It looks like science. It walks like science and so people believe it. It looks like science. It sounds like science. But it's not. It's pseudoscience. There's research that shows that if you use sciencey language, it gives it this veneer of credibility. So what science-ploitation is the use of real science in order to sell bunk, the use of real science in order to sell products. A good example is in the area of genetics. We've had the genetic revolution. We have genomics and we personalized medicine. Well, if you want to sell something, whether it's a shampoo or a genetic test, use that sciencey language in order to get your message across. And the reason that works is because, that science has gotten a lot of attention in the popular press. Their headlines, we've had headlines for decades about genetics. So that works. That messaging works. It's sounds real. It sounds exciting.You can leverage the real science, all that press coverage in order to sell your products. We're seeing it with stem cell research. There's stem cell products everywhere. Now you're seeing with the microbiome, all these gut products now you saw it with nanotechnology on and on. I think it's a really powerful tool to sell misinformation because it's harder to debunk it on the face of it because it sounds real. This is a big battle. This is one of the defining issues of our era. In this theme, we'll be discussing pseudoscience or fake science. To be fair to the legal universe, it is an uphill battle. There are laws that exist that say that you can't deceive people, but often purveyors of pseudoscience are clever. They won't necessarily make a claim that it will cure something or have some kind of health ramification, but will make you feel vital. They'll give you energy. I don't even know what that means. Naturalistic fallacy is a great example. If you stick the word natural on a product, it's more likely to sell. It sells billions of dollars worth of products every year, even though it's conceptually meaningless. So what is fake science? In some aspects, it's gotten easier for those trying to debunk these products because they're not saying these people who are pushing this misinformation. They're not saying this is a different worldview of our spiritual approach, our philosophy. They're often saying, "This works and it works in a scientific way, in a measurable way." Increasingly, that's happening. Whether you're talking alternative therapies or supplements or you name it. They'll say, "This works," and they'll often say, "because of x, y, and z." In the past lessons, we have learned that science is the process of making observations. I was born and raised in Edmonton, so I have been here all my life. So I've got a history of growing up here and living through all of this. Asking questions,. Is this winter warmer or colder than the ones that I grew up in? Will we get more snow now than we used to? Do we get more snow in September than we used to? Do we have more snow on March? Those sorts of things. Collecting evidence. Environment Canada has, on their website, data available for all sorts of stations around the country. Edmonton has two primary stations. Blatchford, which is the city center airport or old city center airport, which is downtown. And then there's the Edmonton International. Evaluating, analyzing, and interpreting evidence. On a cold day in the winter, the Edmonton International can be seven or ten degrees colder than Blatchford will be. And based off the evidence collected, we can accept, reject, or update a theory. In the last year or so, we had the fifth coldest February since 1880. We had the fifth coldest September since 1880. We had the warmest May since 1880. We had the snowiest September since records began. The snow records were a little bit odd. It's always fun to try and put some context around those sorts of things and to also talk about how things have changed over the last century, how they've changed since I was a kid, how they've changed just in recent history of the last 10 or 20 years. In pseudoscience, a process of science is forgotten. Instead, bias is used to guide poor or invalid evidence collection and poor evaluation of evidence to conclude that preexisting biases are based on facts. Pseudoscience is deviant, the claims being made do not highlight, but they are generated without the quality control based in the process of science. Science-ploitation, I think is an interesting phenomenon because I think it's actually making it increasingly difficult to fight the spread of misinformation. I think some of the dangers of science-ploitation are that it can lead individuals to be misled. I mean, that's obvious. That's one of the problems with it. It can create this impression that there's more evidence behind something than there actually is. I also think it can lead to distrust of the good science. This science-ploitation creates an illusion about what's really going on. You may have already thought of your own examples, but it's important to recognize that is not always immediately obvious. Often, pseudo-scientists falsely masquerade their non-scientific supporting evidence as a product of rigorous scientific process. A lot of people think of misinformation just around things like alternative therapy or pseudoscience or conspiracy theories. But there's a lot of misinformation about high-tech stuff, even things that people think are science-based. A really good example is direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Just over the last couple years, this has become a huge industry with millions of people getting their DNA tested to find out what they have or predispositioned to or perhaps what their talents are. And what's really frustrating is the science behind that is not altogether that sound. This is another good example of science being twisted. It's science being misrepresented, but we're more likely to buy it because it feels like science. In our information-dense world, it is often difficult to differentiate science from pseudoscience based on claims alone. So it's important to keep an open mind to all claims. A scientist is skeptical of all claims, even claims that are based in evidence collected by the scientific process. Being skeptical means that a scientist will evaluate all of the evidence available with an open mind, knowing that mistakes can be made in the scientific process that may change results or conclusions. Only after evaluating evidence, will they form a tentative conclusion to update a theory. Conversely, a pseudo-scientist would not practice skepticism, conclude a claim as fact, and acknowledge the supporting evidence as proof. [inaudible] ignoring disputing evidence as insufficient to refute the claim. Therefore, their claims are never updated based off new evidence. So remember, be a scientist, think skeptically, ask questions, search for evidence, and evaluate that evidence and form tentative conclusions while keeping an open mind to evidence as it comes your way.
