What Makes "Good Science" Good?
When we look at news about the climate, we want to make sure we only listen to news that is trustworthy and correct. It’s important to be able to identify good science from bad so that we only trust and share the good stuff. But how can we sort the good from the bad if we don’t even know what we’re looking for? Let’s start by spelling out exactly what makes “good science” so good.
Science that has been “peer-reviewed” is our very best friend when we want to learn about the climate or any other topic. The peer review process is designed to make sure that science articles are legit and goes a little something like this. When a scientist makes a discovery or comes to a conclusion from their research, they want to share that news with everyone! The way that scientists share news is by writing up a report about it, and then sending that report (also called an article or manuscript) to a science journal. Science journals are like newspapers or magazines for other scientists and very smart people. Anyone could write what they want on the internet, or even write a book or get their ideas published in a newspaper, but it is very difficult to get your ideas published in a science journal - and that’s the whole point. When a scientist asks a science journal to publish their article, the journal forwards that article to a group of scientists who are experts on the topic (basically the mods of that journal). All of the scientists in the group have to read the article and decide whether they think the research was done correctly, whether the author really understands the topic, and whether the article comes to the correct conclusion. If the group of judges says something like this, the article WILL NOT get published:
“Hey, this article says that eating ice cream makes you lose weight, but the experiment only let people eat ice cream while they were running on a treadmill. That sounds really misleading.”
But if the group of judges says something like this instead, the article WILL get published:
“Wow this author has clearly done a lot of research and understands this topic very well. I think they have done everything correctly and make some really great points here.”
This process of having other scientists judge your article BEFORE IT EVER GETS PUBLISHED is called peer-review. That’s why you can trust articles that get published in science journals - the experts have already signed off on them and think they are the real deal.
Another important part of science journals is debate. Once an article gets published, scientists all over the world act like detectives and get all up in the article’s business. Then, they write a response and send it to the same science journal and the process happens all over again. Sometimes the responses support the original article, and sometimes they debunk it. All of the debate and fact-checking gets done by scientists, and whatever consensus everyone comes to after the debate is done is considered “good science.”
This debate is important, but don’t expect it to change the consensus drastically. Obviously science can change over the years when we make new discoveries, but that doesn’t mean that the old science was “bad.” All of this is to say that the science may wiggle a little bit over the years, but that’s not an excuse to ignore it now. When science is conducted using the proper methods and in good faith, then we have to address the results whether we like them or not. I promise you won’t look like a fool for following conventional science. Let’s look at two historical cases to illustrate this:
There has been debate for the past decade or so over how to classify Pluto. It had been classified as a planet for decades, but it is currently classified as a dwarf planet. Those two things aren’t wildly far apart. Science wiggled a little bit, but no one is saying that the people who classified Pluto as a planet are fools. Our standards have just evolved as we learn more about space. Notice that no one is saying something totally wild and different now, like “Pluto is actually an alien spaceship made of metal and magic.“ Science that is done correctly and widely accepted doesn’t tend to stray too far from where it started.
There was some “debate” in 1913 when a man published a book saying that fairies are real and evolve from bees and wheat. This man published his ideas in a book, not a science journal - scientists never took him seriously to begin with because he could provide no evidence. This idea sounds foolish now because it is. Scientists labeled this as false in 1913, and looking back a century later we still support that scientific consensus.
One man shouting into the void and being disproven happens all the time. A worldwide group of scientists agreeing on a conclusion is powerful, and is very very rarely disproven even if the details change a little bit with time. That’s why we should trust science journals - they don’t waste time talking about bee fairies or anything else that will be proven totally false in a few years.
“Now all I have to do is get my news from science journals!” I spent 5 years being trained on how to read science journals at some of the best universities in the world, and a lot of them still confuse me. Even when I understand them, it takes me a hella long time to read all the way through them. Don’t worry, this is why there are science reporters! Reporters get the low-down on science journal articles and then write about them in normal-person language. These are the types of articles you can share and read on social media. These types of articles are amazing because they make science accessible to everyone! However, now we circle back to a big problem: anyone can publish anything they want to on the internet. Lucky for us, there are a lot of ways to tell whether these kinds of articles use good science or not! The first step in identifying bad science is knowing what good science is. Now that you’ve mastered that, you’re ready for the field guide on how to spot bad science in the wild.
