June 18, 2024: Why we need to keep humans in scientific research, society is in a state of collective denial, and a heat dome arrives in the northeast. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | Humans tend to attribute authority and trustworthiness to machines. This blind faith could cause serious problems when AI systems are used for scientific research, either as stand-in investigators, or as human research subjects, Molly Crockett, a cognitive psychologist at Princeton University, and Lisa Messeri, a Yale University sociocultural anthropologist, tell Scientific American.
Why this matters: Using AI in research could lead to a "monoculture of knowledge," in which research shifts in a direction of what AI is good at, the scientists say. Additionally, if AI replaces human thinkers, research no longer benefits from the diversity of human thought and creativity. After all, AI is created by humans with specific points of view.
What the experts say: "There are an infinite number of questions we could ask about science and about the world," says Crockett. "We worry that with the expansion of AI, the questions that AI is well suited to answer will be mistaken for the entire field of questions one could ask." | | | How do we all go about our daily lives as distressing (and even horrifying) events play out in the world? Psychologists call the ability to "not see" social problems that should harness our attention "collective denial." Media, governmental leaders and social networks work in tandem to neutralize or evade disturbing information that threatens our emotional peace, write Marianne Cooper, a researcher at Stanford University, and Maxim Voronov, a professor at York University.
COVID case study: More than 73,000 Americans died of COVID in 2023, a higher number than from car accidents or the flu that year. Nine percent of those cases led to long COVID, for which there is no treatment and economic costs that currently rival the Great Recession. And yet the CDC has scaled back COVID testing and ended requirements for hospitals to report cases. People tend to discuss COVID with neutralizing language (the virus is "endemic" now, or referring to the pandemic in past tense), which serves to minimize ongoing deaths and hospitalizations.
What can be done: For COVID, war, humanitarian crises, climate change and all other socially distressing current events, "we need to work harder to catch ourselves in the act of staying silent or avoiding uncomfortable information and do more real-time course correcting," Cooper and Voronov write. "This starts by being more attuned to our 'everyday ignoring' and 'everyday bystanding,'" of objectively dire or urgent situations. | | | Areas in magenta are at "extreme" risk, red are at "major risk," orange are at "moderate" risk and yellow are "minor." NOAA/OpenStreetMap (CC BY-SA 2.0) | | | • Vermont will be hotter than Miami this week, thanks to a heat dome of high pressure that will cause record-breaking temperatures. | 4 min read | | | • Last week the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed a case that would ban the use of the abortion drug mifepristone. But the ruling could still be challenged in lower courts. | 4 min read | | | • Investments in clean energy will surpass $2 trillion this year--twice as large as fossil fuel spending, the International Energy Agency predicts. | 3 min read | | | • Despite the importance of technology and engineering to our society, U.S. students get very little engineering education. Engineering instruction has the benefit of teaching science, math, engineering, reading and writing in one fell swoop, writes Christine M. Cunningham, senior vice president of STEM learning at the Museum of Science, Boston. She and colleagues at the museum have created kindergarten through 12th grade engineering lessons that could be incorporated into school curricula. "Engineering increases student engagement and improves learning in science, math and literacy. It builds the kind of skills all children need—the ability to collaborate, think critically, problem solve and reflect on and improve upon their work," she says. | 4 min read | | | If you're a science lover like me, it can be overwhelming to read the news in our favorite subject area--penguin chicks dying, wildfire smoke filling the air, new diseases popping up, malnourished children without medical care, heat domes stubbornly punishing people for weeks at a time. The list goes on. I agree with the opinion authors above that we need to keep as clear-eyed a view of the world as possible. At the same time, we must care for ourselves with regular news breaks, and I hope to offer a tonic to the gloom this summer, with weekly feel-good science reads. | Send me your favorite good-news science stories: newsletters@sciam.com. We're always looking for ideas for articles! See you tomorrow. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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