After listening to a scientist panel, I learned that working with the public is far more difficult than one would think. People tend to be skeptical, and data is easy to manipulate, so its very easy for people to be given false information. Scientists have to find good and reliable ways to publish their work and present it to the community, whether its through articles, journals, or in the case of one scientist, through the work of a photographer.
In many cases, such as the "research" that caused a massive panic about the safety of vaccines, data is manipulated and cut out to show a very biased and sometimes dangerous opinion. This has created an age of humanity where preventable diseases are making a comeback, due to the spread of misinformation. Scientists and doctors are publishing and performing experiments and tests that show that vaccines are in fact, safe, but people have been tainted by the media and diseases such as polio are coming back.
In all, scientists must communicate with the public as much as they can, even if it's through means of others. Misinformation is spread just as easily as real information, and can cause huge problems.
Monday, October 8, 2018
Scientists and the Public
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I like that you talked about falsified data in this post and how easily the public can access this information. Vaccines can be a really touchy subject, but I think talking about the preventable diseases that are coming back and killing people is a good way to talk about it!
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