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