Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's
Speaker 1: s Y s K Selects, I've chosen our guide to
Speaker 1: research tips. It's a surprisingly good episode that shares the
Speaker 1: ins and outs of keeping from being duped online by
Speaker 1: bad information and how to read between the lines on
Speaker 1: sensational science reporting, all sorts of stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: you might notice in this episode Chuck sounds different than usual.
Speaker 1: That's because this is during the period that he was
Speaker 1: transitioning into a person with a full set of teeth,
Speaker 1: so that adds to the hilarity of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this as much as we did,
Speaker 1: making it. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radios Have Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant and Jerry This Stuff you Should Know. Um, Josh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do something weird today and we're gonna do
Speaker 1: a listener mail at the head of the podcast, right,
Speaker 1: all right, what, all right, let's do it. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is from being the listener mail music going. Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, should we go the whole nine yards? People
Speaker 1: might freak out all right, this is from Bianca. Uh
Speaker 1: VoiceAge is what I'm gonna say. I think that's great. Hey,
Speaker 1: guys wrote you not too long ago asking about Hey
Speaker 1: research your own podcast. It just got back from a
Speaker 1: class where we talked about research misrepresentation and journal articles.
Speaker 1: Apparently journals don't publish everything that is submitted. A lot
Speaker 1: of researchers don't even publish their studies they don't like
Speaker 1: the results. Some laws have been put into place to
Speaker 1: prevent misrepresentation, such as researchers having to register their studies
Speaker 1: before they get results and journals only accepting preregistered studies.
Speaker 1: But apparently this is not happening at all, even though
Speaker 1: it is now technically law. This ends with the general
Speaker 1: public being missing for about methods and drugs that work.
Speaker 1: For example, there are twenty five studies proving a drug
Speaker 1: works that don't. It's more likely that twenty of the
Speaker 1: positive results have been published and only one or two
Speaker 1: of the negative. Uh. And that is from Bianca, and
Speaker 1: that led us to this article on our own website.
Speaker 1: Ten signs that that study is bogus and here it
Speaker 1: is nice Chuck. Well, we get asked a lot about
Speaker 1: research from people, usually in college are like you guys
Speaker 1: are professional researchers. How do I know I'm doing a
Speaker 1: good job and getting good info? And it's getting harder
Speaker 1: and harder these days, it really is. You know. One
Speaker 1: sign that I've learned is if you are searching about
Speaker 1: his study and all of the hits that come back
Speaker 1: are from different news organizations and they're all within like
Speaker 1: a two three day period from a year ago, nothing like,
Speaker 1: nothing more recent than that than somebody released the sensational
Speaker 1: study and no one did any actual effort into investigating it,
Speaker 1: and there was no follow up. If you dig deep enough,
Speaker 1: somebody might have done follow up or something like that,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, it was just something that
Speaker 1: splashed across the headlines, which more often than not is
Speaker 1: the is the case as far as science reporting goes.
Speaker 1: So that's a bonus, that's the eleventh boom. How about that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: should we just start banging these out, let's do it?
Speaker 1: Or do you have some other clever well apart and
Speaker 1: parcel with that. I don't know. If it's clever, you
Speaker 1: do come across people who you know can be trusted
Speaker 1: and relied upon to do good science reporting. So like
Speaker 1: ed Young is one another guy named Ben gold Acre
Speaker 1: has something called bad science. I don't remember what outlet
Speaker 1: he's with. And then there's a guy I think scientific
Speaker 1: American named John Horgan who's awesome. Yeah. Or some journalism
Speaker 1: organizations that have been around and stood the test of
Speaker 1: time that you know are really doing it right, like
Speaker 1: a nature yeah, scientific amor kids are like really science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I feel I feel really good about using those sources. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but even they can you know, there's there's something called
Speaker 1: scientis um where there's a lot of like faith in
Speaker 1: dogma associated with the scientific process, and you know you
Speaker 1: have to root through that as well. Try it. I'm done. Uh.
Speaker 1: The first one that they have here on the list
Speaker 1: is that it's unrepeatable, and that's a big one. UM.
Speaker 1: The Center for Open Science did a study, uh was
Speaker 1: a project really where they took two hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: researchers and they said, you know what, take these one
Speaker 1: hundred studies that have been published already psychological studies and
Speaker 1: just pour over them. And uh, in just last year.
Speaker 1: It took him a while, took them several years. They said,
Speaker 1: you know what, more than half of these can't even
Speaker 1: be repeated using the same methods. They're not reproducible. Nope,
Speaker 1: not reproducible. That's a big one. And and ones that
Speaker 1: means that they when they carried out they followed the
Speaker 1: methodology UM signed sific method podcasts. You should listen to
Speaker 1: that one. That was a good one that they they
Speaker 1: found that their results were just not what the what
Speaker 1: the people published, not anywhere near them. UM. For example,
Speaker 1: they used one as an example where a study found
Speaker 1: that men were terrible at a determining whether a woman
Speaker 1: was giving them um, some sort of like a clues
Speaker 1: to attraction or just being friendly sexy sexy stuff or
Speaker 1: friends or yeah or good to meet you or buzz
Speaker 1: off jerk yeah. Um. And they did the study again
Speaker 1: and as part of this Open Science Center for Open
Speaker 1: Science study your survey, and they found that that was
Speaker 1: not reproducible or that they came up with totally different results.
Speaker 1: And that was just one of many. Yeah. And in
Speaker 1: this case specifically, they looked into that study and they
Speaker 1: found that it was UM. One was in the United Kingdom,
Speaker 1: one was in the United States. May have something to
Speaker 1: do with it. But the point is, Chuck, is if
Speaker 1: you're talking about humanity, I don't think that the study
Speaker 1: was like the American male is terrible at it. It's
Speaker 1: men are terrible at it. Right. So that means that
Speaker 1: whether it's in the UK, which is basically the US
Speaker 1: with an accent and a penchant for t I'm just
Speaker 1: kidding UK s soon, UM, the it should be universal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I agreed, unless you're saying no, it's just
Speaker 1: this only applies to American men, right, or the American
Speaker 1: men right, then it's not even study. Yeah. Uh. The
Speaker 1: next one we have is, uh, it's it's plausible, not
Speaker 1: necessarily provable. And this is a big one because and
Speaker 1: I think, um, we're talking about observational studies here more
Speaker 1: than lab experiments, because with observational studies, you know, you
Speaker 1: sit in a room and get asked three questions about something,
Speaker 1: and all these people get asked the same questions, and
Speaker 1: then they pour over the data and they draw out
Speaker 1: their own observations. And one very famously, an observational study
Speaker 1: that led to false results found a correlation between having
Speaker 1: a type A personality and um, being prone to risk
Speaker 1: for heart attacks and um for a long time, you
Speaker 1: know that the news outlets were like, oh, yes, of
Speaker 1: course that makes total sense. This study proved what we've
Speaker 1: all known all along, um, And then it came out
Speaker 1: that no, actually what was going on was a well
Speaker 1: known anomaly where you have a five percent um risk
Speaker 1: that chance will produce something that looks like a statistically
Speaker 1: significant correlation when really it's just total chance. And science
Speaker 1: is aware of this, especially with observational studies, because the
Speaker 1: more questions you have, the more opportunity you have for
Speaker 1: that five percent chance to create a seemingly statistically significant
Speaker 1: correlation when really it's not there. It was just random chance,
Speaker 1: where if somebody else goes back and does the same
Speaker 1: same study, they're not going to come up with the
Speaker 1: same results. But the if a researcher is I would guess,
Speaker 1: willfully blind to that five percent chance, um, they will
Speaker 1: go ahead and produce the study and be like, no,
Speaker 1: it's true, here's the results right here, go ahead and
Speaker 1: report on it and make my career. Yeah. Well, and
Speaker 1: they also might be looking for something in affect chances
Speaker 1: are they are, Um, it's not just some random studying.
Speaker 1: Let's just see what we get if we ask a
Speaker 1: bunch of weird questions. It's like, hey, we're looking to
Speaker 1: try and prove something most likely, so that better minehoff
Speaker 1: thing might come into play where you're kind of cherry
Speaker 1: picking data. Yeah, that's a big problem that kind of
Speaker 1: comes up. A lot of these are really kind of
Speaker 1: interrelated to totally. The other big thing that's in related
Speaker 1: is how the media reports on science these days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he's a big deal. Yeah, Like John Oliver
Speaker 1: just recently went off on this and NPR did a
Speaker 1: thing on it, like they might even like the researcher
Speaker 1: might say plausible, but it doesn't get portrayed that way
Speaker 1: in the media. Sure. Remember that poor kid who thought
Speaker 1: he found the ancient Mayan city. The media just took
Speaker 1: it and ran with it. You know, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there was a lot of maybe or it's possible, we
Speaker 1: need to go check kind of thing. That mean, he's like, no,
Speaker 1: he discovered an ancient Mayan city never known before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and let's put it in a headline. And that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the That's just kind of the way it is
Speaker 1: these days. Do you have to be able to sort
Speaker 1: through And I guess that's what we're doing here, aren't we, Chuck,
Speaker 1: We're telling everybody how to sort through it, or at
Speaker 1: the very least take scientific reporting with a grain of salt, yes, right,
Speaker 1: and not well, like you don't necessarily have the time
Speaker 1: to go through and double that research and then check
Speaker 1: on that research, and you know, right, so take it
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt. Um unsound samples. Uh. Here
Speaker 1: was his study that basically said, um, how you lost
Speaker 1: your virginity is going to have a very a large
Speaker 1: impact and play a role on how you feel about
Speaker 1: sex and experienced sex for the rest of your life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's possible. Sure, it seems logical, so we'll just go
Speaker 1: with it. But when you, um, only interview college students
Speaker 1: and uh you don't you only interview heterosexual people, then
Speaker 1: you can't really say you've done a robust study, now,
Speaker 1: can't you. Plus you also take out of the sample
Speaker 1: size your sample population, anybody who reports having had a
Speaker 1: violent encounter, Throw them out, that data out, because that's
Speaker 1: not gonna inform how you feel about sex, right exactly.
Speaker 1: You're just narrowing it down further and further and again
Speaker 1: cherry picking the data by throwing people out of your
Speaker 1: population sample that don't that will throw off the data
Speaker 1: that you want. Yeah, and I've never heard of this
Speaker 1: acronym weird and UM. A lot of these studies are
Speaker 1: conducted by professors in acade make so a lot of
Speaker 1: times you've got college students as your sample, and there's
Speaker 1: something called weird Western educated from industrialized, rich in democratic countries. Right,
Speaker 1: those are the participants in the studies studies subject. But
Speaker 1: then they will say, men, right, well, what about the
Speaker 1: gay man in Africa? Right, like you didn't ask him,
Speaker 1: so that was that's actually a really really big deal. Um.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and ten, they these three researchers did
Speaker 1: a survey of a ton of social science and behavioral
Speaker 1: science studies found that eight percent of them used weird
Speaker 1: study participants. So basically it was college kids for eighty
Speaker 1: percent of these papers. And they surveyed a bunch of
Speaker 1: papers and they took it a little further and they
Speaker 1: said that, um, people who fit into the weird category
Speaker 1: only make up twelve percent of the world population, but
Speaker 1: they represent eight percent of the population of these studies.
Speaker 1: And a college student chuck in North America, Europe, Israel,
Speaker 1: or Australia is four thousand times more likely to be
Speaker 1: in a scientific study than anyone else on the planet.
Speaker 1: And they're basing psychology and behavioral sciences are basing their
Speaker 1: findings onto everybody else based on this this small tranche
Speaker 1: of humanity, and that's a that's a big problem. That's
Speaker 1: extremely misleading. Yeah, and it's also a little insulting because
Speaker 1: what they're essentially saying is like, this is who matters.
Speaker 1: Well also, yeah, but what's sad is this is who
Speaker 1: I am going to go to the trouble of recruiting
Speaker 1: for my study. It's just sheer laziness. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: a lot of them are like, well, I don't have
Speaker 1: the funding to do that. I guess I see that,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I guarantee there's a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of laziness involved. Yeah, or maybe if you don't
Speaker 1: have the money, maybe don't do that study. Is it
Speaker 1: that simple? I'm probably over simplifying. I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we're going to hear from some people in academia
Speaker 1: about this one. We'll stop using weird participants, or at
Speaker 1: the very least say, um, like this is sexual dartmouth students. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this applies to them, not everybody in the world of
Speaker 1: these studies where they use those people as study participants
Speaker 1: and they're not even they're not even emblematic of the
Speaker 1: rest of the human race. Like college students are shown
Speaker 1: to see the world differently than other people around the world.
Speaker 1: So it's not like you can be like, well, it's
Speaker 1: still works, you can still extrapolate. It's like flawed in
Speaker 1: every way, shape and form. Probably take a break. Come, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's take a break because you can get a little
Speaker 1: hot under the collar. I love it. Man. Uh, we'll
Speaker 1: be right back after this. Just god so much. Sorry,
Speaker 1: all right, what's next, buddy? Uh? Very small sample sizes. Right,
Speaker 1: if you do a study with twenty mice, then you're
Speaker 1: not doing a good enough study. No, So they used
Speaker 1: this um in the in the article, they use the
Speaker 1: idea of ten thousand smokers and ten thousand non smokers,
Speaker 1: and they said, okay, if you have a population sample
Speaker 1: that size, that's not bad. It's a pretty good start.
Speaker 1: And you find that of the smokers developed lung cancer,
Speaker 1: but only five of non smokers did, then your study
Speaker 1: has what's called a high power Yeah. Um, it's if
Speaker 1: if you had something like ten smokers and ten non smokers,
Speaker 1: and to the smokers developed lung cancer and one developed
Speaker 1: lung cancer. As well, you have very little power, and
Speaker 1: you should have very little confidence in your findings. But regardless,
Speaker 1: it's still going to get reported if it's a sexy idea, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. Um. And because these are kind of overlapping
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, it was I want to
Speaker 1: mention this guy, a scientist named Ulrich uh Dirnegle Uh.
Speaker 1: He and his colleague Malcolm McCloud have been trying I mean,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of scientists that are trying
Speaker 1: to clean this up because they know it's a problem.
Speaker 1: But he co wrote an article in Nature. Uh that's
Speaker 1: called robust research colin institutions must do their part for reproduceability.
Speaker 1: So this kind of ties back into the reproducing things,
Speaker 1: like we said earlier, and his whole ideas, you know
Speaker 1: what good funding they should tie fund ing two good
Speaker 1: institutional practices, like you shouldn't get the money if you
Speaker 1: can't show that you're doing it right. Um. And he
Speaker 1: said that would just weed out a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: Here's one staggering stat for reproducibility and small sample size.
Speaker 1: Biomedical researchers for drug companies reported that of their only
Speaker 1: of the papers that they publish are even reproducible and
Speaker 1: that was like an insider stat and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: They's the drugs are still going to market. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is that's a really good example of why this does
Speaker 1: matter to the average person. You know, like if you
Speaker 1: hear something like um uh, monkeys like to cuddle with
Speaker 1: one another because they are reminded of their mothers. Study shows, right,
Speaker 1: do you can just be like, oh, that's great, I'm
Speaker 1: going to share that on the internet. Doesn't really affect
Speaker 1: you in any way. But when their studies being conducted
Speaker 1: that are that are creating drugs that could kill you
Speaker 1: or not treat you or that kind of thing, And
Speaker 1: is it's attracting money and funding and that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: that's like that's harmful. Yeah. Absolutely. I found another survey
Speaker 1: did you like that terrible study idea that it came
Speaker 1: up like the monkey's like the cuddle A hundred and
Speaker 1: forty trainees at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas,
Speaker 1: Thank you Houston for being so kind to us at
Speaker 1: a recent show. They found that nearly a third of
Speaker 1: these um trainees felt pressure to support their mentors work,
Speaker 1: like to get ahead or not get fired. So that's
Speaker 1: another issue. As you've got these trainees or residents, uh,
Speaker 1: and you have these mentors, and even if you disagree
Speaker 1: or don't think it's a great study, you're you're pressured
Speaker 1: into just going along with it. I could see that
Speaker 1: for sure. There's there seems to be a huge hierarchy.
Speaker 1: And UM Science, Ye canna lab. You know you've got
Speaker 1: the person who runs the lab. It's their lab, and
Speaker 1: go against them. But there are people UM like Science
Speaker 1: and Nature to great journals are updating their guidelines right now.
Speaker 1: They're introducing checklists. UM Science hired statisticians to their panel
Speaker 1: reviewing editors, not just other you know, peer reviewed like
Speaker 1: they actually actually hard numbers people specifically, because that's a
Speaker 1: the process that's a huge part of studies. It's like
Speaker 1: these this mind breaking statistical analysis. It can be used
Speaker 1: for good or ill. And I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: the average scientists necessarily is a whiz at that, although
Speaker 1: it has to be part of training, but not necessarily.
Speaker 1: And that's a different kind of beast altogether. UM stats,
Speaker 1: we talked about it earlier. I took a stats class
Speaker 1: in college. So much trouble that was awful at it.
Speaker 1: It really just it's a special kind of is even mad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't get it. I passed it, though I passed
Speaker 1: it because my professor took pity on me. Um that
Speaker 1: ulric Durna durnagal ulric arnaal Um. He is a he's
Speaker 1: a big time crusader for his jam making sure that
Speaker 1: science is good science. One of the things um he
Speaker 1: crusades against is the idea of remembering that virginity study
Speaker 1: where they just threw out anybody who had a violent
Speaker 1: encounter for their first sexual experience. UM. Apparently that's a
Speaker 1: big deal with animal studies as well. If you're studying
Speaker 1: the effects of a drug or something like there was
Speaker 1: there one in the article. Um. If you're studying the
Speaker 1: effects of a stroke drug and you've got a control
Speaker 1: group of mice that are taking the drug or that
Speaker 1: aren't taking the drug, and then a test group that
Speaker 1: are getting the drug. Um, and then like three mice
Speaker 1: from the group die even though they're on the stroke drug.
Speaker 1: They die of a massive stroke, and you just literally
Speaker 1: and figuratively throw them out of the study, um, and
Speaker 1: don't include them in the results. That changes the data.
Speaker 1: And he's been on a peer of you on a
Speaker 1: paper before He's like, no, this doesn't pass peer of you.
Speaker 1: You can't just throw out what happened to these three rodents?
Speaker 1: You started with ten, there's only seven reported in the end.
Speaker 1: What happened to those three? And how many of them
Speaker 1: just don't report the ten? They're like, oh, we only
Speaker 1: started with seven. Were going, you know, well, I was
Speaker 1: about to say I get the urge. I don't get
Speaker 1: it because it's not right. But I think what happens
Speaker 1: is you work so hard at something. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you're like, how can I just walk away from two
Speaker 1: years of this because it didn't get a result? Okay?
Speaker 1: The point of real science, though, you have to walk
Speaker 1: away from it, Well, you have to publish that. And
Speaker 1: that's the other thing too, And I guarantee scientists will say, hey, man,
Speaker 1: try getting a negative paper published in a good journal.
Speaker 1: These days, you don't want that kind of stuff. But
Speaker 1: part of it also is I don't think it's enough
Speaker 1: to just have to be published in like a journal.
Speaker 1: You want to make the news cycle as well. That
Speaker 1: makes it even better, right, Um, So, I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of factors involved, but ultimately, if you take
Speaker 1: all that stuff away, if you take the culture away,
Speaker 1: from it. You're if you get negative results, you're supposed
Speaker 1: to publish that so that some other scientists can come
Speaker 1: along and be like, oh, somebody else already did this
Speaker 1: using these methods that I was going to use. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna waste two years of my career because somebody
Speaker 1: else already did. Thank you, buddy for saving me this
Speaker 1: time and trouble and effort to know that this does
Speaker 1: not work. You've proven this doesn't work. When you start
Speaker 1: to prove it does work, you actually proved it didn't work.
Speaker 1: That's part of science. Yeah, And I wish there wasn't
Speaker 1: a negative connotation to a negative result because to me,
Speaker 1: it's the value is the same as proving something does
Speaker 1: work as proving something doesn't work. Right. Again, it's just
Speaker 1: not it's sexy. Yeah, but I'm not sexy either, so
Speaker 1: maybe that's why I get it. Uh. Here's one that
Speaker 1: I didn't know was a thing. Predatory publishing. You never
Speaker 1: heard of this. So here's the scenario. You're a doctor
Speaker 1: or a scientist and um, you get an email from
Speaker 1: a journal that says, hey, you got anything interesting for us.
Speaker 1: I've heard about your work, and you say, well, I
Speaker 1: actually do I have this this study right here. They say, cool,
Speaker 1: we'll publish it. You go, great, my career is taking off.
Speaker 1: Then you get a bill he says, where's my three
Speaker 1: grand for publishing your article? And you're like, I don't
Speaker 1: owe you three grand, all right, give us two. And
Speaker 1: you're like, I can't even give you two. And if
Speaker 1: you fight them long enough, maybe they'll drop it and
Speaker 1: never work with you again, or maybe it'll just be like, well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to your next quarter. Exactly. That's called predatory publishing,
Speaker 1: and it's a I'm not sure how new it is,
Speaker 1: maybe it's is it pretty new, but it's a thing
Speaker 1: now where uh, you can pay essentially to get something published. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can. Um it kind of it's kind of like
Speaker 1: who's who in behavioral science is kind of thing you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And apparently it's new because it's a result of open
Speaker 1: source academic journals, which a lot of people push for,
Speaker 1: including Aaron Schwartz very famously who like took a bunch
Speaker 1: of academic articles and published him online and was prosecuted
Speaker 1: heavily for it. Persecuted. You could even say, um, but
Speaker 1: the idea that science is behind this paywall, which is
Speaker 1: another great article from prisonomics by the way, Um, it
Speaker 1: really just ticks a lot of people off. So they
Speaker 1: started open source journals right and as a result, predatory
Speaker 1: publishers came about and said, Okay, yeah, let's make this free,
Speaker 1: but we need to make our money anyway, so we're
Speaker 1: going to charge the academic who wrote the study for
Speaker 1: publishing it. Well yeah, and and sometimes now it's just
Speaker 1: a flat out scam operation. There's this guy named Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Beale who is a research librarian. He is my new
Speaker 1: hero because he's truly like one of these dudes that
Speaker 1: has uh he's trying to make a difference and he's
Speaker 1: not profiting from this, but he's spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time by creating a list of of predatory publishers. Yea
Speaker 1: a significant list too. Yeah, how many four thousand of
Speaker 1: them right now? Um. Some of these companies flat out
Speaker 1: lie like they're literally based out of Pakistan or Nigeria
Speaker 1: and they say, no, we're in New York publisher so
Speaker 1: it's just a flat out scam. Or they lie about
Speaker 1: their review practices, um, like they might not have any
Speaker 1: review practices and they straight up lie and say they do.
Speaker 1: There was one called Scientific Journals International out of Minnesota
Speaker 1: that he found out was just one guy, like literally
Speaker 1: working out of his home, just live, being for articles,
Speaker 1: charging to get them published, not reviewing anything, and just
Speaker 1: saying I'm a journal. Yeah, I'm a scientific journal. He
Speaker 1: shut it down apparently or tried to sell it. I
Speaker 1: think he was found out. UM and this other one,
Speaker 1: the International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications. They created
Speaker 1: an award and then gave it to itself and even
Speaker 1: modeled the award from an Australian TV award like the
Speaker 1: physical statute. That's fascinating. I didn't make you do that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give ourselves. Yeah, let's the best podcast in
Speaker 1: the universal ward that it's gonna look like the Oscar. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: the Oscar crusted with the Emmy. Uh. This other one,
Speaker 1: med med No Publications actually confused the meaning of STM
Speaker 1: Science Technology Medicine. They thought it meant sports technology in Medicine. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of UM science journalists or scientists too. But
Speaker 1: UCH dogs like to send like gibberish articles into those
Speaker 1: things to see if they published him, and sometimes they do.
Speaker 1: Frequently they do. They sniff them off the case it's
Speaker 1: the big time. How about that call back. It's been
Speaker 1: a while. It needs to be a T shirt. Did
Speaker 1: we take a break? Yeah, all right, we'll be back
Speaker 1: and finish up right after this. Just like the number
Speaker 1: of stars the sky so much, Sorry, George. So here's
Speaker 1: a big one. You ever heard the term follow the
Speaker 1: money m That's applicable to a lot of realms of
Speaker 1: society and most certainly in journals. Um, if something looks hinky,
Speaker 1: just do a little instigating and see who's sponsoring their work. Well,
Speaker 1: especially if that person is like, no, everyone else is wrong, right,
Speaker 1: climate change is not man made kind of thing. Sure.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look at the where their finding
Speaker 1: is coming from, you might be unsurprised to find that
Speaker 1: it's coming from people who would benefit from the idea
Speaker 1: that anthropogenic climate change isn't real. Yeah, well we might
Speaker 1: as well talk about him Willie Soon. Yeah, Mr Soon?
Speaker 1: Is he a doctor? He's a He's a physicist of
Speaker 1: some sort. Yeah, all right, m M. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: say Mr or doctor Soon because I'm not positive. Uh.
Speaker 1: He is one of a few people on the planet Earth, um,
Speaker 1: professionals that is, who deny human climate change, human influence
Speaker 1: climate change. Like you said, you said the fancier word
Speaker 1: for it though, and anthropogenic. Yeah, it's a good word. Um.
Speaker 1: And he works at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Speaker 1: So hey, he's with Harvard, he's got the cred, right right. Um.
Speaker 1: Turns out when you look into where he's getting his funding,
Speaker 1: he received one point two million dollars over the past
Speaker 1: decade from Exxon Mobile, the Southern Company, the Cokes, and
Speaker 1: the Koke brothers, their foundation, the Charles G. Coke Foundation.
Speaker 1: Exn stopped in stopped funding him. But the bulk of
Speaker 1: his money and his funding came and I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: forgot the American Petroleum Institute came from people who clearly
Speaker 1: had a dog in this fight. And it's just how
Speaker 1: can you trust this? You know? Yeah, well you trusted
Speaker 1: because there's a guy and he has a PhD in
Speaker 1: aerospace engineering by the way, all right, he's a doc.
Speaker 1: He works with this um this organization, the Harvard Smithsonian
Speaker 1: Center for Astrophysics, which is a legitimate place. Um. It
Speaker 1: doesn't get any funding from Harvard, but it gets a
Speaker 1: lot from NASA and from the Smithsonian well in Harvard's
Speaker 1: very very clear to point this out when people ask
Speaker 1: him about Willie Soon. Um, they're kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: here's the quote, Willie Soon as a Smithsonian staff researcher
Speaker 1: at Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a collaboration of the
Speaker 1: Harvard College Observatory in the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Like they
Speaker 1: just want to be real clear. Even though he uses
Speaker 1: a Harvard email address, he's not our employee. No, but again,
Speaker 1: he's getting lots of funding from NASA and lots of
Speaker 1: funding from the Smithsonian. This guy, Um, if his scientific
Speaker 1: beliefs are what they are and he's a smart guy,
Speaker 1: then yeah, I don't know about like getting fired first saying,
Speaker 1: you know, here's a paper on on the idea that
Speaker 1: climate change is not human made. Yeah, he thinks it's
Speaker 1: the Sun's fault. But he didn't he doesn't reveal in
Speaker 1: any of his um conflicts of interest. Uh, that should
Speaker 1: go at the end of the paper. He didn't reveal
Speaker 1: where his funding was coming from. And I get the
Speaker 1: oppression that in academia, if you're are totally cool with
Speaker 1: everybody thinking like you're a shill, you can get away
Speaker 1: with it. Right. Well, this stuff, a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff is not illegal, right, even predatory publishing is not illegal,
Speaker 1: just unethical. And if you're counting on people to police
Speaker 1: themselves with ethics, a lot of times will disappoint you.
Speaker 1: The Heartland Institute gave Willie Soon a Courage Award, and
Speaker 1: if you're not caring about what other scientists think about
Speaker 1: if you've heard the Heartland Institute, you might remember them.
Speaker 1: They are a conservative thank tank. You might remember them
Speaker 1: in the nineties when they worked alongside Philip Morris to
Speaker 1: deny the risks of secondhand smoke. Yeah, that's all chronicle.
Speaker 1: In that book, I've talked about merchants of doubt that
Speaker 1: really just a bunch of scientists, legitimate bona fide scientists
Speaker 1: who are like up for for um, being bought by
Speaker 1: groups like that said, it is sad um and the whole,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is they're saying like, well, you can't
Speaker 1: say without beyond a shadow of a doubt, with absolute certainty,
Speaker 1: that that's the case. And science is like, no, science
Speaker 1: doesn't do that. Science doesn't do absolute certainty. But the
Speaker 1: average person reading a newspaper sees that, oh you can't
Speaker 1: stay with absolute certainty, Well then maybe it isn't man made.
Speaker 1: And then there's that doubt that. The people just go
Speaker 1: and get the money for for saying that, for writing
Speaker 1: papers about it. It's millions of despicable. Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: Um self reviewed. Uh you've heard of peer review. We've
Speaker 1: talked about it quite a bit. Your reviews. When you
Speaker 1: have a study and then one or more ideally more
Speaker 1: of your peers reviews your study and says, you know what,
Speaker 1: you had, best practices, you did it right. Um, it
Speaker 1: was reproducible, you follow the scientific method. Um, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give it my stamp of approval and put my name
Speaker 1: on it. Not literally or is it? I think so?
Speaker 1: It says who reviewed it. I believe in the journal
Speaker 1: when it's published, but not my name as the author
Speaker 1: of study, you know what I mean? Um, and the
Speaker 1: peer reviewer as a peer reviewer, and that's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1: But people have faked this and been their own peer reviewer,
Speaker 1: which is not how it works. No, who's this guy? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm terrible at pronouncing Korean names, so all apologies, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say nung In Moon nice Dr Moon, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's call him Dr Moon. Okay, So Dr Moon um
Speaker 1: worked on natural medicine. I believe, and was submitting all
Speaker 1: these papers that were getting reviewed very quickly, because apparently
Speaker 1: part of the process of peer reviews to say, this
Speaker 1: paper is great, can you recommend some people in your
Speaker 1: field that can review your paper? And Dr Moon said,
Speaker 1: I sure can. He was on fire. Let me go
Speaker 1: make up some people and make up some email addresses
Speaker 1: that actually come to my inbox and just posed as
Speaker 1: all of zone peer reviewers. He was lazy, though, is
Speaker 1: the thing, like, I don't know that he would have
Speaker 1: been found out if he hadn't been um careless. I
Speaker 1: guess because he was returning the reviews within like twenty
Speaker 1: four hours. Sometimes a peer review of like a real
Speaker 1: um study should take I would guess weeks, if not months,
Speaker 1: like the study the publication schedule for the average study
Speaker 1: or paper, I don't think it's a very quick thing.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of quick turner, right, And this
Speaker 1: guy was like twenty four hours. When they're like Dr Moon,
Speaker 1: I see your paper was reviewed and accepted by Dr Mooney,
Speaker 1: It's like I just added a Y to the end.
Speaker 1: It seemed easy. Uh. If you google peer review fraud,
Speaker 1: you will be shocked and how often this happens and
Speaker 1: how many legit science publishers are having to retract studies? Uh,
Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean they're bad. Um, they're getting duped
Speaker 1: as well. But there's one based in Berlin that had
Speaker 1: sixty four retractions because of fraudulent reviews. And they're just
Speaker 1: one publisher of many. Every publisher out there probably has
Speaker 1: been duped. Um. Maybe not everyone, I'm surmising that, but
Speaker 1: it's a big problem. We should study on it. I'll
Speaker 1: review it. It'll end up in the headlines. Now, every
Speaker 1: single publisher duped, says Chuck. Uh. And speaking of um
Speaker 1: the headlines, Chuck. One of the problems with science reporting
Speaker 1: or reading science reporting is that what you usually are hearing,
Speaker 1: especially if it's making a big splash, is what's called
Speaker 1: the initial findings. Somebody carried out a study and this
Speaker 1: is what they found, and it's amazing and mind blowing
Speaker 1: and it um, it supports everything everyone's always known. But
Speaker 1: now there's a scientific study that says, yes, that's the case.
Speaker 1: And then if you wait a year or two, when
Speaker 1: people follow up and reproduce the study and find that
Speaker 1: it's actually not the case, it doesn't get reported on.
Speaker 1: Usually Yeah, and and sometimes the science scientists or the
Speaker 1: publisher is they're doing it right and they say initial findings,
Speaker 1: but the public and sometimes even the reporter will say
Speaker 1: initial findings. But we as a people that ingest this
Speaker 1: stuff need to understand what that means, um, and the
Speaker 1: fine print is always like you know, you know more
Speaker 1: study is needed, but no one if it's something that
Speaker 1: you want to be true, you'll just say, hey, look
Speaker 1: at the study, right. You know it's brand new and
Speaker 1: they need to study it for twenty more years, but hey,
Speaker 1: look what it says. And the more the more you
Speaker 1: start paying attention to this kind of thing, the more
Speaker 1: kind of disdain you have for that kind of just
Speaker 1: offhand um sensationalist science reporting. But you'll still get it
Speaker 1: up in it. Like every once in a while, I'll
Speaker 1: catch myself like saying something. You'd be like, oh, did
Speaker 1: you hear this? And then as I'm saying it out loud,
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's preposterous. Yeah, there's no way that's going
Speaker 1: to pan out to be true. I got colleckbated, I know.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we have to avoid this stuff. It's
Speaker 1: stuff because we have our name on this podcast. But
Speaker 1: luckily we've given ourselves the back door of saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we make mistakes a lot. It's true though, we're not experts,
Speaker 1: we're not scientists. Uh. And then finally we're gonna finish
Speaker 1: up with the header on this one is it's a
Speaker 1: cool story. And that's a big one because um, it's
Speaker 1: not enough these days. And this all ties in with
Speaker 1: media and how we read things as as people. But
Speaker 1: it's not enough just to have a study that might
Speaker 1: prove something. You have to wrap it up in a
Speaker 1: nice package. Yeah, to deliver people get it in the
Speaker 1: news cycle. And the cooler the better. Yep. It almost
Speaker 1: doesn't matter about the science as far as the media
Speaker 1: is concerned. They just want a good headline and a
Speaker 1: scientist tools say, yeah, that's that's cool. Here's what I found.
Speaker 1: This is going to change the world. Lockness monster is real.
Speaker 1: This is a kind of ended up being depressing somehow.
Speaker 1: Yeah not somehow. Yeah, like yeah, it's kind of depressing.
Speaker 1: We'll figure it out, chuck, Well, we do our best.
Speaker 1: I'll say that science will prevail, I hope. So. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about science and scientific
Speaker 1: studies and research fraud and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: just type some random words into the search part how
Speaker 1: stiff works dot com. See what comes up? And since
Speaker 1: I said random, it's time for a listener mail. Oh no, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what. It's time for administ all right, Josh,
Speaker 1: administrative details. If you're new to the show, you don't
Speaker 1: know what it is. That's the very clunky title. We're saying,
Speaker 1: thank you too listeners who send us neat things. It
Speaker 1: is clunky and generic and I've totally gotten used to
Speaker 1: it by now. Well you're the one who made it
Speaker 1: up to be clunky and generic, and it's stuck. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So people send U stuff from time to time, and
Speaker 1: it's just very kind of you to do so, Yes,
Speaker 1: And we like to give shout outs, whether or not
Speaker 1: it's just out of the goodness of your heart or
Speaker 1: if you have a little small business that you're trying
Speaker 1: to plug. Either way, it's a sneaky way of getting
Speaker 1: it in there. Yeah, but I mean, I think we
Speaker 1: we brought that on, didn't we didn't we say like,
Speaker 1: if you have a small business and you send us something,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll be happy to say something exactly thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's get it going here. We got
Speaker 1: some coffee right from one thousand faces right here in Athens,
Speaker 1: Georgia from Kayla. Yeah delicious, Yes it was. We also
Speaker 1: got some other coffee too, from Jonathan at Steamworks Coffee.
Speaker 1: He came up with a Josh and Chuck blend. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome. I believe it's available for sale to Yeah.
Speaker 1: That Josh and Chuck blend is dark and bitter. Uh.
Speaker 1: Jim Simmons, he's a retired teacher who sent us some
Speaker 1: lovely handmade wooden bowls and a very nice handwritten letter,
Speaker 1: which is always great. Thanks a lot, Jim. Uh. Let's
Speaker 1: see Chamberlayne send us homemade pasta, including a delicious savory
Speaker 1: pumpkin fettuccini. It was very nice. Yum. Jay Graft two
Speaker 1: F's send us a postcard from a great wall of China.
Speaker 1: It's kind of neat sometimes we get those postcards from
Speaker 1: places we've talked about. I was like a thanks James
Speaker 1: right here. Let's see the Hammer Press team. They sent
Speaker 1: us a bunch of Mother's Day cards that are wonderful. Oh,
Speaker 1: those are really nice, really great. You should check him out.
Speaker 1: The Hammer Press team. Yeah. Uh, Misty, Billie and Jessica.
Speaker 1: They sent us a care package of a lot of things.
Speaker 1: There were some cookies, um, including one of my favorite
Speaker 1: white chocolate dipped rits and peanut butter crackers. Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I love those homemade, right yeah. And uh, then some
Speaker 1: seventies Macromay for you, along with seventies Macromay magazine because
Speaker 1: you're obsessed with Macromay. We have a Macromay plant holder
Speaker 1: hanging from my UM microphone arm having a coffee mug
Speaker 1: sent to us by Joe and Lynda heckt, that's right,
Speaker 1: and it has some pens in it. Uh. And they
Speaker 1: also sent us a misty Billy and Jessica a lovely
Speaker 1: little hand drawn picture of us with their family, which
Speaker 1: was so sweet. That's very awesome. Um. We've said it before,
Speaker 1: we'll say it again. Huge. Thank you to Jim Ruwaine
Speaker 1: I believe that's how you say his name. And the
Speaker 1: Crown Royal people for sending us all the Crown Royal
Speaker 1: we are running low. Uh. Mark Silberg at the Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain Institute send us a book called Reinventing Fire. They're
Speaker 1: great out there, man, they know what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: And I think it's Reinventing Fire. Colon Bold Businesses Bowld
Speaker 1: Business solutions for the new energy era. Yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: basically like um green energy observers, but I think they
Speaker 1: they they're experts in like all sectors of energy, but
Speaker 1: they have a focus on green energy, which is awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're pretty cool. Um john whose wife makes Delightfully Delicious
Speaker 1: doggie treats. Delightfully Delicious is the name of the company.
Speaker 1: There's no artificial colors or flavors. And they got um
Speaker 1: sweet little momo hooked on sweet potato dog treats. I
Speaker 1: thought you're gonna say, hooked on the junk, the the
Speaker 1: sweet potato junk. She's crazy cuckoo for sweet potatoes. Nice.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's good for a dog too. It is
Speaker 1: very stratt Johnson send us his band's LP and if
Speaker 1: you're in a band, your name is Strat And that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Uh die omeya still mhm. I think that
Speaker 1: was great. Yeah, I'm not sure if I pronounce it right.
Speaker 1: D I O M A E A. Uh, Frederick, this
Speaker 1: is long overdue. Frederick at the store one five to
Speaker 1: one store dot com. Send us some awesome low profile
Speaker 1: cork iPhone cases and passport holders. And I was telling
Speaker 1: him Jerry Walks around with her iPhone in the cork
Speaker 1: holder and it looks pretty sweet. Oh yeah, so he said, AWESO,
Speaker 1: I'm glad to hear Joe and Holly Harper send is
Speaker 1: some really cool three D printed stuff. You should know,
Speaker 1: things like s Y s k uh, you know, like
Speaker 1: a little desk oh as, like after Robert Indiana's love sculpture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I couldn't think of what that was from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awesome. It's really neat and like a bracelet um
Speaker 1: made out of stuff you should know, three D carved
Speaker 1: like plastics, really neat. Yeah, they did some good stuff,
Speaker 1: So thanks Joe and Holly Harper for that. And then
Speaker 1: last for this one, we got a postcard from Yosemite
Speaker 1: National Park from Laura Jackson, so thanks a lot for that.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everybody who sends this stuff. It's nice to
Speaker 1: know we're thought of and we appreciate it. Yeah. We're
Speaker 1: gonna finish up with another set on the next episode
Speaker 1: of Administrative Details. You got anything else, No, that's it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. If you guys want to hang out with
Speaker 1: us on social media, you can go to s Y
Speaker 1: s K Podcast on Twitter or on Instagram. You can
Speaker 1: hang out with us at Facebook dot com slash stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has
Speaker 1: always joined us at home on the web. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
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