It’s time for another one of my “comments about daily Moments of Science” in place of a standard DMoS.
So Today’s Daily Moment of Science… how the sausage gets made.
I like to write stories about when science does daffy shit, and I have several goals when I write each column. Above all else, it has to be accurate. If I write it and state it as a fact, I made a sincere effort to fact check it. Often I go down far too many rabbit holes to check something that never even makes it into the column.
There is nary a prepositional phrase too insignificant to land next to all the porn in my search history.
Next is to try to get a bunch of different perspectives. I’m trying to craft something I would want to read, so I end up reading for a few hours to get a full suite of information to choose from (and fact check between). I try to balance the science explainers with all the stuff that makes the science explainers worth reading, and so I have a habit of reading it out loud to myself after it’s done to make sure it all flows together.
I also watch some documentaries or videos from other science communicators both for information and to see how other people I respect presented a story. I want to make sure I’m not covering it the same way while finding what’s compelling to me in each presentation. There’s also an effort to follow the unofficial law of ‘internet dibsies’ and give a grace period of at least a few months if I know a colleague recently covered the same thing.
Let nobody labor under the delusion that I think I’ve ‘discovered’ these subjects, because lol.
Third, I try to find the human story. I occasionally get a complaint about how I write my “science lessons” here, but these are not really science lessons. They’re stories about science happening in society. Yes, they almost all have science explainers in them, some of them more in depth than others. But if you’re ever tempted to tell me that my method of “educating the masses on science” is wrong, you’ve misunderstood what I do.
I’m not out to educate the masses on science. That’s what teachers do, and I am not licensed nor do I plan to grade papers. These columns are also not preparing you to go out into the world and become a scientist.
But I do have objectives.
If you read this regularly, I hope you get a better understanding of how scientific advancements in the course of history are inextricably linked with civilization changes.
I hope you consider that, when looking at medical treatments from hundreds of years ago that we now think of as barbaric, you’ll question “what will 2021 look like in 2221?”
I hope that you can see that governments of all stripes can all commit atrocities in their labs and on their people. There are complaints no matter what country I write about doing terrible things, and folks, we all suck. Nothing personal.
I hope stories of the past give you pause to consider the simple dumb luck of being alive today.
Lastly, I hope that with a lot of messy science history, you can see two trends; things continually get better, but there exists always another deadly man-made disaster somewhere on the horizon. And it often happens out of sight to people with far less money than us, where we can so easily look away and forget.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, asking what you want people to think about when they think about science?
Sausage made!
I hope that this post was not triggered by some negative comments that you may have received. I thoroughly enjoy every one of your articles. They are informative, funny, unique and often force me to think about some serious issue related to science and society. i especially relish your writing style, with particular fondness for the snarkiness and crude and lewd language. Thanks
It was for a handful of reasons, but partially because I think people come with expectations sometimes that I view myself as a substitute for a science teacher because that’s how they view me. I’m trying to set the record straight.
I know inevitably people will expect more and different than what I’m here to do, and for that? I’ll link to this blog 🙂
And I’m glad you’re enjoying the work! -Y
Thanks for doing what you are doing and keeping it real.
I only found your site recently, but have been enjoying it immensely. I sit back with my coffee, chuckle, and learn … and then I frequently go to find out more! So thank you for all that you do. You probably don’t get enough recognition for all the time and energy you invest.
The biggest issue I see as an editor is that scientists are not necessarily very good at communicating with the lay public, which at best causes confusion and at worst is exploited by flat earthers, Goop, forced birthers, etc. Exhibit 1 is the word “theory,” which in science is a conception of the world that encompasses verified truths, laws, and facts. So gravity is a theory. So is evolution. But to a layperson a “theory” is an unsubstantiated guess and in science that’s called a “hypothesis.” Why can’t scientists incorporate these definitions as a sentence or two in any explanation?
The other thing that laypeople may not understand, and this became obvious with SARS-CoV-2, where first no masks, then masks, then two masks, is that science’s job is to study things and that the conclusions that scientists draw change with new facts. So an explanation could involve two sentences about this: SARS-CoV-2 is new and as scientists studied it more and more, they got more information, and so they changed their conclusions accordingly, which caused Dr. Fauci to change his recommendations, give the man a Nobel Prize already.
Then there is the mRNA vaccine, which caused the lay public to decide that the Pfizer vaccine was going to change a person’s DNA. I heard this from an otherwise educated person. As I understand mRNA vaccines, it’s the equivalent of taking the face of Freddy Krueger–just the face– and sticking it on a mannequin. So we would recognize that face, but it doesn’t mean that it’s Freddy, it means that we can recognize Freddy when we see him now and reach for a flamethrower when we see him coming. Maybe that’s a totally wrong conception of it, but that’s the point. I’m an educated layperson who is very totally not a virologist. But the mRNA YouTube videos made by actual experts are long and contain diagrams that maybe the average person can’t understand and can’t explain to the coworker one cubicle over. (I work for myself, and nothing I say would make my cat and dog understand, but I digress.) I watched them and I can’t remember them for the life of me, so how can I explain this to my friend who gets the flu vaccine every year but doesn’t want their DNA altered?
And then there is the Stupid Medication Package Insert Phenomenon. The AstraZeneca vaccine will be listing UTIs as an adverse event. That’s my fault. I get them all the time, have gotten them all the time since I was 17, have had all the workups there is, I just get them, it sucks. But because I got one during the study, it goes down as an adverse effect. Someone needs to explain this shit to the public.
I’d like to see some of this kind of thing in your awesome blog posts.
Recently started reading your posts. I am an old retired MD and science lover and your brief and humorous posts are a delight. Keep it up.
(And I mean by that, explaining that issue, not doing a better job, which you kick ass at.)
You have a unique and intriguing approach to the history and facts in your articles that I absolutely love to read!.