The Problem With Science Communication

- On December 1, 2022, "Nature" magazine published a cover story about a holographic wormhole. It was supposedly created inside a quantum computer to investigate the intersection of quantum mechanics and gravity. The story sparked a frenzy of tweets and news headlines. - Nobody has seen the wormhole. Nobody has produced one. - Well, we'll take the best quantum computer in the world and see if we can map it to build the wormhole. - The wormhole becomes traversable, it opens. You can really pass. - Bull (beep). (host laughing) (magnets clicking) - This video is sponsored by Shopify. The

problem

was, of course, that no wormhole had been created. - It feeds on itself, right?

When a story starts, other media outlets pick it up and it spreads very, very quickly. - What really happened is that a super quantum computer was built and inside this quantum computer some calculations can be done. Calculations that can be done on my iPhone because all of today's most powerful quantum computers, at most, do calculations that can easily be done on my iPhone. - You basically have something that represents the mathematics of a wormhole. But the way the story was sold, of course, is that by doing this, whatever calculations they made, they had created the wormhole. - They say it in the same sense in which I could say: "Look, my children have built a rocket" that goes to the moon." Say: "Wow, what kind of son do you have? "Yes, is here".

And I show them a little sketch on a piece of paper when there's a drawing of a rocket going to the moon and I say, "Look!" So what the quantum computer has done is exactly that. There is a small outline of what could perhaps be a warm hole in some hypothetical theory, which is probably wrong. Is this interesting? Yes, it's interesting because the fact that with quantum computers you can do these things means that quantum computers, to a certain extent, start to work. So people get excited about it and then they go out and tell the world, "Oh, we've created a wormhole" on a quantum computer, overemphasizing the wormhole, which probably doesn't exist, since the theory is used of that, which is probably wrong, and the usefulness of quantum computers, which doesn't exist yet.

So, that's an example of bad

communication

, very bad

communication

. I felt embarrassed, I was angry at my colleagues who did that. The source of this

problem

is bad incentives. Scientists need to get funding for their research, and that increasingly depends on attracting public attention to their work. It has simply become part of the culture of

science

, which is expected. there is some kind of media attention and to get that attention, you have to sell your

science

and often the story is not the result of the science, but something else: universities seek to promote themselves to attract students and strengthen their position. reputation.

And nowhere in the scientific method is it, and you put out a press release, but now it's become part of the norm. - Press releases simplify and can exaggerate research and journalists just want to get as many clicks as they can on their stories. The end result of this incentivized game of telephone may be oversimplified sensationalist headlines, science that is simply wrong. Now, I myself have been guilty of exaggerating a scientific story. In 2014, I made a video about the biceps two experiment. So this is one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. The researchers reportedly detected polarization in the cosmic microwave background radiation.

It was supposedly caused by gravitational fluctuations just a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. The result was considered the first real evidence of the quantum nature of gravity and an irrefutable proof of the theory of inflation. The experimenters even surprised Andre Lind, one of the founders of inflation theory, with the news. - Let's hope it's not a trick. I always come out with this feeling, what if they cheat on me? What if I believe in this just because it's beautiful? - Unfortunately, later observations showed that it was probably just dust from our own galaxy and not primordial gravitational waves that created the polarization in the CMB.

So I deleted my video and, to this day, I'm wary of making videos about breaking science news. Like any type of breaking news, there is a high chance that early reports will turn out to be incorrect. Just a few months ago, a paper was uploaded to the Archive Pre-print Server claiming to have discovered the first room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor. This again caused an avalanche of media attention. - A monumental advance, the room temperature superconductor LK99. - One of the most important scientific advances of the 21st century. - If the discovery was real, it would have been a big problem. - The superconductor thing at room temperature, of course, is a dream because if it worked, it would revolutionize everything, right?

Power transmission, that kind of thing. The world would be different if it worked. - But even before attempts to replicate the material and its properties failed, there were clear signs that the claim was false. In the only published graph showing resistivity versus temperature, the resistivity did not drop to zero as would be expected at the assumed critical temperature. Instead, it continued to decline below this value. Additionally, the resistivity scale was given in units of 10 to minus two ohms centimeters. On that scale, any ordinary conductor would appear to have zero resistivity. The resistivity of copper, for example, is on the order of 10 to minus six ohms centimeters.

One video showed the material apparently levitating above a permanent magnet in a supposed demonstration of the Meisner effect. But in that same video, the material also sticks to the magnet, something a superconductor wouldn't do. And finally there's this graph, which shows that over the last hundred years, scientists have found new materials with progressively higher critical temperatures. But as of now, all materials with higher temperatures are only superconducting at very high pressures. For a superconductor at room temperature and room pressure, we would need a jump in critical temperature of around 125 degrees Celsius. That's a lot, and this brings up the point that it's the most unexpected and surprising results that get the most attention, but it's also these same results that are most likely to be false.

In social sciences, it has been shown that studies that later fail to be replicated receive on average 153 more citations than studies that can be replicated. Similar rumors surround flawed research in the physical sciences. - The Italians, I am Italian, came out a while ago announcing to the world that the neutrino was faster than light and then they measured it and it turned out to be a plug that did not fit well and that is why the whole machine did not work. Well. - When the truth is discovered, it rarely receives as much attention as the original discovery. - The aftermath where everyone was like, "Oh, well, this doesn't work and it doesn't look good" and there's no way this stuff can do "what they say it does." That fades into the background, it doesn't get the same attention from the media. - There is the apt saying: "A lie can travel the world "while the truth is still putting on its shoes." But that saying perhaps needs updating in the age of social media, when lies now have an even greater advantage Do you think it is a bigger problem now than it used to be? - I must admit that I think it is getting worse.

I think there is a feeling that you have to change the world to be noticed by the media. people a false idea of ​​how science works. If the latest discovery I hear about turns out to be false, what else could be false? People keep telling me that cosmology is in crisis and all that kind of stuff because that's why. kind of stories you hear in the media. In the end people will say, "Well, why do we fund these things if there is always confusion?" expanding a little. The conversation here is not just about isolated news. I think there are entire fields that are promoted. - Wait, entire fields of science that are... - Yes. - Exalted. - Yes. - But they're not really legitimate or they're just talk or... - Oh no, no, they're not talk. - Merger, merger is a big topic in the news.

People think it's close, right? There are startups, there are people making billions of dollars. - Exactly, I don't know where we are there. Again, not my field, but there was one particular ad, what is it? A year or so ago. - I remember this ad. - Scientists have produced a nuclear fusion reaction that created more energy than was expended, a breakthrough in harnessing the same type of energy that powers the sun and stars. - Simply put, this is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century. (Audience applauds) Right? (audience applauds) - Which is nonsense (bleep) again because it was in the context of military research, nuclear energy, basically for weapons in a way of doing it, which at present has no visible way of becoming an industrial form. to produce energy. - Yes, there is no way to climb. - There is no way to expand it. - This is just lasers in appeal. - Just a little thing and you compress it enormously and then it basically explodes because it's a mini, mini nuclear explosion and then you have more energy than the actual pressure energy that was needed to compress it.

That's right, but you need a lot of excessive energy to do it. That was sold as a big step toward solving the world's energy problem, but it is not. - Back in '87, the merger, people were already talking about it as if it were just around the corner. We just need 20 more years of work and we will achieve it. And today we have exactly the same story with current experiments. - Something that is not overrated is the sponsor of this video, Shopify. And you would know because I've been using Shopify personally for eight years. You know, something a lot of people don't know about me is that before I was a YouTuber, I worked as a science teacher at a tutoring company in Sydney.

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So I set up the Snatoms store in just one day. Shopify allowed me to process payments, withhold applicable state taxes, and see everything that was happening with my store at a glance. Additionally, it also integrates with many third-party apps and sites. So, for example, you could offer multiple different shipping methods and this makes fulfillment very easy. (magnetic click) I also set up Google Shopping directly from the app and it was easy to create automatic reminder emails, like if someone forgets something in their cart. The entire store runs with very little attention from me, which is great because I'm always working on the next video.

So I think there's a reason why everyone uses Shopify for their online store or side hustle, because it offers everything you could want, it's easy to use, and very affordable. I highly recommend Shopify to anyone thinking about starting a business. For a free trial of Shopify, visit shopify.com/veritasium. And now back to the scientific hype. Science is interesting because you can basically divide it into two categories. One is an established body of knowledge and the other is speculation, things that could be true, but we don't have any solid evidence for them yet. And since there can be an infinite number of bad ideas and only one truth, it is likely that most of these speculations are wrong.

But the way certain topics are discussed in the media, it can be impossible to know whether they are part of the established body of knowledge or just wildly fanciful speculation. - There are too many books out there that say: "We have understood that the world is "made by strings and string theory." It is not true, at all. We have not understood that the world is described as string theory. We have a very interesting tentative theory, which is string theory, which has some successes and some failures, and that's interesting. If you want to tell about this research, tell about this research, but don't tell people what we have learned. .

Heworld. - One question I have is: how can we overcome the hype of science? Because it seems like the system is set up to reward hype. Reward journalists because they get the clicks. Scientists can get the money or the attention. So I don't know, I'm curious if there is a possible solution. Yes, I think there is one, and that's exactly what you're doing. talking about the fact that there is a risk of overvaluation. If I can go out and say, "Oh, my quantum computer produced a wormhole" and no one says anything, that's a problem. If we talk about the risk of exaggerating, if we talk about the risk of presenting radical ideas, theories and results, which are very, very provisional, as solid, then in a way we immunize ourselves against this danger. - Science is not presented in the news like sports are presented in the news.

At the end of the news, there are 10 minutes of sports where they will talk about someone kicking a ball in a field and that is not particularly important. This way you will get a complete summary of many fragments of what is happening. But to get a scientific story, it has to be something that destroys the Earth. It has to be a great story. What many scientists would like is to have a broader view of the fact that the entire enterprise is moving forward. That there are a lot of things happening and that we will definitely know more tomorrow than we did today, but that is not the way the media picks it up. - Well, ultimately, almost everyone is incentivized to sensationalize scientific findings.

That's why I think it's important to remember that every time you hear a scientific story in the news, surprising, unexpected results that haven't been independently replicated, they're more likely to be wrong. But despite this, I remain convinced that science is the best way to get to the truth. I mean, sure, in the short term, some may seek attention by rushing data analysis, exaggerating results, or sidestepping peer review. but in the long term that will not allow him to win the Nobel Prize. Bold claims, errors and dead ends will fade into oblivion and only sound science, vigorously tested and independently validated, becomes the accepted body of knowledge. (magnets clicking)