Thoraiya DyerThe Beauty of Science
April 10th 2008 08:18
The computer I'm blogging on.
The radio I'm listening to.
The super-healthy green tea that I'm drinking.
The nutritionally balanced pellets my cat is eating.
All miracles of science, right? And when you learn about science at school, they teach you a very straightforward version of the Scientific Method:
1) Make up something you think could be true.
2) Design an experiment to test the thing you made up.
3) Perform the experiment.
4) Looking at the results, decide whether the thing you made up is true or not.
When did it get all complicated? When did it become possible to advertise a product that "brings health and life to your hair" when, in fact, hair consists of dead skin cells and lifeless keratin? How can something that HAS no life be healthy or unhealthy? When did it become possible to advertise that Echinacea is good for colds and flu, when The New England Journal of Medicine (Vol 353: 341-348, July 2005) in an article by R.B. Turner et al, it was concluded that the happy little plant has absolutely no effect at all?
I'm not talking about a pokey little study with three people in it, either (399 people took part in the study). I'm certainly not talking about a tear-out survey in a gosspy woman's mag where people rate how they imagine the herbal supplement made them feel (the volunteers were exposed to the flu and made to sit in a room for 5 days - they had their snot measured - and they didn't know whether they were taking herbal extract, or a placebo).
But the fact that you can jiggle statistics any way you want to makes me suddenly suspicious. Is my green tea REALLY super-healthy? Is my cat's food really nutritionally balanced? How can I find out for sure?
I'm ready to begin my crusade. Welcome to: Does It Actually Work??
The radio I'm listening to.
The super-healthy green tea that I'm drinking.
The nutritionally balanced pellets my cat is eating.
All miracles of science, right? And when you learn about science at school, they teach you a very straightforward version of the Scientific Method:
1) Make up something you think could be true.
2) Design an experiment to test the thing you made up.
3) Perform the experiment.
4) Looking at the results, decide whether the thing you made up is true or not.
When did it get all complicated? When did it become possible to advertise a product that "brings health and life to your hair" when, in fact, hair consists of dead skin cells and lifeless keratin? How can something that HAS no life be healthy or unhealthy? When did it become possible to advertise that Echinacea is good for colds and flu, when The New England Journal of Medicine (Vol 353: 341-348, July 2005) in an article by R.B. Turner et al, it was concluded that the happy little plant has absolutely no effect at all?
I'm not talking about a pokey little study with three people in it, either (399 people took part in the study). I'm certainly not talking about a tear-out survey in a gosspy woman's mag where people rate how they imagine the herbal supplement made them feel (the volunteers were exposed to the flu and made to sit in a room for 5 days - they had their snot measured - and they didn't know whether they were taking herbal extract, or a placebo).
But the fact that you can jiggle statistics any way you want to makes me suddenly suspicious. Is my green tea REALLY super-healthy? Is my cat's food really nutritionally balanced? How can I find out for sure?
I'm ready to begin my crusade. Welcome to: Does It Actually Work??
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