Does Science Need More Compelling Stories to Foster Public Trust? | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network

Link: Does Science Need More Compelling Stories to Foster Public Trust? | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network

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“Each time, those who espouse only evidence—without narratives about real people—struggle to control the debate. Typically, they lose,” Meisel and Karlawish observed. In the wake of recommendations for reduced breast and prostate cancer screenings from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, many cancer survivors and cancer advocacy groups jumped in to tell the stories of how early screening had saved lives. Many scientists point out that these stories and stats can be misleading because overall survival also increases when more non-life-threatening cancers are detected—and misses the many potential downsides to untargeted screening. That’s where scientists can step up with stories of their own, such as that of the young woman who underwent a series of invasive and stressful biopsies only to reveal that a mass in her breast was not malignant—or the example of the middle aged man who was rendered incontinent after surgery to remove a prostate growth that was not likely to have killed him. Compelling stories could also help counter unwarranted fears about childhood vaccines, by telling the tale of one of the many unvaccinated children who got measles because parents were worried about the purported link to autism.