- The piece highlights the abundance of studies being conducted and how they can often contradict each other.
- It discusses the pressures scientists face to publish and how this can lead to biased or manipulated results.
- The lack of replication studies is mentioned as a problem in the scientific community.
- The media is criticized for blowing studies out of proportion and distorting their findings.
- The audience is also held accountable for wanting fun and sensationalized science news.
- The use of animal studies and their limitations in relation to human applicability is discussed.

- The video discusses how science is often oversimplified, even in TED Talks
- It criticizes a TED Talk by Paul Zak on oxytocin, calling it "morning show style science"
- The video highlights that the real science on oxytocin is more complicated than what Zak presented
- It mentions a flawed study that claimed driving while dehydrated is as dangerous as driving drunk
- The video criticizes the media for misreporting and cherry-picking scientific studies
- It warns against the dangers of misrepresenting science and emphasizes the importance of accurate reporting
- The video introduces "Todd Talks," a satirical take on TED Talks that presents pseudo-science in an entertaining way.

John Oliver discusses how and why media outlets so often report untrue or incomplete information as science.

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The thing we love and respect so much, we only allow scientists to be portrayed by the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nicolas Cage, and Al Pacino.

That is how much we respect them and the complexity of the work they do.

Science is constantly producing new studies, as you would know if you've ever watched TV.

A new study shows how sugar might fuel the growth of cancer.

A new study shows late night snacking could damage the part of your brain that creates and stores memories.

A new study finds pizza is the most addictive food in America.

A new study suggests hugging your dog is bad for your dog.

A new study showing that drinking a glass of red wine is just as good as spending an hour at the gym.

That last 1 doesn't even sound like science.

It's more like something your sassy aunt would wear on a T-shirt.

And when studies aren't blanketing TV, they're all over your Facebook feed, with alerts like, study finds liberals are better than conservatives at smizing, your cat might be thinking about killing you, and scientific study shows that bears engage in fellatio.

Let me know when bears start engaging in some mutually pleasurable 69ing.

Time dot com once even ran the headline, scientists say smelling farts might prevent cancer.

Which I would say was the most unfortunate thing Time ever published, but then, this is a magazine that once did a cover story on those Asian-American whiz kids.

The point is, There are now so many studies being thrown around, they can seem to contradict 1 another.

In just the last few months, we've seen studies about coffee that claim it may reverse the effects of liver damage, help prevent colon cancer, decrease the risk of endometrial cancer, and increase the risk of miscarriage.

Coffee today is like God in the Old Testament.

It will either save you or kill you, depending on how much you believe in its magic powers.

And after a certain point, all that ridiculous information can make you wonder, is science bullshit?

To which the answer is clearly, no, but there is a lot of bullshit currently masquerading as science.

So tonight, we thought we'd talk about a few of the reasons why.

And first, not all scientific studies are equal.

Some may appear in less than legitimate scientific journals.

And others may be subtly biased because of scientists feeling pressured to come up with eye-catching positive results.

My success as a scientist depends on me publishing my findings.

And I need to publish as frequently as possible in the most prestigious outlets that I can.

Scientists are under constant pressure to publish with tenure and funding on the line.

And to get published, it helps to have results that seem new and striking.

Because scientists know nobody is publishing a study that says, nothing up with acai berries.

And to get those results, there are all sorts of ways that consciously or not, you can tweak your study.

You could alter how long it lasts, or make your random sample too small to be reliable, or engage in something that scientists call p-hacking.

That's p-hacking with a hyphen, not to be confused with facking, which, as I think everyone knows, is a euphemism for fucking the Philly fanatic.

Now, p-hacking is very complicated, But it basically means collecting lots of variables and then playing with your data until you find something that counts as statistically significant, but is probably meaningless.

For example, the website FiveThirtyEight surveyed 54 people and collected over 1,000 variables, and through p-hacking the results, was able to find statistically significant correlations between eating cabbage and having an innie belly button, drinking iced tea and believing Crash didn't deserve to win Best Picture, and eating raw tomatoes and Judaism.

And the only thing tomatoes have in common with Judaism is that neither of them really feel quite at home in the upper Midwest.

But you don't even need to engage in these kinds of manipulations to get results that don't hold up.

Even the best designed studies can get flukish results.

And the best process that science has to guard against that is the replication study, where other scientists redo your study and see if they get similar results.

Unfortunately, that happens way less than it should.

Replication studies are so rarely funded, and they're so underappreciated, they never get published.

There's no reward system there in place that enables it to happen.

So you just have all of these exploratory studies out there that are taken as fact, that this is a scientific fact that's never actually been confirmed.

There is no reward for being the second person to discover something in science.

There's no Nobel Prize for fact-checking.

And incidentally, there's no Nobel Prize for fact-checking is a motivational poster in Brian Williams' MSNBC dressing room.

And for all those reasons, for all those reasons, scientists themselves know not to attach too much significance to individual studies until they're placed in the much larger context of all the work taking place in that field.

But too often, a small study with nuanced tentative findings gets blown out of all proportion when it's presented to us, the lay public.

Sometimes that happens when a scientific body puts out a press release summarizing the study for a wider audience.

For instance, earlier this year, a medical society hosted a conference at which a paper was presented comparing the effects of high and low flavanol chocolate during pregnancy.

If that sounds narrow and technical, it was supposed to be.

There wasn't even a control group of women who didn't eat chocolate.

And the study found no difference in preeclampsia or high blood pressure between women who ate the 2 chocolates.

So, there is no way a study that boring can make it to television, right?

Because that medical society issued a press release with the much sexier but pretty misleading title, The Benefits of Chocolate During Pregnancy.

And because most TV producers just read press releases, this happens.

Turns out if you're pregnant, eating 30 grams a day of chocolate, that's about two-thirds of a chocolate bar, not the whole chocolate bar, could improve blood flow to the placenta and benefit the growth and development of your baby, especially in women at risk for preeclampsia or high blood pressure in pregnancy.

The substance gets distorted at every step.

And I can only imagine how someone who watched that segment must have described it the next day.

Ooh, the news said our baby is made of chocolate and it's okay if I eat it but only two-thirds.

And it is not like the media needs help blowing things out of proportion.

Remember that time story about farts and cancer?

It turns out the study never mentioned either of those things.

It just pointed out that certain sulfide compounds are useful pharmacological tools to study mitochondrial dysfunction.

And while that time story was later heavily corrected, the scientists told us that we still get phone calls and emails from strange radio and TV shows wanting us to talk about farts.

They shouldn't be wasting their time fielding calls from drive-time DJs, Gas Man and The Beef.

Man and The Beef ♪ And there is no doubt, some of this is on us, the viewing audience.

We like fun, poppy science that we can share like gossip, and TV news producers know it.

That is why you constantly hear stuff like this.

Men, listen up, a brand new study says a woman is more open to romance when they are full, opposed to being hungry.

Anyone is more open to anything when they aren't hungry.

But you should know that study involved only 20 women.

And you cannot presume that 20 women can speak for all women.

This is science, not the United States Senate.

And then, and then, there was this eye-catching report from just last year.

A university in England says drinking champagne every week may help delay dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

They say only 1 to 3 glasses a week, not a day, a week, can be effective for your health.

No, because there's a big issue with that study, aside from the fact that if you are celebrating with champagne 3 times a week, your standards for celebration need to be much higher.

Champagne is acceptable on New Year's, Valentine's, birthdays, and if and when Henry Kissinger dies, and that's it.

But the bigger issue is, that study was performed on rats.

And how do you not also show them photos of the experiments?

You'd think they would've paired it with some cheese, but it appears they went with cocaine.

It's not the drugs that make them cool, it's their confidence.

But the truth is, while studies performed on rats and mice are undeniably useful, Their applicability to humans can be limited.

The overwhelming majority of treatments that work on lab mice do not wind up succeeding in humans, which means 2 things.

A, we shouldn't rush out to report rodent results.

And B, during lab mouse funerals, when they say, at least he didn't die in vain, most of the time they are lying.

I know it hurts to hear that, but them's the brakes, mouse.

Now, to be fair, it's not always the news media.

Sometimes researchers themselves will oversimplify the science.

Even TED Talks, which have had some amazing speakers, have also featured some morning show style science in the past, like Paul Zak's 2011 talk on a hormone produced in the brain called oxytocin, which he even gave a catchy name to.

This little syringe contains the moral molecule.

It's so easy to cause people's brains to release oxytocin.

I know how to do it, and my favourite way to do it is in fact the easiest.

We have found that people who release more oxytocin are happier.

And they're happier because they have better relationships of all types.

That's the nickname a tabloid gives a dentist who ejaculated on his sedated patients.

And second, second, there is no way that I would be happier giving 8 hugs a day.

I'm English, that is 4 lifetimes worth of hugs.

And look, by Now, you probably won't be surprised to learn the real science on oxytocin is more complicated than the term moral molecule suggests.

Because while it has been found to enhance positive emotions like bonding and trust, researchers have also found that it can enhance negative emotions like envy and bias.

So while promising, the science on this is still very much in progress, which probably explains why a recent survey of oxytocin research warned the reports about it influencing a large number of social behaviors

viewed with healthy skepticism, which is really a long, technical way of saying what you probably knew in the first place, which is when a strange man calling himself Dr.

Love offers to hug you 8 times a day, say no!

You can see just about all of the problems that I've described, plus 1 more in a study that made the rounds last year.

A new study claims that driving while dehydrated is just as dangerous as driving drunk.

Researchers say drivers who drink just 1 ounce of water per hour made the same number of mistakes on the road as those over the legal limit with alcohol.

Doctor, when I heard this, I thought, this cannot be true.

As Britain's National Health Service had already pointed out, that study was riddled with red flags, including that it was based on just 12 men, of whom data was only reported for 11, and it got funding from the European Hydration Institute, a foundation that has received over $7 million from Coca-Cola, a company that just happens to sell rehydration in the form of fizzy brown sugar water, carbonated urine, flat urine, diet urine, and grapefruit-flavored embalming fluid.

And look, just because a study is industry funded or its sample size was small or it was done on mice doesn't mean it's automatically flawed, but it is something the media reporting on it should probably tell you about.

And you may think, well, hold on, where's the harm here?

So long as I don't try to fart cancer away, or fillet a bear, no one's getting hurt.

Because think of it this way, this is a chart mapping the results of studies of things like coffee, eggs, and wine.

All of them have been linked to raising or lowering your risk of cancer depending on the study.

And everything causes cancer is not the conclusion you want to draw from science.

It's the conclusion you should draw from logging on to WebMD, where that is their motto.

Because if I were to tell you about each of those studies in isolation, at some point you might reasonably think, well, no 1 knows anything about what causes cancer.

And that is a problem, because that's the sort of thing that enabled tobacco companies for years to insist the science isn't in yet.

And if you think I'm exaggerating about the impact that this misreporting can have on our faith in science, look at an example from some of the people most guilty of it.

Because The Today Show, which lives for scientific studies, recently concluded 1 segment like this.

Like a lot of studies that we love around here, there have been a couple, especially related to women, about the benefits, as I get all serious, of whole milk.

lot of research, though, that says actually having whole milk or having whole fat dairy products actually can help you lose weight.

I think the way to live your life is you find the study that sounds best to you and you go with that.

You don't just get to cherry-pick the parts that justify what you were going to do anyway.

That's religion, you're thinking of religion.

If we start thinking that science is a la carte, and if you don't like 1 study, don't worry, another will be along soon.

That is what leads people to think that man-made climate change isn't real, or that vaccines cause autism, both of which the scientific consensus is pretty clear on.

Science is, by its nature, imperfect, but it is hugely important, and it deserves better than to be twisted out of proportion and turned into morning show gossip.

So, if they are going to keep saying, a study says, they should have to provide sourcing and context or not mention it at all.

And I know what you're thinking, well, hold on, if that happens, where am I going to get all my interesting bullshit from?

Do you love science and all its complexity, but wish it could be a little less complex and a lot less scientific?

Introducing Todd Talks, where the format of TED Talks meets the intellectual rigor of morning news shows.

What if I were to tell you all that the cure to racism is coffee?

And in my research, I found out red wine makes babies 20% more sociable.

At Todd Talks, we've raised the bar on entertainment by lowering the bar on what constitutes science.

Our scientists at the Skittles Foundation for Rainbow Tasting have done some pioneering work.

We placed 37 volunteers from Tulsa, Oklahoma on an all-Skittle diet for 6 weeks, and guess how many were killed by baboons?

2 were killed in a non-baboon-related murder-suicide.

Because you love science, but you don't want to hear its process accurately depicted on a stage.

I conducted a randomized, double-blind trial on the effects of coffee on cancer of the esophagus.

And while there were statistically significant decreases in incidences of cancer in the mice that were given the coffee compared to the control group, any definitive conclusions will, of course, have to await human trials, peer review, and replication.

I think what he's trying to say is coffee cures cancer.

You won't find our speakers at TED Talks because they're not afraid to ask the hard questions.

What if I were to tell you they were both?

What if I were to tell you they were neither?

What if I were to tell you they were both and neither?

Todd Talks feature the kinds of scientific insights that aren't just uncredible, they're incredible.

By standing butt-to-butt we can actually increase our serotonin levels.

I'm gonna come back in and give you a boost.

If you like the idea of science, you'll absolutely love Todd Talks.

People, none of what you're hearing here is science.

Science is a very slow and rigorous process that does not lend itself easily to sweeping conclusions.

Sounds like somebody needs a serotonin boost.

Todd Talks have been called insightful, inspiring, and a clear trademark infringement.

But my study shows that You seem 70% more authoritative if you're wearing a lab coat.

Because science doesn't have to be an exact science.


Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Science. The thing we love and respect so much, we only allow scientists to be portrayed by the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nicolas Cage, and Al Pacino. That is how much we respect them and the complexity of the work they do. Science is constantly producing new studies, as you would know if you've ever watched TV.

Speaker 1: A new study shows how sugar might fuel the growth of cancer.

Speaker 2: A new study shows late night snacking could damage the part of your brain that creates and stores memories.

Speaker 1: A new study finds pizza is the most addictive food in America. A new study suggests hugging your dog is bad for your dog.

Speaker 2: A new study showing that drinking a glass of red wine is just as good as spending an hour at the gym. What?

Speaker 3: That last 1... No! No! No!

Speaker 0: That last 1 doesn't even sound like science. It's more like something your sassy aunt would wear on a T-shirt. And when studies aren't blanketing TV, they're all over your Facebook feed, with alerts like, study finds liberals are better than conservatives at smizing, your cat might be thinking about killing you, and scientific study shows that bears engage in fellatio. And by the way, I'm not interested. Let me know when bears start engaging in some mutually pleasurable 69ing.

Hashtag bear pleasure, hashtag feminism. -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Time dot... Exactly. Time dot com once even ran the headline, scientists say smelling farts might prevent cancer. Which I would say was the most unfortunate thing Time ever published, but then, this is a magazine that once did a cover story on those Asian-American whiz kids.

The point is, There are now so many studies being thrown around, they can seem to contradict 1 another. In just the last few months, we've seen studies about coffee that claim it may reverse the effects of liver damage, help prevent colon cancer, decrease the risk of endometrial cancer, and increase the risk of miscarriage. Coffee today is like God in the Old Testament. It will either save you or kill you, depending on how much you believe in its magic powers. And after a certain point, all that ridiculous information can make you wonder, is science bullshit?

To which the answer is clearly, no, but there is a lot of bullshit currently masquerading as science. So tonight, we thought we'd talk about a few of the reasons why. And first, not all scientific studies are equal. Some may appear in less than legitimate scientific journals. And others may be subtly biased because of scientists feeling pressured to come up with eye-catching positive results.

Speaker 4: My success as a scientist depends on me publishing my findings. And I need to publish as frequently as possible in the most prestigious outlets that I can.

Speaker 0: Now, that's true. Scientists are under constant pressure to publish with tenure and funding on the line. And to get published, it helps to have results that seem new and striking. Because scientists know nobody is publishing a study that says, nothing up with acai berries. And to get those results, there are all sorts of ways that consciously or not, you can tweak your study.

You could alter how long it lasts, or make your random sample too small to be reliable, or engage in something that scientists call p-hacking. That's p-hacking with a hyphen, not to be confused with facking, which, as I think everyone knows, is a euphemism for fucking the Philly fanatic. Now, p-hacking is very complicated, But it basically means collecting lots of variables and then playing with your data until you find something that counts as statistically significant, but is probably meaningless. For example, the website FiveThirtyEight surveyed 54 people and collected over 1,000 variables, and through p-hacking the results, was able to find statistically significant correlations between eating cabbage and having an innie belly button, drinking iced tea and believing Crash didn't deserve to win Best Picture, and eating raw tomatoes and Judaism. And the only thing tomatoes have in common with Judaism is that neither of them really feel quite at home in the upper Midwest.

But you don't even need to engage in these kinds of manipulations to get results that don't hold up. Even the best designed studies can get flukish results. And the best process that science has to guard against that is the replication study, where other scientists redo your study and see if they get similar results. Unfortunately, that happens way less than it should.

Speaker 5: Replication studies are so rarely funded, and they're so underappreciated, they never get published. No-one wants to do them. There's no reward system there in place that enables it to happen. So you just have all of these exploratory studies out there that are taken as fact, that this is a scientific fact that's never actually been confirmed.

Speaker 0: Exactly. There is no reward for being the second person to discover something in science. There's no Nobel Prize for fact-checking. And incidentally, there's no Nobel Prize for fact-checking is a motivational poster in Brian Williams' MSNBC dressing room. And for all those reasons, for all those reasons, scientists themselves know not to attach too much significance to individual studies until they're placed in the much larger context of all the work taking place in that field.

But too often, a small study with nuanced tentative findings gets blown out of all proportion when it's presented to us, the lay public. Sometimes that happens when a scientific body puts out a press release summarizing the study for a wider audience. For instance, earlier this year, a medical society hosted a conference at which a paper was presented comparing the effects of high and low flavanol chocolate during pregnancy. If that sounds narrow and technical, it was supposed to be. There wasn't even a control group of women who didn't eat chocolate.

And the study found no difference in preeclampsia or high blood pressure between women who ate the 2 chocolates. So, there is no way a study that boring can make it to television, right? Well, wait. Because that medical society issued a press release with the much sexier but pretty misleading title, The Benefits of Chocolate During Pregnancy. And because most TV producers just read press releases, this happens.

Speaker 1: Turns out if you're pregnant, eating 30 grams a day of chocolate, that's about two-thirds of a chocolate bar, not the whole chocolate bar, could improve blood flow to the placenta and benefit the growth and development of your baby, especially in women at risk for preeclampsia or high blood pressure in pregnancy.

Speaker 0: Except that's not what the study said. It's like a game of telephone. The substance gets distorted at every step. And I can only imagine how someone who watched that segment must have described it the next day. Ooh, the news said our baby is made of chocolate and it's okay if I eat it but only two-thirds.

Speaker 3: --Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. ---Mmm. Mmm.

Speaker 0: And... And it is not like the media needs help blowing things out of proportion. Remember that time story about farts and cancer? It turns out the study never mentioned either of those things. It just pointed out that certain sulfide compounds are useful pharmacological tools to study mitochondrial dysfunction.

And while that time story was later heavily corrected, the scientists told us that we still get phone calls and emails from strange radio and TV shows wanting us to talk about farts. Which is clearly a waste of their time. They're doing valuable work. They shouldn't be wasting their time fielding calls from drive-time DJs, Gas Man and The Beef. -♪ Gas Man

Speaker 3: and The Beef ♪ -♪ Gas

Speaker 0: Man and The Beef ♪ And there is no doubt, some of this is on us, the viewing audience. We like fun, poppy science that we can share like gossip, and TV news producers know it. That is why you constantly hear stuff like this.

Speaker 6: Men, listen up, a brand new study says a woman is more open to romance when they are full, opposed to being hungry.

Speaker 0: Okay. First of all, no shit. Anyone is more open to anything when they aren't hungry. But you should know that study involved only 20 women. And you cannot presume that 20 women can speak for all women.

This is science, not the United States Senate. And then, and then, there was this eye-catching report from just last year.

Speaker 7: A university in England says drinking champagne every week may help delay dementia and Alzheimer's disease. They say only 1 to 3 glasses a week, not a day, a week, can be effective for your health. Fantastic news.

Speaker 0: No, it isn't. No. No, because there's a big issue with that study, aside from the fact that if you are celebrating with champagne 3 times a week, your standards for celebration need to be much higher. Champagne is acceptable on New Year's, Valentine's, birthdays, and if and when Henry Kissinger dies, and that's it. That is it.

That is the full list. But the bigger issue is, that study was performed on rats. And how do you not tell people that? And how do you not also show them photos of the experiments? Oh...

You'd think they would've paired it with some cheese, but it appears they went with cocaine. God, that's chic. Those are chic rats. It's not the drugs that make them cool, it's their confidence. But the truth is, while studies performed on rats and mice are undeniably useful, Their applicability to humans can be limited.

The overwhelming majority of treatments that work on lab mice do not wind up succeeding in humans, which means 2 things. A, we shouldn't rush out to report rodent results. And B, during lab mouse funerals, when they say, at least he didn't die in vain, most of the time they are lying. I know it hurts to hear that, but them's the brakes, mouse. Now, to be fair, it's not always the news media.

Sometimes researchers themselves will oversimplify the science. Even TED Talks, which have had some amazing speakers, have also featured some morning show style science in the past, like Paul Zak's 2011 talk on a hormone produced in the brain called oxytocin, which he even gave a catchy name to.

Speaker 8: This little syringe contains the moral molecule. It's so easy to cause people's brains to release oxytocin. I know how to do it, and my favourite way to do it is in fact the easiest. Let me show it to you. Come here, give me a hug.

Speaker 9: There you go.

Speaker 8: Here's your prescription from Dr. Love. 8 hugs a day. We have found that people who release more oxytocin are happier. And they're happier because they have better relationships of all types.

Dr. Love says 8 hugs a day.

Speaker 0: First of all, don't call yourself Dr. Love. That's the nickname a tabloid gives a dentist who ejaculated on his sedated patients. And second, second, there is no way that I would be happier giving 8 hugs a day. I'm English, that is 4 lifetimes worth of hugs.

And look, by Now, you probably won't be surprised to learn the real science on oxytocin is more complicated than the term moral molecule suggests. Because while it has been found to enhance positive emotions like bonding and trust, researchers have also found that it can enhance negative emotions like envy and bias. So while promising, the science on this is still very much in progress, which probably explains why a recent survey of oxytocin research warned the reports about it influencing a large number of social behaviors

Speaker 3: should be

Speaker 0: viewed with healthy skepticism, which is really a long, technical way of saying what you probably knew in the first place, which is when a strange man calling himself Dr. Love offers to hug you 8 times a day, say no! And you can see... You can see just about all of the problems that I've described, plus 1 more in a study that made the rounds last year.

Speaker 2: A new study claims that driving while dehydrated is just as dangerous as driving drunk. Researchers say drivers who drink just 1 ounce of water per hour made the same number of mistakes on the road as those over the legal limit with alcohol. Doctor, when I heard this, I thought, this cannot be true.

Speaker 0: Yeah, obviously it couldn't. Because it wasn't true. As Britain's National Health Service had already pointed out, that study was riddled with red flags, including that it was based on just 12 men, of whom data was only reported for 11, and it got funding from the European Hydration Institute, a foundation that has received over $7 million from Coca-Cola, a company that just happens to sell rehydration in the form of fizzy brown sugar water, carbonated urine, flat urine, diet urine, and grapefruit-flavored embalming fluid. And look, just because a study is industry funded or its sample size was small or it was done on mice doesn't mean it's automatically flawed, but it is something the media reporting on it should probably tell you about. And you may think, well, hold on, where's the harm here?

So long as I don't try to fart cancer away, or fillet a bear, no one's getting hurt. But I'm not so sure about that. Because think of it this way, this is a chart mapping the results of studies of things like coffee, eggs, and wine. All of them have been linked to raising or lowering your risk of cancer depending on the study. And everything causes cancer is not the conclusion you want to draw from science.

It's the conclusion you should draw from logging on to WebMD, where that is their motto. Because if I were to tell you about each of those studies in isolation, at some point you might reasonably think, well, no 1 knows anything about what causes cancer. And that is a problem, because that's the sort of thing that enabled tobacco companies for years to insist the science isn't in yet. And if you think I'm exaggerating about the impact that this misreporting can have on our faith in science, look at an example from some of the people most guilty of it. Because The Today Show, which lives for scientific studies, recently concluded 1 segment like this.

Speaker 1: Like a lot of studies that we love around here, there have been a couple, especially related to women, about the benefits, as I get all serious, of whole milk. Hey, whole milk, But it's true.

Speaker 3: There's a

Speaker 2: lot of research, though, that says actually having whole milk or having whole fat dairy products actually can help you lose weight.

Speaker 1: I think the way to live your life is you find the study that sounds best to you and you go with that.

Speaker 3: No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

Speaker 0: In science... In science... You don't just get to cherry-pick the parts that justify what you were going to do anyway. That's religion, you're thinking of religion.

Speaker 3: That is what you're thinking of there.

Speaker 0: And look, this is dangerous. This is really dangerous. If we start thinking that science is a la carte, and if you don't like 1 study, don't worry, another will be along soon. That is what leads people to think that man-made climate change isn't real, or that vaccines cause autism, both of which the scientific consensus is pretty clear on. Science is, by its nature, imperfect, but it is hugely important, and it deserves better than to be twisted out of proportion and turned into morning show gossip.

So, if they are going to keep saying, a study says, they should have to provide sourcing and context or not mention it at all. And I know what you're thinking, well, hold on, if that happens, where am I going to get all my interesting bullshit from? Don't worry, we have you covered.

Speaker 10: Do you love science and all its complexity, but wish it could be a little less complex and a lot less scientific? Introducing Todd Talks, where the format of TED Talks meets the intellectual rigor of morning news shows. Chocolate.

Speaker 11: Mmm. It will kill you. What if I were to tell you all that the cure to racism is coffee?

Speaker 1: And in my research, I found out red wine makes babies 20% more sociable. That's a baby we can work with.

Speaker 10: At Todd Talks, we've raised the bar on entertainment by lowering the bar on what constitutes science.

Speaker 11: Our scientists at the Skittles Foundation for Rainbow Tasting have done some pioneering work. We placed 37 volunteers from Tulsa, Oklahoma on an all-Skittle diet for 6 weeks, and guess how many were killed by baboons? 1. 34 people lived. 2 were killed in a non-baboon-related murder-suicide.

Speaker 10: Why do we do this? Because you love science, but you don't want to hear its process accurately depicted on a stage.

Speaker 12: I conducted a randomized, double-blind trial on the effects of coffee on cancer of the esophagus. And while there were statistically significant decreases in incidences of cancer in the mice that were given the coffee compared to the control group, any definitive conclusions will, of course, have to await human trials, peer review, and replication. Now, of course, this...

Speaker 11: I think what he's trying to say is coffee cures cancer.

Speaker 0: Yes!

Speaker 3: We did it! We finally

Speaker 11: did it! Coffee cures cancer!

Speaker 10: You won't find our speakers at TED Talks because they're not afraid to ask the hard questions.

Speaker 11: Are eggs good for you? Or are they bad for you? What if I were to tell you they were both? What if I were to tell you they were neither? What if I were to tell you they were both and neither?

Yes!

Speaker 10: Todd Talks feature the kinds of scientific insights that aren't just uncredible, they're incredible.

Speaker 9: Stand butt-to-butt with me. Boom. By standing butt-to-butt we can actually increase our serotonin levels. How do you feel?

Speaker 2: Weird.

Speaker 9: Weird. That's the serotonin working. Okay, don't move. I'm gonna step out. I'm gonna come back in and give you a boost.

How does that feel? She's speechless.

Speaker 10: If you like the idea of science, you'll absolutely love Todd Talks.

Speaker 1: People, none of what you're hearing here is science.

Speaker 12: Science is a very slow and rigorous process that does not lend itself easily to sweeping conclusions.

Speaker 9: Whoa, take it easy, pal. Sounds like somebody needs a serotonin boost. Come on, bring it in.

Speaker 10: Todd Talks have been called insightful, inspiring, and a clear trademark infringement.

Speaker 11: And guess what? I'm not even a scientist. But my study shows that You seem 70% more authoritative if you're wearing a lab coat. And I am! Thank you so much!

Woo! Not a scientist, there you go!

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah! Woo, woo, woo, woo! Woo, woo, woo! Yeah!

Woo! Thank you! Thank you so much! It's been fun. I'm not a scientist.

Speaker 10: Whoo! Todd Talks. Because science doesn't have to be an exact science.

What makes some science not as good/reliable?

What are some of the studies shown at the beginning of the show (news shows, Facebook)?

What did you learn from Dr. Love? What is the real data about oxytocin?

Are there elements of this article you just don’t trust? If so, why?

What about research done on mice and rats?

 What is the gold standard for science? Why is it not done?

What are some things that FiveThirtyEight found from p-hacking?

Where are the researchers from and did they describe the study thoroughly?

what is a short one sentance summary of it

What is the solution that John Oliver comes up with?

 What is an example of how science gets blown out of proportion?

 What is the problem with reporting on all of these studies? How is this exemplified by studies. What about on cancer?

What do you think is John Oliver's point? What types of problems is he talking about? Be specific and use examples. What is suggested that can be done to fix these problems? What can you do to not fall for the problems that are talked about in this video?

See all LastWeekTonight transcripts on Youtube

Scientific Studies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)