounds too modest and like we aren't confident in the science, journals will definitely reject it because it sounds like we did nothing". Basically had to write it so that it says it could revolutionize waste recycling and fix global issues with ash waste all while removing NOx from exhausts to reduce global warming and solving some big world problems etc....which has maybe 1% odds of being true at most. We can't even separate the zeolites from unreacted ash yet, it's just at baby stages, yet took about a year of work. But had to write it overhyped because otherwise journals wouldn't accept it.
And I'm not even the only one. During the experiments I came across a paper that claimed the zeolites produced by a similar method were BETTER than commercial zeolites which is with current technology absolutely impossible.
Wow. Thank you for sharing! And thank you for your research.
Maybe a good middle ground would be a paragraph of "dreams" in the start of papers, stating how the science could be used if/when this/that were perfect. The rest of the paper should be as honest as you're describing, maybe with a little reference back to "dreams" here and there. This way, researchers wouldn't have to compromise negatively, and it will still catch more readers (which I bet is the reason they reject too "modest" papers).
@@pinesyeet well unfortunately I can't change much, I'm not the one making the rules. I also tried to write articles in simpler language and strive to always make my papers free, because I want research to be accessible to the average person (I'm sick of people being able to access misinformation on social media so easily). But that too has never been successful because language of the paper not being "scientific enough" is a very real problem and rejection reason you can have... Ultimately I do what I can, but science is extremely boxed in to specific rules you really can't bend in any way. They literally complicate if you put a figure number in italics or something even slightly different, but these overhyped articles are perfectly fine it seems... it's kind of annoying, feels like the content isn't even all that important.
@@blazejecar Absolutely I feel you, my comment was more a general thought, I didn't mean that it was on you (or anyone else in your position) to change it yourself.
I'm extremely happy about being able to access scientific papers for free atleast. I read so many papers writing my bachelors, and if they weren't free, I don't know what I could've done. And thanks for doing what you can to better the real information flow in science, it is much needed!
Since you just went along with this 'minor' fraud, you are litearlly the root of the problem.
I'm a scientist, and do freelance science journalism on the side. This video is exactly what I find myself thinking about. I only ever write stories when I am 100% convinced that the science is solid, and the result newsworthy. For that reason I never write far beyond my area of expertise.
Sure sometimes I cover topics that are scientifically perhaps not so novel, but are interesting for others to read about, for example, people are dying for exoplanet news, they will gobble up absolutely anything you have to offer.
However I never write about something that stinks or feels off. I could do this anyway, only read abstracts, pitch whatever article I think can get into a newspaper regardless of its scientific merits, and I'd probably triple my earnings. I'd never do that though, and for that reason my side hobby will never be financially rewarding enough to write articles at a high frequency. I hope that being thorough like this will one day pay off...
A lot of science is just based off of.. other science.
godspeed ya magnificant bastard
looking foward to read about what you write
Do you mind where or if I can read your writings. I'd love to be able to read them
Any tips for getting into writing articles? It’s something I’ve thought about, but my motivation is highly fluctuating and it’s been years since I’ve even written a simple essay
@@SnailHatan Take a topic you know a lot about and find/think of something interesting/newsworthy to write about. Then email the editor of a magazine/publication you would like to publish in. Introduce yourself and pitch your idea for an article. If they like your idea and commission an article then you can negotiate a rate per word. It helps to read these magazines often and look at how other people structure their writing.
Ironically the pressure to make science more incredible than it is, makes it actually in-credible in the public's eye in the long run.
What a beautifully worded sentence.
Woah did you come up with that incredible/in-credible wordplay? Because I'm impressed
nice pun
Public doesn't actually care about science they care about new products or service based on scientific principals. In the same way people didn't care about AI until they could get AI to do summarize articles or write a essay by typing a few words or make Cat/Dog superhero images.
Uncredible
One of my professors made it very clear that science is a cumulative process and that a single paper will almost never individually prove anything. It is the multiyear, multidecade, even multicentury growth of scientific knowledge that gives us a view into what is actually likely to be true.
What science was he a professor in?
Science is fundamentally incapable of proofs. It’s simply putting forward a guess and failing to disprove it over and over. Colloquially it a proof of sorts, Heisenberg uncertainty means monkeys could fly outta my butt but the probability is so low it fulfills the definition of impossible.
@@Robinson8491Prolly’ epistemology…
There are exceptions in some sense. Papers that put all the puzzle pieces together, or rather put the last piece in and complete the puzzle, requiring particular ingenuity. But all the steps along the way are of course crucial.
This attitude is why people move into industry when they actually have decent finding
I'm a PhD student suffering from this stupid competition to publish more papers. I can clearly see how this policy is stopping me from doing thoughtful research. We should value comments on papers more than ever. This is the only way to make some people understand there is a penalty for publishing poor research.
In what field of science are you aiming to be a doctor of philosophy? And who's pressuring you into publishing these papers? It seems pretty irresponsible and not well thought through...
@@coen8677 publish or perish.
I don’t comprehend that because you’d hope if someone got media attention for study that turned out to be totally incorrect you think that would be a negative. Like a major negative, highly embarrassing as in you published that? But I believe ya
Except there is seldom a penalty for publishing poor research or methods.
Headlines promoted on sites such as Medscape thrive on sensational headlines that are seldom, no, NEVER supported by the referenced study.
There is good science but those who provide access to it will manipulate its availability and criticism.
Wait what
I wrote a thesis on science communication because of my curiosity and interest in science, but as a mass communication student... Couldn't quite identify the issues as clearly as you just did. This is great, much respect.
I worked as an academic researcher for 5 years. I hated the way it works now, with this "publish or perish" incentive. It's very competitive and hierarchical. People don't want to share knowledge, unless they get something back. Anybody with issues or whom is struggling is just neglected until they break down and burn out. It's insane that it's like that, as Academia should be the cradle of research and knowledge. I never want to work there again.
It's funny how people try to hide knowledge instead of sharing it under capitalism and it clearly stifles scientific progress. Yet people say capitalism is good for progress. Lol
They’ll just say you can’t cut it and you simply become one stats where the cream rises.
I left academia for the same reason.
Add the "pay to play" of most publications and the lowering of standards that has led to questionable things getting through lately and you really have a broken system.
I just stopped publishing for the sake of it. I will publish when I have something of value to communicate. Luckily, the private sector don't force you to publish.
I remember the time when the faster-than-light neutrino broke the news. I remember being extremely shocked and started propagating the story. Later, I only learned that it was false from a discussion I had in a UA-cam comment section.
It is so true that the correction of a sensational false claim only receives a fraction of the media attention the original claim received.
Hence ELON BAD...when it's actually not
@@damfadd What?
@@damfaddwould you happen to be mentally challenged? Or is this just a bot malfunctioning 🤔
Haha, believe it or not, my PhD supervisor was actually the one who jumped the gun and pushed for a press conference about it while everyone else in our collaboration obviously knew it wasnt real lol. At the yearly christmas party some colleague would always play a song on his guitar making fun of him for thinking that neutrinos could travel faster than light.
Think about it like that, you tell someone about it, then you learn it is false and now going to your friends and telling them you told them BS would be embarrassing so you just hope it blows over.
All of that would not be so bad, if we still had journalists in this world. Instead we have bloggers and attention whores that "report" on the same integrity levels as your average gossip.
I'm on my student newspaper, and I cover mostly health stories. The other editors modify my stories so much that the facts I try to publish become wrong. Sensationalism is definitely a growing problem with most journalists.
The other editors lie for money, isn't it?
@@Bearsinspazehe said student, so it is probably a high school newspaper. i’m not sure what they would be chasing though
@@cookie14467 university
The definition of a scientist today, is the exact same definition as that of a politician and a scammer.
@@AntiAtheismIsUnstoppableabsolutely untrue. It’s not the scientists it’s the journalists.
This video reassured how much I would love to watch you talking about how science is made including point of views like Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" or Paul Feyerabend's "Against Method"
What I am noticing in the science community of UA-camrs is that, in their eagerness to release videos every week, they publish videos of very radical theories and people think that we know nothing about the world and that science is a disaster and a contradictory mess, and that is far from the truth
its main stream publications too
If you go to the frontiers, science *is* a contradictory mess, and it should be.
Imo the problem lies in effectively conveying just how huge the "well-established" sector is.
@@pseudolulluswhat do you mean ?
@@smears6039 Just because there is disagreement about very new stuff doesn't mean that there is a similar degree of disagreement about way more time-tested stuff
Remember that "alien satellite"? What a load of bollocks.
This is actually one of your most important videos. It's critical for people to understand this, but not jut for science communication, rather for all media stories: keep your cool, initial interpretations are likely wrong, if it sounds like something you want to believe, then be skeptical. With science stories we have the benefit of falsifiability, that attempts to reproduce the experiment can disprove it. With political and social stories it's much harder, people latch onto an explanation and then years of opposing evidence will not shake that belief. The news media are _incredibly bad at their jobs,_ and are most likely wrong about initial interpretations, even on those occasions where they're not being actively deceitful.
This one is kind of a sequel to “Is Most Published Reasearch Wrong?” that he uploaded back in 2016.
For a recent, completely non science example, look at the Michigan "sign stealing" scandal that erupted in college football over the last few weeks. The journalism around it has been all over the place.
far too many commas
I’m a PhD candidate in condensed matter physics. When the stuff about LK99 came out, it had just followed a similar announcement in a hydride material, and a whole drama erupted involving alleged data fabrication. Media hype is a problem, but I think the issue goes way, way deeper. The whole structure of academia is built around a pressure to publish. Getting publications in high-impact journals is easier when you’re working on something that has a lot of buzz around it. This leads to jargon-y papers and far-fetched claims. Speed of publication becomes a priority over data quality, because you want to be the first one to publish. More authors on a paper will make it harder to get a Nobel prize if what you did is important, so people keep results to themselves and collaboration is discouraged. There’s so much more I could say on this, but tldr I feel like this video misses a lot of nuance.
Science has become a total joke. And you're part of the problem. I have seen no scientist go against the _false_ claims made by scientists which were always with a political agenda, _not_ with the intention to find truth.
I have lost all respect for scientists. They are super arrogant. They believe they're gods. And to an extend, they are. I mean to atheists. They worship scientists like pagans. Atheist religion is a thing, as science religion is too. A pagan religion. We have sen before what comes from worshipping humans as gods. Mao Zedong was a splendid example. How many did he slaughter?
Yeah. If the US spend half as much as they do on military on scientific funds....
In a nutshell the problem is the mentality that every field of knowledge must be profitable. So we hype and cut way to "conquest", and hide failures with punishing cautioning
publish or perish is a scourge on high quality science
@@deco90014 Everyone here is so close to admitting that the problem is capitalism
This is probably one of the most important (if not the most important) videos Veritasium has ever made. To my opinion, the issue with the attitude towards science is very important and relevant. Mass media shows science as a fairytale and something which is light years away from everyday life of ordinary people, therefore there is no understanding of what’s happening in the world of science. By this I mean that the whole comprehension of a science field even on a pure amateur level can be represented as a large puzzle consisting of millions of pieces. When viewers are for example told that somebody had created a wormhole somewhere, they get only when deformed piece in an unknown field of the large puzzle, that’s why nobody wants to even try to figure out the entire puzzle. A certain scientific field can get public attention only if people at least understand what they observe. I think that such consistent, thorough, informative, interesting and at the same time very entertaining videos that Derek’s team has been doing are the wonderful thing that can help people finally obtain the desire to know things about the world, but I think for years this great channel needed an episode that would also explain the situation not in a particular topic, but would raise a very important problem related to the comprehension of science by the audience of mass media and social networks. I think this video is now successfully carrying out this mission.
Thank you Veritasium’s team for doing such great work! You always have my respect ❤
Well said
I know it's a small thing but I love how Derek pulls away the camera and reveals himself at 8:40. It's like a very clever 4th wall breaking moment because he heard something that surprised him enough to stop the professional videoing and stop and ask.
Acollierastro talked about this for string theory. 10:41 "we just need 20 more years" it's all exactly the same, scientists sensationalizing their work in order to get funding. Whether it speaks for those scientists' ethics, or the science communication, or the funding system as a whole is a whole debate
I think everything in this video applies not just to science, but to the current state of society in general.
Thanks Einstein
Sounds more like a cynical truism than insight.
@@Muskar2 If it's true, then is it cynical? Or just realistic?
@@Muskar2 sounds like you're upset they burst your fairytale bubble
@@wmpx34🤓☝️☝️☝️☝️ this is you
I'm old enough to remember the names Pons and Fleischmann. Their "cold fusion" story in 1989 went way beyond viral, especially in the pre-internet days. But after a few weeks and months, their experiment could not be replicated and their names were coated with scorn and shame. That kind of scorn and shame should be applied to anyone who overhypes a story or outright lies about the science.
Sooooo .... not particularly old then ....
The issue is that most of the overhyping is being done by pop science outlets and such media people who don't actually care about scorn and shame. They're in the same category of people as paparazzi.
@@godfreypigott Yeah yeah we get it, you're older than all of us here combined. The multiple ....'s were a dead giveaway lol
@@reddmst Actually I withdraw my comment. Your photo with filthy beard and egghead looks like a senior citizen. Even without the photo, your interest in something as prosaic as the Julian Pie Company was a dead giveaway lol
The same applied to math masters. That should be the rule
Just wanna say that this channel is an absolute GOLDMINE for all the nerds out there! I’m a huge nerd for science and finding this channel felt like winning the lottery.
As a Ph.D. student I can tell: It is all about getting attention to get funding. Also the more hyped your findings are the more likely it is that some journal will care about it.
It's not only that. When you work in a field you geinuinely get excited with the breakthrough you achieve and you want to share it with the world. I can totally understand the quantum wormhole guys. They managed to build and sustain a ridiculously fragile quantum system that worked as a holographic model of a traversible wormhole. That's incredibely cool! In the Nature article they very precisely described what they did, they didn't spread any misinformation. It's the popular media that took the report and twisted it into something totally different. It's very not fair to call their research "BS" just because someone else misunderstood what they did. The situation with the net-positive fusion energy production at LLNL was exactly the same. They achieved something amazing that noone else achieved before them and they reported the finding as it was. It's a very big milestone for laser-driven fusion which is a pretty new field. Not the fault of the researchers that media took the story and turned it into "the first operational fusion power plant".
Ph.D. students always seem to announcee they are Ph.D. students. why is this?
@@PazLeBon Because we are first-hand sources. Not people just watching youtube videos, but experiencing it. (And older physicists have already given in to the stupidity.)
@@qzamboni lmao, sounds ike they would striggle to do a CSE from 20 years ago tbh
@@PazLeBonI mean it is completely relevant here, so I don’t see the problem
One of the ways I vet science channels is to look for nuance and acknowledgements of knowledge gaps and shortcomings of cited research. I think Veritasium and SciShow both great examples of balancing scientific accuracy with simplifying the information to make it approachable for people who don’t have science degrees.
I'm glad to see that this discussion is becoming more and more prevalent amongst respected science educators. It's a discussion that's been going on in academic circles IRL and online for a long time, and one that needs to be had, and deserves the increased attention it's been getting.
I'd like to submit that the LK99 drama, while driven by awful forces, was actually good for science in the public's eye. It was the will they/won't they of the month. Every report that came from a different lab got dissected by the fandom within minutes. THE PUBLIC CARED ABOUT REPRODUCTION STUDIES WITHOUT EVEN REALIZING IT! 🤣
i think this sentimate was also echoed across the community itself, i think that has to do with the fact condensed matter physics is a much more experimental field then alot of the theoretical, and particle physics papers which become big news, their just more resources and experts
Before it even hit popsci news I was seeing multiple people on discord synthesizing LK-99 themselves and wondering why it didn't do anything 😂
"the fandom" the horrific absurdity of such a thing paired with your delusion about the public interaction with the slop presented to them in the news feed all makes for quite a comment.
"Drama", "good for science" you are certainly a fanatic alright.
Science not as a rationalist philosophy nor a series of abstract models attempting to describe an aspect of reality. No.
Science as a social phenomenon. Science as a community. Science as a weekly soap. Science as discussed round the water cooler. Science, now in colour! Science chopped up, sautéed on a high heat, distilled and filtered through the uninspired mind to be delivered to you in manageable weekly installments at 3.99. Sponsored by Corpo, for all your science needs. Science as an identity. Are you excited for science? Science, bringing us together. What's good for science is good for the gander. Dig for science! Science needs you! Choose science, Veronica.
You are part of these "awful forces"
I agree with you on the surface, but why is it so important that the public cares, and who decided that it was important? The government that puts pressure on researchers to "make the public care" is the same government that doesn't do the bare minimum to inform the public about their decisions and policies which 1) have a much bigger significance and impact over people's lives, and 2) are sometimes at the very basis of what would enable the public to understand and give a f*** about research in the first place.
Not really. Confirming bs papers is a waste of time
I think the bigger issue here is that the difference in understanding context of hype is so vast between the dedicated and critical scientific community, and the average science enthusiast.
When the fusion breakthrough was made, it was genuinely the biggest breakthrough we have ever achieved and a major milestone, as it directly proves the theory that a higher energy output can be had from a lower input. We passed the infamous break-even barrier. It is an imperative breakthrough from a scientific point of view, but most science enthusiasts don't actually view these breakthroughs with science in mind, they view it with practical application in mind - and herein lies the problem.
What is a major milestone from a science and theory pov, can appear as borderline useless from an immediate practical application pov. And when these two forms of hype clash, things rarely go well. It leads to false expectations followed by subsequent disappointment by the public majority of science application enthusiasts, leading to lower interest in the field and higher disregard for genuine breakthroughs just because the idea of "what is a breakthrough" differs so greatly.
Aligning expectations for what a breakthrough is, is the most important aspect of bridging critical science and practical use enthusiasm. It's not a case of "it's overhyped or underhyped". The hype itself is inherently not binary, it's multi-colored and can appear different if you change the glasses you view it through.
Agree - I think the fusion example doesnt fit the same as the other examples here. What they said was true, what was reported was true - the fundamental issues (how much energy was needed to power the laser, how long it takes between shots) were discussed in that very press event when they announced it.
Excellent point. I think this is underlined by the fact that they already had the actual scientific breakthrough an entire year earlier, where a shot delivered a drastically improved fusion gain, but not breakeven yet. So they waited for a similar shot that did (which eventually happened) in order to get the maximum attention. That's worthless from the scientific POV, but clearly shows the incentive to get that public attention, which seems to backfire now.
wtf are you talking about? Setting things on fire already proves a low energy input (spark) can lead to tons of energy released, much greater than what set it off. And fusion has already been known about for litearlly decades. And no, a 'break even barrier' was not passed; it was laser fusion, not the tokamat style, so nothing was proven, as laser fusion has 0 commercial use (as fusion reactors for power generation are not being built that way, or are planned to be built that way).
It seems you are guilty of the very thing you are trying to call out, ironically enough. And this recent fusion 'breakthrough' had nothing to do with commercial fusion uses and was merely a laser caused fusion, meant to help with nuclear weapons 'testing' and research. Also, it didn't break even at all; the laser energy input was much, much, much higher than the output. But sure; when you don't include the energy to generate that laser, then it broke even (by just considering the input energy of the laser at the moment it causes fusion rather than the actual energy it takes to generate that laser).
This 'fusion breakthrough' litearlly did nothing to advance commercial fusion; it is an entirely different type of method to achieve fusion.
There is nothing to understand. Science has become a total joke. Men can give birth now, claims grown up well educated scientists. Science has turned into what mayh be the biggest scam in history.
Don’t fission explosions that initiate the fusion reaction in thermonuclear warheads also usually produce less energy than those fusion reactions?
Good to see someone talking about this. It's important to make sure what we are learning is true. Great job Derek
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@@andrewwong2399 well thanks for letting us know. I will report you andrew.
@@softbreeze941 imagine thinking you're funny
Sabine Hossenfelder covered this story last year.
@@andrewwong2399 your algorithm still needs some work to match the contexts of previous text.
This has been the status quo of science publishing for decades, every time Ive read an article with an unbelievable concept or discovery it turned out to indeed literally be unbelievable because what they ACTUALLY meant was a watered down theory that potentially approaches the headline in this tiny way, maybe!
Well, you did this to yourself, when you allowed social sciences to be part of science. Never EVER will I trust any scientist again. Liars. Scammers. Super arrogant. Believe they're gods. I detest sicentists. Each and every one of them. Children of satan.
This is why i get hopeful, but also supremely guarded when i hear things in mainstream science media. when my friends and i talk about it, I say, "I hope it is true" and "i want it to be true, but i will wait for more evidence." people sometimes think i am either a killjoy, emotionless, or conversely supremely intellectually wise and measured. I am not any of those things. I have just been through this some many times that i know to wait for more information before i let myself get excited.
The let down of some things that came before was exceedingly painful.
I quite like the comparison to sports reporting. Because every sports report is usually "X team just won against Y, which puts them in a great position to win the Big Game later in the season." It'd be great to see stories like "They just simulated a wormhole with a quantum computer. It's a great step forward in finding a way to make quantum computers useful and in our understanding of the possibility of wormholes. We'll have more as the research continues."
A game has a beginning, middle, and end, and makes a good story. Also, some players have backgrounds that add depth to the story. Progress in science, unfortunately, doesn't present itself that way. There's a lot of back tracking, reviewing, and false starts. And a lot of scientific personalities are of interest only to others with similar interests rather than a broad swath of the general public.
@@ytechnology I think sports games are very much like science experiments. You play the game according to some rules and there is a score at the end. With a science experiment, there is also a score at the end, be it success or failure, a sigma value or what have you. In science, it's harder to understand the game, the rules and the score than it is in sports, but I find no tendency in sports to overhype some game to unbelievable or untrue levels.
Maybe science experiments should be treated more like a sports event.
Fun fact: name was so long i didnt read 😊 here is your answer
@@henrikmikaelkristensen4784Well, yeah, but the players and reporters don't have to make an individual match or game interesting enough to watch to succeed in their careers. Which is where the interest for scientists, journals, and communicators lie: getting the status and influence for their careers.
It's not a step forward in our understanding of wormholes, because the simulation was small enough to be trivial on a classical computer.
I'm actually really happy that you're addressing this, I've seen so much bs in different scenes, like data science that people just take as fact from the media because they don't understand either the topic or what the medias goal is.
There needs to be some sort of accountability mechanism for any media outlet that publishes something that turns out to be false. If there is zero consequence to reporting falsehoods (intentionally or not), there is no incentive for anyone to have any amount of caution in what they publish.
If we're talking about news outlets pushing unsubstantiated stories or representing wild speculation about current events as fact, I agree. The current approach of "we can always retract it later" has obvious problems and there need to be some sort of accountsbility for this.
Miscommunication about science is more complicated. Scientific papers need to be distilled into a digestible form for the benefit of public understanding. That translation process is rife with opportunities for exaggeration or misunderstanding. Communicating Science to the general public has to walk a fine line of correctness vs understandability. Doesn't excuse overhyped bad papers with flawed experimental design being heavily pushed, but there's so much room to make an honest effort and still be wrong about Science communication that it seems like the bar for bad faith reporting in this domain needs to be pretty high
I sympathize, but that is wrong.
Lies should be allowed (since they are just words), for to do anything otherwise is censorship. The only way to know who SAYS & BELIEVES a lie is to let it be; Science and the Truth it finds, from time to time, is enough to prove ALL lies in eternity to be what they are.
The smallest candle light of Truth is enough to put out any darkness.
The only penalty should be a reduced subscriber base. Anything more strays into censorship.
@@MR-backupI think we've established pretty conclusively at this point that truth will not put out darkness. I have relatives who still think COVID was a government trick, and that the 2020 US election was "stolen," but only for the presidential race.
It's not for their lack of access to correct information, they are simply immune from facts.
i use the block feature for that.
Two of my favourite physicists in one video! What a great chat between Derek and Carlo ❤ Also loved the fact it highlights the issue of so many exaggerated news out there... brilliant!
I've been avoiding 95% of science news for the past 10 years because of this. Thank you so much for addressing this embarrasment of modern humanity.
This sort of is why i watch mainly sabine hossenfelder as she avoids overhyping science news and explains pretty often for pieces of news what they actually are instead of misreprsenting it like most others do, she'll even critisize stuff where she see's issues in methodology. Her content can miss the mark sometimes but most of the times its pretty good
You shouldn't avoid science news. Just stick with good sources like Ars Technica.
@@poochyenarulez Is Ars Technica a good source? Not a downplay rhetoric question, I'm genuinely wondering.
@@ToTheGAMES Yes. I even subscribed to them since I enjoy their stories a lot.
As @@poochyenarulez said, avoiding science news isn't the answer. Just spend a few more minutes to search Google Scholar for the paper and / or authors to see the paper for yourself. See what the abstract sounds like, and if it matches the news. If you can, look at the conclusion in the paper, and if you're still curious, check the methodology. You can 1) learn a crapload about things you're interested in by just reviewing papers occasionally and 2) start to get a critical thinking feel for what news is likely to be real and what is likely to be BS.
I really appreciate your integrity and keeping in line with the name and spirit of the channel. I can only offer my encouragement for what you do, and I look forward to watching your videos. Thank you so much, and keep up the great work.
"What do you have there? A wormhole?"
"Better! I have a *drawring* of a wormhole."
Yeah, that's basically it.
I love Carlo Rovelli. His book "The Order of Time" is one of the most fascinating and beautiful books I have read in the last several years.
Making great content and stories for science and tech is HARD. Great critique and great job going deep on your videos overall :)
A day where Veritasium post is a good day
indeed
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True
Dawg it’s literally Halloween and you’re basing your day on someone on UA-cam posting or not.
Great video as usual veritasium. I love all of the interviews and the great graphic!
Thank you for making this video! For the longest time I have said "the more I hear about a big breakthrough, the less I believe it (until I look into it myself)." And now I can just send people this video instead of explaining it every time!
I have a speech for my High School Forensics competition, about Nuclear Fusion. (It can be a very dense topic I know) So naturally when the conversation shifted over to Nuclear Fusion I was hyped to say the least.
In my speech I talk about how "we've used inertial and magnetic confinement to get net energy gain" but immediately follow up with "but getting net energy gain is vastly different than using it as a sustainable energy source" and then rant about how far away and underfunded nuclear fusion energy is.
The breakthroughs we've achieved are incredible, but while researching Nuclear Fusion, I was very disappointed by the amount of articles overhyping nuclear fusion and the nuclear ignition breakthrough. I'm now happy with how I've worded and presented my speech. All these topics and breakthroughs are incredible and so much fun to learn about, but with today's society (with major contributions to social media and short form content) grabbing attention and getting people to care is so much harder, leading to the ridiculous oversensationalization that plagues our daily media.
Thank you Veritasium for all you've done and taught us about in an impressively unbiased and straightforward way.
Valuable information provided in such a flawless way. These videos never fail to impress me.
This is, and will always be, an eternal problem with anything humanity tries to accomplish that doesn't have quick returns. We MUST be incentivized to keep going. Sometimes the incentives are good, sometimes they are bad. Like the man said, this video itself, is a good step toward recognizing and pushing back against the bad incentives, and making sure we keep a clear head. Thank you for making it.
Well, you lied about corona. You lied about global coolling. You lied about men being able to give birth, which everyone even children know is a total _lie._ And yet, you lied because you were paid to lie, by pharmaceutical industry, or, by gaining power by supporting lies of politicians.
I simply cannot stand anyone of those super arrogant ignorant philthy liars.
Science does not exist today. It is called politics. And here, truth is what can gain the politician the power.
The simple fact is that all science is a multigenerational endeavor. Ever since I was young I've watched so many science announcements from technical to chemical and I've always been of the mind that the proof required for any advancement to be solidified in that endeavor is always going to come long after I leave this world. Especially for any unexpected consequences to show up from said achievements. You've got to take a cautious, steady, and patient approach when truly distilling nature's secrets to common knowledge.
But somebody said there's a breakthrough in cancer!
@@jacobshirley3457 "cancer" is like the miasma hypothesis. We don't really understand the real phenomena that we call "cancer". There's no such thing as cancer.
You’re not entirely wrong, @Fhenrin.
However, you may want to read “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, by Thomas S. Kuhn: periods of “steady, and patient approach”, punctuated by periods of rapid change we tend to call “Revolutions”.
(It’s anyone’s guess when the next “Revolution” will occur. It’s only been a bit over a Century, now, since the last one. [It was about three [3] Centuries from the previous one.])
Thank you for highlighting this! Sensationalism in the media is a huge problem.
Thank you for validating what has been very frustrating. One item at the end is contestible - bad ideas don't always fade - in the public perception, at least
I immediately thought of the hype regarding a "solar panel that works at night." The research itself was fine and acknowledged the limitations (such as the microscopic amount of power produced at night), but the majority of news articles presented it as something revolutionary rather than something that might possibly have some niche use cases.
apparently you can use one in reverse and extract miniscule power from the cooling effect of the night sky, which is absolutely crazy but true, but still not very useful
I've tried to argue with people about the "solar panels work at night" thing. They read one article and suddenly their brains fall out of their heads.
You can only extract energy from an energy gradient! Be it a waterfall, EM radiation, or a thermal gradient, you're (more or less) pulling usable work from the flow. The maximum amount you can extract has to be, by definition, less than the amount flowing. More energy flowing past you = more for you to capture. The sun puts out a big flow of energy even as far away from it as Earth is, and the panels can capture a modest percentage of what hits them. Converting a solar panel to a "night panel" and extracting energy from the small amount flowing up from the ground as things cool off is interesting, but not all that useful. Whether you're directly capturing a weak flow of infrared photons with a PV panel or just modifying the panels to include a thermometric generator to use as a solid state waterwheel to capture energy from the rising heat as it disperses, there just isn't that much energy there to capture.
I don't know why "little energy = very low output regardless of the efficiency of the capture device" is such a hard concept.
Anything but nuclear power, amirite fellow leftoids
@@jasonwalker9471
Across earth overall, I would expect the flow of absorbed sunlight in from the sun to be almost identical to the amount of infrared radiation radiated out into space.
@@donaldhobson8873 It's not. Somewhere around 20% of the light that hits the surface is reflected. Of the 80% that's left, much of it is indeed absorbed and reemitted as long wave infrared... during the day. While there is infrared being emitted by the ground all night long, there is infrared being emitted by the walls in your room too. A nighttime solar panel trying to capture infrared from the ground wouldn't fair any better than trying to set up an infrared photon trap in your bedroom, day or night.
So hyped to see Carlo Rovelli on this channel. Got to meet him in person at a physics conference earlier this year. Genuinely an amazingly charismatic and respectable person. Even signed the book of his I happened to be reading.
He's remarkable in his field. But lately he's been very vocal and involved in politics. He's basically pro-Russia and pro-Hamas de facto
@@zamestre Where? I cant find his Hamas statements.
@@Sk8forsocksread between the lines is probably the answer you gonna get
Absolutely love him
@@zamestre This is a total lie, Rovelli is a pacifist and neither pro-Russia nor pro-Hamas.
"Bull s***" killed me 😂😂
I had the privilege of shooting a video of leading researchers in the field of fossil dating. It was interesting to speak with them and hear how they reported their findings compared to how the news reports things and the stories that become the popular narrative. One video I recorded was between Rainer and John discussing the huge variance in their results of dating Mungo man (40 and 60 thousand years I think). They both used very different methodologies and neither could fault the other's research. Mungo man was being “returned to country” so they both accepted that they would never be able to find the truth.
When they give the age of a fossil they will give a range with a percentage, eg. 90,000-110,000yrs with a 73% probability but the media will typically just report that as 100,000yrs and the public will then run with that. No particular fossil is dated with certainty, it's the whole fossil record that the bigger pictures certainty is based on. I always here people say that Mungo man is 60,000yrs old which is likely because he is used as a reference to support Indigenous Australians claim to how long their people had persisted on the land before European invasion and settlement. This is in spite of the fact that 40,000 would have just as much weight in such claims because we can't really perceive such time scales intuitively and that there doesn't seem to be any claim that modern Aboriginal people actually share DNA with Mungo man so it's quite possible that successive waves of people migrating to Australia killed off Mungo’s people. Acknowledging the possibilities shouldn't be a negative to the plight of today's indigenous peoples but this type of science gets distorted by politics and culture as if necessary for some greater good.
This is interesting. Whenever you hear about a newly discovered or dated piece of archeological evidence related to humans/human ancestors you only ever hear one date, and it's usually used with great confidence to craft some sort of story about what was happening at the time. Such as determining how indigenous people migrated to North America, whether mostly by ice age exposed land or mostly by sea, based solely on the age of the archeological evidence of human activity found, while ignoring the fact that there's a lot more we don't know about what was happening at that time than we do know, given the vast stretches of time involved and relatively few pieces of evidence to go off of.
For all we know, many different groups of people from nearby areas, both those that could be considered aboriginal and those that wouldn't be, could have migrated to Australia, left Australia, been killed by other groups, been wiped out by disease/famine, etc for any number of reasons any number of times in the timeframe of 20000 years. Just like there could have been many repeated migrations to and from the America's during, before, and after the Bering sea land bridge was exposed.
People like definitive answers and a clear picture of what happened in the past when the truth is rarely that simple.
that max CL is a big problem in climate change. The 2100 word temp anomaly prediction is mostly not too bad, but there is a tail out to +5C....so they report 5C, which is a disaster, but if you look at the (totally non-gaussian) spread of the models: oh hell no, it ain't happening.
@@DrDeuteron Climate change as an entire field of research is in a horrible state. Especially when you realize governments have a self-serving interest in what research results gets science teams rewarded or punished.
Or when you use the same exact dating techniques on living (or recently living) samples, and still get a result of 50 thousand years...
@@bobbobert9379 the details are much more interesting than the way it's reported. They don't just use an individual fossil record to determine its age, they also consider all of the other artificats found near the bones. They are also consider the other human fossils from the area as well as predictions of other changes that happened in the region such as climate changes and things that affect radiation.
I'm trying to be non-specific since I'm not an expert. They dumbed things down for me and I don't mean to derive more specific conclusions through suggesting there are gaps in the way things are reported. If anything, the attitude of scientists such as those that I met should give people confidence in their conclusions even if they are misrepresented in the media and popular non-expert discourse.
Great to see Carlo Rovelli in one of your videos! I’m reading his last book right now
It is fascinating. The "wormholes" and the fusion stories were probably the only two science-oriented news stories I really delved into over the past little while, mostly because of a "seems too good to be true" feeling that was engender ed by the most basic of knowledge. Imagine the number of stories I just accepted at face value because the requisite knowledge to doubt them is just a little beyond mine. This in itself is part of the problem because finding out about this drives me to be more skeptical. The difference between the person that believes everything they hear about science and the person who disbelieves everything they hear seems so small.
We just going to forget about what they did during the pandemic?
Thank you Veritasium. Since you're a big channel, your word, possesses huge value. So, thank you for clearing some peoples heads with this video, very clear, concise and informative.
I was in a Electricity and Magnetism course when the faster than light neutrino story happened. I was excited to read about it until our teacher talked to the class about it and basically said it isn't worth believing until its replicated.
I work with a lot of people in VC, and the room temperature superconductor story was the one that turned these top flight MBA, mathematics level PhDs and finance gurus into something not far off 1990s teen girls who has just run into Take That, N'Sync and Back Street Boys in one hit - critical thinking went out the window and the the desire for instant 50,000%+ returns coupled with the fear of missing out made them believers, especially as all these media outlets couldn't all be wrong, could they?
Well...
It was a somewhat embarrassing lesson learned, thankfully before any money changed hands. But it does highlight how some ultra hot areas of science - quantum computing, graphene, fusion etc...exist in the public mindset as areas where there are virtually unlimited, near instant short term returns and a real potential for a rapid technical breakthrough - that allows very dangerous paths to be taken.
Funny when all media report it it's more likely to be false. I don't get people tho why do they assume if something is hyped that must be true. Everyone kinda assume it was verified by someone else lol
Well that is the thing nowadays... a scientist says Eureka and 4 people run away really fast. The media rep is running off to tell the news, the scientist is going off to update his notes and start drafting his journals, the investor is going to tell all his VC friends about his investments success, and the intern is going to his social account and break NDA. and no one is going to think... maybe we should double check our results.
Sure there's a way to make money out of those fools. Remember game-stop-gate. Then they cry to government-momma to give back their money.
@@Nat-oj2ucit’s about getting attention while you’re stuck in a lab for decades without seeing sunlight or girls.
This isn't just about the communication, its also about what research people can even pursue; people over-exaggerate their research in an attempt to get attention and funding, which leads to credible, non-exaggerated research not getting the attention and funding it deserves. And in a few years we'll be at the point where people won't be able to pursue research without fabricating it to look like its more than it actually is. All research is important, if in the past we only looked into what seemed interesting at first glance, we wouldn't have made most of our important breakthroughs. Glad you're bringing some light to the problem.
This video really gives good food for thought! I'm in academics (a microbiology department) and I'm going to forward this video to the grad students in my department and hopefully get some discussions going - thanks for this really stimulating content :)
Excellent video. Once the News makes the headline it is very difficult to erase. You can make a retraction, explain what really happened, but many people that identify with the original headline have incorporated that emotion and are not willing to let go
Absolutely fundamental topic of science communication. It's all about crafting a story about the research process and how exciting it is. It's less lazy than most typical journalistic accounts but it allows you to keep readers interest whilst integrating a healthy dose of skepticism and hope.
Exactly what you do on this channel !
I remember going to paleontology lecture in Toruń, Poland in 2008. Professor, who was sumerising new findings in our country, said "of course we told reporters, that we found first ever dinosaur remains in Poland, which is a lie. Every time we find dinosaur bones we say it's the first time as it helps spreading the news and securing funding."
My wife is doing a masters in Science Communication and yesterday's class they showed the clip of the standford student telling the news to his teacher. Couldn't believe you just released a video about the subject refering the same video 8 hours later :) great video. Great topic. Good job once again
My favorite podcast, The Skeptics Guide to the Universe will talk about this often. One of the things that they usually mention is how a lot of these discoveries will say "we will have x technology in 5-10 years!" and pretty much every time this is said, that basically means never. They have been podcasting long enough, since like 2006 or so, that they have been able to go back and look at some old news segments and see where they are now, 5-10 years later. And while interesting, the topic was almost always overhyped.
The big takeaway is that science is usually a series of incremental improvements with very few giant leaps forward. But the giant leaps forward will get the funding.
You may find “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, by Thomas S. Kuhn, to be of interest: Yes, Science is, usually, “a serious of incremental improvements with very few giant leaps forward.”
It’s been over a Century since the last “revolution”, but that occurred about three (3) Centuries after the previous one.
Great video as usual veritasium. I love all of the interviews and the great graphic!
1) Conservation of Classical Momentum implies p_new = p_old, x_new = x_old + a_translation if rectilinearly walking into one
2) in the Momentum Representation, lambda Psi_transported + mu Psi_stay = Psi_old is possible, so a part of the vector is transported while the other part stays at x_old because identifying x_new and x_old, you could be transported back and forth so staying there.
And it’s creators like you bringing science sanity and understanding to the masses. Thank you!
wow! thought it was a fake account at first.
Very good expose about how all media is devolving into clickbait, and pulling our collective thought down with it.
Welcome to capitalism and the post-facts world
Carlo Rovelli is awesome, I have his book and I read over and over again it is awesome.
I'm happy, that such a popular channel aims to work with such sincerity, and it's reaching way beyond, the academic scientists community
4:10 What a great guy. Always aiming to stay on the path of science.
This video (and ones like it) is very important. We need this type of optimistic and structured skepticism. Especially as the AI era unravels.
I worked on the NIF fusion animation you showed in your video. No one on my team, in the administration, or any of the scientists has portrayed this as anything more than what it really was - a groundbreaking demonstration that fusion is possible. The results of those experiments have been analyzed and repeated. It's solid science that is the fruition of years of hard work. Disappointed that you would engage in this kind of character assassination.
This is a story on the reporting of science and your intentions or comments were clearly not reported and that is the exact point of the video.
No one at NIF, NNSA, or DOE lied. And that is what he said. He called people liars.
Thank you for including fusion in this hype discussion. The latest data I can find shows we are at about 2-3% output energy versus total energy input. The breakthrough was that they achieved sustained fusion reaction for a very short time. I am waiting for a video on why fusion energy may already be unnecessary and here is why.
We so fixated on the sexy fusion generation that we are overlooking the potential to fill all our energy needs by installing more existing clean sources (solar, water, wind, ...).
Another critically important issue is that the difficulty of fusion development is delaying the date we meet our energy needs using exclusively clean sources.
Yes, there are still some issues energy storage and transmission but aren't these much easier to resolve than creating production level fusion? Resolving these issues would be far less expensive and quicker than making fusion at production level.
This is a complex question that has not been addressed by anyone I can find.
This brought back memories of a book I came across once while browsing through a state library. It was called Nonscience by Brian Gray, written in 1971, it talked sarcastically about the 'right' way to sell science discoveries and how to become an "expert". For example, even if you don't know that much about a field you can edit a symposium and publish the papers presented and therefore get your name in print and before the media. Also any new equipment for your lab can be passed off as a breakthrough in cancer (or whatever) research. It was brilliant. I'm afraid the snarky suggestions he made are now revealed wisdom to the media.
This is what reporting has turned into on all levels. It’s about being the biggest and best story regardless of actually checking fact before they release the story. Science is no different. One would think that the scientific community would be more concerned with the blowback of getting something wrong but it seems it doesn’t. Humiliation apparently isn’t something some highly educated individuals are worried about. We know the media has never worried about this issue ever. I find it best after hearing something fantastic about science discoveries is to give it few days before saying anything about it. And it usually is found to be overhyped.
That's weird, I remember my father telling me he heard on the news they've found something faster than light, which turned out to be neutrinos. I was extremely sceptical, and found online that they were asking for help to find the flaw in their experiment, but I didn't hear anything else about it then, but still wondered now and then what it was all about. (@7:00) Now I know. A loose plug.
Well there are particles faster than light, just not in vacuum. Google Cherenkov radiation.
Such an interesting problem, science communication. I spent most of my academic career with the perspective that “in the age of information, ignorance is a choice” but the further I get, the more I connect with people - I mean REALLY connect with humans, I find fault in this formula. The social engineering problem, which is slightly talked about here, is a massive situation which we as academics are usually waived away from. Don’t know how to solve the problem honestly, probably money? I’m blessed to be well funded, and I work very hard for that. But I’m glad it’s being discussed, and I very much value your content and forum of discussion here. Thank you for sharing.
As a layman I read about it when it came out and I didn't think it was a wormhole. They explained what they did in that it was like modeling some aspect of one or making an analog of one but with a qauntum computer. It was interesting. People just have to be responsible with the media they consume in general.
Ya same, i didnt see anyone think it was a real wormhole lol.
There’s the old joke of the scientist saying “my work is of no value when taken out of context”, and the headline saying “scientist claims science is of no use”
Thank you for making this video. I've had to fight off over-eager people amazed by the latest mainstream headline for a long time but I am just a piss-poor communicator and an awful teacher so it has been impossible to explain to them why they are being too...credulous? Or just not having a "science mindset" if that makes sense. Most of the general population seems to think in absolutes, where knowledge is some sort of hard and fast thing, not a nebulous, ever expanding and sometimes contracting web of observations and theories and testing that defies simple explanation. People actually get mad when "scientists keep changing their mind!" as if it were a fault with scientists and not a fault with own mind. But because I personally can understand how to contextualize science communication, I also struggle with blaming people for not "thinking right" instead of science communication for not explaining it right, and that is problematic.
So good to see Carlo Rovelli ! Such an humble person considering how rad he is
I wish there were a "love" button instead of only a "like" button, so I could tell the algorithm that this is exactly the kind of thing I very much want more of.
Try using the share link option and then clicking on the link you get. 👍💖
ok
Had the pleasure of being taught by Geraint Lewis in my undergrad, he's a great guy and even better teacher!
I had a class called modern physics discoveries, one of those easy subjects where they make you do some papers and presentations. Anyway, in one of the first classes we talked about scientific divulgation, and precisely the fact that most people overhype some scientific discoveries. There is a lot more to this topic, but the video was beautifully put, great job
That sounds cool, the physics major in my undergrad had a similar course. Science outreach towards the general public should be talked more about at that level. I know a prof who makes her students (math/phys education majors) make a short video/tiktok/whatever on some e.g. calculus concept as part of the course grading.
Couldn't agree more! Medical research reporting often follows the same pattern: the more sensational, the more it's hyped up, leading to greater publicity.
And it is evil, because I've lost count of the number of times over the years that cures for para- and quadraplegia have been promised to be around the corner, bringing soul-destroying cycles of hope and despair to sufferers.
Thank you for this video! As scientists and communicators, it's our responsibility to accurately portray and explain the science. In my videos, I make sure to look at all sides and past studies. I also caution my viewers that a single study rarely results in a major breakthrough. The biggest issue, in my opinion, is that many people who communicate science are neither scientists nor trained science communicators.
Many don't bother to consult with the actual experts. They will just find the most convenient 'smart person' that supports the hype they want to sell. e.g. 2020.
As a communications officer at a university, I agree with most of what is said in this video. My view is that most of us can get better at this, from the scientist overhyping their results and all the way to the end consumer clicking on clickbait. When it comes to my own profession, I think we have way too much focus on news, but there are so much more you can do than writing a press release about some new finding! There are books, podcasts, youtube channels and so on, where nothings stopping you from explaining things slowly and contextualizing.
Often times findings that are several decades (sometimes even centuries) old are still more or less unknow to the general public. When I look at the related content right at this moment, I see proof of just that, with Veritasium videos titled "How One Line in the Oldest Math Text Hinted at Hidden Universes", "The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics" and "The Man Who Killed Millions and Saved Billions", all with several million views. One thing I learned when working as a journalist is that "news" don't really have to be new, they just have to be new to the reader.
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I would love a video on the opposite problem in science communication where the communication is dense, lengthy, and boring for most people. In my experience in college scientific papers things are either sensationalized or boring and unreadable for the average person. I’d love it if you made a video on this other side of the science communication problem.
That’s why Anton is so legit
Academic and research papers are not for the layman. It can't be nor should the field be burdened with making copies of papers intended for the general population. I do think abstracts should be readable for most adults though (and they very usually are in my experience). It's the job of science communicators and pop-science creators to parse papers. Most papers are essentially inherently boring. Yes, it's amazing when learning is fun but it being fun cannot and should not be some standard that must be adhered to. The sooner you accept that you just have to slog through papers, the better it'll be for you.
scientific papers are supposed to be boring because they need to be accurate for their intended audience. it is not like "research papers" of politics or "gender studies"
You have a valid point. Their use of language can be improved to better communicate their work. They often use unnecessarily big words when they can just use the regular, shorter version that's generally used. It would make their work more readable and tolerable. I hate it when people want to sound smart by using a massive swollen word for every 3rd word of their sentence. It's just overkill. Being smart is about knowing things and not making stupid decisions, not using fancy big words in droves until you numb the minds of most who try to understand you. That's not impressive, that's just counterproductive...
@@johnsober I would argue you don't need complex words to explain complex ideas. Obviously removing details for the sake of dumbing things down is a bad idea. But if you can get the same information across using in simpler terms, what's the point of making it harder to understand?
Thank you for this well presented and much needed video!
Google knows that I am a nerd and so the newsfeed on my Google Chrome homepage on my phone is full of science news. I quickly learned to not click on certain websites and some I've even asked Google to no longer recommend. Same on UA-cam. So much clickbait.
Example - I just watched some channel's interview with a scientist who discovered that there could possibly be life on an exoplanet. This was based on info from JWST. The interviewer kept trying to hype it. "You are going to be the most famous human ever." The scientist smiled nervously and kept trying to redirect or explain that there's only a 50/50 chance and still a lot more observation and research to be done. While still impressive (a 50/50 chance), I did not finish the video or even give it a thumbs up, which is rare. I understand how UA-cam works and always like every video, but this was so blatantly over hyped I just couldn't.
Plus we also have the anti-science and anti-intellectual movement being perpetrated by conservatives and corporations. With all of these issues and more we really have to work hard to figure out what's real and most people don't have the time, energy or f***s to give about it, so the lies get bigger and more airtime.
Overall, this issue is really making me want electrolytes. After all, "it's what plants crave." 🤦🏼♀️ It's very discouraging. Thanks for doing your part to shed light on the issue.
I usually don't write comments, but they say it affects youtube algorithms, and this is something that more people should watch and understand, so here you are 😊. I myself try hard to explain to people that science is much more profound and consistent than they think. Thank you for such a good explanation of why it is so important!
My first thought on hearing they "built" a wormhole in a computer was, "This is not a pipe." (The Treachery of Images by Magritte).
I love your topics. Thanks. You put a lot of effort in.
I don't think just "talking about the problem" will solve it. Rather, this is the first step for people in general getting that there is a problem.
But we need a more structural change. Journals and funding agencies must get serious with replicability. That is one of the fundamentals of science, and yet is negleted. The way we rank researchers and institutions based in productivity (aka publishing rates) is another big cause.
Well, yes we need to talk a lot more about this to develop solutions and mainly to gain public support to implement them.
Thank you. I was kinda getting annoyed about that too. When that fusion story broke I was immediately thinking "but... how do you scale such a process... mass producing super expensive tiny capsules filled with Deuterium, having to open the chamber and reseal it after every firing, which means cooling it down every time, which means super inefficient thermal transfer of the energy...."
I searched for sources talking about this issue but didn't find anything. I can't be the only one seeing the issues???
Made me pull my hair lol