Jennifer Richler | The Atlantic 2019 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights,2013:50-281855<figure><img alt="" height="332" src="" width="570"><figcaption class="credit">(<em>ginnerobot/<a href="">flickr</a></em>)</figcaption></figure><p>If you took to heart the recent cover story in <em>The Economist</em>, <a href="" target="_blank">“How Science Goes Wrong,”</a> you might be tempted throw your hands up and stop reading about scientific research entirely. The piece describes how scientists often fail to reproduce some of the most frequently cited findings in their fields, calling their conclusions into question. Science writers have also come under fire recently, most notably Malcolm Gladwell, who according to critics in the <a href="" target="_blank"><em>The Atlantic</em></a><em>, </em><a href="" target="_blank"><em>The Wall Street Journal,</em></a> and <a href="" target="_blank"><em>Slate</em></a><em>, </em>among others<em>, </em>cherry-picks research to fit his thesis and hangs major arguments on poorly replicated studies in his latest book, <em>David and Goliath</em>.</p><p>These rebukes are only the latest in what has become a torrent of criticism of the way scientific research is carried out and reported. The catalyst arguably was a paper by the epidemiologist John Ioannidis, provocatively titled “Why Most Research Findings are False,” that got a lot of attention from the popular press, including <a href="">a 2010 cover story </a>in <em>The Atlantic </em>by David Freedman. In a <a href="" target="_blank">recent piece</a> in the <em>Columbia Journalism Review, </em>Freedman also blamed science journalism for “a failure … to scrutinize the research it covers.”</p><p>Where are the readers in this discussion? Yes, scientists should do high-quality work and journalists should report it responsibly, but readers should be discerning and thoughtful information consumers. They can’t expect science writing to provide simple answers to complex questions; in fact, they should be skeptical of any piece that claims to do so. As University of Virginia psychology professor Brian Nosek told me, "Science reporting is not purveying the facts, it's purveying the discovery process, the adventure into the unknown."</p><p>Getting the most out of science writing takes work, but it’s vital, and similar to the attention we devote to consuming other products: We check the labels on food packages at the supermarket.  We pore over online reviews before making even minor purchases. We should put the same care into the way we absorb scientific information, which has the power to shape the way we live.</p><p>To be a thoughtful reader, there are a few questions you should ask yourself whenever you read a popular science piece. I’ll use <a href="" target="_blank">Hanna Rosin’s 2009 story in <em>The</em> <em>Atlantic</em></a>, about the evidence for and against the benefits of breastfeeding, as an example, because it addresses these questions especially well.</p><p><big><strong>What’s the Big Picture?</strong></big></p><p>A lot of science writing focuses on single studies. But each study is only a piece of the puzzle; look for writing that provides context. Before delving into the research on breastfeeding in her piece, Rosin provides historical background that helps explain why people have such strong feelings about breastfeeding and formula. She describes, for example, how some of the concern about formula stemmed from an international scandal in the 1970s, in which babies who were formula-fed in South America and Africa were more likely to die than those who were breastfed. It turned out that this was because mothers were using contaminated water or rationing formula because it was so expensive. Still, she writes, “the whole episode turned breast-feeding advocates and formula makers into Crips and Bloods, and introduced the take-no-prisoners turf war between them that continues to this day.”</p><p>Her review of the breastfeeding research is similarly nuanced. The article’s title, “The Case Against Breastfeeding,” suggests a diatribe, but the piece itself provides an even-handed review of the literature, describing studies that have found evidence for the benefits of breastfeeding and others that have not. In this way, she builds toward her overall conclusion: that claims about the benefits of breastfeeding have been overstated.</p><p><big><strong>What’s Wrong?</strong></big></p><p>Even a good study has limitations and weaknesses. Usually the researchers are direct about these in academic papers, and do a decent job of explaining how they might detract from the study’s conclusions. Look for science writers to be similarly frank. Examples of weaknesses include: samples that are either very small (which makes it difficult to find a statistically significant difference) or very large (which means tiny, basically meaningless effects might still be statistically significant), or are somehow unrepresentative of the population they’re trying to understand (studying animals to learn about human diseases, for example).</p><p>Also look for a popular science piece to identify methodological weaknesses that might have undermined the study’s findings. In her piece, Rosin points out a “glaring flaw” with most research on breastfeeding: mothers who choose to breastfeed probably differ in many ways—income, education level, race—from those who don’t, and any of these factors could influence a child’s development. Even cleverly designed sibling studies, which compare mothers who fed their children differently—say, breastfeeding the first child but using formula for subsequent children—can’t completely address these confounds, Rosin points out. A mother might treat her children differently in ways other than feeding—for example, lavishing more attention on her first child than on her second and third. By pointing out the weaknesses in some of the breastfeeding studies, Rosin helps explain the contradictory literature: Studies that found evidence for benefits tended to be those that did not account for these potential confounds, whereas those that found little or no evidence for breastfeeding’s benefits were usually well-designed and controlled.</p><p><big><strong>What Does This Mean For Me?</strong></big></p><p>In many cases, understanding what the research says about a topic you’re interested in isn't enough—you also want to understand how it applies to you, especially if it pertains to a topic as important as personal health. When I read Rosin’s piece soon after my first child was born, this question was foremost in my mind. Exhausted by breastfeeding exclusively, I decided to supplement with formula, and though I felt my decision was well reasoned, the not-so-subtle messages I’d received for the past several months—from <em>What to Expect</em>, to hospital lactation consultants, to the women in my new mothers’ group—were that exclusive breastfeeding was the only acceptable option. Rosin’s piece offered me a fresh perspective. It didn't tell me whether I should breastfeed or not—she acknowledged that “[b]reast-feeding … is much too intimate and elemental” to enter into based purely on facts and figures. But she made it easy to evaluate how the findings on breastfeeding pertained to me. Take her discussion of the IQ findings:</p><blockquote> <p>The evidence on IQs … at best suggests a small advantage, perhaps five points … If a child is disadvantaged in other ways, this bump might make a difference. But for the kids in my playground set, the ones whose mothers obsess about breast-feeding, it gets lost in a wash of <em>Baby Einstein</em> videos, piano lessons, and the rest. And in any case, if a breast-feeding mother is miserable … surely that can have a greater effect on a kid’s future success than a few IQ points.</p> </blockquote><p>I knew my son, like Rosin’s child, would be raised in an environment that was stimulating (perhaps overly so). I knew that exclusive breastfeeding was making me miserable, and that Rosin’s hunch that maternal depression can harm kids was supported by research. The relevance to me was clear: breastfeeding likely wouldn't provide benefits to my child beyond what he already received by being raised in an enriching environment, and doing so exclusively might actually indirectly hurt him by making me feel depressed.</p><p>Rosin’s piece is not an exception: many other science pieces address these questions well. But if you read something that doesn’t, the solution is simple: read more. You can search websites such as <a href="" target="_blank">ScienceDaily</a> for summaries of the latest research news on any topic, or <a href="" target="_blank">Longform</a> for more in-depth pieces. It’s also essential to check in regularly on critical topics, such as those related to personal health, to see how the science is evolving. In his book <em>Wrong, </em>Freedman suggests that when you finish reading a piece of science writing, you don’t think, “‘Wow, I better make some serious changes to the way I eat/talk to my children/use my credit cards,’ but rather ‘Hmmm, I wonder how likely it is that this advice will turn out to be worth following.’” That curiosity should spur you to seek out good information continually. Over time, if the research appears to converge on a particular conclusion—the overwhelming consensus that there is no link between autism and vaccines, for example—then you should probably take it seriously.</p><p>Of course, the better the science in the first place, the better the chances that you’ll have high-quality science writing at your fingertips. Fortunately, the research community is moving in the right direction, taking seriously the criticisms that have been leveled against it, such as poor replicability. Nosek, the University of Virginia psychologist I spoke to, recently launched the Reproducibility Project, a collaborative effort to see if the results of studies published in three major psychology journals in 2008 can be replicated. And the <em>Personality and Social Psychology Review</em>, a prestigious journal, recently published a set of guidelines put forth by a task force on research practices to improve the dependability of research, including choosing an appropriate sample size and avoiding what the authors call “questionable research practices”—for example, running multiple experiments with similar procedures and only reporting those with statistically significant results.</p><p>But perhaps the most important guideline in the paper is this: “[W]e need to promote a climate that emphasizes ‘telling the whole story’ rather than ‘telling a good story.’” This sentence applies to science writing as it does to science, with one tweak: Telling the whole story and telling a good story need not be mutually exclusive. The best science writing does both.</p>Jennifer Richler to Read About Science 2013-12-06T13:00:00-05:002013-12-06T13:00:10-05:00Some studies mean so much more than others, and few mean anything without honest,2013:50-274227<p><a href=""><img alt="Downton_Abbey_Matthew.jpg" src="" width="570" height="296" class="mt-image-none" style=""></a> </p><div class="credit">PBS</div><p>I was recently the victim of a spoiler. It was the day after the two-hour finale of <i>Downton Abbey</i>, and I hadn't watched it yet. I innocently went on Facebook for my daily dose of family vacation and gourmet dinner photos, and there it was: a major plot twist divulged, courtesy of one of my "friends." </p><p>My tale of woe will likely sound familiar to many. The combination of social media, which allow us to react to events in real time, and new technologies, which provide us with countless ways to watch shows after they air, has made it easy to accidentally learn how a TV episode or movie ends before watching it. It isn't surprising, then, that the spoiler issue has been chewed over for years. Way back in 2008, on <i>New York's </i>Vulture site, Dan Kois even proposed a list of <a href="">statutes of limitations for spoilers</a>, specifying how long writers should wait before revealing important plot twists from TV shows, movies, plays, and books in their articles.</p><p> <!-- START "MORE ON" SINGLE STORY BOX v. 1 --> </p><div style="margin: 10px; padding: 0; padding-top: 3px; padding-bottom: 10px; border-top: 1px solid #dfdfdf; border-bottom: 1px solid #dfdfdf; width: 242px; float: right;"> <h2 style="font-size: 7.5pt; font-weight: normal; margin: 0; padding: 0;"> Related Story </h2> <div> <a href=""> <img style="margin: 0; padding: 0; border: 0; width: 242px; height: 157px;" src=""></a> </div> <div style="margin-top: 5px; font-weight: bold; font-size: 10.5pt;"> <a href=""> The Irresistible Perils of Watching a Film's Deleted Scenes </a> </div> </div><!-- END "MORE ON" SINGLE STORY BOX v. 1 --><p>But this most recent spoiling left me feeling especially outraged—which, in turn, led me to wonder: Why did I care? Why were spoilers so bad? It turns out, I found, there's scientific research that helps explains what it is that spoilers spoil.</p><p>Some of this research starts with a fundamental question: Why do people like stories in the first place? As Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom points out in his book <i>How Pleasure Works</i>, it's puzzling that we spend more of our free time exploring fictional worlds—reading, watching TV and movies, playing video games—than engaging in real-world pastimes. "Surely we would be better off pursuing more adaptive activities—eating and drinking and fornicating, establishing relationships, building shelter, and teaching our children," he writes. </p><p>So what's with our obsession with make-believe? Bloom and others argue that, on some level, we don't distinguish fact from fiction. There's research to back this up: For example, a study found that people refuse to eat a piece of fudge shaped to look like feces, even though they know it's just fudge. Appearance and reality get blurred. We like stories about sex because we like having sex, and somewhere in our minds, the two are the same. As Thalia Goldstein, a psychology professor at Pace University, explained to me, this blurring actually happens at the neurological level: The conscious, thinking parts of our brain tell us that a story isn't real, but the more primitive parts tell us it is. </p><p>This research suggests one explanation for why spoilers suck: They remind us that a story is just a story. It's hard to get transported when you already know where you'll end up—in real life you don't have that knowledge.</p><p>Of course, not everyone shares my spoiler hatred. A recent study found that people who heard the "spoiled" version of a short story liked it more than those who heard the "unspoiled" version. But as Goldstein pointed out, the study overlooked a key fact: People only care about spoilers for stories they feel invested in, not those they've heard for the first time a minute earlier.</p><p>Some spoiler defenders make more theoretical arguments, such as <i>Time</i>'s TV critic James Poniewozik, who wrote, "An unwanted spoiler does take something away, but not, I think, the pleasure of actually reading or watching a story. Rather, it takes away from the anticipation before watching it—wondering who dies, whether they'll get off the Island."</p><p> But taking away the anticipation <i>does </i>take away the pleasure of a story. There's plenty of research showing that people enjoy the anticipation of something pleasurable as much as—or sometimes even more than—they enjoy the thing itself. That's why a study found that people would rather postpone a free dinner at a French restaurant by a week than have it right away; they want the pleasure of looking forward to the meal. As Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert says in his book <i>Stumbling on Happiness, </i>"Forestalling pleasure is an inventive technique for getting double the juice from half the fruit."</p><p>Others <a href="">point out</a> that if knowing major plot twists inevitably spoiled stories, people wouldn't enjoy reading the same book or watching the same movie over and over, and wouldn't flock to see movies like <i>Argo</i>, for which most people already know the ending. But watching a favorite movie for the hundredth time affords a kind of pleasure that is very different from—and, I would argue, not as strong as—what you experience when you see it for the first time. Once you know how a story ends, you can no longer have your mind blown; the pleasure is now in the details. Ditto for movies for which you know the ending before they even start. As Goldstein noted, "Nobody goes to a James Bond movie wondering if the crime is going to get solved and justice served—you go to see explosions and whatever the women are wearing or not wearing." Maybe that's one reason most romantic comedies are so bad, as <a href="">Christopher Orr argued recently in <i>The Atlantic</i></a>—you already know how things end, and the details aren't very interesting. </p><p>What about people who read spoilers intentionally? You know these people (or perhaps you're even one of them): They claim that spoilers free them from the anxiety of watching or reading something suspenseful. Maybe they just don't know what's good for them. Or maybe, for some people, anticipation is agony; hence the expression, "The anticipation is killing me." After all, not<i> everyone </i>in the French restaurant study chose to put off the meal; some wanted to have it sooner rather than later. </p><p>In the end, it's hard to know how much spoilers really matter—you can't watch the same movie spoiled and unspoiled and compare your experience of each. Goldstein suggested a clever experiment that gets close: Take a group of people and have them watch two movies that include major plot twists. Half the group watches movie A spoiled and movie B unspoiled, and vice versa for the other half. Then compare people's enjoyment of the spoiled and unspoiled movies. </p><p>Until someone does that study, I'm going to stick to my spoilers-are-evil stance and try a little harder to stay out of their way. That probably means I need to avoid social media whenever there's something on the DVR. Either that or suck it up and watch my beloved shows live. </p>Jennifer Richler Explanations for Why Spoilers Are So Horrible2013-03-21T08:41:32-04:002013-03-21T08:41:27-04:00Studies show that anticipation and suspension of disbelief are both key ingredients in a pleasurable experience&mdash;and spoilers have a tendency to kill both.