Holy sacred cow! Why reactions to the exercise and depression trial go to the heart of scientific

[xchrom]

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/06/13/holy-sacred-cow-why-reactions-to-the-exercise-and-depression-trial-go-to-the-heart-of-scientific-controversy/

Holy sacred cow! Why reactions to the exercise and depression trial go to the heart of scientific controversy.



What do you believe about the effects of exercise and depression – and why do you believe it? Are you personally unenthusiastic about exercising, or are you closer to religious fervor about it?

These are critical questions. Because it doesn’t matter how much you believe in the importance of science. If you have a very strong prior existing belief, chances are it’s going to exert a strong bias on how you select and react to evidence on the subject.

In the ideal rational world with loads of expertise and time on your hands, that wouldn’t matter when you came across research. If you were interested in the issue, you would carefully assess the biases and strengths of new research, with an equally careful assessment of the existing body of research. You wouldn’t make up your mind about the current state of knowledge till after this systematic assessment was done.

But that’s not what it’s like, is it? In the real world, what we already believe often determines whether we even read something at all. And if it reinforces our belief – “Ha! See? I knew it! More proof!” – we might whizz off an email or a tweet without more than a brief skim of the abstract (or even less).

[get the red out]

1. Sometimes it's hard to know whose "science" to believe

It seems where health is concerned a study will be made public that says one thing, then not long later another study will call into question the findings of the first. It's hard to know whose study was the better, as a person without a scientific background. It's the battle of the scientific studies sometimes, and finally you just give up and look for what seems to be working in your own body with your own health and try to trust your doctor.

[xchrom]

3. science is never static. nt

[get the red out]

5. True, but

The media does a good job at making a whirl-wind out of it and sometimes sound-biting the results in ways that misrepresent the conclusions. And then there are the pseudo-experts who try to make product advocacy look like "science". It becomes difficult and time consuming for average people to sort through all the messages. This does not demean science in any way, but it puts a barrier between what is discovered and people's ability to learn about it.

[HuckleB]

8. MSM is not the place to get news about science.

MSM reports preliminary studies as if they are incredibly meaningful every day. That's what leads to the public's confusion. Well, that, and the fact that we don't teach the scientific method, the value of various types of studies and basic stuff like plausibility to ourselves.

[LeftishBrit]

11. Too true

[bananas]

2. Site Under Maintenance

It took a long time to connect, then said:

Blogs.ScientificAmerican.com
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Sorry for the inconvenience. Blogs.ScientificAmerican.com is currently shut down for maintenance. Please check back later.
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[xchrom]

4. works fine for me. nt

[enlightenment]

6. It might be in your cache, xchrom -

it's not working for me, either.

Interesting sounding article, though -thanks for posting the link. I'll try it again later!

[xchrom]

7. It is good. If it continues not to work -

I'll delete and maybe post another day or something.

[HuckleB]

9. No problems here.

[bemildred]

10. +1. nt