Scientific Fake News: what is it exactly?

Improper information have always existed. By becoming a popular term, the expression "fake news" has alerted people and brought some useful skepticism, which is not a natural feature of the human mind. 

Evolutionary speaking, the human mind has evolved over 200.000 years of history to believe. In fact, evolutionary psychology claims that our unique ability to fantasise abstract phenomena was responsible for the species to prevail .  

As Francis Bacon once stated, "the human mind is more excited by affirmatives than negatives". And it was recently demonstrated in tweeter and published in Science: "fake news spread faster than true news".

Although we have evolved technologically and science is in the core of this evolution, the human mind did not have enough time to evolve from fantasy to skepticism. The last 500 hundred years were not enough to outrun 200.000 years of evolution. Biologically, we are believers.

The root of scientific thinking is skepticism. In science, we must have a method to overcome our predisposition to believe. This method is called the null hypothesis: we start by not believing and only change to the alternative of believe after strong evidence against chance or bias rejects the null. Being skeptical is tiresome and sometimes boring. 

This is in the center of a scientific problem: the lack of reproducibility, well described by Ioannidis in his popular PLOS One article: "most published research findings are false". And we believe them. 

The term "fake news" became popular two years ago and served as an alert for people, before becoming unpopular for political reasons. 

With a correct understanding its meaning, the term  "scientific fake news" helps against the problem of scientific reproducibility. But first, we must differentiate "scientific fake news" from "fake news". 

Fake news is created by a person or small group of people with common interest. Scientific fake news is created by a system who is defective: the creators are not alone, peer-reviewers, editors, societies and readers have to approve it and spread the message with enthusiasm. And they may do it with good intention.

Fake news has a creator who knows the news is fake. In scientific fake news, the creator believe in the message, a belief reinforced by his or her confirmation bias. 

Fake news has a creator with poor personal integrity. In scientific fake news, the creator suffers from scientific integrity, mediated biologically by cognitive bias. 

Fake news does not have empirical evidence, scientific fake news has experimental evidence that falsely suggests credibility.

Fake news is easily dismissed. Scientific fake news may take years to dismiss. It is responsible for the phenomenon of medical reversal, when improper information drives medical behaviour for years, only to be reverted after true and stronger evidence takes place. It was the case of medical therapies that were incorporated such as Xigris for sepses, hypothermia after cardiac arrest, beta-blockers for non-cardiac surgery and so on ... 

In his seminal article on medical reversal, Vinay Prasad wrote "we must raise the bar and before adopting medical technologies".

And the last difference: Donald Trump loves the term ''fake news", but has no ideia what "scientific fake news" mean. 

Well, it is not that scientific fake news is totally naive, there is also conflict of interest mediating it. But the main conflict comes from positivism bias, meaning every authors, editors or readers prefere positive studies over negative studies. 

Following description of human mind cognitive biases under uncertainty by Kahneman and Tversky, Richard Thaler came up with the solution to nudge human behaviour. Nudge means interventions to unconsciously change behaviour, with may be more effective than rational arguments. 

For example, to avoid people to cheat on tax returns, instead of explaining how important it is to pay taxes, a nudge would just say "most people fill their reports accurately". It was the most effective to improve behaviour in the UK. 

In the case of science, the expression fake news is so strong that may act as a nudge to scientific integrity. Yes, it may sound politically incorrect, but it is a disruptive nudge. Just speak about bias and chance has not been enough, as recently meant by Marcia Angell: "no longer possible to believe much of clinical research published".

Maybe we are not in a crises of scientific integrity. Actually, I think this type of discussions are becoming more frequent and we should be optimist.

But a nudge may accelerate the process: before reading any article, we should make a critical appraisal of our internal beliefs and ask ourselves: in this specific subject, am I specially vulnerable to believe in "scientific fake news"?