Seth's Blog: The amateur scientist (that's us)
Many people buy a car (probably their single biggest discretionary purchase) based on slamming a door, kicking a tire and judging the handshake of a salesperson.
We choose a surgeon based on the carpeting in his office and a politician by his hair cut.
During the first week of swine flu vaccines in New York, most parents (more than half!) chose to keep their kids out of the program.
Interviewed parents said things like, "I'm not sure it's safe," and "I wanted to see if it affected other kids..."
No mention of longitudinal studies or long-term side effects. No science at all, really, just rumors and hunches and gut instincts.
This gut-instinct approach served people well for hundreds of thousands of years, but it's pretty clear that it doesn't work in a complex world. Eating salmon at a wedding feels 'safe' because we always have, but of course any professional scientist will tell you that farmed salmon is an ecological disaster. You can't see the problem, so you ignore it.
Audiophiles spend thousands of dollars rewiring the electrical lines in their house with .99999% pure copper, ignoring the fact that the power from the street is in the same old cables. Adding decimal points to our irrationality doesn't change much.



