casual conversation about the March for
science last year when we ended up
touching on the subject of women’s
access to contraception this led to a
conversation about the different types
of contraception and how they work when
it got to oral hormone therapy for women
or birth control pills my friend said I
just don’t feel like it’s healthy to
regulate periods like that now I may not
be an expert in contraception but the
statement bothered me it bothered me
because she said I just don’t feel like
it’s healthy people use these kinds of
statements all the time
especially in science and medicine
Stephen Colbert even corned a satirical
term to describe this that he calls
truthiness which he defines as relying
on gut instinct rather than fact when
people form opinions that usually use
one of two categories as a foundation
the first is personal anecdotes and
beliefs so in this case you might say
well my friend gained a lot of weight on
hormonal contraception so I don’t
believe it’s healthy the second category
is fundamental social values so you
might say it’s not right to change how
your body functions but these two
categories should ideally be informed by
if not bridged from scientific evidence
so instead saying something like
hormonal contraception changes a woman’s
level of progesterone and estrogen and a
change in these hormones affects people
differently there’s a lot of information
out there that targets beliefs in social
values in an attempt to influence your
opinion but turns out there’s actually a
pretty well described method for
assessing whether or not something is
quote unquote true in science this
method uses experimentation and analysis
devoid of personal opinions and beliefs
and this approach is called the
scientific method and it really can be
applied to any field not just science we
can see people using the scientific
method every day over the holidays I
watched my one-year-old nephew
oddly test the amount of force necessary
to open a drawer basically he pulled on
the drawer on multiple times increasing
his force each time until he had an
answer the door opened and he fell down
as we get older we tend to rely on our
past experiences to guide how we think
about a problem and then we sort of
Reason our way to an answer but when it
comes to science and medicine sometimes
simple reasoning doesn’t work we
actually need data so all of us got me
thinking how can we as scientists help
shift people towards forming their
opinions based on actual evidence rather
than personal experiences and emotion
well first I think we need to
collectively understand that the science
itself needs to be honest and accurate
but we also need to understand that when
you hear of forming a scientific
consensus like 97% of scientists agree
on X Y or Z that those conclusions were
formed from rigorous experimentation in
peer review when I started my
undergraduate education here at st.
Lawrence I came here understanding that
I didn’t know everything but I thought
that here at college this was where I
was going to learn at all I came here
thinking maybe I had a pretty good
foundation in biology and chemistry but
we really delved into those subjects in
dr. Anna Estevez is cell bio class or
dr. Sam glaciers by a P chem course and
I learned so much more so when I
graduated I thought ah ok now I know
everything but it wasn’t till I joined
the ph.d program at University of
Maryland in Baltimore that I found
myself in familiar ground realizing that
actually didn’t know all that much again
and that’s the story of science
understanding what we know understanding
what we don’t know and then devising
experiments to help answer our questions
and most of the time it’s not a huge
question like the shape of a planet or
humans effects on climate change the
questions we a scientist try to answer a
small and they usually only
incrementally increase the knowledge in
a field for example my PhD focused on a
specific type of cell in the human body
that cardiomyocyte these are the cells
in the heart within these cells I looked
at a specific organelle called the
mitochondria
on an even smaller scale I looked at a
channel or an opening in the membrane of
this mitochondria and then even smaller
still I looked at how molecules might
affect the opening of this channel and I
looked at all of us in an effort to
understand a macroscopic effect very
important in life altering disease in
some people’s lives which is heart
failure and how to keep people with
heart failure alive longer so with this
very narrow research focus I don’t claim
to be an expert in all things science
but I can reliably say that I am an
expert in using the scientific method
and performing experiments so what is
the scientific method exactly well it
starts with asking a question and I know
this sounds pretty easy we ask questions
every day but to truly ask a novel
scientific question takes a solid
understanding of a topic to know where
those crucial gaps are and filling those
gaps is really what meaningful science
is all about so during my doctoral
studies I had big questions and I had
little questions and a similar question
as my nephew asked earlier about force I
asked a question about strength the
strength of these little mitochondria
inside heart cells so we’ve known for a
long time you probably know from your
general bio courses that mitochondria
are called the powerhouses of the cell
and they’re called this mainly because
they produce the energy needed for
things like muscle contraction like the
heart mitochondria also help buffer
calcium levels to which aids muscle
movement as well but they can only take
up so much calcium until they burst it’s
kind of like filling up a balloon with
air at some point you’re gonna reach the
maximum capacity of the balloon and
it’ll pop so with that understanding I
asked how much calcium can a
mitochondria take up until they burst
with the understanding that the more
calcium they take up the stronger
healthier that mitochondria is the
second step of the scientific method is
to develop hypothesis in an experiment
designed to answer your question since I
was studying heart failure I wasn’t so
much interested in normal mitochondria
but rather mitochondria from sick
animals and mitochondria from sick
animals that I had treated to help
increase their capacity to
calcium and I performed a ton of
experiments I tried different
combination therapies different stages
of heart failure and of course different
doses of calcium until I realized when
those mitochondria burst and whether or
not my experiments or therapies helped
increase their capacity to take up
calcium the last steps of the scientific
method include analyzing your data and
submitting work for publication so after
gathering and analyzing all of my data I
had to put my results into context
within the broader scientific community
studying heart failure and mitochondrial
function so I wrote up papers I
submitted my results and I was subject
to peer review sharing the results of
research is an important part of science
we all stand on the shoulders of those
people and the ideas that came before us
and shared knowledge allows us to grow
and picking the right journal with which
to submit to is also important not all
journals are created equal so when you
read a scientific article it matters
where that journal was published it also
matters if that journal uses the peer
review process the peer review peer
review process which used to be called
refereeing is a process where an other
people are thought leaders in your field
have read and critiqued a new piece of
work this helps maintain the integrity
of the field and helps ensure that
really only quality work is published
while papers that need revision are not
so after addressing concerns from
reviewers which could range from small
formatting mistakes to major revisions
requiring many more experiments and
additional months of study a paper is
finally accepted for publication and
this by the way assumes that it’s not
just flatly rejected so and this is a
very bench science example of using the
scientific method but you can really use
this method for many things not just
science take baking as an example baking
is actually a pretty scientific process
let’s say you’re trying to create like a
healthier version of a typical cookie
maybe using less sugar as an example so
you might run through the same recipe
multiple times decreasing the sugar each
time until you created a cookie that no
longer tasted
good well you just use science to answer
the question of what is the minimum
amount of sugar necessary to create a
good tasting cookie of course good here
is relative but the point remains you
gather data you analyze the results by
tasting it and you made a conclusion you
can also use the scientific method for
more difficult questions questions you
can’t answer yourself with your own
experimentation take my friend’s opinion
on contraception if she were really
curious about the safety of these types
of medications she can log on to PubMed
gov which is a digital archive run by
the National Institute of Health that
contains a library of biomedical and
life science literature with over 27
million citations on the site you can
type in hormonal contraception safety
and see that there are over 400 results
in the topic there are even papers there
that summarize the numerous safety
articles so you don’t have to read each
one of them individually yourself unless
of course you wanted to so the answers
to those types of questions are
available without having to use personal
anecdotes and opinions and answering
them in this way uses the scientific
method to you–you’ve gather data you
analyze the results by reading it and
then you make a conclusion so why am i
up here talking about my research into a
small organelle in the heart or my
friends opinion on birth control pills
the point is that creating meaningful
conclusions is a difficult process in
the science world it takes years of
training and many layers of scrutiny
to publish findings that have an impact
and you don’t need to be a scientist to
make use of the scientific method in
your everyday it’s simply an unbiased
evidence-based approach to answering a
question unfortunately today we’re
living in a society where the curiosity
and hard work of finding answers is
being replaced with an increasing
reliance on personal anecdotes and
beliefs in today’s society we want
things fast we want our information fast
and we want our answers
really fast but sometimes the best most
reliable information and answers comes
from a more traditional way of thinking
using the logical method of science if
we can slow down attempt to carefully
understand something we may actually
learn meaningful truthful answers facts
exist whether we believe them or not
whether we understand them or not and
it’s our right to believe or understand
something but just because it’s our
right doesn’t make that fact any less
true we should all be out there
educating ourselves about the world
challenging each other’s opinions and
passing that knowledge on to others dr.
Neil deGrasse Tyson says the universe is
under no obligation to make sense to you
and though that’s true with a solid
understanding in the sciences combined
with hard work we can work together and
try to make sense of it and that is
progress thank you [Applause]