1: Behind the Soundbite

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The rate of communication is accelerating. Busy people wage a desperate battle each day to plow through as much information as possible.

From Future Shock (1970) by Alvin Toffler

Ah, the soundbite—that media-produced tidbit that catches our attention. Put it there with the bottom line of business reports and the title of articles we don’t have time to read.

Fiber doesn’t prevent colon cancer? Throw out my breakfast cereal. But wait, I heard it helps prevent obesity! We are constantly bombarded by soundbites about recent findings, and this makes us anxious.

A basic knowledge of science gives us some stability in the flood of scientific and not-so-scientific information. It helps us separate fact from fiction, and fads and nonsense from the scientific and truthful. It makes us less vulnerable to the quack cures and easy fixes that are constantly offered in one guise or another.

We also need to understand how scientific information is gathered and reported. Otherwise, we become impatient and find it frustrating that scientists often say however or perhaps, and rarely say always or never. We like solid bottom-line advice. However, there aren’t many simple explanations in today’s complex world. We should be suspicious of easy answers. An old joke is that legislators, in seeking expert testimony, want scientists with only one arm—they’re fed up with scientists who answer simple questions with, “On one hand..., on the other hand ...” Nonscientists can seem more credible when talking to the public about science because they typically don’t hedge their answers as scientists do.