Believe You Me How the Scientific Method Might Change Your Mind Kelly OConnell TEDxStLawrenceU

So, was sitting with friend having casual conversation about the March for Science last year. When we ended up touching on the subject of women's access to contraception. This led to conversation about the different types of contraception and how they work. When it got to oral hormone therapy for women or birth control pills, my friend said, just don't feel like it's healthy to regulate periods like that." Now, may not be an expert in contraception, but the statement bothered me. It bothered me because she said, just don't feel like it's healthy." People use these kinds of statements all the time, especially in science and medicine. Stephen Colbert even coined satirical term to describe this that he calls truthiness, which he defines as relying on gut instinct rather than fact. When people form opinions, they usually use one of two categories as foundation. The first is personal anecdotes and beliefs. So, in this case, you might say, "Well, my friend gained lot of weight on hormonal contraception, so don't believe it's healthy." The second category is fundamental social values. So, you might say, "It's not right to change how your body functions." But these two categories should ideally be informed by if not bridged from scientific evidence. So, instead saying something like, "Hormonal contraception changes woman's level of progesterone and estrogen, and change in these hormones affects people differently." There's lot of information out there that targets beliefs and social values in an attempt to influence your opinion. But turns out there's actually pretty well-described method for assessing whether or not something is {quote} "unquote" true in science. This method uses experimentation and analysis devoid of personal opinions and beliefs. And this approach is called the scientific method, and it really can be applied to any field, not just science. We can see people using the scientific method every day. Over the holidays, watched my 1-year-old nephew repeatedly test the amount of force necessary to open drawer. Basically, he pulled on the drawer multiple times, increasing his force each time, until he had an answer. The drawer opened, and he fell down. As we get older, we tend to rely on our past experiences to guide how we think about problem, and then we sort of reason our way to an answer. But when it comes to science and medicine, sometimes simple reasoning doesn't work. We actually need data. So, all of this got me thinking, how can we as scientists help shift people towards forming their opinions based on actual evidence rather than personal experiences and emotion? Well, first think we need to collectively understand that the science itself needs to be honest and accurate, but we also need to understand that when you hear of forming scientific consensus like 97% of scientists agree on or that those conclusions were formed from rigorous experimentation and peer review. When started my undergraduate education here at St. Lawrence, came here understanding that didn't know everything. But thought that here at college, this was where was going to learn it all. came here thinking maybe had pretty good foundation in biology and chemistry, but we really delved into those subjects in Dr. Anna Estevez's cell bio class or Dr. Sam Glazer's biop chem course, and learned so much more. So, when graduated, thought, okay. Now know everything." But it wasn't till joined the PhD program at University of Maryland in Baltimore that found myself in familiar ground, realizing that actually didn't know all that much again. And that's the story of science, understanding what we know, understanding what we don't know, and then devising experiments to help answer our questions. And most of the time it's not huge question like the shape of planet or humans' effects on climate change. The questions we as scientists try to answer are small, and they usually only incrementally increase the knowledge in field. For example, my PhD focused on specific type of cell in the human body, the cardiomyocyte. These are the cells in the heart. Within these cells, looked at specific organelle called the mitochondria. On an even smaller scale, looked at channel or an opening in the membrane of this mitochondria. And then even smaller still, looked at how molecules might affect the opening of this channel. And looked at all of this in an effort to understand macroscopic effect, very important in life-altering disease in some people's lives, which is heart failure, and how to keep people with heart failure alive longer. So, with this very narrow research focus, don't claim to be an expert in all things science, but can reliably say that am an expert in using the scientific method and performing experiments. So, what is the scientific method exactly? Well, it starts with asking question. And know this sounds pretty easy. We ask questions every day. But to truly ask novel scientific question takes solid understanding of topic to know where those crucial gaps are. And filling those gaps is really what meaningful science is all about. So, during my doctoral studies, had big questions and had little questions. In similar question as my nephew asked earlier about force, asked question about strength, the strength of these little mitochondria inside heart cells. So, we've known for long time, you probably know from your general bio courses, that mitochondria are called the powerhouses of the cell. And they're called this mainly because they produce the energy needed for things like muscle contraction, like the heart. Mitochondria also help buffer calcium levels, too, which aids muscle movement as well, but they can only take up so much calcium until they burst. It's kind of like filling up balloon with air. At some point, you're going to reach the maximum capacity of the balloon, and it'll pop. So, with that understanding, asked, "How much calcium can mitochondria take up until they burst?" With the understanding that the more calcium they take up, the stronger or healthier that mitochondria is. The second step of the scientific method is to develop hypothesis and an experiment designed to answer your question. Since was studying heart failure, wasn't so much interested in normal mitochondria, but rather mitochondria from sick animals, and mitochondria from sick animals that had treated to help increase their capacity to take up calcium. And performed ton of experiments. tried different combination therapies, different stages of heart failure, and of course different doses of calcium until realized when those mitochondria burst and whether or not my experiments or therapies helped increase their capacity to take up calcium. The last steps of the scientific method include analyzing your data and submitting work for publication. So, after gathering and analyzing all of my data, had to put my results into context within the broader scientific community studying heart failure and mitochondrial function. So, wrote up papers, submitted my results, and was subject to peer review. Sharing the results of research is an important part of science. We all stand on the shoulders of those people and the ideas that came before us, and shared knowledge allows us to grow. And picking the right journal with which to submit to is also important. Not all journals are created equal, so when you read scientific article, it matters where that journal was published. It also matters if that journal uses the peer review process. The peer review peer review process, which used to be called refereeing, is process where in other people are thought leaders in your field have read and critiqued new piece of work. This helps maintain the integrity of the field and helps ensure that really only quality work is published, while papers that need revision are not. So, after addressing concerns from reviewers, which could range from small formatting mistakes to major revisions requiring many more experiments and additional months of study, paper is finally accepted for publication. And this, by the way, assumes that it's not just flatly rejected. So, and this is very bench science example of using the scientific method, but you can really use this method for many things, not just science. Take baking as an example. Baking is actually pretty scientific process. Let's say you're trying to create like healthier version of typical cookie, maybe using less sugar as an example. So, you might run through the same recipe multiple times, decreasing the sugar each time, until you created cookie that no longer tasted very good. Well, you just used science to answer the question of what is the minimum amount of sugar necessary to create good-tasting cookie. Of course, good here is relative, but the point remains you gathered data, you analyzed the results by tasting it, and you made conclusion. You can also use the scientific method for more difficult questions, questions you can't answer yourself with your own experimentation. Take my friend's opinion on contraception. If she were really curious about the safety of these types of medications, she can log on to pubmed.gov, which is digital archive run by the National Institute of Health that contains library of biomedical and life science literature with over 27 million citations. On the site, you can type in hormonal contraception safety and see that there are over 400 results on the topic. There are even papers there that summarize the numerous safety articles, so you don't have to read each one of them individually yourself, unless of course you wanted to. So, the answers to those types of questions are available without having to use personal anecdotes and opinions. And answering them in this way uses the scientific method, too. You gather data, you analyze the results by reading it, and then you make conclusion. So, why am up here talking about my research into small organelle in the heart or my friend's opinion on birth control pills? The point is that creating meaningful conclusions is difficult process. In the science world, it takes years of training and many layers of scrutiny to publish findings that have an impact. And you don't need to be scientist to make use of the scientific method in your everyday. It's simply an unbiased, evidence-based approach to answering question. Unfortunately, today, we're living in society where the curiosity and hard work of finding answers is being replaced with an increasing reliance on personal anecdotes and beliefs. In today's society, we want things fast. We want our information fast, and we want our answers really fast. But, sometimes the best, most reliable information and answers comes from more traditional way of thinking, using the logical method of science. If we can slow down, attempt to carefully understand something, we may actually learn meaningful, truthful answers. Facts exist, whether we believe them or not, whether we understand them or not. And it's our right to believe or understand something, but just because it's our right doesn't make that fact any less true. We should all be out there educating ourselves about the world, challenging each other's opinions, and passing that knowledge on to others. Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson says, "The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you." And though that's true, with solid understanding in the sciences combined with hard work, we can work together and try to make sense of it. And that is progress. Thank you.