Last Week Tonight with John Oliver- Scientific Studies (HBO)
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science the things we love and respect so much we only allow scientists to be
portrayed by the likes of arnold schwarzenegger Nicolas Cage and Al
Pacino that's how much we respect them and the complexity of the work they do
science is constantly producing new studies as you would know if you ever
watch TV
a new study shows how sugar might fuel the growth of cancer a new study shows
late night snacking could damage the part of your brain that creates and
stores memories
a new study finds people isn't being most addictive food in America a new
study suggests hugging your dog is bad for your dog
a new study showing that drinking a glass of red wine is just as good as
spending an hour at the gym
doesn't even sound like science is more like something you'll sassy owns would
wear on at a show I went on blanketing TV that all over your Facebook feed with
alerts like study finds liberals are better the Conservatives at small easing
your cat might be thinking about killing you and scientific study shows that
bears engage in fellatio and otherwise I'm not interested let me know when
based on engaging in some mutually pleasurable 69 and hashtag a pleasure
talking dot com was even ran the headline scientists say smelling farts
might prevent cancer which would say was the most important thing time ever
published but then this is a magazine that once did a cover story on those
asian-american whiz kids appointees there are now so many stops being thrown
around thank you seem to contradict one another in just the last few months
we've seen studies about coffee that claimed it may reverse the effects of
liver damage
help prevent colon cancer decrease the risk of endometrial cancer and increase
the risk of miscarriage coffee today is like God in the Old Testament it will
save you or kill you depending on how much you believe in its magic palace
and also a certain points all that ridiculous information can make you
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wonder e-science bullshit to which the answer is clearly not but there is a lot
wonder e-science bullshit to which the answer is clearly not but there is a lot
of bullshit County masquerading as science so tonight we thought we talked
about a few of the reasons why and first not all scientific studies are equal
some may appear in less than legitimate scientific journals and others may be
slightly biased because of scientists feeling pressure to come up with
eye-catching positive results
my success as a as a scientist depends on be publishing my findings and I need
to publish as frequently as possible in the most prestigious outlets that I can
stroke scientists are under constant pressure to publish with tenure and
funding on the line and to get published it helps to have results that seemed you
and striking scientists know nobody is publishing a study that says nothing up
with Acai berries and to get those results there are all sorts of ways that
consciously or not you can tweak your study you could alter how long it lasts
all make your random sample too small to be reliable or engage in something that
scientists call P hacking that speaking with a hyphen not to be confused with
fracking which as I think everyone knows is a euphemism for the Phillie Phanatic
is very complicated but it basically means collecting lots of variables and
then playing with your data until you find something that counts as
statistically significant part is probably meaningless for example the
website 538 surveyed 54 people and collected over a thousand berry balls
and through P hacking results was able to find statistically significant
correlations between eating cabbage and having an innie belly button drinking
iced tea and believing crash didn't deserve to win best picture
and eating raw tomatoes and Judaism and the only thing d'amato's have in common
with Judaism is that really feel quite at home in the upper midwest you don't
even need to engage in these kinds of manipulations to get results that don't
hold up even the best design studies can get Lucas results and the best process
that science has to guard against that is the replication study other
scientists redo your study and see if they get similar results
unfortunately that happens way less than it should be application studies so
really funded and they still underappreciated and never get published
no one wants to do them there's no reward system there and placed it
enables it to happen so you just have all of these exploratory studies out
there that have taken as fact that this is a scientific fact there's never
actually been confirmed exactly there is no reward for being the second person to
discover something in science there's no Nobel Prize for fact-checking and
incidentally there's no Nobel Prize for fact-checking is a motivational poster
in Brian Williams MSNBC dressing room and for all those reasons
themselves not not to attach too much significance to individual studies until
their place in a much larger context of all the work taking place in that field
but too often a small study with nuanced tentative findings gets blown out of all
proportion when it's presented to us the lay public sometimes that happens when a
scientific body put out a press release summarizing the study for a wide
audience for instance earlier this year a medical society hosted a conference at
which a paper was presented comparing the effects of high and low flat panel
chocolate during pregnancy if that sounds narrow and technical it was
supposed to be there wasn't even a control group of women who didn't eat
chocolate and the study found no difference in preeclampsia or high blood
pressure between women who ate the two jobless so there is no way I study that
boring can make it to television rights well white because that medical society
issued a press release with a much sexier but pretty misleading title the
benefits of chocolate during pregnancy and because most TV producers just read
press releases this happens turns out of your pregnant eating 30 grams a day of
chocolate that's about two-thirds of a chocolate bar not the little chocolate
bar could improve blood flow to the placenta and benefit the growth and
development of your baby especially in women at risk for preeclampsia or high
blood pressure in pregnancy except that's not what it's like in with
telephone the substance gets distorted at every step and I can only imagine how
someone to watch that segment must have described it the next day the new setup
baby is made of chocolate and it's ok if I E chip but only truth
comedian needs help
blowing things out of proportion remember that time story about farts and
cancer it turns out the study never mentioned either of those things just
pointed out that certain sulfide compounds are useful pharmacological
tools to study mitochondrial dysfunction and while that time story was later
heavily corrected the scientists told us that we still get phone calls and emails
from strange radio and TV shows wanting us to talk about which is clearly wasted
their time they're doing valuable work they shouldn't be wasting time fielding
calls from Drivetime DJs gas man and the peace and there is no doubt some of this
is on us the viewing audience we like fun papi science that we can share like
gossip and TV news produces know it that is what you constantly hear stuff like
this
men listen up a brand new study says a woman is more open to romance when they
are full
opposed to being hungry ok normal no shit is more open to anything
hungry but but you should know that study involved only twenty women and you
cannot proceed twenty women can speak for all women this is science not the
United States Senate
from just last year
University in England says drinking champagne every week may help the late
dementia and Alzheimer's disease only one to three classes a week day a week
can be effective for your health
fantastic news know if there's a big issue with us aside from the fact that
if you are celebrating with champagne three times a week
your standard for celebration need to be much higher
acceptable on New Years Valentines Day and even when henry kissinger dies and
that's it
full list but the bigger issue ads that study was performed on racks
how do you not tell people that how do you not also showed them photos of the
experiments with some cheese but it appears they work with cocaine but she
says she Kratz got the drugs that make them cool it's their confidence
the truth these law studies on rats and mice are undeniably useful applicability
to humans can be limited the overwhelming majority of treatment that
work on lab mice do not want up succeeding in humans which means two
things we shouldn't rush out to report rodent results and be during lab mouse
deals when they say at least you didn't die in vain
most of the time they are like I know it hurts to hear that but them's the breaks
mouse now to be fair it's not like the news media sometimes researchers
themselves
oversimplify the science even take talks which have had some amazing speakers
have also featured some morning show style science in the past like full
Zacks 2011 talk on a home on producing the brain called oxytocin which he even
gave a caching ninth crystal syringe contains the more amount you it's so
easy to cause people's brains release I tell him I know how to do it and my
favorite way to do it is in fact the easiest let me show it to you
prescription from Dr love a child today we have found that people really some
more oxytocin are happier and happier because they have better relationships
of all types Dr Love says eight hugs a day don't call yourself doctor love
tabloid gives a dentist who ejaculated on a sedated patients second not what I
would be happier giving 808
English that is for lifetime's worth of hearts by now you probably won't be
surprised to learn the real science on oxytocin is more complicated than the
term moral molecule suggests because while it has been found to enhance
positive emotions like bonding and trust researchers have also found that it can
enhance negative emotions like end the unbiased a while promising the science
on this is still very much in progress which probably explains why a recent
survey of oxytocin research warned the reports about it influencing a large
number of social behaviour should be viewed with healthy skepticism which is
really a long technical way of saying what you probably knew in the first
place which is when a strange man calling himself got to love of eight
times a day you know
just about all the problems that describes plus one more in a study that
made the rounds last year a new study claims that driving while dehydrated is
just as dangerous as driving drunk
researchers say drivers who drink just one ounce of water per hour
me the same number of mistakes on the road is those over the legal limit with
alcohol doctor when I heard this I thought this cannot be true
obviously because it wasn't true as Britain's National Health Service should
already pointed out that study was riddled with red flags including that it
was based on just 12 men of whom 28 was only reported 411 and it got funding
from the European hydration
foundation has received August seven million dollars from coca-cola company
that just happens to sell rehydration in the form of fizzy brown sugar water
carbonated you're in black you're in diet you're in a great fruit flavored
embalming fluid and not just because I started industry-funded or its sample
size was small it was done on mice doesn't mean it automatically flawed but
it is something the media reporting on it should probably tell you about and
you might think well where's the home so long as I tried to fart cancer away or
later but no one's getting hurt but I'm not so sure about that
think of it this way this is a chart mapping the results of studies things
like coffee eggs and wine all of them have been linked to raising or lowering
your risk of cancer
depending on the study and everything causes cancer is not the conclusion you
want to draw from science is the conclusion you should draw from logging
on to WebMD where that is that matter
because it would you tell me about each of those studies in isolation at some
point you might reasonably think will no one knows anything about what causes
cancer and that is a problem because that's the sort of thing that enable
tobacco companies for years to assist the science isn't in yet and if you
think I'm exaggerating about the impact of this list reporting can have on our
faith in science look at it example from some of the people most guilty of it
because the Today Show which lives for scientific studies recently concluded
one segment like this like a lot of studies that we love around here and
there been a couple especially related to women about the benefits as I get a
lot of research though that says actually having whole milk more having
whole dairy products actually can help you lose weight I think the way to live
your life as you find the study that sounds best
just get to cherry pick the parts that justify what you were going to do anyway
that's religion you're thinking of religion
thinking that scientists ala carte and if you don't want one study don't worry
another will be along soon that is what leads people to think that man-made
climate change isn't real or that vaccines cause autism both of which the
scientific consensus is pretty clear on science seized by its nature imperfect
but it is hugely important and it deserves better than to be twisted out
of proportion and turned into morning show got it so if they are going to keep
saying a study says they should have to provide sourcing and context or not
mention it at all and I know what you think it will hold on if that happens
where am I going to get all my interesting bullshit from don't worry we
have you covered
deal of Science in all its complexity but wish it could be a little less
complex and a lot less scientific introducing Todd talks with affirmative
10 talks beats the intellectual rigor of morning news shows
it will kill you
what if I were to tell you all that the cure to racism is coffee and in my
research I found out red wine makes babies 20% more sociable that the baby
we can work with and talk Talk's we've raised the bar and entertainment by
lowering the bar and what constitutes science our scientists that the skittles
foundation for rainbow tasting have done some pioneering work we place 37
volunteers from Tulsa Oklahoma on an all-school diet for six weeks and guess
how many were killed by baboons 134 people lived who were killed in a non
baboon related murder-suicide why do we do this because you love science but you
don't wanna hear its process accurately depicted on a stage a randomized
double-blind trial on the effects of coffee on cancer of the esophagus and
while they were statistically significant decreases in incidence of
cancer in the mice that were given the coffee compared to the control group any
definitive conclusions will have to await human trials and replication of
course this is trying to say is coffee cures cancer
you won't find our speakers at TED talks because they're not afraid to ask the
hard questions or are they bad for you to tell you they were both what if I
were to tell you they were not what if I were to tell you they would not talk
Talk's feature the kinds of scientific insights that are just incredible
incredible stand but I standing by to but we can actually increase our
serotonin levels of you feel weird weird that's the serotonin working
step out and come back and give you a booms and that he'll be speechless
if you like the idea of signs absolutely love Todd talks of what you're hearing
sciences a very slow and rigorous process that does not lend itself easily
does sweeping conclude take it easy sounds like somebody needs a serotonin
booze bring it and talk talks have been called insightful inspiring and a clear
trademark infringement and guess what I'm not even if scientists but my study
shows that you seem 70% more authoritative if you're wearing a lab coat
... and I am
Thank you so much!!!!!
I am a scientist.... wooohoooo.... yea!
TODD Talks, because science doesn't have to be exact science