3 Lessons to Lessen the Burden of Misinformation

In the past few years, and more acutely in the past few months, the propagation of false information, propaganda and misleading content through the internet has reached unprecedented levels. Certainly, the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing storm of news, information, ideas and conspiracies has brought into focus how difficult it is for a lay person to sift through the cobweb and understand the reality of any sufficiently complex situation. As a scientist, I’m used to looking at new information with skepticism (I invite those of you who think scientists are always in agreement with each other to listen in to our lab meetings or conferences) and I find myself increasingly using a few simple, yet profound concepts, to filter the information stream and help understand the reality.

Correlation does not mean Causation: This is the idea that even if two variables appear to go up or down in sync, it doesn’t mean one is caused by the other. Often, there’s a hidden factor that controls them both, or in other cases, the correlation can be entirely coincidental. The basic method to determine causation is to study two randomly selected groups of which only one harbors the proffered Cause, and then see if only that group exhibits the Effect. This is the basic skeleton of a “randomized control” study. When analyzing a claim that A causes B, it is useful to look for a well-defined study that has the above-mentioned design. 

Once you understand this principle-you will start to question several commonly made claims. For example, every election season, incumbent politicians will claim that all the positive changes that happened during their time in office were due to their policies. Likewise, the opposition will blame the incumbent for all that went wrong during their time. This direct cause-effect claim is largely unverifiable since there are no parallel control groups, where previous policies are allowed to continue unchanged. So, the best we can do is to look at the trends that existed in the previous regime and extrapolate it based on other factors that change over time, and then compare it to the current situation. Such analyses are largely missing from the standard coverage of politics and political discourse in general. Just looking at instantaneous, short-term numbers for long-term policies does not make sense and is often counterproductive to understanding where we really stand. 

Similarly, when evaluating a policy’s effects on different groups in a society-whatever that may be-we are quick to attribute a direct cause and effect relationship. For example, a certain public welfare policy may disproportionately benefit certain sections of society-that doesn’t automatically make the policy discriminatory. Quite often, there may be other pre-existing conditions that limit the efficacy of a perfectly good policy. The importance of finding the root cause is paramount, otherwise we end up wasting resources fighting the wrong battles, while the problem persists. 

In fact, the social sciences have been historically less amenable to going beyond correlative analyses to determine causation, citing difficulty in testing human subjects under controlled conditions. In fact, The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 2019 to a group of scientists who pioneered the use of randomized controlled trials to test out economic theories and hypotheses. It is quite remarkable that economic theories are only just (in historical terms) being put to test in this rigorous, experimental framework, that forms the basis of much of our knowledge in medicine and indeed other fields of science.

Simple causes can lead to Complex effects (and vice versa): Complex systems are typically comprised of numerous components which are intricately linked to one another. An organism, a city, a community, climate, etc. are classic examples of such systems. One of the properties of complex systems is that very simple perturbations often lead to cascading and wide-ranging implications. Too often, we instinctively disfavor a simple cause that explains large-scale changes in ourselves the world around us. This is the basic reason why evolution by natural selection or the implications of climate change are difficult to come to terms with intuitively.

Conversely, looking for the simplest explanation of a certain situation may also lead us awry in the quest for the truth. Again, it’s important to identify the cause and not disregard ones because they appear to be too complex or too simple. Devastating effects on our body can be induced from one small mutation in a single protein; a slight warming of the global temperature may lead to highly unpredictable weather patterns; a single viral outbreak can lead to economic devastation and a mental health crisis across the world. 

Individual vs. Population behavior: Individual behaviors are highly dynamic and unpredictable, but the aggregate behaviors of the same individuals may often be quite predictable. This is one of the major misconceptions that prevents people’s belief in models being able to predict the aggregate behavior of complex systems. For example, it is impossible to predict when you, as an individual might be involved in a car accident in any given year, yet the total number of car accidents in your city or locality per year can be predicted to a high degree of accuracy with historical data. The dissonance between individual and aggregate behavior also means we should be skeptical of any claims of efficacy for a drug, for example, that is based on a few, isolated cases (often called anecdotal evidence). We saw this play out in the media time and again during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, with vastly overestimated claims of efficacy of several drug candidates emerging out of small, anecdotal case studies. Similarly, the failure of a tried and tested system on a single individual while worthy of investigation, is not cause enough to undermine the whole system. Many fringe movements, like the anti-vaccination cult tries to justify their actions by stoking the confusion between hard aggregate level facts versus the emotional story of an isolated failure.

This dichotomy is also a reason to doubt the culture’s obsession with successful people and their habits, rituals and lifestyle, as a means to attain success for the public-at-large. A segment of the self-help literature indeed focuses entirely on this idea. But the premise of the promise of fulfillment here, is deeply flawed, since the most successful people are genuinely outliers, whether by sheer genetic luck, environmental happenstance or by the interaction of their habits with their unique inherent qualities. Even more ludicrous is the idea that someone who is wildly successful in one field (therefore, a celebrity) should automatically have wise things to say about other aspects of society and the world in general. Given how expertise is truly attained, one should expect the opposite, in fact.

Science teaches us every day to treat every possible causal explanation (intuitive or not, complex or not, aligned with our beliefs or not-doesn’t matter!) or theory with equal skepticism, only to be dispelled by the weight of evidence. We often use correlations to narrow down the possible causes, but that is never the end-all! And, it must be tested not on a few individual units, but large aggregates of populations, with proper controls to root out the possibility of confounding effects. When we look at all the news and information being thrown at us through this lens, it helps to ground ourselves in reality rather than well-crafted fabrications. 

I have long believed that in early education, young kids should be trained in logical reasoning and the key methodologies common to all sciences-namely the systematic testing of hypotheses, before branching out into the different scientific disciplines of physics, chemistry, biology etc. After all, when you strip away the peripherals, science is actually a way of thinking about the world that lets you arrive at objective truths. And that is severely lacking in our way of dealing with the problems of the world at this point.