Posts Tagged ‘trust’
December 29, 2024 — In recent years, a troubling trend has emerged – a growing distrust in health science, particularly in fields like nutrition and obesity. This skepticism isn’t just about healthy debate or constructive criticism. It’s about an erosion of confidence in scientific expertise. In the age of social media and viral misinformation, unreasonable doubts have real consequences […]
April 28, 2024 — Daniella Lamas is a critical care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She recalls telling the wife of a patient who was dying something she did not want to hear about her husband’s care. The woman told Lamas: “Why should I believe you? I don’t think that I do.” The Imperative for Trust […]
March 11, 2024 — We can point to any number of symptoms. The rise of measles because of skepticism about vaccination comes to mind. Certainly, we hear from people who reject scientific concepts about obesity. So it’s no surprise to us that a new report in PNAS documents high but declining public confidence in science. Arthur Lupia, David Allison, […]
February 25, 2024 — Are we cynical? We can surely find excuses to be. Examples of cynicism pop up at every glance. Certainly we see it in politics and public policy. Closer to home at ConscienHealth, people routinely find reasons for cynicism about all kinds of medical research and advice – especially nutrition and obesity. This is a real […]
January 22, 2024 — Breastfeeding is such a good idea. But unfortunately, it doesn’t do much to prevent obesity. No matter. On the subject of breastfeeding and preventing obesity in children, we have policy-based evidence – the answer is preset. A new paper in Pediatrics lines up with this. Based on yet another finding of an association between breastfeeding […]
January 7, 2024 — We are living is a time of concern about mistrust, misinformation, and polarization. Edelman has been warning us for years now about deepening distrust that promotes misinformation because people do not know what to believe. It promotes polarization because they come to trust only people with beliefs similar to their own. As we confront misinformation, healthy […]
December 22, 2023 — The year we are now closing marks a new record in retractions of research papers – more than 10,000 in a single year. Reporting for Nature, Richard Van Norden provides details about this milestone in research integrity. Does this impressive number mark progress? Or merely signal that the challenge of research integrity is enormous? A […]
December 3, 2023 — We are living in an age of low trust. Without trust, many problems in public policy confront us – polarization, disinformation, and roadblocks to progress in public health. Unhealthy cynicism begins to crowd out the healthier approach to inquiry, skepticism. The advice to trust, but verify, gives way to broad claims that everything is rigged […]
October 22, 2023 — “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” It is an ancient but fair question. It comes to mind as we read mind-numbing headlines asserting that the scientific advisory committee for the 2025 dietary guidelines is “rife with” and “plagued” by conflict of […]
August 12, 2023 — Research integrity is a hot topic these days. People want to know that they can rely upon scientific publications to be accurate reflections of an honest inquiry to find the answer to a research question. Toward this end, data sharing is an important commitment. Increasingly, researchers pledge to share their data in the interest of […]