Statistics in Popular Science: The Argument from Correlation to Cause (original) (raw)
Related papers
The argument from correlation to cause in science communication
Argument: Biannual Philosophical Journal
The main activity within popularized science communication is the expert‐to‐layman transferral of scientific knowledge. Correlative connections have proven to be a problematic concept to adequately communicate and form a relatively common source for the misrepresentation of scientific knowledge. Depending on the strength of the causal claim, such an inferential step can be considered an “argument from correlation to cause”. This paper reconstructs the argumentative pattern that is typical for these arguments and proposes a number of critical questions for their evaluation. Finally, an analysis is presented of a natural example of reasoning from correlational evidence to cause within the context of popularized science.
What the Public Thinks It Knows About Science
EMBO [European Molecular Biology Organization] Reports, 2003
Popular culture probably does more than formal science education to shape most people’s understanding of science and scientists. It is more pervasive, more eye-catching, and (with rare exceptions) more memorable. No genetics textbook can hope to complete with Jurassic Park, and no lecture on biophysics can match the sight of Dr. Frankenstein pulling lighting down from the stormy sky to animate his creature. What messages about science, then, is the public likely to draw from popular culture? This essay discusses five, but there are naturally many others. Science is complex and multi-faceted, and so is popular culture’s portrayal of it.
Introduction to Pragmatism and Popular Science
In 1976, the rhetorical critic Philip C. Wander, in the process of summarizing, organizing and encouraging more of the scattered research in English and communications studies that investigated scientific research, issued the following caveat:
The Social Role of Popularized Science
2004
In this thesis I will argue that popularized science books should adhere to normative criteria regarding the presentation, interpretation, and understanding of the natural sciences. The increasing popularity of popular science texts (PSTs)-based on sales, critical notice, and scholarly attention-indicates that they can function to interest and partially educate the lay public in scientific principals and practices. I will identify and analyze the narrative, rhetorical features of two popular science texts: Douglas Adams' Last Chance to See and Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams. These texts are selected based on a series of normative criteria, criteria constructed for the purpose of enhancing the public understanding of science. Additionally, these criteria are needed to help the lay public develop a proper appreciation of science. A proper appreciation of science, I argue, enables people to make better informed decisions regarding their own personal welfare and also that of the natural world. Finally, a proper appreciation of science, stimulated by PSTs, may help both scientists and the lay public reconceive the possibilities of narrative, public writing, and civic discourse.
Taking stock: A meta-analysis of studies on the media's coverage of science
Public Understanding of Science, 2012
The presentation of science in the mass media is one of the most important questions facing social scientists who analyse science. Accordingly, media coverage of science has been a constant focal point in the respective literature, and a flurry of such publications has appeared in the past few years. Yet the activity and growth of the respective research have not been accompanied by systematic overviews. This article aims to provide such an overview by means of a meta-analysis: it analyses existing studies systematically and provides an empirical overview of the literature. The analysis shows that while the research field grew significantly in the past few years and employs a variety of research strategies and methods, it has been biased in three ways: mainly natural sciences (and namely biosciences and medicine), Western countries, and print media have been analysed.
Popular science is, ostensibly, for non-scientists; it aims to make knowledge about how the world “just is” widely accessible. But one does not have to look far to find bitter dispute among science writers. How, then, are “lay readers,” who rely on pop science for their scientific “literacy,” to engage critically with conflicting theories? This is an important question, for it addresses the very possibility of critical engagement on the part of those readers for whom popular science is supposedly written. Surely, there must be a point or means of critical entry that does not rely on specialist knowledge. The article takes the contributions of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, as well as Steven Rose and Daniel Dennett, as “case studies.” A pragmatist approach to the problem outlined above is helpful; it offers a framework for criticizing the coherence, and therefore the utility, of the central concepts of popular science (such as Dawkins’s “selfish gene,” and Gould’s “spandrels”). The argument of this paper is not that one does not need to be a scientist to engage with popular science, as long as one is a pragmatist. Rather, pragmatism grounds the critical approach taken to popular science. Distinctions between metaphors and models, as well as passing and concept metaphors/models, are offered. The distinctions are not categorical; instead they point to differences of use or deployment: metaphors are conventionally or characteristically poetic, in that their applicative range is often not specified in advance. Models, as the term is used in this paper, refers to the figurative language often used by science writers, the applicative range of which is most often very well specified. Passing metaphors are those which seem to require little explanation, on the part of writers or readers; concept metaphors are those which demand some concentrated interpretation. With reference to the language philosophy of Davidson and Goodman, and also Rorty, this paper argues that Gould’s popular science writing is theoretically more informative, and therefore more useful, than is Dawkins’s. The author makes no claims as to the “rightness” of the neo-Darwinist narrative itself, the narrative in support of which Dawkins writes, but suggests that Dawkins’s best-known concept, “gene selfishness,” adds little to the overall coherence of that narrative. By contrast, Gould’s work is sufficiently coherent that it is capable of what Rorty called radical “redescription.”
A significant amount of science coverage can be found nowadays in the mass media and is the main source of information about science for many. Accordingly, the relation between science and the media has been intensively analyzed within the social scientific community. It is difficult to keep track of this research, however, as a flurry of studies has been published on the issue. This article provides such an overview. First, it lays out the main theoretical models of science communication, that is, the ‘public understanding of science’ and the ‘mediatization’ model. Second, it describes existing empirical research. In this section, it demonstrates how science’s agenda-building has improved, how science journalists working routines are described, how different scientific disciplines are presented in the mass media and what effects these media representations (might) have on the audience. Third, the article points out future fields of research.
Taking Stock: a Meta-Analysis of Studies on the Media's Coverage in Science
The presentation of science in the mass media is one of the most important questions facing social scientists who analyse science. Accordingly, media coverage of science has been a constant focal point in the respective literature, and a flurry of such publications has appeared in the past few years. Yet the activity and growth of the respective research have not been accompanied by systematic overviews. This article aims to provide such an overview by means of a meta-analysis: it analyses existing studies systematically and provides an empirical overview of the literature. The analysis shows that while the research field grew significantly in the past few years and employs a variety of research strategies and methods, it has been biased in three ways: mainly natural sciences (and namely biosciences and medicine), Western countries, and print media have been analysed. * © 2010 SAGE Publications. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC.