[11001]

I really don't want to diss your work, I respect your intentions to bring scientific discoveries to the masses, but...

This is part of a huge problem in science, the "one sentence summaries", or simple interpretations. It might be tempting to think that knowing a one sentence summary is better than not hearing about the research at all, but it's not so obvious to me.

Most (social science, nutrition, environmental science, economics, psychology etc.) research is deeply flawed. That includes study design, statistical analysis and interpretations. Politicians love to through money at scientists that look for simple straightforward causal relationships between such incredibly complex systems as human behaviour, brain chemistry, nutrition, genetics, etc. And that's why there is so little reproducible research. You won't get a right or wrong answer about whether, say, cannabis is harmful without taking into account, a person's genetics, daily stress, the use of coffee, alcohol and other substances, their diet, their level of physical activity, social life, childhood trauma etc. But that would be too hard to interpret. Instead we get headlines like "Teenagers smoking pot are (arbitrary number) more likely to develop schizophrenia" and "Cannabis has been shown to kill cancer cells", which leads absolutely nowhere, because they just delude people to thinking the scientists are answering the original question ("is cannabis harmful?"), which isn't well defined in the first place.

The necessary part of improving the current state of social "sciences" is acknowledging that simple rules rarely govern complex systems, and therefore the public should be incredibly skeptical to any headlines that report that "the scientists proved" some straightforward "law".

Source: I do data analysis for multiple research groups that include psychology research (hormones, behaviour, depression), nursing research (breastfeeding, childbirth complication) and psycho-oncology research (quality of life of cancer patients and their caregivers).

[jaan]

Thanks – I agree with your worries about misinterpretation, especially in regard to flawed study design. We're not trying to be the be-all end-all, but hopefully a decent starting point for further research into the subtleties of a specific topic. That's in addition to trying to make the science more accessible by having it appeal to a wider audience.

We're still narrowing down our content guidelines, so would love your input! Feel free to ping me.

[11001]

Maybe your website will help people see the plethora of inconsistent findings, so they can start questioning the state of science and think of "better ways" for themselves ;)