#norm changing

[idhren]

The Dose (December 13)

Healthcare policy debate, finally H5N1 milk testing, cancer death progress, and RSV vaccine flops.

Here’s what I do:

Recognize your goal. There is a difference between being right vs. moving someone towards thinking differently. Changing someone’s mind right away rarely happens, but showing them why science (and scientists) is something they can trust is a successful conversation, even if they don't fully accept the data.

Meet them where they are. Identify your audience’s priorities, concerns, and the outcomes that matter most to them. Frame data as a tool to advance their goals. For example, RFK Jr.’s underlying want is transparency. Data can help with that.

People don’t need more facts; they need educators and storytellers. Humanize numbers by pairing data with narratives that resonate emotionally. Stories can make data feel more relevant and harder to dismiss.

Shift the frame: Data should act as a compass, not a weapon. Rather than directly challenging their preferred studies, frame the conversation as exploring all available evidence to strengthen decision-making.

Call out cherry-picking tactfully by focusing on methods, not motives. When addressing poorly designed studies, emphasize scientific rigor without attacking intentions.

[idhren]

The Ginsburg Tapes is a podcast about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s oral arguments in the Supreme Court—before she became #NotoriousRBG.

Specifically, from 1972-1978, Ginsburg argued six cases in the Supreme Court.  In each case, she and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project brought constitutional challenges to laws treating men and women differently.  Ginsburg’s goal was to show the ways in which laws which seemed on their face to benefit women actually perpetuated stereotypes and held both sexes back from full participation in American life.

[idhren]

Master female artisan broke the male-dominated mold in ancient Greece

Three-thousand-year-old remains suggest Cretan woman was a master potter

Potterymaking in ancient Greece was a male-dominated profession, but about 3000 years ago, one woman from the island of Crete broke the mold to become the only known female master ceramicist in antiquity.

[idhren]

see me again and I am galaxies the star-stuff of thought great expanses of nothing studded with particles see me again and I am city peopled with diverse communities of citizen symbiotes see me again and you can't— I am too small lacking contrast my signal indistinguishable from noise (but I never needed you to see me to occupy space as me) ___ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

[idhren]

[Text: “Progress in science — as in any creative discipline — is not a direct march to the answer, but a complex zigzag path, involving many false starts and blunders.”—Mario Livio]

Astrophysicist Mario Livio is the author of Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe. As he wrote in an article of the same name, continuing from the line quoted above, "Blunders are not only inevitable; they are essential to innovative thinking, because they point the way for other explorers." Photo & handwriting above are mine.