Science is about the story not about the facts
hello
my name is soren adamatay i’m a
professor of communication at purdue
university
and i’m here to review the myth that
science and stories
need two different types of thinking the
belief that science is only about facts
and stories are
only about fiction relies on a false
distinction
in fact science is story ready all
scientists are
if not born at least made storytellers
let me back up my claim with a few good
stories
here goes the first one once upon a time
a king and queen lived a merry life in
their kingdom
but alas they had no children despite
their many prayers and the potions they
drank
they remained barren an old midwife
heard of their suffering and sent word
that she can help
the queen hastened to meet the woman who
gave her a charm
linden bow to put under the pillow
before going to bed
promising she would bear a child in no
time
the queen did so and promptly felt
pregnant it was a custom in the kingdom
that if a midwife helps to get a child
she should be lavishly awarded yet
the queen pretended she never heard of
the midwife
when asked to pay the reward then
let us stop here what you just heard
sounds like
and is the beginning of a story yet
is it a real story or simply a linear
series of events
this distinction depends on what follows
if the queen
ignores the request and the midwife
keeps quiet this
story is nothing more than a narration
nothing of consequence
really happened more importantly nothing
we know about queens or midwives changes
our expectations are neither challenged
nor changed
queens are noble-born and powerful
midwives are born in meager
circumstances and have little power
ordinary people are ignored in medieval
times
this is what common people have suffered
throughout history
the story i just told you if it ended
with the queen’s continued pride
would be a historical fact but not
compelling storytelling however
what if after being ignored the midwife
sent
let’s say a bad messenger to the queen
in the middle of the night suddenly what
we thought we knew about the queen and
the midwife changes
the midwife behaves like a supernatural
being she has magic powers
she’s no low-born woman in a word she
violates
our expectations as does her behavior
the bad episode may trigger new actions
what if the bat told the queen that she
wouldn’t be able to carry the pregnancy
to term unless she performs
three tasks now
this is a true story here’s the
difference
a story violates expectations and
proposes
a new understanding of how the world
works
now sometimes stories use extraordinary
effects to explain what just happened
however not all stories need to be
supernatural to be stories
stories may violate expectations in
trivial ways
but are stories nonetheless
let us imagine this new scenario a mail
carrier approaches a house
and rings the bell a dog barks inside
the house the mail carrier
woof barks back now is this a story
of course it is why the mail carrier
just violated your expectations about
her role
she’s not supposed to bark at dogs the
mail carrier is supposed to
put the letters in the letterbox or at
best to ask if anyone is at home
however since the letter carrier did
something unexpected the question that
you the audience
probably asked was what might have
reasonably led her to do that
the answers or alternative explanations
that we can propose are many
the mail carrier knows the dog is
returning to her home
or she’s not a mail carrier at all but a
burglar
trying to ingratiate herself with the
dog
together the point stories always need
a before and after that adds something
new to what we
already know thus the natural
connections between the before and the
after
a term known as causality need to be
violated
and replaced with new explanations
furthermore
by providing new explanations stories
teach
in brief for a story to be a story it
must surprise the audience with an
unexpected explanation for processes
that the audience
believes they already understood in
doing so
a story teaches all good
strong storytelling teaches and teaching
by storytelling
changes the world
thinking about storytelling this way
reveals something
important about knowledge in general
new knowledge is story ready because of
this
scientific discoveries are exceptional
stories since by definition
they violate assumptions and teach us
new things
here’s one fitting example of a great
scientific story
for millennia if you ask people what
does the sun do
they will tell you that it revolves
around the earth to provide warmth
thus according to the ancients the earth
was in the center of the universe
this explanation however was not a
figment of their imagination
it was rooted in empirical observation
it was enough to spend
a day in the sun to notice that it was
the sun
that moved around you not the other way
around
it took some time for humans to notice
that although the sun and the stars did
seem to move across the sky
some heavenly objects many quite bright
followed random paths
fittingly these objects were called
planets
a greek word that translate as wanderers
mars jupiter or venus moved strangely
across the horizon
at times with the sun at times against
its path
the ancients thought that the movement
of the planets was ordained by the gods
to signal their will
thus they attempted to read divine will
using
calculations called horoscopes
however after a while scholars like
copernicus or galileo
using data gathered by the previous
generations including for horoscopes
proposed that it might be in fact the
earth that moves around the sun
similarly the planets might not be
anything else but
earth-like bodies that also move around
our sun at speeds and trajectories that
are different from our own mathematical
calculations based on careful
observations show that
all the apparent vagaries of the
wanderers
were optical illusions the same was true
for the sun too
its movement was no more real than the
illusion we experienced when
waiting on a train we think we have
started moving
only to realize that it is the train
next to us that has in fact
left the station suddenly the old
explanation
earth is the center of the universe was
violated and more important
a new explanation for the puzzling
vagaries of planets was offered
two birds were hit with one stone the
history of science is brimming with such
events in fact by definition science
thrives
on originality and expectation
subversion
in turn science constantly violates
expectations and proposes
new explanations that move humanity
closer to knowing
more about the universe
scientific stories need however more
than insights
they demand data science is the rigorous
analysis of data to discern
new causal patterns for example
100 years ago heart attacks were seen as
either accidents or the product of old
age for many generations the
relationship between
eating right artery disease and heart
attacks was unknown
in fact being plumpy was a sign of
health in some cultures
it took many years of research to
realize that eating a lot of saturated
fat
such as that found in large cheese or
some meats
in general over-indulgence can thicken
and block
heart arteries this leads to heart
blockages
and death one researcher ansel
keys realized this by comparing the
diets of americans of northern european
descent and japanese people
although both sample populations were
laborers
the northern americans had much higher
heart attack rates
the cause the northern american diet was
too rich in cholesterol provided by fat
cancel keys insight was further
validated by the data
when he observed that the us-based
japanese population that switched
european
american diet developed heart disease
at higher rates the relationship between
science and stories however
is not a one-way street it is not only
that
good science makes good stories but good
stories can lead to scientific
progress let us take the story of
treating breast cancer due to
prudishness breast cancer was a taboo
subject
until a few decades ago furthermore as a
kind of cancer that an
excision can take out surgical
procedures were preferred
even if they did not cure the illness
thus
few talked about breast cancer and when
it was a topic of conversation
it was a very private matter of intimate
surgery
although easier to detect and treat than
other tumors breast cancer had a
relatively high fatality rate
as recently as the 1960s only one in
four women survived more than 10 years
after diagnosis
during the 1970s however something
changed
more and more women including highly
visible figures such as the actress
shirley temple black and first lady
betty ford
publicly discussed their struggles with
breast cancer
this spurred public interest in the lack
of attention given to breast cancer
furthermore the public story challenged
ignorance of the past
some proposed that more can be done
including therapy to increase the rate
of survival
and even cure for breast cancer this led
to more research
more funding and more scientific
progress
currently more than 80 percent of women
diagnosed with cancer
survived more than 10 years a research
project conducted by corbett and mori
showed that over 30 years 1960 to 1990
extended media coverage led to a
virtuous circle
generating more funding and research
which spawned
more media coverage we started with the
definition of storytelling that focused
on violating
expectations who would have thought that
stories are not
only intimately connected to science
but can also change the world we found
that new explanations
attract public attention and teach
unveiling the mechanism that turns
narratives into remarkable stories
then we discovered that moving the
mountains of
all beliefs with new findings is
specific to data analysis
in science in general the conclusion
should be simple
all scientists are natural storytellers
never tell anyone if you are a scientist
that all you care about
are the facts what you should really
care about
is the story