Everyday the media report science findings and the journals churn out research articles. In addition to feeling inundated, the lay reader may also wonder what's accurate and what's suspect and what's downright bogus. Here are three articles that can remind us to be discerning.
First is an interview with neuroscience researcher Dr. Willoughby Britton. Although she is addressing the science of meditation, what she says about how research should be evaluated has more general application. Click to read "Meditation Nation" (Tricycle).
There are different levels of scientific research, different levels of rigor. I think this is a place where the public could use a lot of education. Because they don’t know how to interpret science, they assume much higher levels of evidence.
The first level is a “pre-post” study, which looks something like this: We go learn to meditate for eight weeks and at the end of it we feel better. We took a stress and anxiety scale before and after, and our stress or anxiety improved. So we say, “Meditation helped me!” That is actually not a valid conclusion. The conclusion you can make in science is that something helped. We didn’t control for the idea that just deciding to do something is going to help. Just that factor—intentionally deciding to make a commitment to your health and well-being—can make a big difference.
Click to read about other levels of rigor.
Next is a post titled "How to Spot Bad Science"(Big Think) which includes "a rather splendid bucket list of issues to look out for when reading science news."
And finally here is an article in which the authors point out how important the relational context is in evaluating research, and look at some research showing how it might have different results had the relational context been different.
The study of social behavior using any methodology, including neuroscience methodologies, must take relational context into account. Researchers must consider not only the nature of the actor him or herself, but also the nature of the person with whom he or she is interacting, and, crucially, the nature of the existing (or desired) relationship between them. It is this last aspect of multi-person processes on which we focus in this paper.
Click to read the rest of "Understanding and accounting for relational context is critical for social neuroscience" (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience).
A reading of all three will likely sharpen your level of caution and discrimination. I read them with appreciation and think you may, too.
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