After seeing an article claiming that a big myth was debunked by science without documenting if such myth existed in first place, I’ve decided to write a bit about the myth label and the practice of labelling arguments as a myth. I had the impression that labelling an argument as myth was instrumental to bad scientific discourse, and I’ll try to document and detail this hypothesis.

A myth label. could be highly dismissive from a scientific point of view. In scientific discourse a myth is an unsubstantiated popular belief that can be easily falsified by science. Form a discourse point of view, labelling something as a myth could give the impression that it is not worth exploring, documenting, presenting it, but that it’s just worth debunking.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the means and skills to research this practice extensively. what I’ll try to do is to provide examples of how this label is used and try to argument and hypothesize how it could affect scientific discourse.

I’ll try to present my reasoning on the topic as clearly and openly as possible, to let you follow it and, in case, to let you discuss it and criticize it.

To search for examples of articles that label an argument as myth, I have selected three scientific topics that are stirring controversy, since I think that the myth label might be misused more frequently and might damage discourse more if the topic is highly divisive; especially if the public debate on the topic tends to be entrenched and stuck. Those topics are also close enough to my specialization, so that I can discuss them somehow comfortably.

These topics that I’ve selected are:

• GMO and sustainable agriculture,
• Climate change,
• Vaccines,

Last, I would like to put forward some disclaimers:

I don’t want to suggest that public discourse on those three topics is at the same level and at the same point. The dialogue on these topics is different every topic presenting its peculiarity and challenges. While the debate on GMO, and intensive vs sustainable agriculture is, although entrenched, more open, with both sides bringing interesting points of view, the debates on vaccines and on climate change, or especially the opposition and denial side, has lost a bit of scientific relevance, but it can still bring great examples of how science is discussed in public.

Within those topics, I’ve selected articles (unfortunately with a google search, if anybody has any idea on how a search for web content more reproducible, please let me know) that have the word “Myth” in the title or subtitle and that comes from a widely respected popular science magazine, or from a respected newspaper that deals with popular and public engagement on science topics.

Myth Labels

These are the articles that debunk myths that I’ve found.

Below I’ll try to quickly discuss how they deal with the myth that they present: if they document it, if they analyze it and in case how. I’ll try to do it in a way that is independent from the meaning of the argument that is labelled as a myth: while I agree with some of the arguments that are labeled as myth and I do not agree with other, I trued to be impartial (and I might have failed miserably on this side).

I’ll present a critique of several popular science and public engagement articles. Please, don’t take my position as a judgment of the article itself, my criticism will be tightly restricted to the use of the myth label. Moreover, a bit on purpose I choose articles with high scientific level and content, instead of the sensationalist ones.

GMO and sustainable agriculture

I’ll try to bring three article as an example.

The first article is published by from phys.org and is basically a press release on a “Wheat myth debunked by a major new study”. It is a bit unfair to criticize this article because it is not an argumentative analysis on the topic. The article discusses a peer reviewed publications that studies how modern wheat varieties outperforms old varieties even under low input conditions. The article links to a reliable and extensive peer reviewed study, but fails completely to document if the “Wheat Myth” that is referenced in the title exists at all.

The second article discusses three myths on modern agriculture. This small articles introduces the existence of three myths on intensive agriculture (that it currently feeds the world, that it is more efficient the small scale agriculture and that it is necessary to feed the world). While the article debunks the myth correctly, with links to peer reviewed research that “proves” the ‘myth’ wrong. It does nothing to document the existence, the content and the extensions to which these myth are diffused in first place.

The last article on the topic deserves a bit more attention: it is titled The GMO-suicide myth. This long, documented and argumentative article is highly critical toward anti-GMO activists and them linking GMO cotton and farmers suicide in India. The article confutes a direct link between the two, but agrees that there is a incredibly high suicide rate among Indian farmers.

This article tracks down the origin of the “GMO suicide myth” to the writings of Vandana Shiva, and refers to a couple of her articles. In details: this article issued on the Huffington Post and her book “Biopiracy”. In this case the existence of arguments being confuted (by anti-GMO protesters) and their origin are documented.

But, does the myth label tricks us into dismissing their arguments too easily? Shiva’s article on the Huffington post article proposes a much wider critique of trade liberalization, of seed intellectual property and how it is incompatible with farmer saved seeds, it details the unfairness of the subsidy system at a global level, and hints to potential unsustainabilities of the GMO system.

For all the criticism of the myth and it’s origin (detailed in the section “Anatomy of a Myth”), it is rather funny that the “GMO-suicide Myth” article reaches conclusions that are at least parallel to the ones of Vandana Shiva, whose arguments are being debunked. With one criticizing the financial system under which Indian farmers are working and the other attacking an unfair trade system.

Climate change

Climate change is (unfortunately) a highly divisive topic at this moment, and labelling arguments as myths might be attractive on both sides of the confrontation.

I deliberately choose a high level article that criticizes the argument of the climate change hiatus. The article debunks the hiatus argument, or the concept that global warming is slowing down or temporarily on pause. It does it with strong scientific arguments but it gives little detail on who supports the myth.

The myth is presented in an twitter video excerpt and in a speech of US Senator Ted Cruz. The article also links to a peer reviewed research paper that documents and confutes systematically hundreds of research paper that propose the concept of hiatus. Meaning that the myth is debunked in detail and convincingly.

An interesting extension and further dwelling into the arguments of climate change denial could be an exploration of its cultural (and maybe economic interests) bases. When scientific dialogue goes beyond reasonable doubt, and discourse get stuck, then an investigation of the cultural origin of the “myth”, could yield interesting results.

Vaccines

I didn’t dare to collect articles that label vaccines effectiveness as a myth, so I’ll check only one side of the argument.

Of two articles labelling arguments from vaccine opposition groups, one appeared on The Guardian and one on Science, both present a documented and fair approach to the position that they label as myths.

The article on The Guardian, which to be fair is rather old, describes how a real case of a vaccine caused disability was being hijacked by sensationalist press for unrelated claims. The argument labelled are the risks of MMR vaccine and its alleged links to autism, which are rather convincingly debunked.

The other article appeared on Science labels four arguments against vaccines as myths. It details how this arguments were born, and why they are convincingly considered myths.

I actually don’t have great criticisms toward those articles. Tough, I would like to point out an alternative approach to anti-vax that does not rely on myth busting, but rather treating their arguments as a phenomena and on characterizing and analyzing them.

For example, this article from the Verge describes a research approach on documenting and studying opposition to vaccines on social media. This analytic approach toward arguments that go beyond scientific doubt might be fruitful. They imply understanding the basis of the myth, how is communicated and how we can face it. but more on that later.

My considerations

Above you can find examples of arguments labelled as myths in high level popular and divulgative science articles. I had the impression that those journals use the myth label much less often than sensationalist magazines and websites, but this is an other hypothesis that at this moment I don’t have the skills to check.

I would like to stress again that this is not a critique of those articles as a whole, but of the pitfalls of the myth label.

I also didn’t check for “myth” labels in peer reviewed articles, I would expect them to be used even less. Although research is done and published in peer reviewed articles, I would suggest that also popular science articles could influence strongly scientific discourse and the scientific research process.

Critique of the Myth Label

With the articles above, I’ll propose this hypotheses and critique. The myth label dismisses the arguments too lightly and easily, and this it put writer and reader to the risk of:

• straw man arguments, that attack a non existent argument, or an extrapolated position.
• Invisible shared assumptions, that, left unquestioned, lead to non objective conclusions. When one side of dialogue is neglected.
• Debunking, instead of approaching, describing and analyzing the argument.

I’ll argument below.

Straw man argument

You make a straw man argument when you discredit an argument that you attribute to your opponent, but that your opponent never supported.

Proceedings by straw man arguments could be deleterious for such a delicate process as the public discourse on scientific . The articles above have moderate risk to expose their readers to straw man arguments, especially if they do not document the source of the argument labelled as myth and who supports it (it might be one that never really existed, it might be a marginal one, or one that is already losing supporters).

Especially the first two articles do not document the existence of the myth they debunk. The third, on “GMO suicides” documents the existence of the argument labelled as myth but it fails to report and discuss a wider discourse that is carried on by the most authoritative supporter of that argument.

Objectivity as a social result

Besides a voluntary straw man argument, labelling an argument as a myth could expose both the reader and the writer to the dismiss it too easily. I would like to hypothesize that this might be happening in the article on “GMO suicide” and in the second article about vaccines (in the last myth that gets discredited).

As documented by the work of Helen Longino, objectivity is a social result.

Objectivity is a social result because parts of the scientific process are subjective to our personal background and our personal beliefs. Mainly, when we formulate an hypothesis we often rely on our assumptions; the same observations under different hypotheses and assumptions can lead to different conclusions. Only a properly nurtured scientific criticism and dialogue that is inclusive to people from different background and different points of view yield objective results.

Scientific conclusions that are not discussed in a properly diverse context are vulnerable to the “invisibility of the shared assumption”.

Wrongly labelling an arguments that appears borderline as myth, could exclude it from the scientific dialogue, together with the people supporting it. The remaining part of the scientific community, since not exposed to the issues of its assumption, could risk to proceed a sub-optimal scientific path.

That’s why I hypothesize that labelling an argument as a myth, could exclude part of society from dialogue about it and could expose us to invisible shared assumptions.

Myths as myths

Once we have excluded straw man arguments and once we have questioned our position enough to be sure that it is not the result of an invisible shared assumption of our scientific community, at that point, the argument that we are facing could indeed be something similar to a myth.

And here comes a bit the fun part. I think that a myth is much more than a fake story, a myth is much more than some random incongruence. A myth is a story that, even if disproven, resonates in society for specific reasons (agree or not agree with them). Thus debunking a myth might not be a sufficient or fruitful approach. Maybe a myth must be observed, studied, analyzed, understood and challenged.

A myth is a powerful story that, according to Jung, manifests our “collective unconscious”, or, according to Joseph Campbell, carries key functions in our society such as validating and the existing social order. Maybe some of those arguments that we scientists label as myth, have the same power of those ancient myths.

Ancient myths pervade our society and, especially the Greek ones, they get constantly retold, from romantic paintings, to children books, to psychoanalysis, from movies to music and theatre.

The most interesting and exemplary approach toward ancient myths might come from feminist critique. A myth if analyzed tells us important concepts and paradigms of the society that built it. Once the myth have been understood, it can be faced and, in case, transformed and appropriated. What could we learn from this approach?

Indeed there are examples of an analytic approach to the “myth” arguments against climate change and against vaccination on social media. These analysis try to face and describe how those “myth” are communicated in society instead of just trying to debunk them.

This approach could help understand how those arguments thrived. Is there a social issue, a cultural issue that helped the myth to spread? Can those issues be addressed? Can those arguments be redirected toward fruitful social critique? The opposition to vaccines for examples, could highlight some issue with our healthcare or pharmaceutical system. In this way, those “myth” arguments, could be might also be protected from economical and political exploitation.

Conclusions

In this post I propose some hypothesis and some clumsy critique on how the myth label could affect scientific discourse.

I’ve collected 5 articles that label an argument as myth in the title and I tried to detail the widely different ways in which they deal with it.

In my opinion labelling an argument as myth could expose the reader, but also the writer to multiple risks:

1. Straw man arguments.
2. Invisible shared assumptions.

If those two possibilities have been carefully addressed and excluded. The “myth” might indeed come from a fixed discourse that goes beyond scientific arguments. It could therefore be something similar to a myth: a story that, no matter if disproven, resonates in us because radicated in our experience, in our culture or in our society (and that it could be exploited for monetary interest).

If this is the case, rather then debunk them, it might be interesting trying to analyze them. Myths are rich in information, they might suggest a way out of them, they might hint to some important society issues hidden within them, and eventually they could be faced and addressed, like feminist writers did in last decades for the myth of ancient Greece, instead of just debunking them.

PS

Some of the articles linked in this post are paywalled, please, do not try to access them with alternative methods. Wink wink (^_−).