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Hello and welcome to technically speaking, a podcast where scientists and engineers come together to chat about common interests share knowledge and satisfy some curiosity. I'm Amina and in this episode I'm joined by Antonia, Aneeqa and Cara to talk about how scientific findings are interpreted and whether they portray, and shape, our opinions. To start off with, let's define what scientific findings are
and how that's different from data. Cara: Because we were discussing this a little bit before we recorded, right, and we all obviously have quite a little bit of different stances on what this means to each of us. So I guess I'll start and say: I think of scientific findings being the conclusion, essentially, from a study. How somebody has arrived at a point and what they kind of have decided is - I always get confused with these words - hypothesis, their, or their, their theory um...
So they got to that end point and to get to that stage they've had to use data. But actually, I view data as having been interpreted in between as well, so a scientific finding isn't interpreted from data; data is a representation of information in a structured way.
I would agree with that definition you start off with data.
So let's start off with asking everyone a scientific finding that you have come across: how it has affected your opinion or has made you ask more questions. Should we start off with Aneeqa.
This is a very basic one. So, I remember when I was in school we had to set jelly babies on fire and they called it, like, the screaming jelly baby experiment which just sound so... Amina: Oh my goodness! ... sounds so violent... Amina: That sounds really not nice! ...and really morbid. Because we have to find out how many calories was contained in this screaming jelly baby we burned jelly babies and other food stuffs to find out
how many calories was in there. So, I'll define: A calorie is basically an amount of energy required to raise one gram of water by one degree celsius. That was a finding, that a jelly baby contained so many calories, which we found after
burning it. Obviously when we eat food our body doesn't set the food on fire to, like, use those calories so it was quite cool for me at the time to, like, see, 'oh okay so burning something is releasing the energy and when we eat it we're releasing energy in very different ways' but finding out about the equivalence of energy was was quite interesting.
And also, I was very confused at the time because the numbers kind of didn't match up with what's on the packet because, I know on packets they write everything in kcal which is kilo-calories which I think is a thousand calories. Amina: Yeah. But we only say, like, so we say calories as opposed to kilo-calories when in conversation. So I thought that was quite an interesting scientific finding and it made me think about what food is worth calorifically.
So wait, was your experiment finding that you were higher or lower than what it said on the package?
So packets write kilo-calories and, um...
It's just a different context, right. Aneeqa: It's a different unit basically. Amina: Yeah.
So what you're saying, it is true because that burning it, we assume that there's a 100% conversion of the energy within the jelly baby. But obviously when you eat a jelly baby, I don't think all of those calories are absorbed into your body. Amina: Yeah. I'm not sure. I've also, I don't think I've actually ever eaten a jelly baby, to be fair. So I'm not sure. Antonia: Sorry? Antonia seems very shocked that I've never had a jelly baby!
I mean, is that because of the gelatin? Aneeqa: Yeah, yeah, spot on. Gelatin issues.
For some reason, I kind of... I was like, 'But you did an experiment with it of course you ate some at the same time', but I'm... I'm sure your teacher would have told you to not eat the food in the lab conditions. Aneeqa: You shouldn't be eating in the lab Cara!
Don't chew gum either. Cara: Yeah!
How about Cara; what about you? Cara: I guess, the example I have of this is - I'm gonna say it was quite a humbling experience - when I was kind of put in my place a little bit for something which I thought was a scientific find and maybe it wasn't so much. So I haven't really eaten meat much for many years and it's, kind of, just because I don't
really like it, to be honest. It was no real ethical or worldly reason, I just chose to eat less meat and eat more vegetables because I feel better that way, and I like it better. But when I was in my undergraduate, I started learning a bit about, you know, the whole idea of climate change and impact on the world and whatever else. And then... so I started getting some facts that made me realise that the way my diet was going was actually, like,
good for the world. And you hear lots of these facts about how one of the biggest things you can do as an individual is to cut meat and dairy out of your diet and I was like, 'Oh, this is great!' and I always had all these different, like, stats to back me up. So many studies talked about how up to, like, 50% of carbon emissions in the world are from the meat industry.
And then when I started my PhD... in the first year of my PhD, this is when I started to learn to be very critical of lots of different information because: I was at a summer... research summer school and we were doing this, like, task together on this, like, online portal and we were talking about all the different changes we can make to society to see how much we can help
stop climate change and I was like, I was like... feeling really smug. I was like, 'Okay, well, we should all cut meat out of our diet' and the person leading the session was like, 'Are you sure about that?' and he did the thing on the little, um, portal game that we were playing and it made, like, no impact whatsoever. And actually, it showed that in lots of studies that taking
meat out of your diet isn't actually as good as it says in some other studies. And it was just, like, opening up this whole idea that it's not as factual as you might assume because there's been so many assumptions made. It depends who's framing it and in what way, and it just made me, kind of, aware of being critical whenever I'm taking scientific facts off my instagram stories. You know I should definitely have to criticise it in a better way.
That's like very, uh... speaks to my soul. And I'll get a lot of haters now for admitting to being an ex-vegan but I was the same. I used to think that it's better to have less meat and, when I looked into it more, it's not black and white: it really depends on what's the source of your meat and even, like, vegetables, like... avocados, for example, - I know we've discussed before - have a huge environmental impact as well. So it's all about being balanced and,
yeah, being critical of the data. Amina: We've touched on this in past episodes as well, of how media and things play a role in all of this. Of how certain bits of information are quite juicy and they get promoted a bit more and then it doesn't really necessarily show the whole picture. So you're just... you're reiterating that. Antonia how about yourself? Antonia: Just to add on to what Cara was saying, actually, was... there was this fact about,
you know, we eat five spiders across the year in our sleep. That's one of those prevalent facts that have actually just been totally made up. It's like, someone created it to see how fast these kind of false information no backing... And it's because, it's a snappy thing. And I don't even think it's five spiders, it could be seven, but it just, it's just one of those weird ideas that just just keeps getting passed on. Cara: And well, another fun fact for that:
ten thousand steps a day, that was a media campaign. There's no real... Really?! Amina: I did not know that!
It was the Tokyo olympics. It was created in Japan around some athletic events and they wanted to make, like, a snappy title, I think they... I think it's actually, like, six thousand steps a day or something that's good for you but they thought ten thousand sounded better.
Wow! Cara: For people who aren't really sure what it is: you're supposed to get ten thousand steps a day, um, and they say... This is, like, you know. This is how they sell fitbits, this is how they sell pedometers. This is what they say is, like, the goal of being fit and healthy in everyday life: and you should get ten thousands steps a day and it just sounds snappy. It just kind of sounds good. I was always told that if you have a scientific paper and you're writing up your
research findings; get three findings. So things sound good in threes. You know, why three things? Did you find three things? Did you find seven things instead? But three sounds better. People are more likely to listen to you. Well it's interesting: I always thought it was just, you know, you have three findings for... at least for comparison and things. I didn't know that it just
it's three because it sounds good! Cara: Yeah well, maybe that's in qualitative research you have to, kind of, tell your story in a different way. Antonia, how about yourself? Antonia: Back on to the scientific findings! Quite a few years ago diesel was cheaper to buy at the pump than petrol.
My Dad was thinking of changing cars so he was like, 'Oh well, you know, the miles per gallon you get with a diesel car is better but does that weigh up overall?' and I was just like, 'No Dad, you can't get a diesel car; the emissions!' and he was like, 'What?! They're supposed to be better for carbon dioxide emissions!' And, at the time in my course we were looking at diesel versus petrol cars.
You're just, sort of, doing a trade-off of what type of emissions you have. You know, petrol has less energy in each kilogram of fuel so that's why you get more miles per gallon out of diesel, but diesel has generally got more impurities and the way it burns means that there's actually more
so little particulates, you know the... you see it, this kind of like dark clouds coming out of a diesel car. And so you need to have more catalystic converter, you need more parts to clean up the emissions so that they get to a nice level. And there are these standards to ensure, like, air quality and things like that. My Dad didn't change in the end because he thought, 'Ah just... I've used a petrol car all my life I'll just stick with a petrol car.
You know, this, this diesel being cheap might not even last.' And then two years later the VW emissions scandal came to light. I guess we'll talk about that in a bit.
Yes we will. So it sounds like, what you were saying, there's so much information around us and that it has an ability to influence our views. How information is interpreted can be altered by the context that it's presented in. So let's revisit those examples we gave and do a little bit of the deeper dive. So shall we start off with Antonia since we're discussing the diesel emissions scandal.
Yeah. So, cars have emissions. When a fuel combusts there are byproducts. One of the useful products we get is heat which drives the engine. Other bits, you know, when you burn the air there'll be nitrous oxide. Incomplete combustion will produce these particulates and you might also get some carbon monoxide. And it matters because it all impacts our air quality. Aneeqa: I could have like, just listen to you talking about these facts and figures:
you sound like proper expert on the on the issue! Antonia: So, there are lots of emissions that come out on cars. One of the facts that came out of car companies was diesel cars produce less carbon dioxide emissions and so entire countries based their carbon... well, their climate change plans around this and promoted those cars. Then, when it was revealed that actually they were manipulating the results in that the test conditions were were not completely fair: that they attached a device,
which they called a defeat device. It would know when it's under test conditions and so the engine would run in a better manner so it would pass the test. But in real world conditions it wouldn't actually reach that emission level. So people were seeing, 'Why is our air quality a lot worse than expected?' and it was because they'd, they'd, taken that, manipulated it and then sold many, many cars based on that. Cara: Wow, so that's, like, actively misleading
the data. It wasn't just that somebody interpreted in a certain way, they actually wanted to make sure that it said what they wanted it to say. Antonia: Yeah.
Wow! Amina: You have to question whether there was some insider information there. That this is how we're doing it and this is how we're posing it. Because if entire countries are basing their carbon emissions around this it seems quite strange that they got away with so much for so long. Was it just one company that came out with it or did they then find out other people would do the same thing?
I mean, it was a couple of years before VW were highlighted, the EU did some research and found different models of cars weren't passing the test and real world conditions. And as people dug in more after VW came out it seemed like there was there was quite a few brands. They have a governing, or like, sector body. The automotive industry will come together and set certain parameters together and they basically wrote their own rule book.
And they would also say, 'This is the best we could do right now and if we all stick to this level we're not competing with each other.' So, it became so standard for everyone to do this sort of thing as well. Cara: I think that's really interesting in how it differs from my example of talking about, um... talking about the emissions of the meat industry,
for example, or just food and agriculture in general. Yours was such an explicit, purposefully done misleading with data whereas what I took away from my experience was that, I realised that people go into science with such biases that they will continue to work at studies
until they get something which kind of confirms what they previously believed. So someone who is a vegetarian compared to somebody who comes from a family of four generations who've been farming beef are going to want to see very different things when they do studies into the impact of what their diet is. And things become very emotional and very, kind of, culturally attached.
I see science as not always being like this, like there is, like, a truth to find; it's always shaped and influenced by people's background and beliefs.
So yeah, that's a completely different example of how, actually, in your case it was people saying, 'Okay, well, this is going to be better for business; let's try and reach this goal.' Whereas, I think sometimes, actually, what also happens is people think that they have told the truth and people who kind of view the world in a way that um... what's it called positivistic, which means that they think that there is right and there is wrong whereas they don't realise that, if they
do this study only looking at Irish females who lived in Belfast their whole life, they're going to get a different result than someone who's, you know, completely different - from a different background - and they're, they're, physically, maybe, different how they interact with the world.
That's really interesting. You view it that way as... Essentially, what you seek you shall find, right? Rather than interpreting it. Cara: Yeah, well, I think there's a mixture of both. I think there's definitely a mixture of both. But I think, one of the best examples I saw
of this was, um... I always forget who he is; he's quite a famous academic. But he, um, he was doing some work in informal settlements in Bangladesh, I think it was, and they were basically trying to do, um, water systems as cheaply as possible - they just didn't have the money to put the infrastructure in place into these informal settlements, which didn't have it previously - by using European and American standards by... to design the water systems. It just would not
work in any way. And they were, just, like, 'Well this is the engineering standards. This is fact. This is based on what we've always done. Of course is going to work!' And he said they actually ended up using, um, approaches used in Japan instead. And actually, by taking this completely different approach to engineering, which people think of as a hard fact, they were able to do it in a way which is so much more intuitive and cheaper because, actually,
it just it's... They take a completely different mindset when they approach it. So that's why I always say engineering is more of an art form than a science, but I will say it's a mixture of the two. I will say, some things are... what we know and have been fact for at least a few hundred years so you know,
they might stick around as a fact for a while. Antonia: I feel like there's a lot to unpack. You just said engineering is sort of an art form and I think, I think some people would, would sort of say, 'Well there's at least some sort of, like, technical basis.', that they do start with science somewhere and then might use a scientific approach towards getting there but, ultimately deciding what's the right solution will differ on the situation. So,
you know, there is still science in there, right! Cara: So this is where for me it gets, lik,e super
that science isn't always a science. So there's courses at university where people who will study maths and philosophy, or physics and philosophy, because, actually, a lot of what you get to behind what science is, is completely based on culture. It's completely based on how we choose to view things. I don't, I don't take that stance: I appreciate the scientific method but it's, it's all speculative; it's all kind of made up. And that's the when your mind starts to get really
blown, talking about data and scientific finding. Amina: It is all based on what someone else's findings are and then us taking that and then building upon it rather than, I suppos,e breaking it down and, sort of, looking into the details of it every single time. We take
the principles and we build on it, right! Cara: Yeah, and so, I think, Aneeqa then: back to your example of the screaming jelly baby... it's what people are now discussing, is - this is a whole different wormhole to go down - talking about diet culture and diets science, science and nutritional science. That's, you know, so up for debate in lots of different ways.
Absolutely! And I think having like a measure, like a calorie, makes people think that, you know, 'If I have one calorie of, of, a jelly baby, or one calorie of a banana it's going to be
it's worth the same.' Um, and like, calorie counting and stuff, it can be really toxic and really dangerous because it doesn't take into account all the other things, like, in your food, like the fiber present, the vitamins, the minerals and and how, how, effectively our
body can absorb those nutrients as well. So it's slightly different example but, um, I'm anemic and so - I only know this because I'm anemic - that there's two different types of of iron found in foods and some are plant-based foods and some are obviously animal-based product. So it's, like, heme and non-heme. It's actually easier to absorb iron generally from
animal-based foods compared to plant-based foods. I think that's the case. So, like, when I was vegan everyone's like, 'Oh, you can get your iron from, you know, your spinach and things like that.' And I eat so much spinach and pulses and things like that anyway and they contain iron,
but you need to eat a significant amount more to absorb, this, the same amount. And I think, yeah, having these simplistic units and stuff like that, is, is valuable because it gives us some indication, but it can be really mis-misconstrued, misinterpreted, taken advantage of, I would say.
Or maybe just too simplified, you know? Like, what we're using calories for is energy; we're not necessarily saying you will have a well-rounded, balanced diet. We're just saying this is how much energy you'll have, in general. The more energy you have, and you don't use,
it will get stored as fat. It doesn't take into account how many vitamins you have. So, from my very broad understanding of diet - in that I'm also just a lay-man in this term - but I heard that vegans often suffer from this because they don't get B12 which is a vitamin commonly found in animal products. So, you've got a pair iron with B12 you can't just purely go, go, iron. Is that what your, what was your finding Aneeqa? Aneeqa: Vitamin C is what you need to take with
your iron in order to absorb it properly. But B12 was a big one in the former vegan community I was part of in that people didn't used to wash their fruits and vegetables because of this B12, because they're like, 'It's in the soil.' So you can get your B12 from the soil.
Nice and gritty then! Aneeqa: Yeah yeah. I did not follow that advice. I wasn't vegan for very long, I should say. I've made it a big thing and it really, it wasn't.
Was it because they told you you should eat soil?
Yeah, I mean, that kind of put me off a little bit. Again it's what Cara said about people who have a certain opinion, agenda, things they're trying to push: they'll find ways to convince you. They'll have all sorts of things that can, kind of, convince you that you're doing the right thing but you have to look into things in detail and be critical, I think is what we're coming back to.
looking at the bigger picture. Antonia: I think that's why it's really hard when you read newspaper headlines, for example. They'll say, 'This has been found to be cancerous' or, 'you shouldn't... you should drink more red wine... you should drink less red wine... you should drink one glass a day for your health.' And it will all depend on the test conditions, right! So, you know, what was the sample of the population that they took.
Was it all a bunch of students? I'm perpetrating that all students drink alcohol. That is not true, actually, but it's that bias that we've created by the test condition perhaps, as well.
That goes back to your example. It's the whole picture isn't, it it's not just the information that someone chooses to give to us. From all of your examples it seems that some information is cherry-picked to sell a particular narrative so perhaps it makes sense to discuss whether we think cherry-picking data is a good thing or a bad thing.
I think it depends. But that sounds again very hypocritical because we've said, 'Oh, how cherry-picking is such a bad thing in all of our examples' but maybe it can be a good thing in in certain cases if it can influence behavior that is better for society. Again, who defines what's better, what's worse or what's good, what's bad. It's often a bit of a gray area and there will always be some people who will come off worse and some people will come off
better on any kind of policy or finding. I think that there is an argument for having raw data available for people to have access to, or just in general have data available for people to access, because that's a huge one isn't it. Like, I know a lot of data is hidden behind paywalls and and a lot of scientific publications are quite difficult to access and that's not really fair.
So I think the public should have access to the data. But then there's also a certain amount of trust people have in scientists as well and that's what scientists do in their jobs. Just as we go to a doctor and we rely on them to like fix a broken bone we don't try and fix it ourselves after reading a book on how to fix bones. I think there should be some kind of level of trust of scientists. Of course they can be bad scientists just as there can be bad doctors,
but I also do think we need to trust scientists a bit. And then be more wary of the people using the scientists or trying to take stuff from the scientists with their own gains, maybe.
It's quite easy to get overwhelmed with a lot of information as well though,
isn't it? I think some people would just prefer for for them to turn to someone and say, 'Can you please just tell me what this is?' or say, for example, like, going on the example that you're saying about veganism, if someone is vegan and they are iron deficient and they need a fix to it they would just want to be able to go to a source of information and say, 'Okay how do I fix this; this is my problem, how do I fix it?' rather than saying well, 'You could eat this much spinach,
and you could do this but eat vitamin C with it, and have some B12 with it.' I think sometimes it's just too much information out there. And for some things you just want to know what the answer is.
Aneeqa, what you said there, you trust people with information and sometimes I like to think, 'Okay, they're going to cherry pick things to sell that message and simplify it in a way that people get.' I think that's great. But, you know, do I think that whenever someone's saying something which I agree with but if they say something which is opposed to my values,
am I then going to say that they shouldn't be cherry-picking data? And that's something, you know, I'm aware that I do and sometimes I'm like, 'Yeah, it's fine to tell a simplified story.' And so, I work on social value and, actually, social value really is about changing the messages of how people talk about, or how people understand how, things which are built through engineering projects impact their lives in a positive way.
And that can be really great. It can be talking about,you know, people who come from a background or maybe they, for whatever reason, they don't care about environmental pressures because they're too busy in their own daily life to think about other things.
So I can say, 'Okay, the environmental pressures mean that we're going to build a better park and you can bring your children to that park and it makes your life less stressful day by day.' Like, you know, that's changing the narrative in a great way to meet them where they need to be. But also, social value is very much about, like, it's almost like greenwashing: you can kind of cherry-pick the data that you want to kind of then cover up some bad stuff. So it's,
yeah, they're like... there's no answer to this. It really depends and, probably - person to person, who you ask - they'll say different things depending which cherry-picked data you show them.
Is it cherry-picking or is it more picking a focus? You know, It depends on if you you hide everything else from them. So you say, 'Oh yes, we're building a park on top of this pile of rubbish' - I don't know, probably not but I just mean, you know, are you just giving them that, that, surface level or do you give them the full picture to look at but you put at the front, 'This is the benefit to you.'? Cara: That's so true, that's so true! It's
framing it in a certain way, it's not hiding things. It's just framing something which makes it... you prioritize stuff and make it relevant to people. But, you know, maybe there's a fine line.
Absolutely! You're thinking about prioritizing and what you focus on. So if people choose to say 'we're carbon'... So now everyone's talking about being carbon neutral. It's, like, a big... that's again a whole other rabbit hole. But, um, so that's... they're not lying about their data. They may have planted all of those trees. But whether planting those trees really is as good as not emitting all of that carbon in the first place,
that's another question, isn't it. And so, in that case, again, it's like, yeah, what they focused on advertising to people or selling to people, and, you know, what are they not talking about.
Aneeqa, sorry, you just said a rabbit hole. I realised when I was saying a wormhole I was like, 'It doesn't sound quite right' and I kept saying the word wormhole by putting rabbit hole and can of worms together.
Let's make it a thing Cara! Cara: But wormhole, wormhole, that's cool, that's cool. Sometimes it feels like a wormhole. Aneeqa: Space age and high tech, I think let's make it thing. Cara: Yeah, okay!
You start off in one place and you end up somewhere else and that is a rabbit hole and wormhole! Aneeqa: That was a movie!
Thats this podcast! Amina: That is this podcast, for sure. Antonia: Yeah, we tried we tried to start in one place. Aneeqa: We went through a wormhole. This is a very niche reference, I don't know if anyone will get it, but did anyone watch the S Club 7 movie where they went through a wormhole? Antonia: I did watch it but i don't remember the wormhole. Aneeqa: They went through a wormhole and went back to the 1960s. Antonia: Was that the one
where they got cloned? Aneeqa: Oh, I think that was another movie.
How many S Club 7 movies were there? aneeqa: I'm not sure but I've seen those two. I was a big fan. Anyone who's not heard of S Club 7 needs to go down a youtube wormhole-rabbithole and search their songs. They even had a TV show. Antonia: Was their entire concept that they were group but they were filmed like a sitcom? Aneeqa: Yeah, yeah, yeah! Right okay, so it seems like scientific information and the way that it's presented is
really important. And how it's presented and how it's picked up by non-experts without clear and transparent explanation of methodologies and assumptions used makes it very easy for the information to be misunderstood. This can have a huge impact on people's behaviors and we need to be responsible as scientists and engineers to ensure the message we are presenting mirrors the results that we show.
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