Day 7: The Rise of the Armchair Scientist

And How It’s Destroying the World

We’re living in the age of accessible information. As my mother once told me “You know, you can Google anything!”. She’s not wrong. The Internet has absolutely changed the way that we live our lives and gain understanding about things in the world. It’s far easier to google ‘quantum mechanics’ than to spend 50 years of your life learning about it, only to realize you will never really understand it.

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t want this to change. As a scientist, this has changed the way that we conduct research. I can access a massive library of scientific articles and textbooks from the comfort of my bedroom, allowing me to find and compare the latest information in my field of research as efficiently as possible.

But here comes the problem; this constant access to information tends to make people think they are experts in whatever they Googled that day. How many people go into their doctor’s office having already diagnosed themselves with a complicated and rare disease when all they have is a stomach flu? While annoying for the doctor, this likely has little impact on whom you vote for or whether or not you believe in climate change.

I refer to them as ‘armchair scientists’ — people who read a few popular science or journal articles written by a questionable source and then use this to form (and publicly spew) an opinion about a topic.

Now, here is where I want to make it clear that I’m not putting the onus on the general public to properly do their research. While I think that in general people need to stop pretending to be experts in things they’ve only read about on the internet (this is not a problem unique to science), I also think that scientists need to do a much better job of communicating complex ideas so that they are less often misinterpreted.

One unfortunate result of this problem has been a spread of severe chemophobia (general fear of chemicals) to the point where we are told that if it’s natural it MUST be better for you (it’s not) and that all chemicals will give you cancer (they won’t). Another, perhaps even more massive problem, is a lack of belief and understanding about climate change. It’s easy to find a single study in any field of research and misinterpret it to tell you what you want to hear.

So how do we fix this?

Communication —

The scientific community needs to put more effort into increasing the overall scientific literacy of the general public by more honestly and effectively discussing scientific research.

Ask the experts —

There is the sense in our generation that because the information is out there, you should be able to become an expert in everything, thus creating the belief that you know everything. We all need to understand — and be ok with — the fact that there are people who know a lot more than we do about most things, and that when we don’t know the solution is to ask them. It’s ok to say ‘I don’t know’!

Do you know any armchair scientists? Are you one? What do you think should be expected of scientists versus the general public in terms of improving scientific literacy?