[Applause] hi my name is rolina and today I want to give you a story of me and journalism so it all started on one hot summer day during living skills class and my teacher threw this question to us what are GMOs and no it does not stand for OMG spells backwards however GMOs are stands for genetically modified organisms when this question was thrown through to the class a debate arose in the class and the general consensus was that GMOs are deleterious or harmful to our health we learned about the seralini study published in 2012 which
reported that when rats were fed genetically modified corn they started developing tumors so I decided that day that I really didn't want to get giant tumors and even if I was going to get them I didn't want to get them from eating corn I mean at least it has to be chocolate or something tastier so I went back home and did my research to my surprise I found that after cini's paper was published the the methods and conclusions me was harsh criticism from the scientists in the field this discovery shocked me since I always believed
that science is irrefutable and precise at that moment I realized oh maybe not all science journalist journals are necessarily facts um in prominent scientists in the field questioned the method used in in s's paper and a statistical strength of his argument in serin's paper he used only 10 samples which is clearly not a very good sample size if you have ever studied statistics however this paper by cinis caught a national attention and ignited a national and then Global media frenzy and it wasn't just talk these chain of events led to real action Kenya an African
pioneer in genetically modified organisms issued an indefinite band for all genetically modified organisms this however over the last few years uh subsequent SC subsequent uh research by other scientists around the world show that actually genetically modified corn genetically modified organism does not have any adverse effects on rats or animals um in re a very recent meta study the in the re very recent meta study they studied 147 studies on genetically modified corn and genetically modified organism and found that genetically modified organisms actually cause benefits in terms of higher yields and cost saving agricultural production now
let's not just say that genetically modified organism had no adverse effects on our society however this do this does warn us that science is often in debate and even even among the experts even the smartest the most experienced uh even the most experienced scientists May often disagree with each other when we too quickly get excited about flashy headlines and move to action before checking our resources we may often make you reverseable damages so if all scientists were to tell the truth and held responsibility for their own findings are we going to be able to trust
the headlines that we read well let's look at some data first this graph shows compares the number of active Facebook users with the yields of on 10year Greek government bonds as you can see as Facebook users increases the Greek de Government Bond increases as well therefore we can conclude Facebook caused the Greek Deb crisis second graph um This One Compares the number of pirates per year with the global average temperature as you can tell from the graph as the number of pirates decreases per year the global average temperature actually increases therefore we can conclude Pirates
caused the global warming finally in this graph it compares the ice cream consumptions and murder rates as ice cream consumptions increases the murders increases as well therefore we can conclude ice cream cause murders each graph has a very strong regression line however are you sure that these causitive relationships are reliable if you believe so maybe think twice before ordering an ice cream next time so you can prevent yourself from becoming a potential murderer these obviously bizarre and false conclusions remind us of the strongest warning that we learn learned in statistics class correlation does not imply
causation even if there is a causitive relationship between the two variables it is often something very complicated involving a dozen of other factors when we too quickly get excited about flashship headlines it is it is often Poss possible that we may make a false consump consumptions on the variables in fact in recent Med uh in recent so and most statistics most statistics for social science are often collected through observations from which a false cost to relationship can be easily concluded well now we actually scientists are not the only ones to blame a scientific journalists are
actually actually takes complicated complicated statistical arguments and turn them into flashy headlines to capture your attention in a journalism class I took during the summer we were told to write headlines or articles that are unique and recent promotes a positive motivation and most importantly encourage catches the reader attention so it is not hard to imagine that if all if that science journalist journals are can be easily uh can be easily can be widely exaggerated if the purpose of Journalism is to get the most views well every morning we wake up we check the Google News
Twitter Facebook we we get our news from friends from the social media from the internet and we accept what we read as facts however after all it is published by a scientist was a PhD however what we don't realize is that there is a process by which science become news and news become rumors it looks something like this first a scientist published an article about his hypothesis on what he might think and what it might what he might what it might mean then it picks up by a journalist a journalist pops down and picks it
up and writes a sensational headline about what the scientists wrote after a quick interview with a scientist and before actually ever reading the paper then a second journalist reads the paper from the first journalist and writes an article about what he think about the first article these articles get spread onto the internet picked up like local news shared by friends so in this game of telephone facts gets mixc constructed quotes taken out of context and conclusions are often dramatized so if you want to read about Cutting Edge science we must do so as a grain
of salt think critically track down the original story hear both sides argument and remember that scientific findings are not necessarily facts it is our responsibility as readers as Citizens to check our resources and reconsider The credibility of each article each paper that we read before spreading it onto the social media it is the responsibility of journalists to appreciate the power that they withhold in controlling the media and which which may which may lead to irreversible damages if used inappropriately thank you [Applause]
