I read that research of the University of...

How many times have you read or heard that the researchers from a specific University discovered that... and then followed news that appeared useless. As an example, consider the relationship between how you hang toilet paper and your personality! Here there is a problem of scientific dissemination (as well as use of public money), to explain scientific facts to people who may have little or no knowledge about a subject. 

Cathy reads the post:

I have an opinion that during the Covid pandemic we lost our faith in science. The information that experts gave us seemed conflicting and perhaps even irrelevant to reality. So where is science if at the end there are just people that express different opinions about the same fact? If this has happened for medicine, for psychology it is worse as few people consider it to be a science.

 

How can we approach this issue? Firstly, information must be verified. You may ask me: but how can the layman verify this? If you read scientific information, the source must be provided. It must be mentioned who has dealt with it. The citation must also come from an accredited journal or book. So, if you are about to read an article that does not have the source, you cannot be sure of its correctness.

 

And what about the researchers of the bizarre example? What is true? If the researchers have published in a journal, this means that the information they reported is true (or better: the conclusions are the result of a scientific method). Yes, but it’s true just for the sample they analysed, and this does not necessarily mean that it’s true for everyone. And now? If what we read is true just for people who live in a specific place during a specific period, then is nothing true? Let’s take a step further. In scientific research, there is a technique called meta-analysis, a word perhaps little known but with a relatively easy meaning. You take all researches in the world about the same topic, you summarize the results, and see what is the "world trend".

So, do we have to believe the researchers of the University of...? If they published in a scientific journal, yes, we should believe them, and we should believe that what they got is true but just for the sample they analysed. And if I’m very, very interested, I can look up to see if there’s a meta-analysis about that subject and try to understand what the world trend about that topic is. This is a way to approach scientific literature.

Do you check the news you read? What is the most bizarre psychological news you have read? How much trust do you have in science? What about in psychology?

If you want me to describe in my own words a topic of psychology, please request it in the comment section.

Cited sources: if you want to read an example of meta-analysis, I published one, and you can read it at this link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389945722010814

Search on google: "top psychology journals" to know the name of some accredited journals.