Significance of Medical and Biological Science
In this paper I will show that (X) the value of medical and biological knowledge is based on it’s accuracy (Y) by exploring how doctors and the media portray advances in medical science (Z) in order to show that the worth of scientists lie in the truth and utility of their theories and findings. First I will describe how many studies conducted by the medical industries are performed unscientifically and inaccurately, which has lead to the public receiving poor information from media outlets and doctors. Next I will present evidence of the media withholding certain information and only broadcasting what they want too, causing lack of information and accuracy in their stories. I will then show how many studies and findings completed by doctors and scientists contradict each other, leading to an unknown truth. These points should be enough to encourage one to think about how medical and biological scientific knowledge is valuable in today’s changing society.
Accuracy of Medical Studies and Findings
Much of the information concluded from medical studies conducted by the health industry turns out to be inaccurate. The general public is then given this information and told it is reliable by doctors and the media who are trying to persuade them to take a certain medication or change their lifestyle. This false information should not be worth anything to people but it is because it is being described as the truth and accurate. Each year a hypothesis that was proven the year before is proved to be wrong. So why wasn’t such a hypothesis proved wrong in the first place so the false information would never have been shared with millions of people looking for answers? The problem is with a common testing process among scientists known as observational testing, such as the Nurses’ Health Survey, in which a scientist observes a subject to attempt to link two events together. Scientists cannot be sure that one event causes another event to occur, they can only hypothesize. This means that the scientist will look at his study results and try to find a conclusion to why he received the results he did (Taubes 4). It is said that for every right hypothesis there is a wrong hypothesis too, so there is a great chance that a scientist’s work is not correct. According to Stephen Pauker, a professor of medicine at Tufts University and a pioneer in the field of clinical decision making, studies are probabilistic statements. They do not tell us what the truth is, but they allow both physicians and patients to “estimate the truth� so they can make informed decisions (Taubes 6). Observational studies conclude that this behavior, whatever it is, prevents disease and saves lives, when all they’re really doing is comparing two different types of people who are, in effect, incomparable (Taubes 11).
The correct and accurate way to conduct a study requires a randomized-controlled trial, known as an experiment, not an observational study (Taubes 4). A randomized-controlled trial is one in which a random sample is chosen and one group is tested with the certain drug or lifestyle and the other group is tested with a placebo or a fake drug that has no effect on the subject. The sample needs to be large enough to show that there is not any coincidence among its results. If a study is conducted in this way there is far less doubt to whether a drug causes a certain result or not. We can tell this because if the placebo group has different results than the experimental group then this means that the testing factor is responsible for the differences.
Experimental studies such as these and the randomized-controlled trials needed to ascertain reliable knowledge about long-term risks and benefits of a drug, lifestyle factor, or aspect of our diet are inordinately expensive and time consuming, because they require direct control over the subjects and the expense of the study. Observational studies are relatively cheap and less time consuming because all that is done is a survey or observation of a group without any direct influence or costs (Taubes 6). Even though experimental studies are more expensive and time consuming than observational studies they should be the main source of information for medical research. A change to a system like that would lead to more accurate and reliable information for the medical industry to use when influencing the public about a drug or lifestyle change.
Media Biased Regarding Medical Science
Media outlets are the prime source of all information that the public receives regarding medical and biological scientific research and results. This means that the media is responsible for what airs and is published and what is not. This is because they cannot share all of the study results or new information, so they pick and choose what they want based on their values and what they believe in, even though the media is supposed to be fair and unbiased in what they share with the public. The media decides to leave certain essential parts of information out when they are reporting that might be necessary to fully grasp the concept. This in turn leads to the argument that the fault is with the press. The problem is not in the research but in the way it is interpreted for the public, as Jerome Kassirer and Marcia Angell, then the editors of The New England Journal of Medicine, explained in a 1994 editorial titled “What Should the Public Believe?� Each study, they explained, is just a “piece of a puzzle� and so the media has to do a better job of communicating the many limitations of any single study and the caveats involved, the foremost, of course, being that an association between two events is not the same as a cause and effect (Taube 6).
Richard Peto, professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at Oxford University, thinks that medical research provides such an important perspective on human life and death, but an incredible amount of rubbish is published. By this he means the results of observational studies that appear daily in the news media and often become the basis of public-health recommendations about what we should or should not do to promote our continued good health (Taubes 5). If all of the information of a story is not shared with the public then it can be seen as rubbish.
An example of this is described in the movie The Corporation, when the Fox Broadcasting Company refused to air a story about the negative effects of Posilac on cows and humans. Jane Akre, a reporter out of Tampa Bay, FL planned on airing the investigative report, but Monsanto, the company that produces the drug threatened to sue Fox News if the story ever aired. The Fox Broadcasting Company owned 23 separate stations at the time and they did not want to lose any advertising money if they aired the controversial, but true story, so they agreed to cooperate with the Monsanto lawyers. Today, rich and powerful men control most of our media outlets, and we all know what that has entailed in matters of truth and reality (Ruse 11). This shows that the media is mainly concerned with generating money and enough profits and then secondly they are concerned with sharing the truth. The Monsanto story was rewritten 83 times but never aired and the reporters were eventually fired for not sufficiently altering their story. In this case Fox news thought it would be in their best interest if they never informed the public of this story, even though every American who drank milk was affected by it. The media considers other things when it comes to deciding on what to report than just what the public wants to hear. This causes large amounts of people to be misinformed when it comes to making intelligent decisions regarding their health. This is just one example of how the media can be biased when deciding what to report to the public, and that instances such as this are very common.
Contradiction Among Scientists Research
Many scientists have different findings and results to similar studies conducted by others. An example of this is what makes people gay. There are two main hypotheses to how people end up gay, nature vs. nurture. Some scientists believe that gay people have a certain gene or that part of their brain is designed differently than a heterosexual person and other scientists think that ending up gay is based on the environment that a person grew up in. This leads to the question of who is right and who is wrong, whom should the public believe, and how can we decide on this? As Simon LeVay, a neuroscientist stated, “it is all kind of frustrating that it is still a bunch of hints, that nothing is really as crystal clear as one would like� (Swidey 117).
When a scientist conducts an experiment and discovers some new idea or concept somebody else is then going to attempt the same experiment and try to obtain the same results. If different results show up then the whole concept goes into question and who is telling the truth? The scientist who discovered the idea or the scientist who contradicts the new idea? The media decides this for us, by choosing what to report and what to leave out. Media outlets have the ultimate power to focus on a scientist’s work or to contradict it with another’s opposite work depending on their values. Medical research will always contradict itself when compared to other studies as long as there are differing views among the scientific community. If an experimental result discovers an idea that does not follow along with the believed concepts of another scientist, he will attempt to disprove it, in order to show the public that he is right.
In today’s media outlets, sharing the truth and accurate stories with the public is not their main concern, as they want to make money on top of everything else and then share information without hurting anyone or themselves. The problem with this is that the media is responsible for sharing medical and biological knowledge with the public in an accurate and unbiased manner without dollar signs in their eyes. Scientists need to be counted on to conduct experiments that generate reliable and scientifically stable evidence to support their hypotheses. When the media receives poor information from a scientist’s study, then they are responsible for piecing the puzzle together before they can report it. Most medical experimental results are contradicted by someone who does not agree with them and tries to prove them wrong. Today’s society is always changing and the value of medical and biological knowledge created by scientists is extremely valuable to the general public as long as their findings are reported accurately and honestly. The media outlets need to make a commitment to informing the public of an unbiased and generally truthful depiction of experimental study results and stories that affect their audience.
Works Cited
Ruse, Michael. Mystery of Mysteries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Neil Swidey. “What Makes People Gay?� The Best American Science Writing. Ed.
Atul Gawande. New York: Harper Perennial, 2006. 113-128.
Taubes, Gary. “Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy?� New York Times 16
Sept. 2007.
The Corporation. Dir. Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar. Perf. Jane Akre, Ray
Anderson, and Maude Barlow. USA, 2003.