Michael Specter at TED: Why is the Scientific Method so Difficult to Understand?

This TED talk exemplifies at a fundamental level some of the problems I have with so many opinions in the world. "Everyone's entitled to their own opinion...but you know what you're not entitled to? You're not entitled to your own facts," he says just before launching into a rant against denialism. He covers the loons who champion the elimination of newborn vaccinations and growing number of people (for the most part of both privilege and wealth, I have to say) who campaign against GM foods.



What's most troubling to me, however, is reading the comments below the video. I know, that's always a bad idea for thinking people. But there's a startling number of people who've written comments basically assailing his talk because they're skeptical of the science. Specter is giving a talk about how the scientific method as a process for finding facts, truth and answers is the best way to understand things in the world.

He says people like Jenny McCarthy, who campaign against disease vaccinations because of a ridiculously mistaken belief that they cause autism, are responding to anecdotal evidence rather than scientific evidence. Specter even comes out and says, "I understand why people think that," in addition to saying that we should ask questions and ask for evidence and proof. But once the proof has been provided, it's necessary to accept it. We can't deny science when it comes to policy and broad solutions.

Then people watch this talk and say, "I'm skeptical of science." Making a statement like that is a complete misunderstanding of how science works. The vaccine/autism link wasn't disproved by one scientist in a single lab. This was years of research done in several countries, each of which found no evidence of a causal link. That's how science works - through extensive research and experimentation, peer review, follow-up experiments.

What Michael Specter says in this video seems so self-evident to me. It saddens me to realize how many people will carry on without deference to facts.

If you're interested in more, Specter has a book on this very topic.

UPDATE: The doctor who made the connection between infant vaccinations and autism has been revealed as a fraud.