When Science Turns Fairy Tale

by Ariel Anton

For this discussion, I decided to cover some of the points that were brought up in episode 9 of the Technically Human podcast. Professor Donig and Carl Zimmer discuss the reality behind the idea of genetic manipulation or engineering and its role in many science fictions movies and books we see today, which, as Zimmer finds them, is actually science that is "turning into a fairy tale" because the process of reaching such scientific extremes in such fiction are unrealistic. Hollywood has made the genetic-engineering side of science fiction as shocking as possible for an audience, like the accomplishment of reviving dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, which covers the fact that such shocking and terrifying genetic experiments have already occurred in society. Zimmer notes the eugenics project in Nazi Germany as one of these genetic engineering experiments that, when actually understood, is absolutely vile and disturbing. I think this was a very interesting point that Zimmer brought up in regard to how Hollywood will shy away from using historical genetic projects or research as the backbone for a script, simply because I personally hadn't really heard much about the ethical failures in human research, let alone even heard of them before until I was in a research methodology class in college. After reading more about the Tuskegee Syphilis research project and what the outcomes were of from projects on eugenics in Nazi Germany, I think these would be events significant enough to bring to a silver screen that would heighten awareness that there have always been ethical issues surrounding genetics--and the dangers are nothing new. It is almost as if society is attempting to "forget" history in medicine and genetics, and only focus on the "good" we are met with now, while expressing "bad" in futuristic sci-fi films. As brought up as a theme in the earliest units of this class, some individuals have had to sacrifice all for the good of the masses. 

Lastly, Professor Donig and Zimmer discuss the current issue with people not knowing how to read scientific literature. Personally, I've always liked reading scientific literature after a biology teacher in high school helped me understand it when I was working on a complex experiment for a science fair. I had not yet taken a statistics class, yet my teacher helped me begin to understand the significance of interpreting data and the meaning. As Zimmer mentions in this podcast, people with little experience in reading scientific literature have a hard time interpreting data, as many factors determine what makes research credible or not (like population numbers tested and p-value, for example). This struggle is something I have witnessed here in college, and many professors seem to be shocked that students are taking poor data and making claims about it that aren't backed by strong statistical support. I believe this really challenges the science community and society in general today, because one person who interprets data wrong and makes a claim on social media will, in turn, have the power to make a few or a few thousand other people panic about it. As an Agriculture Science major, I see a shocking amount of poorly backed or false claims about agricultural practices, thus, I believe that schools should begin encouraging teaching more statistics and data interpretation in science classes--at the latest, in high school--so that individuals aren't so quick to believe what a news headline reads.