We all need to be citizen scientists to guard our futures
Knowing how science works is increasingly important when we rely so much on experts answering important scientific questions honestly
You may have seen this month a news report that it may be possible to make a warp drive of the kind seen on by warping space-time around a starship, so it can travel faster than light.
Like the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, it's the kind of story that suggests science is the esoteric domain of eggheads in ivory towers, perhaps of interest but without direct relevance to the rest of us.
Compounding this impression, few job openings specify any of the sciences. Yet levels of scientific knowledge, and understanding of how science works, greatly affect the lives of you, me and everyone else.
Science, though wide-ranging, broadly involves the pursuit of knowledge that can be verified, such as through experiments. Predictions are possible, and can be extremely accurate: should you somehow leap from a high building in a vacuum, within 10 seconds you would be plummeting earthwards at 353 kilometres an hour.
Science can also be imprecise, finding it hard to pin down reality. Medical science provides several examples. For instance, after extensive research into diets, the best scientific advice for anyone wanting to lose weight has not progressed much beyond the commonsense "eat less, move more".
Even supposed medical truths can prove ill-founded. Peptic ulcers were believed to be caused by stress or dietary factors, until two doctors went against the then-prevailing wisdom and showed that most resulted from a bacterial infection. I have a strong interest in salt, as I find it helps combat my chronic sinus troubles. Well-known warnings link excess salt to high blood pressure, in turn threatening heart attacks and strokes. But, reading information online, I learn that the evidence for this is shaky; an article in last year noted: "For every study that suggests that salt is unhealthy, another does not."
