I like to think I am a rational person and that I make decisions based on evidence.  So this item by the Knight Science Journalism Tracker worried me:  “Big media splash over claim of lead in rice; barely a ripple when claim is withdrawn.  http://bit.ly/15F9rVg ”

From Time magazine to Science Daily, the media reported that troubling amounts of lead were found in rice.  But the results could not be replicated.  The original researcher found his equipment was giving bad numbers and withdrew his results (kudos to him!), hardly anyone reported that retraction.

Are you walking around afraid to eat rice because of lead levels?  If you are, never mind.

I often wonder how much junk I have collected in my head, especially when I “know” something but can’t remember how, why, or from where I know it.  The scientific method is a way for us all to share the same physical reality, beyond culture, beyond personal quirks; a way to transcend our individual limitations.  Scientists are only human, after all, or, as Stephen Jay Gould said in The Mismeasure of Man:  “science must be understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of robots programmed to collect pure information.”

I try not to get so emotionally invested in what I “know” that I stop learning.  I take it as a matter of faith that knowledge is better than ignorance and truth is better than error.  Policies based on faulty facts don’t succeed.  Whether you are discussing lead in rice, gun control, climate change, or education, does anyone really want to keep pushing ideas that don’t work?

I try to keep alert for what I know that ain’t so.

http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/ can help you keep track of retractions in published journals, especially as related to medical research and other life sciences.