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from the even-smart-people-can-perpetuate-stupid dept.
False beliefs and wishful thinking about the human experience are common. They are hurting people — and holding back science.
[...] These myths often blossom from a seed of a fact — early detection does save lives for some cancers — and thrive on human desires or anxieties, such as a fear of death. But they can do harm by, for instance, driving people to pursue unnecessary treatment or spend money on unproven products. They can also derail or forestall promising research by distracting scientists or monopolizing funding. And dispelling them is tricky.
Scientists should work to discredit myths, but they also have a responsibility to try to prevent new ones from arising, says Paul Howard-Jones, who studies neuroscience and education at the University of Bristol, UK. "We need to look deeper to understand how they come about in the first place and why they're so prevalent and persistent."
Some dangerous myths get plenty of air time: vaccines cause autism, HIV doesn't cause AIDS. But many others swirl about, too, harming people, sucking up money, muddying the scientific enterprise — or simply getting on scientists' nerves. Here, Nature looks at the origins and repercussions of five myths that refuse to die.
These are some of the science myths that will not die.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 20 2015, @10:24AM
Myths:
1. Business's first and only duty is to make money, now, ASAP. Supposedly for the shareholders. Morality has no place in business decisions.
2. Propaganda is acceptable, just a business move.
3. Marketing's sole purpose is to increase profits, and turning everyone into scared, compliant consumers makes marketing and business easier.
4. The news is just another business.
Oh, were we taking only about _scientific_ myths?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by isostatic on Sunday December 20 2015, @11:46AM
Those aren't myths, they're reality.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday December 20 2015, @02:32PM
I disagree with #1. A business's goal is to make money now and in the future. The version you've put there is the current 'Death by MBA' approach to business that seems to have been adopted in North America over the last 20 years or so.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday December 21 2015, @07:59AM
20 years is a pretty good run for a "greed is good" myth, wouldn't you say? Oh yes, "self-regulation", and the Citizen's United take on "free speech" are goodies too.
Capitalism has done well. But there is a lot of corruption. The government is supposed to act as a referee, keep the competition from turning destructive or unfair, keep the powerful in check so they don't become abusive, gouging monopolies. What I don't know is whether the levels of corruption are cyclic, or on a permanent trend one direction or another. If they are on a permanent upward trend, it could end in disaster for our current civilization.
I also suspect that Malthusian overpopulation problems are very much real, fears of it are justified, and this has put a strain on capitalism that has increased corruption and hoarding. However, Malthus was too simplistic. A bit of thought, and one realizes life has had this potential ever since there was life. Population can increase at exponential rates. But, resources available can never increase at such a rate, not on a permanent basis. Available resources can only increase at polynomial rates, the rate at which territorial expansion at a constant speed can reach new terrain. As the radius of a sphere increases, the volume increases by a factor of only the square of the radius. Life could have handled this restriction by overpopulating and collapsing, but it seems that most of the time it does not. Why not? I hazard the notion that evolution has sorted that lifestyle out as an inefficient one, and lifeforms that followed it evolved away from it or went extinct. Humanity right now could be on just such a path where we must choose between restraint or extinction. "Greed is good" is the path towards extinction. With our technology, we've overcome many of the restraints that kept us in check. In the past, we could afford to indulge in unrestrained competition in playing the game of life, because we weren't significant enough to profoundly change our environment. Now though, it seems we are. One thing Global Warming denialists are really pushing is the idea that it's still like it was in past centuries, that the world is still far too big for poor little us to make any damaging difference.