Leadership and Science: Is there a connection?

 I gave a talk on humanistic leadership to a group of teachers a few months ago and one of them asked me, why I mentioned science and critical thinking so often in the context of humanistic leadership.  The answer is simple, you can't do good, if you don't know what is true or false. 

Being a leader is hard. It's not simply about managing people. It's about inspiring people to do their best.  And to be their best, people need good information. 

Most people think about humanistic leadership as being about ethics, and it absolutely is. But it's not enough to want to do good. To actually do good in the world, you have to come up with good reality base solutions to the very real problems you and your team face. 

And to do that, you need science. A good leader must be scientifically literate. If they are not, they are not a good leader. And yes, I'm being blunt. But it's true. 

We humans, are by and large, really lousy thinkers. We take short cuts in our thinking and we don't always reality test our thoughts and ideas.  A good leader will reality test their ideas. Why? Because the only thing worse than being wrong, is continuing to be wrong and causing suffering and death as a result.

I am writing this in late November, from the United States of America during the Covid 19 pandemic. The only thing that will get us out of this, is science. The places where the leadership is denying science, are dealing with high numbers of deaths. We are talking hundreds of thousands of people dying because some leaders are rejecting the science.

Not every decision a leader makes is life or death, but if you aren't prepared to make those decisions using the best information you can get, you should not be a position of authority.  You shouldn't be allowed to manage anything let alone, lead.

Leading people off a cliff to their deaths, is not good leadership.

But I digress. A good leader, uses science for the big and mundane decisions because knowing what is true and what is false is critical to effective problem solving. If you don't know what is really causing your problem and what will really work to fix it, you will waste time, energy and money not fixing your problem. That isn't good leadership.

Want to be a good leader, become a good critical thinker and dedicate yourself to reality based decision making. 

https://humanistlearning.com/realitybaseddecisionmaking/

Humanism and Science

 I recently did a presentation for over 7,000 teachers in a global teaching forum.  One of the questions I was asked was - why do I consider science - a required skill?

The answer to that question lies in our commitment to effective & ethical problem solving.   

In order to solve problems, we have to be realistic about what is causing those problems. If we misdiagnose our problem - we will not only fail to solve our problem, we may actually make things worse.

Since - I want to make things better - I work on making sure what I think is true - actually is true. That is where science comes in.

Science is an attempt to objectively know things through systematic study. I am currently helping my son learn math. The most important part of learning math - is to be systematic about it. If you skip a step, you introduce error. The same is true for every field of study.

Systematic - works to reduce errors. Every time you can reduce errors - you increase your chance of success.

I don't think you can be a humanist if you are NOT committed to embracing science and critical thinking. You just can't. 

The problem is - science isn't always right. Mostly - they are just - less wrong.  Meaning - scientists are dedicated to learning what they are wrong about and learning how to be less wrong.  And that's great.

No one is perfect. Being humble enough to admit you might have been wrong and looking for ways to be less wrong - is what creates progress.  It's definitely better than the alternative - which is to just - always be wrong. Being less wrong - is actually right. 

Here is an essay I wrote on this - that discussing Isaac Asimov's approach to science - which is the relativity of wrong http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-being-less-wrong-is-actually-right.html

How to read and understand a scientific paper

Scientific Literacy is required for citizenship. We cannot understand the proposals to fix our problems if we can’t tell what is true and what isn’t.

Science is a methodology. It’s about trying to figure out what is objectively true. To do that scientists use various methods to try and test for what really is happening and account for bias and other things that might be impacting whatever it is they are looking at.  Some scientists do this better than others.

This is why scientists submit their work to peer review and everyone else in their field critiques their work looking for problems. It seems adversarial, but, we all have biases and we all miss things and having other people double checking our work for mistakes helps catch mistakes. This is a good thing and something we all should welcome.

When something is reported in the news, journalists and others report what the study says. But what happens if the journalist isn’t scientifically literate? Or the editor has biases and wants a big splashy headline?  When that happens, the headlines may not be supported by the paper or the findings.

Because our lives literally depend on science it’s important that we become scientifically literate, meaning we must all learn how to read reports and papers and make judgements about whether what they are claiming is likely. We need to learn to be skeptical. In other words, we need to learn to think like a scientist, and look for reasons why the study doesn’t say what it purports to say.

I am linking to an article about how to read and understand a scientific paper for non-scientists. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/05/09/how-to-read-and-understand-a-scientific-paper-a-guide-for-non-scientists/

First things first. Get the actual paper. If you are reading an article about a study – link through to the study. Eventually you will get to a pdf put out by the scientist or their university.  It will look something like this: https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud

On this page – you should be able to download the entire paper or read the summary and introduction, methods used and key takeaways. If the key takeaways are different from reported, congratulations, you’ve passed step one.

Next, look for caveats to the findings. Scientists will always tell you what the limits of their findings are and how they aren’t valid in all sorts of situations they didn’t control for. Knowing what this paper doesn’t say – is useful and will help prevent you from believing the hype about whatever the paper is about.

Now, read the article. Yes, they are long. Yes, they use all sorts of terms that may seem complicated. But, you won’t be able to tell whether you agree with their conclusions if you don’t. And, they are often very fascinating because of things that are down deep in the data. For instance, the paper I linked to makes claims at the top that seem a bit outrageous, but as you read through and realize how they got there-  it makes sense.

If you aren’t sure whether a method used by the researchers is problematic – go and look for critiques. Not political critiques, scientific critiques. Politicians try to debunk science they don’t like all the time. They may be correct, but they may not be. Often, they are just spouting propaganda -and cherry picking the evidence. You want to know what is true and whether you can trust the politician so find out what other actual scientists say and remain skeptical.

Good luck – our society depends on all of us getting this right.

Scientific Literacy is a Basic Life Skill

What the vaccine debate can teach us about the importance of scientific literacy

On a parenting discussion board, one of the parents was discussing vaccines. She doesn't trust the government and so doesn't trust the government’s guidelines on vaccination schedules for her kid. And when presented with the evidence that the vaccination schedule is actually REALLY good and that kids and society benefit from vaccines she said this: “There are all kinds of studies that prove or disprove and it is hard to decide what to believe.”  In other words, in the face of evidence to the contrary – she is sticking to her decision.

I don’t want to get into a vaccine debate here. What I want to do is to debunk her comment that “there are all kinds of studies that prove or disprove and it is hard to decide what to believe,” because – that simply isn’t true. Anyone who is scientifically literate can figure out which studies to believe. It isn't actually all that hard to figure out which competing claims are reality based or not. It just takes a little effort to get the information and to see if there is any information debunking the claim.

Given the life or death nature implications of the vaccine debate it is clear that the scientific literacy required to judge whether any particular study is reality based or not should be considered a basic life skill.

Scientific Literacy

To figure out which competing claims are true and which are false requires a skill known as scientific literacy. Being scientifically literate is something you can learn if you make an effort to do so. To be scientifically literate means you know how to evaluate claims being made using basic science.

For instance, what constitutes a valid study? What do the statistics used in a study mean or don't mean? What constitutes a statistically significant finding? Scientific literacy also requires that you cultivate the critical thinking skills necessary so that you can recognize the most common logical fallacies and a few other thinking skills that involve overcoming personal biases in your own thinking.

Saying - it's so hard to figure it out - is a cop out. You are basically telling everyone that you are too lazy to think well and that you suffer from confirmation bias so you didn't bother to question a claim because you didn't want to have your opinions challenged by actual facts.

It's good this woman was willing to hear competing information, but having asked for that information she shouldn't have then claimed that it's too hard to figure out what is true and what isn't. It isn't too hard. You just have to put in a little effort. More if a claim confirms your personal biases as we all have our blinders.

To learn more about how to figure out if a claim is true or not – consider taking “Living Made Simpler – https://humanistlearning.com/livingmadesimpler1/