Regarding the percentages that are presented these days on the effectiveness of some vaccines in development to combat the Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, many scientists and bioethicists are denouncing the treatment of information carried out by the media, which, in addition to being biased, incomplete and poorly explained, is based only on press releases, and not on studies.
Others argue that people are hungry for optimistic news. However, if we mix unjustified optimism with credulity, then the result can create an emotional roller coaster (of highs of optimism followed by lows of pesismo because the promised results have not arrived) that pessimism will finally increase.
Stockdale Paradox
When the Minister Salvador Illa suggested that perhaps at Christmas we would receive the gift of the COVID vaccine, was probably trying to convey hope to the Spanish (hopefully that's what it was, and not a statement resulting from ignorance). However, given that the vaccine is not going to arrive on those dates, and may not even arrive next year, Offering such hopes that will soon be dashed can cause harmful side effects..
It is what describe the Stockdale paradox: a concept popularized by the writer Jim Collins in his book Companies that stand out taking as a reference Admiral James Stockdale, the highest-ranking American prisoner of the Vietnam War. During his captivity, Stockdale found out what kind of prisoners died the most: Those who kept repeating: “calm down, we'll get out of here, take heart, we'll be home by Christmas.”
Then Christmas arrived and the forecast was not fulfilled. But then his forecast jumped to another date. And so on until the prisoner surrendered.
![[Libros que nos inspiran] ‘¿Esto es paranormal? Por qué creemos en lo imposible’ de Richard Wiseman](https://i.blogs.es/641ba1/esto-es-paranormal-9788492981540/375_142.jpg)
Maintaining skeptical thinking is not an easy task. In fact, in general, it is so unnatural and counterintuitive that it is reminiscent of the sisyphus myth: the one we neglect, we have to start over. But it is something that we must do with the news of this type that the press publishes, based on simple pharmaceutical notes. But it is not only the way to avoid Stockdale's paradox, but also to avoid self-deception.
Thanks to different surveys, today we know how ignorant the general population is in matters of science. Today, almost half of adults in the United States believe in astrology, in angels and demons, and that we are being observed by aliens arriving in UFOs who frequently abduct human beings.
This happens because our brain is not very efficient when it comes to analyzing information and tends to be biased, self-deceived, filling gaps of ignorance with myths and establishing causality where there is only correlation, as I already denounced. Francis Bacon in its Novum Organum:
All superstition is the same whether it is about astrology, dreams, omens, retributive judgment, or similar, in all deceived believers they observe events that come true, but refuse to see their flaws, even though they are much more common.
If one of the most important filters for determining whether something is true or false, the press, is not working properly, we are lost. Let's not allow it. Let's be skeptical, realistic, optirrealists, and if the media does not do it, let us look for the information in better sources, always remembering the words of Carl Sagan and a kind of eleventh commandment. A vaccine as necessary as that of Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2:
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The news
Be wary of overly optimistic news because excess optimism causes pessimism, also with vaccines
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.