How to explain science using Law & Order.

So, yesterday I got into a YouTube comment argument (yes, I KNOW, I know, I shouldn’t be in YouTube comments in the first place, much less engaging anybody there) with someone about the non-link between vaccines and autism. A raw food personality that I generally agree with mentioned in a video about vaccines being linked to autism, and I fired off a comment immediately, basically saying, “UM, NO.” It’s common knowledge that Andrew Wakefield’s study was retracted by the medical journal in which it was published and that he himself was subject to a medical misconduct inquiry. The ruling: Wakefield and two of his team members were found to have “acted dishonestly and irresponsibly” and shown “callous disregard” for the children in the study. (See this article in Time for more details.)

In other words, his study was found to be total bollocks.

One of the channel’s followers said that she “disagreed” with science, and that since I hadn’t lived through someone being “hurt” by vaccinations, that I didn’t know what I was talking about. My reply: “Um . . . well, actually, as far as the study being debunked . . . I kinda do know what I’m talking about.”

The problem–or, rather, a big part of the problem–is that people seem to have dis-internalized the fact that science is not a group of conclusions that one agrees or disagrees with. I feel as though people believe that scientists sit around their labs, stroking their beards (or their crazy Einstein hair, maybe) and imagining what the universe might be like. If that’s what science was, it wouldn’t be any more viable than religion, so sure, it would be perfectly legit to disagree with science.

I’m thankful that’s not how science works. If that’s what scientists did, we wouldn’t know anything about anything.

Those of us who were paying attention in sixth grade know that science is a method that we use to learn about the world in a systematic way. I guess the big picture of this didn’t sink in for some, and explaining it never seems to help. Then, it hit me–there is a way to explain science using something that everyone loves: the show Law & Order. Feel free to use this explanation when you come across anybody who doesn’t quite get what science is about. (Substitute Dragnet, CSI, or any other police procedural accordingly.)

What happens first in every episode of Law & Order? A crime is committed, and the police are called. They get to the scene after the fact unless the timing works out so that they’re standing right there when it happens, so they don’t usually see the crime, just the results of the crime. The crime is sort of like . . . noticing an interesting event out in the world, or having a question about how something works. As a scientist, you’re a detective of the world; you want to find out more about it so you can explain it.

So, the police start doing investigative work. They gather evidence. They have to find the right evidence that leads to the right conclusions; the crime might be, say, the murder of a convenience store clerk. The police have to ask themselves what evidence would lead to clues that could solve the murder. They could ask everyone in the city if they know what happened, but that would be a grossly inefficient use of time. So they first decide to view the store’s security tapes and interview a few witnesses who were on the scene, to find some concrete information that will direct their investigation.

A scientist also starts by gathering evidence. Maybe the scientist is wondering why water freezes faster when it’s hot than when it’s already cold. (This is a true thing that happens.) It would be pretty silly to jump right into experimentation–maybe someone else already proved why this happens. Or, maybe the scientist would devise an experiment that someone else has already done, and she could read the research that’s already been done and add to it rather than re-inventing the wheel.

The police, once they’ve started gathering evidence, usually start to get an idea of who might have committed the crime. That’s not enough, of course–they have to prove it. Now that they believe they know who did it, they can narrow their focus considerably; they can get search warrants to look for bloodstained clothing, or a weapon that matches. If they find an item that provides proof, that helps their case; if they find nothing, they can’t prove their case. If they find enough nothing, they may have to start over because their idea of who did it could be wrong.

A scientist also gets an idea of why she thinks that water freezes faster when it’s hot than when it’s cold. In science, we call a possible answer to a scientific question a hypothesis. A hypothesis by itself is meaningless; just like the police can’t make an arrest without getting enough evidence to prove that the suspect committed the crime, a scientist can’t confirm a hypothesis without proving that the hypothesis is correct via experimentation. The scientist must find a way to gather data that supports her idea. She can do this by manipulating variables in different scenarios and recording the results. The results may or may not confirm her hypothesis–if the evidence is not there to be found, her hypothesis can’t be confirmed.

One of the great parts of Law & Order is that it doesn’t stop when the police catch the criminal; neither does science stop when the scientist thinks she has proven her hypothesis. The next part of Law & Order is the trial: the prosecuting attorney must present the evidence to a jury of the suspect’s peers. The scientist must do the same; the findings of the experiments are written up and published in a scientific journal, where other scientists can look at the methods, see if the data matches the conclusions, and replicate the experiments to see if they can get the same data using the same methods. If the scientist’s peers find fault with the experiments or her interpretation of the data, her hypothesis isn’t proven at all. It’s the same as the defense poking holes in the prosecution’s case, only the entire scientific community becomes the defense. They’re defending against false science being represented as truth.

Getting a “conviction” in the scientific world requires mountains of evidence gathered through correct procedure in experiments that can be replicated and found to give consistent results. And unlike the court system, there is no double jeopardy in science; a scientist can try again and again to prove a hypothesis, and the community can try again and again to either replicate or debunk the results of a study or experiment. Science can’t get off on a technicality.

Part of the disconnect seems to be that people don’t realize how much work goes into science. The detective shows don’t portray all of the grunt work that police have to do, such as interviewing dozens of people who probably won’t know anything about the crime, but who might know and thus can’t be ignored. People don’t see that science isn’t all whiz-bang discovery; there’s a lot of tedium, repetition, crossing t’s and dotting i’s, and going back over the same ground to make sure that nothing was missed. So when we scoff at people who treat science like it’s someone’s personal opinion… well, that’s why. It takes very little effort to form a personal opinion–it’s something we do automatically several times a day; it takes a lot of effort to correctly do science.

If they still don’t understand science after you’ve drawn all of the parallels, there’s only one option left: sit them down in front of a Law & Order marathon (there’s always one playing somewhere) until they get it. You may have to restrain them. Remember, this is for the good of humanity; a day of watching Sam Waterston or Mariska Hargitay is a sacrifice we may all have to make. For science.