Issue link: https://www.ahpindiestylist.com/i/1250436
N ot a m e m b e r ? J o i n at a s so c iate d h a i rp rofe s sio n a ls .c o m 37 written by someone with experience in science writing that rests on solid evidence and names sources you should be able to check. Those sources should be fully approved, peer-reviewed studies or statements from specialists whose expertise is in the right area. WHY SMART PEOPLE BELIEVE JUNK SCIENCE Right now, everybody's judgment is a little compromised, and with good reason. When we seem to be looking at a story full of contradictions that threatens us directly and disrupts our way of living, the mind tries to make sense of what is happening by developing perceptual hypotheses to fill in those gaps. This is known as using heuristics to make decisions: "rules of thumb" or shortcuts to save us time when facing a problem or to help us when we do not have all the information. 5 We don't follow every step to get from A to B; instead, educated guesswork and a form of patternicity—"the tendency to find patterns in meaningless noise"—takes hold. 6 Depending on someone's sociocultural, educational, and psychological makeup , different forms of apophenia may be experienced, which is the tendency to ascribe intention, meaning, and connections between seemingly random data and events, and is often the basis for conspiracy theories. In short, if a story isn't making sense to us, we fill in those gaps with what we do know and understand, taking the shortest route possible with the least uncertainty. The sense of more control and certainty is based on the way we normally deal with problems, whether it is by getting angry, going into denial, or researching as much as we can so that we feel more in control of our situation. Scientists are not immune to this; what is known as type 1 error in statistics is the tendency to see false patterns in data or incorrectly ascribing causality. Researchers and data analysts are just as likely to fall prey to the phenomenon as the layperson, but the stakes are higher since the information they extract from reams of data may be used at the highest levels to develop policy and governance. Evolutionary modeling has shown that patternicity is an ancient survival mechanism, based on the relative risk of potential outcomes depending on which pattern is believed. Not looking for patterns (and creating them where we can't find them) creates intolerable anxiety because of the degree of uncertainty, and therefore the potential perceived danger. For example, believing that the noise in my apartment corridor is a burglar when it is only my cat will prompt me to investigate. If I believe it is my cat and do nothing, I might be murdered in my bed. But if I believe it is a burglar and act on that, I have a fighting chance of survival, so thinking the worst "costs" me less than ignoring the noise. Compounded with other psychological and experiential factors, researchers in evolutionary biology have concluded that, in general, modern humans are not good at judging the relative probability of one scenario over another, and if we cannot understand the causes behind something, we will tend to "assign causal probabilities to all sets of events . . . lump[ing] causal associations with non-causal ones." 7 Faced with a worldwide pandemic that has created this degree of disruption compounded by tons of data we are struggling to make sense of, our brains fall into the pattern of meaning-making and ascribing causality, with the added stimuli of fear and anxiety. The survival threat is real, and we have few tools at our disposal. We are being told to act in ways that feel unnatural, to self-isolate and abandon our jobs, our families, everything that forms our routine and identity. Physical Noise Noise pollution (i.e., TV/kids/ pets, colleagues/traffic) Physiological Noise Fatigue/discomfort/ pain/too cold/too hot Psychological Noise Worries/assumptions/ stereotypes/bias Semantic Noise Jargon/choice of words/ unfamiliar ideas Sender/Encoder Receiver/Decoder Hi, here are the facts... Isolation Fear Misinformation Anxiety