This week, I happened upon an essay in Photon In The Darkness called A Layperson’s Guide to the Scientific Literature. While much of this site looks at the subject of autism and the growth of sensational theories based on individual experiences rather than medical research, there is much here about pseudoscience that certainly helps me, a dull-witted heart attack survivor, understand more about how to interpret ‘research’ that scientists (or their Big Pharma pals, whichever the case may be) publish in medical journals.
For example, this Layperson’s Guide discusses a phenomenon called The Lucky Stockbroker Syndrome that can lead to reinforcement of individual experiences, based on the following analogy:
“A stockbroker decides to try a new money-making scheme. He gets a list of 10,000 potential clients and sends half of them a letter telling them that a certain stock will rise in value over the next week. To the other half of the list, he sends a letter saying that the same stock will fall in value.
“The next week, he sends letters to the half of his list (5,000 people) that got the correct prediction – again, half of them are told that a certain stock will go up in price and the other half are told that the stock price will fall. This goes on for a total of six weeks.
“At the end of this time, he has a list of 156 people who have – by random chance – received six consecutive correct predictions about stock prices. He then offers these people an expensive five-year subscription to his stock-picking service, which they gladly purchase, thinking that he has some amazing system for predicting the stock market.” Continue reading
As one who has written countless press releases during the decades I worked in public relations, I just love picking through other people’s press releases now. I can smell a spin a mile away, and I’m always curious about translating the spin back into The Truth when corporations attempt to communicate with the media.
Let’s say you’re a scientist who wants to do some research on the Tooth Fairy. You could design your study to determine if the Tooth Fairy leaves more money for a tooth left in a plastic baggie under the pillow than for a tooth wrapped in a piece of tissue (as we used to do in our family). Or you could look at the average amount of money left behind for the first baby tooth to fall out compared to the last tooth. Or perhaps you might attempt to correlate Tooth Fairy proceeds with the income of the toothless kid’s parents.
