Kind: captions
Language: en
some critics of the TV show MythBusters
claim that the show misrepresents the
scientific process for example the
experiments are sometimes conducted only
once and without adequate controls but
then these results are generalized to
make definitive claims rather than
repeating the experiment and using
statistical analysis as a scientist
would to figure out what is really true
so ironically a show that is meant to
educate people about science may instead
be giving them the opposite impression
of how science works but you know
similar criticisms have been made of
veritasium for example when Destin and I
performed our experiments to show that
the water swirls the opposite way in the
northern and southern hemispheres we
only showed doing it once even though we
each did it three or four times in our
own hemisphere and I guess that brings
forth the question should we change what
we're doing I mean should Mythbusters
and veritasium really show the
repetitive nature of science and use
statistical results as evidence for our
claims well my answer is no but to
understand why we first have to dig into
something called the helping experiment
this was performed in New York in the
1960s and the way it went
was individual participants were placed
in isolated booths where they could
speak to five other participants through
an intercom but only one mic was live at
a time and these participants were meant
to speak interns for two minutes each
about their lives any problems they were
having and it would just go in rounds
now what the participants didn't know
was that one of them was actually an
actor who was reading a script prepared
for him by the experimenters and he went
first in the first round he talked about
the problems he was having adjusting to
life in New York City and particularly
the difficulty that he gets the seizures
particularly when stressed and so
everyone else had their turn then it
came back round to this actor again now
this time when he was speaking he became
more and more incoherent as he was
talking he said that he could feel a
seizure coming on and he made choking
noises he asked for help from the other
participants he said he felt like he was
dying and then he continued to get more
and more distressed until his mic went
off
and the point of the experiment was to
see how many of the participants would
help I mean if you were one of the other
participants do you think you would have
left your booth and gone to see if he
was okay in total about 13 participants
took part in this experiment and the
number that helped before his mic was
turned off was just for now while this
might sound a little bit disappointing
about the state of human helpfulness you
got to keep in mind that there were
other people listening to the same
distress call and that may have diffused
the responsibility that individuals
would feel this is something known as
the bystander effect now what's
interesting about this experiment from
my point of view is not how it confirms
the bystander effect but in how people
view the results for example they fail
to change their opinion of themselves or
others after learning about this
experiment for example have you changed
your opinion about how likely you would
be to help in this situation
now that you know that only 30% of
people did in that situation well there
was a follow-up study conducted where
students were shown two videos of
individual participants who were
purported to be from the original study
they had already learned about the study
and then they were asked at the end of
watching those two videos which were
pretty uninformative just showed that
these people were good decent ordinary
people these students were asked how
likely do you think it was that those
two particular participants helped and
overwhelmingly students felt that those
two participants would have helped even
though they knew that statistically only
30% did so in fact it would have just
been a better guess to say they probably
didn't they didn't seem to really
internalize those general results as
pertaining to the particular they just
kind of assumed it excluded ordinary
good decent people now is there a way to
get people to really understand how the
world works well they did another
follow-up study where they talked about
the experiment they described the
experiment but they didn't give the
results and then they showed those two
participant videos again not mentioning
anything about the experiment just
showing that these are two decent
ordinary people and then they told the
students that those two people did not
help in the experiment and they asked
the students to
guess what proportion of people did help
and now in this case when they were
going from those particular examples of
ordinary nice people who didn't help
they were much better at generalizing to
the overall result to the statistical
result in fact they got it basically
right and I think this highlights for us
that our brains are much better at
working with individual stories and and
things in detail than they are with
statistical results and that is why I
think if you're Mythbusters or
veritasium it's better to communicate
science to tell the story to show the
experiment really once in a dramatic way
rather than three or four times where
each new iteration well each repetition
just confirms the original result that
you were talking about but if you're
actually doing the science if you're
actually trying to establish scientific
fact then of course you need the
repetition and the statistical analysis
so I think it really does come down to
what your objectives are but with this
conclusion I think this opens up two big
potential pitfalls one is that people
without scientific evidence can make
crafty stories that catch on and quickly
become what people feel is the truth and
the other pitfall is scientists who have
strong scientific evidence who have
clear statistical results and yet they
can't communicate them to people because
they don't have a great story so an
example of the first pitfall is the
recent spread of this rumor that the
outbreak of a birth defect microcephaly
in South America was actually caused by
a larvacide made by Monsanto that story
caught on like wildfire and you can see
why because it's got this clear villain
that everyone loves to hate in Monsanto
and it's got a really causal story that
someone is doing something bad to the
water and it's this poison that we're
poisoning ourselves and it's a very
emotive clear story well the other story
is well it's a little bit more
statistical that there is some kind of
connection which is the scientific
consensus that the Zika virus carried by
these mosquitoes is causing the
microcephaly and
there are strong indications that that
really is what's happening and if you
look at the claims about the larvacide
they really don't hold much weight I
mean the larvicide is so weak that you
could drink a thousand liters of it a
day a thousand liters of the water
treated with this larvacide and have no
adverse effects or this larvacide has
been used in dog and cat pet collars so
really you know there there isn't strong
evidence for the larvacide connection in
fact there is no connection between the
larvacide and Monsanto at all but I
think the story took hold because it had
such a strong narrative on the other
hand you have things like climate change
which have very strong statistical
evidence to back them up large-scale
results over the globe and yet one cold
snowy winter is so much more visceral
and meaningful to individual people than
this thing which feels you know
completely data based and it just
depends on how much you trust data I
guess a scientists we love data and we
feel like if we're trying to communicate
to someone we're trying to convince
someone of something all we need to do
is show more data but what experiments
demonstrate to us with statistical
certainty is that stories work much
better
normally I do these walk-and-talk style
videos on my second channel to
veritasium but I imagine that some of
you might not know that that exists so I
thought I'd put one of these here on one
veritasium Plus this one has a fair
amount of data and you know experimental
stuff in it so I figured that could be
interesting for you as well so if you
want to check out the check in check
yeah so if you want to check out the
second channel then go to to veritasium
I'll put a card or something for it up
here