Truth and Objectivity

Truth is a funny thing. When you’re young, it’s pretty simple -- you’re telling the truth or you’re lying. Despite our penchant for fibbing even at a young age (yes, Mom, I lied about not eating the Cherry Chapstick), the concept itself is easy to grasp. When you’re older, truth gets more complicated. It becomes more tied into Truth. With a capital T. I think I was around sixth grade when all this came into focus for me - the grays of life versus the simple black and white. As an anxious and thoughtful kid, this kept me up at night. Were there universal Truths? Was it really as simple as a fib versus a lie? How could something that one of my friends knew to be The Truth ring so false to me? I mean, some things had to be true. Gravity, science, history - those things you learned in school. At least those were true and concrete. Right?

As I got older, figuring out the Truth was less likely to cause sleep deprivation, but it was still something I grappled with. In journalism, objectivity is one of the most basic principles. And why shouldn’t it be? Each article should be unbiased and objective, naturally. And when you're uncovering and reporting on facts, why would anything else get in the way? But when truly prodded, the idea of true objectivity seems suspect. Obviously a journalist should try to remain objective, but it's hard to imagine not being swayed by your own perspective and lens. I don’t mean lying about a fact, or intentionally taking someone out of context. But your view of the world is going to affect your interpretation of everything within that. It will affect your telling of the story.

I wrote a story for my senior capstone about student loan debt and its impact on society. This was not a biased article - everything I wrote was truthful and accurate and researched. But even the topic reveals my beliefs. Let’s be honest: would someone who did not believe in the value of education and the importance of economic equality write that article? Um, probably not. I don't think this makes it any less valuable as a piece of journalism.

Life is not so simple. It’s full of squishy unknowns and countless question marks. “We hold these truths to be self evident...” hell, we can’t even agree on what those truths are.

I just read an interesting piece in the New Yorker “The Truth Wears Off” by Jonah Lehrer (sorry non subscribers, it's not available in full online). The article is about a phenomena, sometimes referred to as the shrinking effect, that reflects the tendency for the effectiveness of a study to decrease over time. Meaning scientific results become less scientific and more ...chance as they’re repeated. Initial data surrounding a study might appear robust and supportive, but it will decay over time. So even “truth” -- even science - isn’t so infallible. To quote Arrested Development, skewering the absurd: “I hear the jury’s still out on science.”

Of this disturbing decidedly unscientific shrinking effect, Leherer wrote: “If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved? Which results should we believe?” He added “It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable.”

In the article, one scientist, Michael Jennions, who has studied the decline in the truth of these studies explained his hesitancy in discussing the matter: “This is a very sensitive issue for scientists,” he said. “You know, we’re supposed to be dealing with hard facts, the stuff that’s supposed to stand the test of time. But when you see these trends you become a little more skeptical of things.”

I get that. Who are scientists without Truth and facts? Who are journalists without objectivity?

I think rather than denying it, it's important to acknowledge that nothing is infallible and a hard truth, and try to pursue the best truths we can. Keep testing the scientific data. Keep questioning everything. In the end, isn’t truth really about who you choose to believe?

Global warming seems so obviously true to me - it is the “Inconvenient Truth” after all (even though I actually never saw that movie. Oops). It’s been proven by scientists. By scientists. But what if I’m wrong and science is wrong. ….these people who don’t believe in global warming, aren’t just pulling my leg (which, honestly, sometime it feels like) they believe it to be the truth. Maybe evolution really is a lie and someone is just planting dinosaur bones to throw suckers like me off course. I guess bully for all those folks who have been tsking the idea of evolution. I’m going to have some apologizing to do in the end.

I believe in science and the scientific method as a Truth. But I’m sure some people believe just as strongly in religion.

We sort of just form lots of small truths around a few big truths and stick to it.

The main reason these scientists were found to get these positive results in the beginning with a decline later on, is simply because we like proving ourselves right and hate to be wrong. On the one hand, I feel like I was raised with the belief that science was above that. But at the same time, it’s kind of a “doi!” statement. Everyone likes to be right. Sure some of us are more stubborn than others. (Ask my family, I fall on the “...as a mule” side of this coin.) But in general - who likes to be wrong? No one likes to be wrong when they’re arguing a point. I mean, how many times have you gotten out your iPhone to prove on Wikipedia that a nectarine is not a peach and plum combined? But more to the point, no one wants to be wrong on something they truly believe. One of their tenets. A scientist who has spent their life trying to find ways of preventing heart attacks is going to find that daily low dose asprin is effective. Not because they are lying but they’re going see the pattern. They’re going to pursue their truth.

I was listening to a recent This American Life, “Last Man Standing”. On it, a young Mormon woman talks about her crisis of faith. When she believed in God, so many signs pointed to His existence: a perfectly-timed shooting star, or clearing of the clouds. Now, without the faith, she remains unswayed by the same occurrences. She spoke to a man who believed he’d had a UFO encounter. He, too, believed every day things were supporting his truth. Sometimes there’s science to back it up, sometimes we write and article and sometimes there’s just a shooting star. The Truth May Be Out There, but it also might just be each one of our own, slightly slanted truths. For the record, I’m still siding with science, though.

Welcome back.

The last post I wrote was over a year ago. Now that my job requires extensive writing every day, there’s less incentive to come home and write more. Plus, why write an entire post analyzing an article, when I can simply post it to Twitter with a hashtag, succinctly and wittily summarizing my feelings about whatever I’m sharing. You know, like: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/8045747/ #lolz.

In the past year, nearly everything has changed for me: new job, new city, new cat. OK, maybe that last item is not on par with the other two -- but essentially my life has taken a 360, or 180, or some significant turn.

I work in PR now, which is either the exact opposite of working as a journalist or just a different slice of the same pie. I go back and forth in how I think about it. This move does really mean an official exodus from journalism for me. While on some level there’s relief about escaping a sinking ship, I still sometimes get the feeling I really still belong at sea. While journalism is still in an incredibly shabby state, things seem a bit less dour at this point compared with a year ago. For one thing, compared with 2009, when 596 magazines folded (including Gourmet and a number of other Conde Nast titles), 2010 actually saw more magazines launching than folding (193 to 176, respectively). I also woke up this morning to find a Groupon for a New York Times subscription in my inbox. $24 for eight weeks of the Sunday Times -- maybe that’s going to save the newspaper industry?