The scientific community is increasingly talking about the problem of reproducibility of research and the frequent abuse of erroneous conclusions. Some unscrupulous scientists, including nutritionists and psychologists, persist in their misconceptions and even popularize them, prompting the public to follow dubious advice. Others can do nothing about being misinterpreted, and cautious statements are considered the ultimate truth. We talk about popular misconceptions about science that are still widespread in the public today.
Stupid gorillas
In popular culture, Neanderthals are portrayed as ape-like people, rude, dumb and hunched over. This common misconception is associated with the name of the French paleoanthropologist Marcellin Boule, who was the first to describe the remains of an ancient creature found in a cave in the commune of La Chapelle-aux-Seine (France). The scientist presented a reconstruction of the external appearance of a Neanderthal, which, according to his version, looked like a gorilla with bent knees and back. This vision of a hominid was influenced by the fact that Marcellin studied the skeleton of an old male whose joints were affected by arthritis. Because of the mistake, the image of a primitive man, devoid of intelligence, has taken root in the minds of people for many decades. The Neanderthal is still opposed to modern man, intelligent and civilized. However, many studies have shownthat Boulle's reconstruction was in fact far from reality.
Photo: Laurent Cipriani / AP.
To date, anthropologists have demonstrated that Neanderthals were not much different from the first Homo sapiens. They made stone tools, painted on the walls of caves, made decorations, and created rituals for burying the dead. There is evidence that the paleoanthropes were able to make fire, and also probably had some language ability. In any case, ancient people of the modern type interbred with Neanderthals, as a result of which representatives of the human race of non-African origin have a genome that is 1-3 percent of Neanderthal DNA.
The sad fate of the sweet tooth
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In the early 1970s, psychologist Walter Mischel, a future professor at Stanford University, conducted a series of studies called the "marshmallow experiment." The results of these experiments showed that children who preferred to wait 15 minutes and received twice the reward than those who were eager to eat even a little sweet treat were more successful in the future. Michel's study involved about 600 children, a third of whom were quite patient, and many of them after many years were described as more successful at school, passed standardized tests better and had normal body mass indices - unlike other peers. Moreover, in 2011, researchers identified differences in some areas of the brain - the prefrontal cortex and striatum.
However, a 2018 study found that the choices of 5-year-olds say little about their future. While a repeated marshmallow experiment showed some correlation between test score and ability at age 15, it was half that of the original study. And indicators such as cognitive ability, intelligence, and family well-being were not at all dependent on the ability to delay pleasure. In other words, even if a young child has little control over his desires, in the future, upbringing and the environment can change him.
Photo: Bahnmueller / Globallookpress.com
All people are their own …
Another famous experiment conducted at Stanford University was devoted to the study of human psychology in prison. It was conducted by the American psychologist Philip George Zimbardo. He divided the volunteers into two groups: "jailers" and "prisoners". The subjects, playing the role of jailers, were instructed not to physically abuse participants in the other group, but they were allowed to intimidate the “prisoners” and apply strict sanctions to them. As a result, the "jailers" turned into sadists, taking pleasure in the physical and mental suffering of their victims. Zimbardo himself, obviously, really wanted the conditions of the experiment to resemble reality as much as possible. He demanded from the "jailers" to be as hard as possible on the "prisoners",create in them a feeling of powerlessness and take away from them "all individuality." In addition, he did not allow the prisoners to complete the experiment ahead of schedule.
Later, Zimbardo used the results of his experiment to justify the real jailers, who were accused of torture and bullying at the American military prison in Iraq. He appealed that the situation in Abu Ghraib was very similar to the conditions of the Stanford prison experiment, and the government wants to make scapegoats out of individual prison staff, although in fact the problem lies in the punishment system itself. Each person will turn into a monster if placed under certain conditions - that is what Zimbardo wanted to prove.
This simple message was very popular with the public, and the Stanford Prison Experiment became famous. They made films about him, wrote books, and Zimbardo's conclusions are still cited by amateurs to discuss the natural depravity of man. However, in fact, Zimbardo's research has little to do with science, as he himself said. First, there was no control group, outside observers were actively involved in the experiment and encouraged the actions of the "guards", and the researchers' conclusions were based on individual situations. The experimental results were never reproduced due to the lack of specific data.
Photo: simplypsychology.org
Journalist Ben Blum found evidence that academics did everything they could to get the exact conclusion they needed from the experiment that would help demonstrate the need for reform in the penal system. While this does not disprove the fact that the jailers did indeed treat the prisoners badly, this behavior was most likely the result of manipulation by the experimenter, rather than natural behavior in prison, as Zimbardo likes to say.
War on sugar
American children's endocrinologist Robert Lustig is famous for his harsh criticism of sugar. In his opinion, fructose, which is found in refined sugar, causes metabolic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, fatty liver disease, heart problems and obesity. At the same time, fructose, which is contained in fruits, is safe to consume due to the fact that it is associated with dietary fiber. In 2009, his video lecture Sugar: The Bitter Truth went viral on YouTube. By February 2017, this video had been viewed seven million times.
However, other scientists believe that obesity does not depend on the consumption of fructose, but on high-calorie foods. To prove his point, Lustig conducted the following experiment. He invited 43 obese children, who were asked what they usually ate, and then for nine days he gave them food with an equivalent amount of calories (pizza, chips, hot dogs, burritos) but low in sugar. As a result, the children lost 0.9 percent weight. According to Spectacor Health, this study has two critical flaws. First, Lustig had no way of testing whether children were telling the truth, and it is well known that overweight people tend to underestimate the amount of food they eat. For children to lose 0.9 percent of their weight, they need to eat 600 less calories each day. That is, Lustig is trying to saythat one calorie contains fewer calories than the other.
Secondly, Lustig did not consider a control group - there was none in his experiment. That is, it is necessary to check whether children lose weight under the conditions of the experiment, if the sugar level remains the same. If children really underestimate the amount of food they eat, then children in the control group would also lose weight. In other words, his experiment does not fit the "golden rule" of research.
Photo: Krzysztof Kaniewski / Globallookpress.com
Competence problems
In 1999, Justin Kruger and David Dunning hypothesized that people with low skill levels tend to overestimate their abilities, while professionals tend to underestimate them. They confirmed their hypothesis through an experiment with students, and their findings became popular in business, academia, and online controversy. According to the distorted and, unfortunately, very popular interpretation of the Dunning-Kruger effect, amateurs are supposedly confident that they understand this or that issue much better than competent people.
But the Dunning-Kruger effect really only says that incompetent people think they are better than they really are. They don't think they are better than specialists. The researchers of this bias themselves believe that this is due to the fact that laymen simply do not have enough cognitive skills to determine their true level of incompetence. However, there are other possible explanations. The Dunning-Kruger effect can reflect regression to the mean, a statistical phenomenon in which extreme values tend to roll back toward the mean. In other words, the athletes who win the competition are likely to lose in the next tournaments. This effect may have influenced the results of studies by Dunning and Kruger, in which students received extreme grades (very bad or very good). On the other hand,people, in principle, tend to rate their abilities above average.
Alexander Enikeev
