What Science Really Is (and How to Spot Pseudoscience Online)

Introduction

 This may seem like a really basic question, but do you know what science is? Because when I look at the world today and when I hear things on, on social media and, and listen to, uh, quote unquote quote experts, I think we’ve kind of lost sight of what. Science is at, at its core, at its foundation. Just hang with me on this.

Okay. So at its core, science is a systematic way of asking questions about the natural world and testing answers against evidence. That’s it. So that also begs the question. What isn’t science? Why do we say there’s misinformation or pseudoscience? And why are there even arguments? Because there’s so many things that are being portrayed as science.

It’s not, and it, and it actually is not hard to discern between the two. It’s quite easy, but so many people in the world seem very confused by all of this. And so I want to just give some core insights and ways that you can think about things so that when you are gathering your information and when you are doing your research, maybe these are some things that you can identify as potential red flags of, is this real science or is this not?

What science is

So science is. Also a method. It’s a process. That’s why it’s called the scientific method. Usually it starts off with a key observation. Somebody notices a pattern or a phenomenon or a trend that does not equal science. Okay? Many people will take that to now equal science that is part. The first step of the scientific method, an observation is made.

Where do we see this? Well, we hear it every day, that there’s a mountain of literature out there that has shown through many multiple analyses, meta-analyses, all those things that show over the course of 30, 40 years, this mountain of reproducible evidence. It’s being refuted by anecdote observation.

People saying, well, the evidence may show this, but I’ve noticed this in my family. I guarantee any time like I do a, a short reel or I do something, I will. And we’re talking in more general terms of like what science has shown meaning. And, and I’ll go through the rest of the scientific process, but I always have the person that will comment, well, none of that applies to me.

Okay. It may not, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen to you. It doesn’t mean that we’re not validating you or listening to you. It’s just that would an observation, that would be a phenomenon that in order for us to really understand it and to truly understand it. We would want before making massive conclusions on that, we would want to put it through a scientific method.

The scientific method

So what’s the next step? Well, the next step is you come up with af After you have an observation, you come up with a hypothesis where you’re forming some kind of testable explanation on this. So you come up with a hypothesis that you can test. How do you test? You test through experimentation, data collection, and this whole process, by the way, is key because when we’re talking about science, how that that experiment or that test is designed is important.

Is it free from bias? Actually, the first question is who’s funding it? Okay. We have to know who’s funding it. What questions are being answered? What are we testing? How is the data being collected? Who’s being included? What’s being included? What’s being excluded? There’s all kinds of things that go into creating, uh, a, a beautiful, for instance, investigation or research.

Then what we have to do is after we design that study or that research and analys and we conduct it, we have to analyze or interpret the results, uh, often using logic or statistics or, or different methods to appropriately analyze those results. Then it doesn’t stop there. Okay? And, and so many times.

People that get engrossed or sidetracked by pseudoscience or making bold causative statements will get sidetracked somewhere along even those first few steps. The first observation or the they’ll, they’ll believe more the anecdote or the observation more than the process or the method. So they may get sidetracked at just that.

Posing the que the right question. They may get sidetracked at perhaps the design of the study. They may get sidetracked in terms of how is this analyzed, what kind of statistics were used. Hopefully if we have a lot of integrity and a lot of scientific thought by smart people. We can notice observations, we can create a hypothesis.

We can design an effective study. We can utilize proven methods to analyze that, but then guess what comes next? We have to be able to replicate it. It can’t be a one-off. So this is where you can’t have just one small study of 20 people that is disproving. Many, many, many, many legitimate studies of over 1.2 million people, for instance, can’t do it.

The studies have to be able to be replicated, and even better, it should be replicated by a neutral third party. Anyone should be able to take your experiment and replicate those results. Why don’t we have to test gravity anymore? ‘cause it’s already been tested. There was the observation, there was a hypothesis, there’s the data, there was the analysis, there’s the replication.

Time and time and time again, it’s there. And then what we do is we come up with certain conclusions after that replication. But it doesn’t stop there because again, it’s a method. We are using the best observations and the best questions and the best experiments, and the best analysis and the best replication that we have at the time with the information that’s available.

But guess what? We may have new abilities that come along. We may have new abilities that allow us to design better experiments. We may have new abilities that does allow us to analyze data better. And that alters what we do. And so the last part that science is okay with is we make revision. We have to revise.

Why science changes over time

That’s called progress. It’s not called, oh, blaming somebody for coming up with a wrong study or a bad study or this or that. No, it’s called, we’re revising what we’re doing along the way. Lemme give you an example. Uh, I started clinical practice after my training, uh, almost 18 years ago. How I practice now is completely different than in, in, in so many ways than what I did coming outta my training.

Does that mean that my training was bad? No. I had great training. I was trained by brilliant people. Who challenged us, who taught us to think. And even though some people claim that we’re not taught to think in medical school, we actually are, or at least I was, we were taught to question. So that’s another myth that, that some people will throw out that, that we’re not allowed to question in medical school and residency, we’re not, we’re we’re actually.

Encouraged to question. We’re encouraged to research. We’re encouraged to look at those tough questions. We’re encouraged to challenge the current conclusions. Why? Because when you’re a true scientist, you follow the true data and you’re okay with making revisions, you’re okay with updating conclusions.

So my practice has evolved over the last decade and a half. And how I approach people in, in what I look at, how I view it, the, the tests that are run, how I analyze things. Why? Because it’s science. It’s true science. It’s, it’s not that what was, what I did 15 years ago is necessarily bad. It’s the best we had at the current time and things were being replicated.

But as we learned as science and, and as our knowledge evolved. We have to be able to adapt. We have to be able to learn, and we have to be able to revise. That is why scientific knowledge changes over time, and it should change when better evidence comes along. When better evidence, when better questions or more observations are asked, or sorry, more observations are seen, better questions are asked.

Um. Better design studies, better tools that are available for us to analyze. All of this should help us evolve and change what we’re doing. What I don’t like seeing is people saying, well, I knew that all about, I knew that from the beginning. I knew that from the very beginning. I’ve been saying this all along.

Were you really? It’s kind of the first question is, were you really, um, most of the time they weren’t. They’re gaslighting you, but. What I would rather have is somebody say, this is what, this is the data that we had at this given amount of time. And then as we had more better studies, this is how we evolved evidence.

Uh, over time the scientific method builds. It builds and it stacks on top of each other in what we’ve learned, it’s not about trying to gaslight the past. By creating doubt and fear and mingling, uh, observation and beliefs and different things and anecdotes, uh, to scare you or to create distrust. That’s not science.

That is not science at all. So let’s talk a little bit more about what science isn’t. It is not. A set of unchanging facts. It is not based on authority. It’s not because, you know, just some person said so, or some authority figure said. So it is not immune to bias it, but it builds structures to reduce bias.

It’s not the same as common sense or logic alone without evidence. Science is the organized. Evidence-based process of discovering how the natural world works by forming testable explanations and subjecting them to continual scrutiny. That’s how we learn. Instead of playing some blame game, we just need to be anxiously engaged and furthering the knowledge and the education and building and learning from the things that we, that we’ve had in the past.

Why pseudoscience sells

Um,

let’s talk just a little bit about how pseudoscience may, why it sells itself so well, number one, I think it does because it feels intuitive. So humans love patterns. Uh, even when they’re wrong. They, they just love patterns and it feels intuitive. And it feels good. And pseudoscience, people often will connect with your emotions.

They’ll often start with a concept of like, here’s the concept. They’ll connect with your emotion. Either through fear or fear of missing out, or what am I missing or, or what’s the quote unquote, hidden food allergy that may be destroying your health, or, you know, all of these fear-based messaging. They’ll try to, and, and then they’ll share some anecdote Again, they’ll stop at kind of that observation level.

They’ll sell some, an anecdote. That connects with you? Oh yeah. I, you, you can, you can identify because you felt dismissed by the medical community. You felt this, you felt that you were wronged. And so now they’re, you’re, you’re connecting with them on an emotional level. And so it kind of feels intuitive.

And then they also tend to sell a lot more certainty, uh, certainty, cells. Science will actually rarely give you a hundred percent certainty. Um, one of my colleagues who’s very, uh, very popular on Instagram, who does an amazing job, an absolutely amazing job, uh, of. Disseminating information. Her name’s Dr.

Farra Khan. Uh, you can find her on on Instagram pretty easy. She does an amazing job of, of educating and one of the things that we always joke about, because we do a lot of segments together. Is she’ll often pose a question, and my answer will often start with, it depends, well, it depends. And, and it always comes down to that because it’s not black or white there, there’s a lot of gray area that doesn’t sell.

And, and unfortunately that may not sell a lot because science rarely gives that a hundred percent certainty. Uh, pseudoscience will tend to give you these more really definitive, concrete, bold answers, whereas science is gonna give you like a confidence interval. It’s gonna give you that confidence interval.

It’s going to list some things of, well, it does depend. Well, these factors do matter. Well, this context does matter because there’s nuance to it. And so, uh, that’s another reason why pseudoscience will often sell. And the other reason is those that are selling pseudoscience aren’t really accountable to anyone, uh, because they’re.

Often not doctors, so they’re not held to the same accountability or regulatory authorities, um, uh, licensing, you know, uh, uh, groups that doctors are beholden to. Um, and at the end of the day what they’ll do is they’ll say, well, if it’s not working, go talk to your doctor about this or. Even prior to that, they may say, we’re not doctors. We’re not giving medical advice. Here’s the product and here’s why we’re doing it, but go talk to your doctor about it. Then we have to spend all of our time dispelling those myths. It’s not that we don’t know about the tests, it’s just that a lot of them don’t have evidence to back them up.

And guess what? What I said at the beginning, we have to justify everything as medically necessary. Whether it’s a test, a procedure, or a medication. And so the influencers though can scale these cash businesses and make millions off of you from unvalidated and unsubstantiated tests, nutraceuticals and supplements that have very little oversight.

A lot of the tests that they’re selling, a lot of the products that they’re selling don’t come under the purview of the FDA and these coaches.

‘cause they’re not, doctors don’t have the liability that doctors have. So what they’ll do is be able to market online, target people online, push the product, push the test, sell the cash, scale their product with no oversight. And still at the end of the day, if it doesn’t work, do you know what they say? Oh, I’m not a doctor.

Go talk to your doctor about this or. Even prior to that, they may say, we’re not doctors. We’re not giving medical advice. Here’s the product and here’s why we’re doing it, but go talk to your doctor about it. Then we have to spend all of our time dispelling those myths. It’s not that we don’t know about the tests, it’s just that a lot of them don’t have evidence to back them up.

And guess what? What I said at the beginning, we have to justify everything as medically necessary. Whether it’s a test, a procedure, or a medication. And so the influencers though can scale these cash businesses and make millions off of you from unvalidated and unsubstantiated tests, nutraceuticals and supplements that have very little oversight.

“Medical-ish” language doesn’t equal evidence

A lot of the tests that they’re selling, a lot of the products that they’re selling don’t come under the purview of the FDA and these coaches.

‘cause they’re not, doctors don’t have the liability that doctors have. So what they’ll do is be able to market online, target people online, push the product, push the test, sell the cash, scale their product with no oversight. And still at the end of the day, if it doesn’t work, do you know what they say? Oh, I’m not a doctor.

Go talk to your doctor about it. But before that, there, there’s often a lot of that certainty.

They also will make it sound scientific. So they’ll mingle their message with a bunch of technical jargon. But the technical jargon does not mean a scientific method. Let, let me give you one example. Uh, food sensitivity testing, okay? They will often, uh, make claims about. You know how your immune sys your immune system is reacting to a certain food, and they can detect it with these IgG antibodies because your immune system, so they’re throwing out these technical terms, but what they fail to mention on all of that is when that’s been put through the scientific method, it hasn’t shown any kind of clinical correlation whatsoever.

And so using big words. To make something sound scientific. I mean, if that, if that were the answer, then, I mean, Gwyneth Paltrow would be like a Nobel laureate, you know, but that’s not it. You can’t, uh, just be sold on technical jargon. It doesn’t equal the scientific method.

The “recipe” for bad science on social media

Pseudoscience again, will often weaponize anecdotes.

We’ll thrive on emotional storytelling, on kind of the outliers that were unheard because again, that plays into you often because you’ve been dismissed, you’ve been hurt, you’ve been unheard, you’ve been frustrated, so they’re appealing to that, that emotion, and then they’re selling you a certainty, a really simple answer, whether it’s a simple test or, or these hundred tests that, that are detecting things.

You might be missing. Again, playing on the fear. Um, those are the things that sell and the, they’re often gonna share that dramatic, an anecdote. So here’s kind of the recipe when you’re seeing something, this is a, this is a recipe for bad science number one ingredient. They’re gonna share a dramatic anecdote.

The second ingredient, they’re going to use medical ish, technical language. Number three, they’re gonna add suspicion or create distrust in the medical community. Number four, they will ultimately end up selling you something at the end. There’s going to be a product, there will be a supplement, there will be a test or something.

Uh, number five, they’ll often block people who do post actual data. Um. And those are things to really look out for.

A quick checklist to spot real science

This can be very harmful to the public because misconceptions lead to delays in your care. They lead to false hope. They give you this hope that, oh my gosh, this one, this is the one thing that I’m missing in my life.

And then you start getting on this, this tr this, uh, supplement merry-go-round, if you will. Let’s not confuse our world even more. You know, science is a method. It’s a process. It’s, it deals with complexity, it deals with nuance. It’s changing, it’s evolving. It’s not based on sensationalization, it’s not based on anecdote.

Uh, it goes beyond that. Okay. So those are just some really easy things, quick checklist that you can do to how to spot real science in the wild. Does it use controls or does it use your cousin? Um, is the sample size larger than your dinner party? Is it peer reviewed or peer influenced? Are the claims consistent with known mechanisms?

Legit mechanisms. Okay. Is there a conflict of interest? Uh, that’s underlying? Meaning, who’s funding this? Could this study be replicated or not? Okay? Science isn’t perfect. But it’s, it’s the best of the tools that we have. Um, anecdotes are important in terms of, of giving us ideas. They’re important starting points because we can make observations and then we can start applying science as we, as we go along.

Conclusion and real-life example

Um, one little conclusion, just kind of in conclusion, I’ll share one story, uh, recently where, um.

So in conclusion, I’m gonna share a real life experience that just happened a few weeks ago. So I was sent a some literature and it claimed that vaccines cause autoimmunity and autism and. After kind of diving into this, it was separate papers and one scientific paper shows that some children with autism have what’s called folate receptor autoantibodies.

Another study showed there were some dietary proteins like cows milk. Cain in particular can sometimes cross-react with those antibodies. Meaning those autoantibodies in these autistic children. So someone looked at that and said, oh, vaccines can be grown in certain media that contain food like casein or bovine proteins.

Therefore, vaccines are causing autoimmunity and autism in our children. And now we should be treating with leucovorin because it gets back to the problem is. Those children with autism have those folate receptor autoantibodies that leucovorin is supposedly, uh, able to treat. Um, the problem is when you zoom out from that, that is not how science works.

Drawing those kinds of conclusion, that, but that is exactly how misinformation starts. Um, it’s like they were finding one piece of a puzzle under the couch and saying, this is the puzzle. We zoom out just a bit, instead of taking those disjointed studies with scientific jargon, that’s creating anecdotes, um, then drawing conclusions.

That’s not how science works. Okay. There might be an observation that there are some children with autism that have those autoantibody folate receptors. Perhaps that is an observation, but taking, when we take that and we look at millions of children over many, many studies and multiple systemic, uh, systematic reviews, when it’s put to scientific scrutiny, their conclusion just does not pan out.

That is not what real evidence shows. You can see though where the misinformation starts by taking bits and pieces of the anecdote, and it does not mean by any stretch that I am disregarding or dismissing anyone who’s had any kind of side effect or adverse event from a vaccine. That’s not the point.

Vaccines carry risk. They carry benefit. For each one, we need to weigh that risk benefit so that, so that we have that understanding. We have to subject this though to real scientific scrutiny, not jumping to pseudoscience conclusions. Um, hopefully this helps. Hopefully it gives you some red flags to kind of look at some tips as you’re reviewing things to say, is this real evidence or not?

Is this. Just part of an algorithm, echo chamber that I’m getting or not. Okay. Let’s enhance our thinking this year. Let’s look at things more critically. Let’s make the immune edits in our lives that we need to look at things so that we’re not getting stuck down the merry-go-round of supplements or the merry-go-round of one hit wonders that we’re trying to fix.

When there’s probably some complexity and nuance involved, find those people that you can trust. I know you can. We’re in this together. Until next time, uh, wish you all the best.

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