Bradley van Paridon: What is up, Brad fans, how you doing? How
you livin? I hope you had a wonderful summer. We are back
from our sort of summer break, and this is an episode that was
recorded earlier in the summer, and it revolves around science
communication. Obviously, that's a common theme on this show, and
it was the idea for it came from coverage I was seeing over the
summer of Jonathan haidt's new book, The anxious generation.
And just to be clear, we're not going to discuss the content of
the book at all. To give you some context, Jonathan Haidt is
a very well known social science researcher, and his work that
has become so popular really focuses on the issues of social
media and children and so his major thesis, I guess, if I
could paraphrase it very quickly, is that the reason
we're seeing so much anxiety, depression, these kind of things
in teenagers. Is the way that kids are not being allowed free
play. They're overly coddled, let's say, overly protected. And
then also, there's a there's a big influence of social media in
this sort of going from a sort of, what we would call, like the
old school way of growing up where you're outside playing,
tumbling around, scraping your knees, to everything being
online and digital. And he makes the case that this is, this is
not good. But again, we're not going to discuss the content of
the of that argument or of this research. But really, this book,
this latest book of his, becomes a New York Times bestseller.
It's, it's all over the media. You can see it. I'm seeing it in
a lot of my feeds, and I know that that's, you know,
algorithmic, algorithmically driven, so maybe people aren't
seeing it, or whatever. But it did jump into the mainstream,
and then I started to see smaller outlets like PBS and
some more niche sort of science news outlets publishing the
critiques, you know, the researchers that disagree with
his thesis, and it was very clear that the critiques were
not jumping into the mainstream, like his argument was jumping
into the mainstream. And that got me thinking about, well,
what do we how do we handle these issues? When we say, you
know, like, let's say the phrase we all heard during covid, the
science isn't settled. And very rarely is the science, you know,
settled, right? Like, that's kind of one of the hallmarks of
science. And then you get into the process of science, well,
why isn't it settled? How can we say, you know, one thing is more
likely than the other. You know, can we make concrete statements
when it comes to health and raising our kids and all of
these things that are important to us? And so all of these
questions started bubbling up into into my mind, and I had
this really set of questions and format that I was going to do
for this episode with our guest, who is Jay Ingram. People who
have listened to the show before know Jay. People who grew up in
Canada or live in Canada know Jay. He's a long time science
journalist broadcaster. He hosted TV shows in Canada, Daily
Planet, the first ever daily science news show for multiple
years, 14, I believe, and he's written books. He's been on the
radio, the flagship science program for the CBC quirks and
quarks. He was a longtime host of that. He's been all over, and
he's one of the first people to really give me a shot, a push,
let's say, into doing this career. So I always love talking
with Jay, because he's a good friend, good mentor, and he's
got a ton of experience in this. He's been doing this for a long,
long time. So I had this plan of walking through all of these
sort of questions, focusing on Jonathan heights book as the
sort of case study. You know, why is this popular versus other
things? What? How does the critique get more popular? If
that's if that's your goal, how are you trying to do that? And
very quickly into the conversation, we went in a lot
of different places. And so I kind of threw the script out in
a good way. This is a good thing, because, like I said, Jay
has been doing this a long time, and he has a lot of interesting
thoughts. And so we had a really good conversation about this. We
covered, well, we tried to cover, because a lot of these
things we don't really, we still, we're working through
them, right? It's a work in progress, just like science
itself. We covered what do you do if you're a scientist, as a
researcher, someone with an informed opinion who wants to
disagree? What's the best way to do that? How do you get your
message out there? We use examples of some of the big
science podcasts, the Andrew hubermans, the LEX Friedmans,
these kind of things we talk about. So you know, what's the
best way to deal with that? Why are scientists, maybe sometimes
wary of going on these shows we really focus on, like, what do
you need to make a proper critique? Right? Like, how do
you present a proper critique of something? Let's say that you
science that is in the mainstream, that that you
disagree with, and at the crux of that is you need to be able
to communicate the process. And Jay says, in this, in all the
years of doing this, he's yet to find a really good way to
communicate the process of science, right? And I think
that's a really important point. And then we go on to, again, put
this in the context of some examples, health misinformation,
there's so much out there, and people are, you know, really
ready to, you know, jump on board with some stuff that maybe
doesn't have a lot of scientific rigor behind it. And, you know,
they want to question the professional scientists when it
comes to health. But yet, like, how do you, then, how do you,
how do you combat that with, again, process stories, which is
very boring and difficult to do. We talk a lot about audience.
How do you attract an audience outside of the people that are
just already interested in science? We talk about the
isolation of the scientific community and the scientific
media community. You know, the myths that we kind of have, that
we we need to use. We always need to put phrases in our
articles that, like more research is needed, or, you
know, this research is going to might one day lead to a better
robot or a better drone, or something like, it's just,
there's always these taglines that we put in because the
scientific community, the science media community,
believes, well, that's what you have to do in order to make
people interested in the science. And maybe that's true,
but I don't know. And Jay also talks about some positive case
studies. There was a Lancet Commission on dementia that he
mentions, and it's this big, but, well, he'll explain it, but
it's a big body of research that that continually gets updated on
dementia risks. And he talks about how this is an interesting
way for scientists to be presenting their work, because
they go into, you know, all of these things, the risks, how
they change, how they how some things are now new risks, some
things were maybe taking off the list, but it really kind of
shows the slow moving process of science and is a nice
communication format. And he mentions the defy dementia
podcast that he is hosting, which will be linked in the show
notes, so you can, you can take a look at that. And he talks
about the approach that they're doing there of not beating
people over the head with advice, but really just trying
to present everything in a way that the people can then, you
know, make their own decisions about, you know, some of these
dementia risks and stuff like that. And so it's some really
great insight into science communication, but there's also
some really interesting dementia facts in there too. So
definitely worth listening to that section. As always, I
really, really enjoy talking with Jay Ingram, like I said,
he's got a wealth of experience and knowledge in this area. And
like many episodes where we kind of talk about the nuts and bolts
of science communication, it sometimes feels like we don't
have solid answers, and I think that that, you know that's true,
we probably won't right. But this conversation, for me,
definitely shows where we could focus our attention and what new
things might we might try in order to maybe break out of some
of the myths, like I said, that we all have in this field, but
then also for an audience, you know, that likes to consume, you
know, science stuff, I assume that's why, why you're listening
to this show. It's a good reminder of the things to look
for, right? And I think seeing how professional science, you
know, media, journalists and scientists, think about data and
the struggles of how the struggles we have of how to
present it to audiences, is informative for audiences to to
see. You know what it is that we're trying to get across, and
you know you can comment, you can get in touch with the show
about what it is that you would like to see. How would you like
to see these, these topics handled? So with that, please
get in touch with the show at two Brad for you on x and
Instagram. You can email the show to Bradford u@gmail.com and
you can please comment, subscribe, like, follow all of
that stuff wherever you're getting your podcast that really
helps the show. And yeah, that would be great. We would love to
hear from you. So
without. Any further ramblings on by me. Here is my
conversation with Jay Ingram.
All right, Jay, welcome back. It's always a always a pleasure
to see you, and thanks for taking the time. How are you?
I'm
Jay Ingram: well, thanks and thanks for having me back on. I
must, I must have passed the test the last time. Hey,
Bradley van Paridon: you're one of the few people that just keep
saying yes, so
Jay Ingram: I qualify.
Bradley van Paridon: Well, hey, I think the audience you know
that has followed since the beginning of the show knows you
by now. Broadcaster, writer, you've been in science
communication, science journalism for decades in
Canada, and I'm sure you've worked in some other places as
well, but the Canadian audience will know you very well. But
yes, you do say yes to come on. So that's a that's a bonus for
me, but I always really enjoy these kind of conversations,
because today we're going to again, have this idea of kind of
getting into the weeds of science communication. You know,
what works, what doesn't work? There's some of these questions
that kind of float around, and have been floating around, maybe
more closer to the surface since, since covid, but that we
don't really have a lot of good answers to but yet I feel like
we should discuss them. We should probe them. We should
talk about them. And the one that I want to bring up today is
this idea of, how do we present, you know, topics that maybe
aren't settled, right? So that's, that's a phrase that
gets turned around, the science isn't settled. How do we discuss
these things? Obviously, this was a big thing with covid. I
don't want to really talk about covid, because I think people
are kind of sick of it. And I wanted to take a look at a case
study that's maybe a bit different, because covid was
very acute. It seemed more obvious that, yes, we don't know
what's going on. That was as much as people maybe forget that
was a lot of, a bit of the mantra at the beginning, right?
We don't know what's going on. What I want to talk to you about
today is, well, the case study would be a book by Jonathan
Haidt, who is a pretty famous, I'd say, public intellectual
researcher, and he's written a book about the influence of
social media on the development of teens, the prevalence or The
increase of teen depression, this kind of topics you've
probably heard of before, and he's making a very strong link
in the book. His argument is big part of it is social media and
kids not having sort of free play anymore. It's become very,
very popular, I think a lot of people. It's on New York Times
bestsellers, but then sporadically here and there I
see sort of the other side, right? Researchers being like,
well, it's not that simple. And, you know, they have their ideas.
But what I notice is that the critiques don't fall into the
mainstream. There are usually in, you know, science news, very
dedicated science news, or, you know, PBS, you know, some
smaller news channels. So this is kind of this dilemma that I
wanted to maybe discuss with you today. Is, you got this, this
big hit book, you're a big public, you know, intellectual
scientist, but does that tell the whole story? And what does
an audience do when presented with a figure like this, who has
a book that's probably written very compelling, how do they
tease out? Well, is this the whole story? Do they even care?
And so I thought maybe a good way to start if you don't have,
you know, just general thoughts at the beginning, as I've thrown
all this at you, my idea to start the conversation was
actually to sort of brainstorm. Well, what is it about a science
topic like this, that vaults it into the mainstream, that puts
it into, you know, a New York Times bestseller, puts it on the
tongues of everybody who's talking on social media and
stuff that's not necessarily the science. The first thing that
comes to mind is, is the scientist a likable and good
communicator? Because that's going to go a long way to get
those ideas out there, even if the ideas are controversial or,
let's say, not totally as settled as they might be
presenting them.
Jay Ingram: So as you said, height is a public intellectual,
you don't get that kind of status by saying irrelevant
things or not saying them very well. And so, you know, while I
haven't read his book, I do know that he's advocating pretty
strongly for no cell phone use. You know, among young people as
he thinks that the connection between phones and social media
and distraction and polarization, those are all
connected. And, you know, one of your questions in there was, you
know, how do, how does an individual like him have an
impact? Well, if he's. Actually suggest, I'm suggesting that
cell phone use should be dramatically curbed,
particularly in schools. I guess you're going to get people's
attention, because not only every kid might be affected by,
you know, such a movement, but school administrators, school
teachers, and then everybody, every parent who's concerned
about how their kid is growing up, maturing and learning. So,
you know, if you, if you write about something that is so that
so broadly affects people, I think you're bound to get
attention. He's a big name already. He's a good writer.
That's why he's a big name. So I think this is the combination.
But you know, if we're going to talk about science and its
impact on people, you know, I'm not sure that that is the best
book simply because it's more, as you said, social science than
than science, and you know, as opposed to that, how about, I'm
going back a ways for this, but how about Stephen Hawking's or
Carl sagan's books about the universe now, and you can
immediately see the disjunct there, because books about the
universe don't affect
Bradley van Paridon: Exactly, yeah.
Jay Ingram: I mean, unless you're unless you're planning to
be immortal. So
Bradley van Paridon: you know, it just or have some kind of
existential angst. Yeah, exactly.
Jay Ingram: But I'm not going to get into existential angst about
the sun consuming the earth in 4 billion years, you know, and
just, I don't care. So, so then, so one of the questions, which
isn't exactly the question you asked me, but nonetheless, is,
how is it that books like that that have, unlike hate's book,
have no impact, like, really, other than, you know, prompting
a conversation with people, have no impact on your life. And you
know, somewhere, and I've actually always been curious as
to why astronomy and cosmology, and even setting aside the
search for extraterrestrials, just stuff about the universe
and the evolution of the universe and the origin of the
universe. Why is it so popular? And, you know, I wonder if
perhaps it's popular because it's both spectacular in time,
range and size and everything else. It's actually, well, it is
beyond our comprehension, and we sort of understand that, but
also because it doesn't challenge anybody, other than
Flat Earthers or people who believe that, you know, the
universe was created in 4004 BC. I mean, you know those people
aside, and even the people who are Creationists can latch onto
a book, a Stephen Hawking book, and say, This is the glory of
God that he's talking about. You know, what other entity could do
this, but for most people, it is an item of curiosity, and maybe
mind blowing curiosity. But it stops there. It doesn't say
anything about the price of groceries or how you're going to
lead your day. And so a lot of science, it well, at least that
branch of science, astronomy and cosmology, succeeds for reasons
that I'm I'm not totally clear on, but let me give you another
example that that hews a bit closer to this line, which is
you probably know about Huberman and his amazingly popular
podcast, which sometimes infuriates people. And there was
a recent case, he did a podcast on on marijuana and its effects,
and I started seeing on X comments by neuroscientists,
some of whom I know, deploring how inaccurate and misleading
this entire podcast was. And besides noticing these comments,
I also noticed they were talking to each other, two other
neuroscientists lamenting this scar on neuroscience that had
just been perpetrated by Huberman. And so one of these
people, and I can you know he's he's already publicly linked to
this, so I can name him, a guy named Matt Hill. At the
University of Calgary, who is really a bona fide THC expert.
He's been researching cannabinoids forever. That's
basically his career. He's well established. He's well
respected. And I knew him, so, you know, I just didn't I said
to him, I don't know that I was the first person to say this,
but I said you should actually talk directly to Huberman and
ask to be on a show, because telling other neuroscientists is
going nowhere. So he did get in touch with Huberman. I haven't
listened to the results yet, but he was on huberman's Show. I
don't even know if that episode has been released yet, but you
know, in terms of, how do you try and set the record straight?
And you mentioned, you know, the beginnings of covid and how
there was a lot of uncertainty, and so it's not just setting the
record straight, but trying to keep people up to date without
misleading them in one direction or the other. I thought that was
probably the best he could do, because, and this relates to
hate as well, people that have a platform already are in a very,
very powerful, sometimes impregnable position. And, you
know, my bet would be, even though I thought Matt Hill did
exactly the right thing by going on Huberman. In the long run, is
Huberman going to lose an audience over this? I really
doubt it. I think he's going to go on. You know, he and Lex
Friedman and other people like that have enormous audiences for
good reason. I mean, they do really interesting podcasts on
whether they're they're all true or not. Talking here more about
Huberman than Friedman is up for grabs. I mean, you know, who
knows? But they're very difficult to dislodge, and so
reputation has a huge role to play. And you know, if I don't
think there are many scientists who have a, you know, a huge
audience and continually come out with untruths, but that is
one of the most important things to think about, is if you
disagree, if a scientist disagrees with what other
scientists are saying, how do you approach that? You know it
reminds me of The what now seem to be very rare debates between
creationists and evolutionists. And I've attended such things,
and it quickly became clear to me that they're absolutely
pointless, because there will never be a single person in the
audience who changes his or her mind as a result of the debate.
They and they're really speaking over each other anyway, right
around each other. But the point is, they're fixed in their
views. No evolutionist is going to become a creationist, and
vice versa. And so you have to be very careful. You have to
pick your spot. I don't like what this person is saying. I
think it's misleading. How do I address it? And you know, going
back to the fundamental principle of communication,
who's the audience? Who are you trying to reach in your you know
your disagreement. I mean, that's where Matt Hill did the
right thing. Go to the source. Get on the air with the source,
and that is your best chance, because you're then, you're then
at least reaching the audience that Huberman previously
reached. Now, whether they listen to you or not is another
question over which you have no control, because
Bradley van Paridon: that's what I was going to say too. Is that,
like, as much as, you know, I feel like some of those
podcasts, you know, the Huberman, the Friedman's, you
know, you could put something even less loosely, you know,
linked to science, but the Joe Rogan stuff, you know, it's, the
people that listening to that have already made up their mind
too, right? Like, whether you're pro marijuana or against
marijuana, you hear both episodes, I would I wonder if
anyone even listens to the to the counter episode. You know,
they they've listened to the episode on, you know, the bad
things about marijuana that fits their belief. They hear someone
that's going to come on and argue the other side. Do they
even listen to it? I don't know. So it just it feels like a bit
of an Yeah, damned if you
Jay Ingram: so the you know, Huberman retains all the control
if he called his and hills discussion when we don't know
how he's going to format it, but if he called it more on
marijuana, people would
Bradley van Paridon: listen. That's true, yeah.
Jay Ingram: But you know you mentioned Joe Rogan, so I've
listened to one Joe Rogan podcast, and it's because I was
researching these efforts largely centered in Silicon
Valley to extend the human life
Bradley van Paridon: span. Yeah, big topic to show, yeah, yeah,
yeah. Well, and
Jay Ingram: so he invited a guy who whose work or whose
theories, at least I was familiar with, and I just wanted
to get a little bit better depth. And it was a really good
interview. And, you know, so when people disparage Rogan,
they seldom take that second stamp of saying, Well, okay, you
know, I saw this ridiculous comment he made on X actually,
this was yesterday about how Canada's going down the toilet
because of its game. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean the it is
tempting to take a comment like that and say, I'll never listen
to this. BSN, but the point is, there are people that don't know
anything about Canada, which would include a large part of
his audience, and they were interested in the in this aging
topic. And it was a good, clear interview, and he got a lot of
information that one would want to know. So again, you have to
consider the audience. And you know, who's ever an analyzed a
Joe Rogan audience to see if there's a split between those
who listen to his political nonsense and those who listen to
the guest? Yeah, because you know, there, I don't know, but
there may be quite a difference. I mean, so it's, yeah, it's, I
mean, if you're asking the general question of, how does a
disgruntled scientist try to counteract stuff that he thinks
is inaccurate or even inflammatory and wrong. How best
to do it. It's a tricky landscape.
Bradley van Paridon: Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, without going too
far into all of the discussions of the different podcasts, I
feel like I should say too, like I've listened to a lot of Joe
Rogan and I was, you know, it's kind of what got me into
podcasting, and especially when he had those scientific guests
on, and he generally did a really good job of, you know,
being the being the dumb guy in the room and asking the question
that the audience wants to hear. You know, once did they got this
chance to hear this big science person. So I just, I really like
that point, and that split in the audience of who's listening
to the guest and who's listening? Because that was what
I fell into, was the camp of listening to the guest, and then
eventually got so frustrated with all of the other nonsense
that I just stopped listening altogether. But it's one thing I
think, for you know, as I think it's a great example you have of
a scientist who's like, let me I need to correct the record. Or,
you know, if you're just speaking to your peers and
lamenting the fact that this is out there, then, yeah, it's
that's going to do nothing. So that was one of the thoughts I
had on my notes over this episode, you know, was, what do
you do? What's your what's your responsibility? If you feel like
you need to get that other side out there. And so going to the
source. Going to places where you heard this information is
one thing, but it's, I wonder, how many people, yeah, like,
didn't if, maybe, if you didn't give that prompt, or, you know,
didn't give that advice, how many people would be, you know,
would know what to do, or would know how to do it, or know how
to reach out to media in any sense, and then how much of it
is on the media itself to sort of get that other side. As
someone that works in science journalism, I feel like, you
know that if I'm as a freelancer, if I saw that other
side to a big topic, I would be like, Oh, that's something I
could pitch. You know, that's something that would gain some
interest because it's the counter side, but it never seems
to get as much interest as the initial thing, right?
Jay Ingram: So let me so there's two things there. What? What
does a scientist do? What does the media do? And I'll talk
about the scientists. And if I forget to get to the media, you
can remind Yeah. So one of the things I noticed about the matt
Hill, Huberman thing was that the neuroscientists talking to
Matt because there was a kind of a discussion about, should he
What should he do? How should he do it? They were intimidated.
Seemed to me. They were worried that Rogan was going to sorry.
Huberman, interchangeable. Yeah, we you. Huberman was going to
edit it in a way that made matt look bad. And they were saying,
and this wasn't a bad idea, but it reflects an attitude, oh, you
should. You should be recording it at the same time. Right? So
then, if he edits it in a way that makes you look wrong, well,
you can counter, you know, which, of course, implied, oh,
my god. How long is this thing going to go on with a dwindling
audience, the whole time? But it reflected an attitude that when,
and it's partly right, if you're going to take on someone with a
giant audience, you have to be care. You have to be sure that
you're going to get some sort of fair hearing, even though I
think it's the only way to do it. Now, you know, there are a
lot of scientists, cannabinoid researchers who don't care what
Huberman says, and even if they knew that he had broadcast, you
know, falsehoods, they would just say, well, it's not up to
me to do that, you know, I'm doing my research. I have my
grant money to do my research. I teach classes. I get paid for
doing that. That's what I do. And, you know, that's fine. I
mean, I've, I've met, I haven't met, a huge number of scientists
who scan the public media all the time, looking for things
that they feel they should respond to. And I would just add
to that, seeing as though we're basically talking about
everything here, there are people who are quite public in
their efforts to combat mis and disinformation, and I think
They're ignoring who is the audience as well, because they
regularly post on X here's more information that conservative
Paul conservative people are more accepting of misinformation
than people who aren't conservative. Well, just think
about that for a sec. Who's going to pay any attention to
that? The people who aren't conservatives will have just had
their ideas confirmed. So big deal you've confirmed. You've
entrenched them in their already held opinion. And there's not
really much point in doing that. Conservatives will look at it
and say, Oh, well, you know,
Bradley van Paridon: he's a lib more Yeah, more liberal
nonsense, yeah,
Jay Ingram: and, yeah, yeah. And, you know, woke, yeah, and
just and disregard it. So, so why? Why are you doing it? I
mean, I think it's laudable to try and combat misinformation.
My point only is that's not the right way to do it so and then
on the other side of the coin, just to sort of try and, you
know, paint a family portrait of the kinds of people that are
involved in these topics. You know, David Suzuki has been
savaged by politicians for a decade. Was he ever wrong? He
may have stated things, you know, strongly, but he was never
really wrong as we you know, I sit here in Calgary and we have
like, eight straight days and plus 30 temperatures. You know,
no one can reasonably or rationally claim at this point
that there's no effect on of climate change. And so what do
you do about that? It's it's an asymmetric battle. He's using
scientific data people will always to buttress his argument,
his opponents will always find something. Oh, yeah, sure. Well,
there was a heat wave in 1927 where the temperatures were
exactly the same as they are today. All of this stuff that is
irrelevant. And the problem is opponents of science don't
really dig very deep into the data, and this is where you have
a problem in expressing dissatisfaction with somebody's
work, because you have to get into the process of science.
Hey, we're not sure what's happening right now. That kind
of admission that that no scientist wants to make, and you
have to, people have to understand before you approach
them with some sort of, you know, Contra argument to what's
prevalent. They have to understand a little bit about
the process of science and getting across the process of
science, I don't think has ever been done very well,
Bradley van Paridon: yeah, and I think, but so then this is kind
of, I don't know that I have, I've had recent episodes of
delved. More into the the process of science communication
and all these kind of topics. And I, oh, I always struggle at
about this point in the episode where it starts to look really
bleak, you know, like, what are we? What's the point, really?
Because, especially when you think about you did these big
topics, you know, like, and we, at the beginning, touched on
why, you know, it's going to reach a huge audience. When you
talk about raising kids, or, you know, health, you know, health
stuff is, is like, Huberman, you know, who's a neuroscientist,
and now it's kind of the whole thing is, like optimizing your
health, and like hacking the body, and like all this. So
there's tons of stuff going on there that is, I'd say dubious,
or at least we'll say unsettled science, right? Like it's, you
get one or two studies, and it's like, Okay, this looks good. But
as we know, the process of science would take longer and
longer and longer for these things to play out. So without
having to explain that process without being able to explain
that process. Like, where do you go to find that audience to, you
know, do that work? Let's say, of explaining the process so you
can get that little bit of knowledge. Because, like you
said, Twitter's not going to do it. You can go to the source,
but I don't know. So it just feels like, if that's the way
that you have to sort of approach critiquing these
things. But how do you get anybody to pay attention to
that?
Jay Ingram: I don't know. I mean, the thing is, what that
requires is a long read, some in depth, and you need some really
concrete examples of how science evolves, and people already know
this. I mean, we were talking earlier about, you know, the
universe, and why is it? Why is it so? Why are images and ideas
about the universe so compelling? The other day, I was
reading that, if you you know a certain way of treating quantum
mechanics might show that time is an illusion. Okay, well, you
know, if you looked at the equivalent statement in medical
science, it would be pretty dramatic. It would be something
like, you must never eat another potato for the rest of your
life, or something like that. We've been wrong. Time is an
illusion. But, you know, saying that time is an illusion affects
nobody. Yeah, they still get up at seven in the morning, yeah,
and have breakfast and, you know, go out and work or do
whatever. The train is
Bradley van Paridon: still going to show up at 730 whether you're
there or not. Yeah,
Jay Ingram: exactly. It might be an illusion, but the train's
going to be there anyway. Whereas if you say you're eating
all the wrong food, you know that's something that hits
people, and people don't like being told that what they're
doing is wrong, and so either people that sort of have an
interest in the backdrop to that. You know, we used to think
this, then it evolved to this, and now we've come to that. I
accept that, but people who haven't paid much attention and
are being told that their diet is terrible are likely going to
question the science. I don't know. I've thought about this
quite a lot with the help of some other friends of mine,
about how to do the process of science, and I haven't yet hit
on what would seem to be a good vehicle for that, because comes
back to, you know, the idea that those who already believe that
or understand that science is a process and our ideas are
inevitably going to change are cool with that, and those who
want To know whether the vaccine is 100% safe or not, are not
going to be cool with that. But you know, there's a huge amount
of willful misunderstanding going on too. There is no
vaccine that is safe 100% safe. It's gotten to the point where
advocates of the covid vaccines are afraid to say that, yeah,
because you cannot in this battle between anti vaxxers and
reasonable people, there's, there's no common ground there.
You know, it's just, it's two islands of people hurling words
at each other, and so I don't really know now, you also
mentioned the role of the media. So you know, if you're if you're
working for a magazine or one of the few online newspapers that
still has a science correspondent, you. Yeah. Again,
you're talking to your people, right? A science column in a in
a news in an online newspaper, only attracts people who are
kind of interested in science, yeah? So they'll accept it from
you. You know, you know, there's always this throwaway phrase, of
course, we need to do more research, yeah? You know, which
is one of those phrases that no, nobody pays any attention to. I
found
Bradley van Paridon: I'm trying to find so many different ways
of writing that exact thing without saying those words just
just because it's like every article.
Jay Ingram: I think if you're going to tackle it, I think you
should write an article just on that and and nothing else. And
take some sort of headline that everybody is paying attention to
and just say right out. You know, we don't know how long
this is going to be seen to be nearly 100% true, and we don't
know how long it's going to be before it's only 75% true. But
that is inevitable. Yeah, somebody's got to say that. So
maybe it should be you, because, you know, throwing away, of
course, more research needs to be done. It's right up there
with we think this study of dragonfly flight may lend itself
to creating new, more mobile mailbox. But that, you know
what? That's an actually, usually an outright lie, yeah,
but it's, it's just an effort. It just shows the the isolation
in some senses of the scientific community, where some writer, it
may not be the scientist, but it might be thinks, unless you
connect it to robots, people aren't going to care, yeah,
well, you're right. Most people don't care about how dragonflies
are amazing flyers. They see them, they think, oh, that's
kind of cool. It can fly backwards. They don't think
about how and and, you know, probably if asked, Should $2
million be dispensed to figure out how they might say no, until
you say, but it might make better robots. I'm sorry. I
shouldn't laugh, because it's not a funny topic. But I, and
maybe it's clear from the way I've been talking, I've had
trouble sorting out exactly how you should do this. I can give
you an example of where I think people have been very careful,
and that is the Lancet Commission on dementia risks. So
they came out in 2017 and the lancet commissions are huge
arrays of international scientists who evaluate data
around a topic. And in 2017 they published a list of risks for
dementia that you can do something about you like you
Bradley something about in your life. And then in 2020 they
updated it and had a added a couple more, and they've just,
it's embargoed, as you and I speak, but they've added a
couple more risks and solidified the evidence around some of the
risks they previously identified. And that's really
what I like about it.
Bradley van Paridon: I'm afraid to look at telling me to not
drink beer. And I don't know if I'm ready for that.
Jay Ingram: They're allowing you to drink some beer, okay, all
right, just not a lot, but if you smoke, you should stop.
Bradley van Paridon: Yeah, that's quit that decades ago.
Jay Ingram: If you do things that increase your risk of
traumatic brain injury, you should stop. No if you have
diabetes, you should stop. Anyway. I'm not going to get all
14 risks, but my point is that they've done this in a very
steady, thorough way, and not just adding risks, but also
reviewing the previous risks and evaluating them in light of
evidence that has accumulated since 2017, 2020, and so on. And
so I have a particular interest in this because I'm doing a
podcast called defy dementia, where we are communicating with
people about these risks and what you could and should do in
your life to reduce your risk of dementia or even reduce your
progression, even if you've been diagnosed with mild cognitive
impairment or dementia. So it's a great example, and it is
getting the press, at least, mostly in the UK, but it sort of
comes over to North America as well, that these and. You know
what they're they're not always changes in your life that people
want to hear. You know, I I like having 12 drinks a week? Well,
maybe that's too many. You should stop smoking. If you've
got a wood stove and there's smoke all over the place, you're
increasing your risk of dementias. You might want to do
something about that so, you know, but they're not, they're
not telling you you must. You're not saying, I'm going to get,
I'm going to, you know, add a carbon tax to your life, because
there's really good evidence that that would help fight
climate change. They're not doing it that way. They're just
saying, Look, here are the risks. We encourage you. We
don't force you. We encourage you to take some steps, and
you'll be better off, and so will your kids and your family
and anybody else who might end up being a caregiver. So so
that's one topic, yeah. And, I
Bradley van Paridon: mean, and I think, you know, as much as I
said, the medical space, there's a lot of stuff that's
frustrating in communication. That's also an example of where,
because your people want that information. It's the same thing
with the height book right to kind of just bring it back to
that people want to know about. What should I do with my kids? I
think, in some ways, now that I'm a father, people want too
much to be told what's the right thing. There's so much
information out there. But anyway, that's another topic,
but it's, I think this then comes to audience. So you the
people that are going to seek out this information on
dementia, probably, you know, I would guess a lot of them maybe
have experience with it in their life, or something like that. So
they're going to see that. They're going to respond to
that. Again, how does that get into sort of the mainstream, you
know, like, if you're, if your goal as someone who's who's done
this research, who's done this, this panel, whatever, I can't
remember what you called the consortium, whatever, um, the
goal would, obviously, we should get this out there to as many
people as possible, because it's good, you know, it's the best
information we have. You know, what is the, I guess, the
vehicles to do that. And this brings me to a question that
I've juggled with in the last little bit, again, in previous
episodes and stuff, is, well, does everybody need to know
everything you know when it comes to science and science
news, this would seem like a topic that would you would want
to know about. And it seems to me, more and more that like what
you want to call it, legacy media, traditional media, the
news media, that cycle, that way of of covering topics doesn't
work for this material, like it's just, it's you square peg,
round hole kind of thing. It's just, it's not going to work.
You're not going to be able to get that nuance. You're not
going to be able to find those audiences. So then, what is it?
Because Twitter or X, I don't know if that's the spot
podcasts, I think are great, but people have to find your
podcast. I don't know this. This seems, again, like one of those.
I'm throwing a bunch of stuff up here, and that many of us have
the well,
Jay Ingram: so if I could just go back to the lifestyle risks
for dementia, one of the IT, one of the values, and I've already
said this, is that it has a consistency. It isn't just a one
time thing. So it comes back and people remember it vaguely from
the time before, so they might be more interested in how it's
evolved. So you are nailing the science evolves subject down by
that. But the other thing is that, and you mentioned that,
oh, in the audience, there's probably a lot of people have
had dementia in their lives. Is there anybody living today who
hasn't had dementia in their family somewhere, or their
friends? I doubt it. I've never, I've never spoken to an audience
where somebody put up their hands that have no connection
with dementia whatsoever. Yeah, and even if you didn't, and you
realize the amount of money that would be saved if a healthcare
system managed to persuade people to change their
lifestyles such that the result would be dementia in general,
would be delayed by five years. The amount of savings would be
absolutely incredible. There's going to be 150 million people
with dementia by 2050 the shortage of caregivers by 2030
is in the US is estimated to be well over 100,000 so it has
multiple benefits. It's not just you, you may not get dementia,
it's society might. Not get as much dementia. So I think that
when a story has those kinds of attributes, that it's people
have some experience. I mean, if you had a if you had an
equivalent periodic report telling people what your future
income would be or something like that. You would eat that
up, especially if you'd seen over a period of five or six
years that it had turned out to be accurate. It's just that, you
know, there are many stories that are quite so reliable and
personal. And I think those are two, two aspects of a topic now
where you know you mentioned legacy media, I think New York
Times, Washington Post papers like that are still, are still
effective. There are these. They're the equivalent in Europe
and the UK. But you know, are like, do 20 year olds read that
sort of stuff? And how do you get see? It doesn't really
matter. Talk, social media, legacy media, a book, whatever.
The format is less important than the age group and the
interests of the audience you're trying to get. So, you know, a
book will resonate with some people, tonight's article will
resonate with some people, and I don't think a single person can
be so well. First of all, working 24 hours a day.
Secondly, researching every source of information to try and
hit the best one. Because inevitably, in science, some
topics should be on one medium, then some topics should be on a
different one. And you'd have to be an awfully erudite journalist
to know instantly when you came across a story where it should
be put and you'd also have to be incredibly skilled to be able to
put it there.
Bradley van Paridon: Yeah, well, and so then this is kind of like
it makes me, you know, again, in some of these thoughts, is like,
so, you know, the science section of a paper, okay, so New
York Times, Washington Post, they probably have a really good
science correspondent that is, is versed in science like that,
knows that beat really well, right? Whereas maybe even, like,
something like the CBC or, you know, let's go down the list. If
they even have a science there, maybe it's somebody that you
know did health or did environment or something before,
but it's not, you know, is not there. So there's that lack of,
of, you know, knowledge in the institutions, in those
institutions there. And then you have, you know, some of the
stuff that I do, which is your very dedicated science news
magazines, you know, the scientific Americans, the the
chemistry worlds, you know, like the the places. So it's like, I
don't expect, you know, even, yeah, I know my mom reads some
of them. But you know, people in my in my peer group, you know,
like, outside of that, I don't think they're reading, they're
going to be reading the stuff I put out in chemistry world,
right? Because it doesn't matter to them, that kind of thing. But
this is, I guess, I'm trying to think about where, yeah, placing
different topics and different things area in different
mediums. And I think our audience has a lot to do with
it, as you know, with the social media stuff like, if you want to
hit young people, hit young people, you got to be on Tiktok.
If you want to get the older people, maybe podcasts,
millennials, podcasts, that kind of thing. But, yeah, I don't
know. I think it's, it's it's tough, because I agree with what
you were saying earlier. This noble pursuit of, sort of
wanting to get the correct thing out there and get people to sort
of understand, you know, what it means when we say it's not
settled, and why, you know, maybe, maybe don't change your
whole life. You know, style based on a Huberman podcast. I
feel like there's a lot of people that are probably ping
ponging from, you know, diet to diet, to hack to hack, you know,
and you're never seeing any results, but constantly being
like, I'm doing it, maybe a series of something, like a
YouTube series or something, or a couple series of videos I'm
dabbling into YouTube now. So maybe this is me convincing
myself to do this, but explaining the difference in the
different studies? Right? Because, like, what's a meta
analysis versus a review versus a clinical trial versus which
sounds incredibly boring, I think, to a lot of people, but
how if you knew the differences between that your ability to
then look at a Huberman. Podcast and look at the the journals
quickly that they're citing there, and say, Oh yeah, maybe
the weight of evidence, not so so much on that. But this one
has a systemic review, you know, that kind of meta analysis, that
kind of thing, so but, I mean, how do you teach people that?
Because that seems like super boring. Well, you it is. Thank
you. You
Jay Ingram: can't, well, you can't do it that way. What you'd
have to do is when you feel compelled to respond to
statements coming from somebody that you think are inaccurate or
gloss over the truth or whatever. It's only then, when
the story is in the news, that it's really appropriate to start
talking about meta analyzes, or, you know, retrospective trials.
Yeah, use that. I had an interesting here's an
interesting example, again, drawn from dementia studies
showing that there was one study about alcohol, so you'll be
interested in
Bradley van Paridon: this. You saw my eyes
Jay Ingram: that consumption over consumption of alcohol was
definitely a risk, but so was abstinence. Now that's puzzling,
right? It's puzzling until you realize that a lot of people who
are abstinent are so because they had to stop drinking, and
as a result, they have a backlog of damage done by the alcohol
before they became abstinent. And so that's a tiny example of
how you have to scrutinize the participants in a study to
really get an accurate picture of what the study is all about.
And so if I were, if I were to to tackle the issue of, how do
you get across the the idiosyncrasies, that's not quite
the right word, but the detailed structure of a study that allows
somebody to make statements about it. You have to have the
study there, and in people's minds, you can't come at it
because you know, doing it as, here's a here's a meta analysis,
here's this, here's that, that's too much like being in school,
yeah, yeah, you know. And you know, you hated it when you were
in school, and it was only later, some of us realized that
was actually kind of interesting and important, yeah, but people
are too busy to be sent back to school. Yeah, they don't want
to. So exactly, whereas, if you know not, I don't want to
belabor the Huberman example, but an example like that where
you feel like somebody's disseminating false information,
take one component of it and say, Here's how that was arrived
at. Here's why. There are problems with that. Then it
becomes much more interesting. It's much more of a solving a
mystery, a detective story. Yeah, yeah. And you know, you we
can't, we can't forget that in all of this, you have to be
telling stories. Yes,
Bradley van Paridon: yeah, yeah, exactly. I think, you know, I
think in politics, they talk about the process story, right?
That that gets put out there in PR and stuff. Every once in a
while, they do a process story of how they arrived at these
conclusions. And obviously, there's different, it's a
different realm and a different, you know, reason why you would
put some of those out, but that's kind of what I'm thinking
of. And it just made me think something that I've been
thinking a lot of. This is my last thought before I let you
go. Is just, what can you know, people like me, science
journalists, science people in science media, let's say science
communication. Or who are you know, passionate about it,
learning from other areas, you know, like learning from sports
broadcasting or, you know, these just other entertainment
mediums. I think that thinking maybe a little outside the box
and trying to grab from from different places, it's never
going to be a perfect fit, perfect analogy, you know, but I
feel like there's, there's a lot left on the table that that
people in the science space haven't explored. Well,
Jay Ingram: yeah, because, and again, I'm repeating myself, but
it's because they don't think of a, the audience and B, that
every, every story is about people. You know, I posted TV
show in Canada called Daily Planet for like, 16 years, and
it was said to be a science show, but it wasn't. It was a
people show, like every single. Television program ever. It's
just that the people had some sort of connection, sometimes
remote, sometimes intimate, to science and technology. And so
unless you pin your, you know, just you're you're disturbed by
something, unless you pin that on some kind of story with some
kinds of people in it, the rest the audience isn't going to be
interested. And so, you know, I think you're absolutely right.
Look at sports. I mean, really a lot of sports coverage is pretty
tedious,
Bradley van Paridon: yeah, but people love it. But,
Jay Ingram: you know, people love it, but why do they love
it? Well, for one thing, they have a strong allegiance to a
team, yeah, for completely irrational reasons, this team,
which is owned by some billionaire, happens to be
located in my town, yeah? So I love them, and I hate all the
others, even though, if I met the players in this team, I'd
probably hate most of them too. It doesn't matter you've got it
you've Yeah, I know,
Bradley van Paridon: of course go Oilers.
Jay Ingram: The that allegiance is what drives people's
attention and thoughts and in the same way, if you set aside
sports and look at how polarized the political world is right
now, that's all about allegiance, and it's allegiance
to some kind of nebulous idea. But it's mostly because, hey, I
agree with all these other people who are saying these
things. It it does not involve analysis there. You know, more
sports fans love their team come hell or high water than actually
start thinking about, you know, that player that everyone loves
is really ineffective, that, Oh, let's talk about the Blue Jays.
Their management is terrible, yeah, they have a bad team
again, yeah, surely, you know, and acute writers pick that up,
but it's their beat, yeah, right. And so they already have
an audience. And this is the problem when you're trying to do
equivalent things in science, is that the audience, the the
number of committed audience members is much left, so much
less, yeah, so some of those techniques aren't going to work,
yeah, and that's, I'm glad, that's your last question,
because I can't think of anything else.
Bradley van Paridon: Well, you said yes to coming on the
podcast, so that was enough for me, and I've taken up your time
now. So I again, I want to put this part as I'm saying goodbye
to you, to the audience, you know, listening to these,
because I think they've listened to a few of these where I've
brought up a lot of these questions, and I put them to
other people in this field, and people I respect and that I
think have more experience than me, but, yeah, we don't have
proper answers. So it always ends up feeling a little, you
know, maybe inconclusive, but that's kind of the topic that
we're talking about, is that these things evolve, they go on
and on. So Thanks for, thanks for putting in your two cents,
and thanks for, you know, maybe pushing, maybe pushing me a
little bit closer to something, and maybe pushing the audience a
little bit closer to some kind of answers or resolution here,
Jay, it's it's always a pleasure to see you. Thank you.
Jay Ingram: Thanks a lot. Brad. Give me some easier questions.
Well,
Bradley van Paridon: if you want to do a whole show about the
Edmonton Oilers and how this year is definitely the year that
we win it,
Jay Ingram: we could do that. Yeah, they're not my team.
Bradley van Paridon: It's not your team. All right, fair
enough. There we have it. Thank you so much for tuning in to
this episode. Thank you, as always, to the freak motif for
the music, Sebastian Abood for our logo and design. And please
let us know. Let me know what you thought. Reach out at two
grad for you on x and Instagram. You can email the show to
Bradford. You@gmail.com like, follow, subscribe on those
platforms. Wherever you get your podcast, leave a review, that
kind of stuff that really helps us. You can look at two Brad for
you on YouTube, we're slowly going to start populating that
page with more and more videos, more content, and please
subscribe there and leave us comments. Let us know what it is
that you like, don't like and want to see. I'm trying to adapt
everything to my audience, as we learned in this episode, is so,
so important. So thank you so much for joining us and well,
until next time, stay safe. Be good to each other. Bye for now
you.