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Stories are powerful influences on us. We have been telling each other stories as a way of relaying information or capturing history since the Paleolithic period when, perhaps, Og was telling the story of how he single-handedly slew a wooly mammoth. Today, among others, it is the province of writers, reporters and, of course, politicians. For many who adopt an alternative philosophy, there is a new word for stories - “Lived Experiences.” Although important, and welcome, these become a problem as they are considered to be truth that may not be challenged. They are also intended to serve as a replacement for all things objective or factual - such as is found in science.
This is postmodernism, which also goes by names including Critical Theory, Social Justice, multiculturalism or moral relativism. The stories that are considered most valid are those from “marginalized” groups including gender or sexual orientation, black or other minorities and those who have been colonized.
Lived experiences can be illuminating, valuable and persuasive, and will always have a place in our culture. But the question is: Should these stories be our sole source of understanding reality?
I recently attended the opening of a listening session as part of the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. The Webpage opens with:
“Millions of Americans struggle with hunger. Millions more struggle with diet-related diseases—like heart disease and diabetes—which are some of the leading causes of death and disability in the U.S.”
It’s been 50 years since there has been a conference like this, so I was looking forward to it. But, the opening sessions threw me. The first speaker was a woman who had recently been homeless and she talked about her “lived experience” of finding it difficult to find a healthy meal. I’m just guessing I’m not the only person that didn’t find this surprising.
I have no idea how this conference, scheduled for September of this year will go but I wonder how much lived experiences will play a role?
My concern follows from the three aspects of stories that relate to science.
They are anecdotes. Anecdotes, by their nature, cannot be verified as is required for any scientific fact. They are not “proof based on findings from systematic observation, measurement, and experimentation.”
As such, they are, at best, one data point. When I was at FDA, I had a senior manager tell me repeatedly about his particular experiences related to a rule we were working on and told me I should use his experience to form the basis of a benefits analysis. I told him that benefits were based on all of the people exposed to a hazard and I would include his one datapoint among a sampling of hundreds of thousands. He was, to put it mildly, angry.
Stories are often wrong. For example, FDA has consumer hotlines for people to report experiences they have had with regulated products like foods, dietary supplements, vaccines and drugs. There is a food hotline that consumers can contact to complain about food poisoning. FDA follows up on those reports and finds that the vast majority of the time, over 90% of people made ill by a particular contaminated food are wrong (internal study). One reason is that different kinds of pathogens have different lag times (for example, listeria monocytogenes may affect a neonate a month after consumption of a contaminated food).
The problem is, as one of my psychologist friends at FDA told me, we are “story-making machines.” When it comes to cause and effect, we are usually able to churn out a cause based on something we recently heard or two events that seem to coincide in time.
Stories cannot replace science. We invented science and scientists invented us, including computers, medicines, cars, food, televisions and rockets to the moon. It hasn’t always been positive as we also invented guns, opioids and atomic bombs. Nevertheless, scientists are continuing to discover new cures for disease, innovative foods and devices to help us choose them, robotic body parts and artificial lungs and kidneys that fail, 3D printing of everything from screws to foods to houses, driverless cars for sightless or limbless people.
We will always have stories with us and the more and more diverse the better. But they have a place alongside science if we are to continue progressing, not replace it. Og’s story was all that was needed back then.