By: Brian Redmond, PhD
We hear the phrase “It’s scientifically proven!” all the time. You see it on television, you read it in news articles, as well as hear it on the radio and in conversations and other sources. Usually, it is being used to convince you of the veracity of some idea or usefulness of some product. Well, as Sheldon Cooper would say “that’s hokum”.
There are several reasons that phrase is hokum. I’ll start with the underlying idea and then come back to a more practical.
First and foremost, science doesn’t prove anything.
Say what?!
I’ll say that again, science doesn’t prove anything. To prove means that there is absolutely no doubt about something. In other words, the theory being discussed is completely and utterly true.
In the scientific method, while truth is the absolute goal, we can always improve our theories (e.g. explanations of the world), therefore perfect certainty cannot be known. More and more evidence can be collected to demonstrate the theory and create more confidence in it. That’s why scientists calculate statistics, to gauge that confidence in their findings and support for the theory. But the possibility always exists that new evidence will emerge and modify the theory. So, a good scientist will say something along the lines of “the evidence supports the theory that …” but will never say “My theory is proven, look at this data!” Or in the business context, “This training is proven to work!”
Related to that point, one set of data (or a study) in particular never is enough to say “it’s scientifically proven!” The main reason is as stated before that new evidence can occur and one study in particular can very easily be refuted by the one study. Similar to the way one opinion is easily refuted by another opinion. One study or set of data can have flaws. This isn’t intentional bias, it is just the nature of collecting data in a particular location at a particular time by a particular researcher with the limitations placed on the research by all those conditions. But by the law of averages such systematic error is washed out as many scientists collect data in a variety of research settings (Carpi & Egger, 2012). So, after lots of evidence is collected, then someone can say prove, but it’s still not fully accurate.
I’ll interject an analogy here from physics to demonstrate why “proven” does not exist. Absolute zero is a theoretical concept in physics where all matter stops moving (Department of Physics; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012). Moving matter creates heat. However, it has never been achieved and quite possibly never will simply because matter is always moving and there is always going to be some error in an experiment. So, while scientists have achieved near absolute zero, they have reduced the error in their experiments to half a billionth of a Kelvin degree. But technically even though they are 99.999999999% close, they actually haven’t observed absolute zero which would be necessary to say it is “proven”.
Returning to the practical reason why the phrase “scientifically proven” is hokum is that phrase is typically used as weasel words. Weasel word(s) is a term popularized by Wikipedia to describe unsupported attributions such as “some people say” or “they said”.
Who are “some people”?
Who are “they”?
Where does their information come from?
In other words, these are claims without evidence to back whatever is being claimed. In many cases when someone is using “scientifically proven” they are using it in place of actual evidence. Look closely at the fine print on the bottom of the screen for weight loss television commercials. Even though the spokesperson is saying that the diet or pill is “scientifically proven to be effective”, the fine print usually says something like “results not typical” which are the actual facts. Luckily the government started making them include that summary of their actual evidence.
To sum up: dig deeper and avoid shucksters. When someone tells you “it’s scientifically proven!” ask for their actual evidence. If they can’t provide it or it is presented in a way that makes analyzing it difficult, they are trying to scam you.
References
Carpi, A., & Egger, A.E. (2012). Data: Uncertainty, Error, and Confidence. Retrieved at: http://www.visionlearning.com/library/module_viewer.php?mid=157
Department of Physics; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (2012). Why can’t we go below absolute zero? Retrieved at: http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=17041
Unsupported attributions. (2012, April 22). Retrieved May 17, 2012 from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WEASEL#Unsupported_attributions