Introduction: Hello, I am Mae Raab.

Im from Dayton, Ohio and I am a freshman here at Notre

Dame.
I am also a huge mantis shrimp enthusiast!! *pic of mantis shrimp*
The topic of my talk today is popularized science, and how popularized media on the internet
aid the formation of misconceptions and misunderstandings about scientific research.
This is a topic that is rapidly emerging, showing itself as something to be aware of and worthy of
discussion. Popularization of science exists to familiarize the masses with scientific findings, in
order to increase support and awareness of research. there are two main reasons why
popularized science has been growing rapidly: a) As science gets more complicated, more effort
is needed to explain the complex ideas to people. Seeing that we are living in a time of huge
scientific and technological advances, this reason makes sense. The second reason: the
internet. With all that explaining to do, where better place to share the concepts than the
internet? Its an incredibly easy way to spread information to a large number of people. The
problem: the internet makes it possible for a wide range of people to assume the role of
science popularizer, whether or not they have a shred of scientific knowledge or not, in
whatever format they please, and regardless of their motivation for doing so.
id like to give you an example of some creatively popularized science that ties in with how I
became aware of my own interaction with popularized science. and yes, it has to do with mantis
shrimp.
For those of you that dont know,the mantis shrimp has 16 color-receptive cones (compared to
humans, who have just three), Aside from that, It can also pack a punch that is fast as a 22
caliber bullet.
maybe now youre wondering, that is if I havent already told you - how does a girl from Ohio
come to know about mantis shrimp? Now, Ive never done scientific research on peacock
mantis shrimp, and I obviously dont live near any tropical or subtropical seas (their natural
habitat). I found out about mantis shrimp through a few online media sources, beginning with a
radiolab podcast about Colors.
REMEMBER! Science popularization= a set of activities, disciplines and approaches that
seek to communicate science to a wide voluntary audience. The RadioLab podcast does so
in a rather creative way, using a choir to simulate how mantis shrimp see colors differently than
we do.
-----That was the human color spectrum, the rainbow we see. it lasted about 8 seconds. Mantis
shrimp, on the other hand
--------------That was about 18 seconds long, compared to our 8. Pretty amazing when you think what that
might look like!
So now you have an introduction to a fun, somewhat informational manifestation of science
popularization.
****YOu see, while popularized science can be fun, works may offer shreds of scientific
understanding without illuminating the depth of knowledge required to appreciate
scientific findings. That, however, was the most positive light in which youll see
popularized science for the rest of this presentation.
I will now address how science popularization largely ends up misguiding those who
view it.
1)There are varying levels of this - getting some facts wrong about the mantis shrimp or not
understanding what really contributes to their strong punch is not a life or death situation.
2)However, when there are larger situations at stake, such as a cancer diagnosis or discussion
about global warming, people are likely to be more misinformed than knowledgeable.

3)Furthermore, if large groups of people make decisions that aim to improve common good
based off of uncredible thought trends rooted in misinterpretation of source information, then
tangible, harmful effects could ensue.
So, lets look at the source information: the research itself.
The first issue with science popularization is that a lot of the published research is false.
Change Slide
In an essay called Why Most Research Findings Are False, John P. A. Ioaniddis makes the
claim that, well, most research findings are false. *see slide* There are some sub-claims within
his essay, and through an analysis of statistics he shows that most research is not set up well.
Research can be affected by these factors especially:
(from his essay)
Corollary 5: The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a
scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true.
Prestigious investigators may suppress via the peer review process the appearance and
dissemination of findings that refute their findings, thus condemning their field to
perpetuate false dogma. Empirical evidence on expert opinion shows that it is extremely
unreliable [28].
Corollary 6: The hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the
less likely the research findings are to be true.
This is obviously a tense situation. These issues are amplified and even prodded by the journals
that publish them, which seek to publish interesting findings. This can result in oversight when
assessing the validity of the papers.
Thus, the second issue is fraudulent peer reviews, meaning a lot of bad science is being
published, often out of self interest of the researchers.
A major online science publisher and blog, BioMed central, recently retracted 43 papers,
admitting that the peer reviews were products of orchestrated, fake, meaningless peer reviews.
investigating this issue with many other publishers since the BioMed central incident, and it is
clear there is a widespread issue. A SCIgen program, written by MIT students, strings together
science buzzwords and phrases to write totally incomprehensible papers - some of which have
been published! A paper written by two Simpsons Characters and kim jong fun was found, as
well as one called get me off your fucking email list. the latter was called excellent science.
SO though this issue has been brought to attention, it is proving to be difficult to control, and
there is much improving to do.
A lot of bad science is being published.
The third issue with popularized science is whose hands, er, blogs it gets into.
It can be used for good: discussed the ways some research had been cited and packaged by
people ranging from scientists to ethicists, so I decided to do the same sort of thing here. Lets
take a look at these headlines:
*switch slides*
The first is from a site called IFLS, created by elise andrews. the second is from one of her cited
sources. the first is much more interesting, no? as such, the two sites have very different
intended purposes. Andrews created her site as.., she woke up to thousands of followers.
while the second site, science for the masses, is intended for people to be able to read about
research and replicate it themselves. the authors of each site also differ greatly. Andrews has
become highly influential with regard to the average viewers perception of science, showing
how her background doesnt necessarily relate to popularity.

A look at another influencer reveals a major issue with public consumption of popularized
science.
This is vani hari, aka food babe. She has developed a very large following: the food babe army.
the blindness of her followers is obvious, because she blocks anyone who challenges her
statements or questions her authority as a scientific personality.
She preaches that people should have greater awareness of the chemicals in their food. in fact,
she goes as far as to say that you shouldnt eat food with ANY chemicals. this would be
extremely limiting,seeing as water, h2o, is a chemical.
The reason she is such a problem can be illustrated by another of her campaigns: antivaccination. She proclaims that people should encounter the flu naturally. She doesnt mention
that around 31,000 people die from the flu each year. This causes a problem for doctors who
find that their authority has been undermined by her, as people often search for information
about vaccines online, see the loud, protesting, information promoted by [Link] online, and
refuse to get vaccinated. As the effectiveness of a vaccine decreases if less people in a
community are vaccinated, this poses a real health problem.
Now, I am by no means conveying that Ms. Hari actually has any concerns for peoples health.
She has a whole line of food babe approved (and endorsed) sugary juice cleanses. isnt that
odd, since juice cleanses have been shown to have no real effect? Is food Babe Hypocritical?
highly misleading? Extremely popular and effective at motivating large groups of misinformed
people? it seems so. And shes only one example of that.
SO WHAT?
On one hand, maybe the popularization of science is a necessary evil to get people
interested in science. It makes it much more digestible, raises awareness, and in some
cases inspires people. Its not like the masses will be posting scholarly articles to be
reviewed by scientists.
On the other hand, science is beginning to function like a business, and aims to attract
viewers from catchy titles. As Iondinnis says, this introduces bias and incentive to
conduct false or useless research just for retail or entertainment value. Popular science
has become a product that makes people a lot of money: take Vani Hari for example. Or
even the more scientific sounding blogs, like ScienceAlert and IFLS - the more visits
their page gets, the more lucrative it will be. So this question is raised: How good is
raising awareness, how educational can popularized works be, if they end up decreasing
the integrity of scientific pursuits?
Mr. Bolivera, who i mentioned earlier, says with regard to science popularization in mexico that
it would be useful to adopt abroad strategy (possibly a national one) that encourages all diverse
modalities around the three goals proposed: social appreciation, understanding and
responsibility about science and technology.
At a lecture I recently attended, a student asked what she could do, since she was studying
science and was interested in research. she said she often read about research, but lacked the
statistics skills and background that Dr. Jarvis had used to analyze the research he presented.
How was she supposed to tell what was good information and what was not?
His response: get the background, and learn the skills!