Asya Kazantseva someone is wrong. “Someone is wrong on the Internet! Scientific research on controversial issues” Asya Kazantseva. Why are we wrong?

Last winter, it was difficult not to notice the book of the scientific journalist Asya Kazantseva - everyone was talking about it (and with her, that is, with Asya). Its popularity is quite understandable: we entered the Internet age as an immature society, without getting rid of popular fears and ideas. There is definitely someone around us who believes that vaccinations cause autism, watching a movie on TV can make you gay, homeopathy is healthier than traditional medicine, and the terrible GMOs will bring us to an early grave. Kazantseva calls all these topics holivars. It would probably be more correct to call everything that she refutes simply nonsense. It is important here not to succumb to the feeling that Kazantseva calls “the feeling of cognitive ease” - when we believe in something simply because it is convenient to believe in it. And Asya Kazantseva’s book is not about the fact that we won’t actually die from GMOs, and we won’t be cured from homeopathy. First of all, it gives a lesson in critical thinking - necessary for everyone who at least sometimes goes online or just turns on the TV. Give this book to your grandmothers when the second edition arrives!

Lisa Birger, The Village

Asya Kazantseva looks like a classic “nerd” with glasses, so under the influence of the cognitive stereotypes that I learned about from this book, we will in any case be inclined to believe everything she wrote. However, she carefully substantiates each of her statements, and the negative part of the stereotype about “nerds” in relation to Asa is generally incorrect - she has excellent style and a great sense of humor.
In a sense, what Kazantseva and the Anti-Corruption Foundation are doing is similar: using open sources and a little free time, it is easy to prove, based on facts, that officials in Russia are corrupt, and products with GMOs do not threaten you with either gills or hooves.
It will be great when we all, before believing the news on TV or the healer with his miracle medicine, begin to engage in critical thinking and the ability to use an Internet search engine.

Alexey Navalny, head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation

This time, the winner of the Enlightenment Prize, researcher and scientific journalist Asya Kazantseva set about debunking popular myths that permeate both the media field and our everyday life: the author consistently and clearly explains that vaccinations do not cause autism in children, homeopathy only works as a placebo, and GMOs do not cause cancer.
Perhaps one of the most relevant chapters in the local context is the discussion of homophobia, innate sexual orientation and raising children in same-sex marriages. In the space of incessant information noise, the spread of misconceptions and disinformation, Kazantseva’s book becomes an important, and for some, a must-read text.

Genre:

Book description: Asya Kazantseva is a young journalist developing the scientific direction of this genre. Her strong point is to tell the reader about complex things simply and clearly, without primitive simplifications or omitting important things. The author explores pressing controversial issues relating to science, health and human life, and helps to find answers with evidence and confirmation of truth. Can autism really develop after routine vaccinations? Is it true that homeopathy is omnipotent and can overcome dangerous diseases? Should we be so afraid of genetically modified foods? After reading the book, the reader will probably be able to figure out which answers are correct and which are wrong. And he will also learn to analyze any information that circulates on the Internet, and which claims to be true, but is not always this truth.
This is already the second published work of the talented journalist and popularizer of scientific ideas. Her book about the functioning of the human brain was positively received by scientific and readership audiences and even received a publishing award.
Asya Kazantseva’s new work will become a kind of guide for readers’ work with information on the Internet related to health and life.

In these times of active fight against piracy, most books in our library have only short fragments for review, including the book Someone is Wrong on the Internet! Scientific research into controversial issues. Thanks to this, you can understand whether you like this book and whether you should purchase it in the future. Thus, you support the work of the writer Asya Kazantsev by legally purchasing the book if you liked its summary.

“Someone is wrong on the Internet!” is the second creation of scientific journalist Asya Kazantseva. The fact that Asya is not just talented, but also incredibly smart is evidenced by the fact that for her debut book “Who would have thought!” she received the Enlightener Award. For the second time, Asya managed to write exactly the kind of book with which you want to talk alone, like with an older, wise friend.

The author herself positions her creation as “scientific research on controversial issues.” The book examines famous Internet myths about medicine, science and life. All information has a deep scientific basis and is well argued. I note that in addition to the myths that are destroyed on the pages of this book, there are also well-known “myths” that are scientifically proven and have already become completely reliable facts.

“The school curriculum lags behind science by at least twenty years. The only skill that makes sense to bet on in such a situation is the ability to use search engines, find the information you need and distinguish reputable sources from low-quality ones. And this is exactly what they don’t teach in school.”

Among the main points and characteristics of the book, I noted the following:

1. Objectivity. “I have a dream that people, when evaluating food (or anything else), would use rational arguments to a greater extent than myths blindly learned from thin air.” It’s no secret that any person (and scientists are no exception) in one way or another tries to confirm his personal point of view, to choose a convenient view on the issue. This is precisely what it seemed to me that Asya sincerely avoids, which speaks volumes about her professional level and ethics.

2. Credibility. “It’s not a matter of who has it longer. Another thing is important: who has better evidence.” Every small study, every quote, every statistic that appears on the pages of the book has links to scientific articles. By the way, at the end of the book, a list of links to real scientific research and peer-reviewed articles takes up 37 pages! Apart from the fact that for any scientist the ability to check and confirm information is a professional duty, then for a reader who does not have a scientific degree, such an attitude becomes a motivator in the development of this wonderful habit.

3. Style. The author writes as well as he understands biology. Her texts perfectly coexist complex scientific language with simple language that is understandable to any layman. Asya successfully retells all the points that may become unclear to a non-professional reader in earthly language, which, in fact, is the essence of popular science literature.

4. Humor. “If you don’t know women who are smarter than you (or men you know who are dumber than you), then you just don’t interact with people very much.” They say that women are rarely smart (by the way, there is also a chapter about this in the book under discussion), and even less often - with a sense of humor. Asya Kazantseva destroys these ridiculous stereotypes by her own example. Simply wonderful scientific irony in the style of Sherlock is a real decoration of the book “Someone is Wrong on the Internet!”

5. Mentions of other authors and books. For me, Asya’s work became not only a scientific discovery, but also, in a sense, a literary one. In the process of analyzing certain problems, the author gives examples and recommends popular science books by other authors, gives them brief characteristics, and says what exactly the reader can study in more detail in the books of other authors. As an avid book lover, I really value links to other books, especially if I like the author of the recommendation.

Ultimately, I will say that after the book “Someone is Wrong on the Internet!” my love for non-fiction literature fully blossomed and began to blossom, incorporating all the worthy works of the genre into my must-read list. I recommend it to everyone who wants to put an end to the age-old disputes among the unenlightened, who wants to look better than others in any dialogue, and just people who love well-written books with high-quality and fascinating content.

“It seems to me that a society in which it is customary to think critically about any incoming information would achieve incredible success and prosperity.”

Someone on the Internet is wrong! - description and summary, author Anastasia Kazantseva, read for free online on the website of the electronic library ParaKnig.me

Vaccinations can cause autism, serious illnesses are treated with homeopathy, HIV inevitably leads to death, GMOs are dangerous to eat - is this true? It is important for everyone to know the correct answer, because our life and health depend on it. In her new book, scientific journalist Asya Kazantseva explains: to figure out whether this or that statement is reliable, you don’t have to be a narrow specialist. The main thing is to learn to analyze publicly available information. And then, if “someone is wrong on the Internet,” you will definitely notice it.

Asya Kazantseva’s first book “Who would have thought? How the Brain Makes Us Do Stupid Things" was highly appreciated by scientists and ordinary readers - it has remained a bestseller for several years. In 2014, the book was awarded the Enlightener Prize. In everything that Asya does, be it popular science lectures, articles or books, her rare ability to talk about complex things in an accessible and captivating way is evident, without simplifying or changing the scientific approach.

Vaccinations cause autism, serious illnesses are treated with homeopathy, HIV is a death sentence, eating GMOs can cause terrible harm - is this true? It is important for everyone to know the correct answer, because our life and health depend on it. In her new book, scientific journalist Asya Kazantseva explains a simple thing: to understand this or that statement, you do not have to be a narrow specialist. The main thing is to learn to analyze publicly available information. And then, if “someone is wrong on the Internet,” you will definitely notice it.

Asya Kazantseva. Someone on the Internet is wrong! Scientific research into controversial issues. – M.: AST, Corpus, 2016. – 376 p.

Download the abstract (summary) in the format or

Holivar - from English. holy war, holy war, is a heated and meaningless discussion on the Internet, in which, as a rule, everyone remains unconvinced.

Part I. Medical holivars

Chapter 1. “Homeopathy has no side effects!”

The principles on which homeopathy is based were invented by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann at the end of the 18th century. If some substance is harmful to a healthy person and causes him, for example, nausea and convulsions, then it is with this substance that the patient’s nausea and convulsions should be treated. To explain the effect, Hahnemann uses various additional entities that lack dictionary definitions, such as vital force (in the organism) and dynamic force (in the drug). It is precisely to strengthen the latter, in order to influence the former, that the principle of multiple dilution was invented.

In the first half of the 19th century, homeopathy was by no means a pseudoscientific discipline. Representatives of competing trends prescribed their bloodletting, enemas, mercury and arsenic preparations with approximately the same degree of validity as Hahnemann, while his drugs were at least harmless.

Homeopathy was indeed a very progressive form of medicine 200 years ago. But over these 200 years, normal medicine has come a long way. Today she controls HIV and diabetes, cures cancer and provides paralyzed people with robotic prosthetics. And homeopathy - well, it also comes up with all sorts of funny little innovations. But basically it still dissolves theoretically harmful substances until they practically disappear, as Samuel Hahnemann bequeathed.

For example, oscillococcinum, which is popular in the treatment of influenza, is a two-hundredth centesimal dilution, that is, one part of the original solution accounts for 10,400 parts of water (this figure significantly exceeds estimates of the number of elementary particles in the Universe). Despite the fact that there is so little active ingredient in Oscillococcinum, and studies show that the medicine does not work, every year in Russia alone manufacturers earn 2.65 billion rubles from it.

Let's imagine that we are conducting real - double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled - studies of homeopathy. Every word is important here. Controlled means we have two groups of patients: experimental and control. The first receives the medicine that interests us, and the second receives a placebo (or, if the disease is dangerous and cannot be treated at all, then not a placebo, but a drug generally accepted for the treatment of this disease). We need to make sure that the new drug doesn't just help the disease, but that it works better than the placebo or the old drug.

Many diseases go away on their own, just over time, and if there is no comparison group, then it is very easy to attribute this effect to our medicine. Randomized means that patients are randomly assigned to the two groups by drawing lots. Otherwise, doctors may unconsciously (or consciously) begin to feed their new drug to better patients, and, on the contrary, send unfavorable patients to a group that receives a placebo. Then in the end it will certainly turn out that people who received the new medicine recover more often and faster. Finally, a double-blind study is one in which the patients do not know whether they are receiving a drug or a placebo, and even the doctors who give them the pills do not know whether they are giving the drug or a placebo.

Confidence in a cure tends to have a beneficial effect on the likelihood of cure, and it is necessary that it does not differ in patients of both groups, and that their attending physicians also do not demonstrate confidence or uncertainty in a favorable outcome of therapy (which is difficult to avoid when they know the medicine they are dispensing or placebo). This is the gold standard for testing any drug precisely because it allows the actual physiological effects of the drug to be taken into account, separating it from the patient's belief in the effectiveness of the treatment.

Chapter 2. “Vaccines Cause Autism”

Andrew Wakefield published a study on the connection between vaccination and autism in the famous medical journal The Lancet in 1998. However, it was then shown that Wakefield's study, even if it was not a deliberate falsification, was obviously carried out extremely carelessly and the data supposedly confirming Wakefield's hypothesis about the connection between vaccinations, intestinal disorders and autism were literally far-fetched. After analyzing the totality of established facts, the editors of The Lancet decided to retract Wakefield’s article, and the General Medical Council of Great Britain deprived Wakefield of the right to practice medicine.

In Denmark, every person has a personal identification number, which is also linked to medical information. This circumstance made it possible to analyze the health status of all children born between January 1, 1991 and December 31, 1998 - a total of 537,303, of which 440,655 were vaccinated against measles, rubella and mumps, and 96,648 against those or for other reasons the vaccine was not given. In the first group, 269 children were diagnosed with autism, and in the second group, 47. It turns out that 0.06% of children in the vaccinated group and 0.05% in the unvaccinated group develop autism - generally speaking, this is much more like a statistical error than a strict cause-and-effect relationship.

However, the results of Wakefield's work were not long in coming. In 1997, 91.5% of two-year-old children in England were vaccinated against measles, rubella and mumps. After parents began to massively refuse vaccination, this figure crept down and reached 79.9%. It was only after 2004, when a retraction was published, that vaccination coverage began to recover, but it was not until 2012 that a return to baseline was achieved. Declining vaccination rates predictably caused an increase in measles incidence. If in 1998 there were 56 laboratory-confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales, then in 2006 there were already 740, and in 2008 this figure reached 1370.

According to legend, the discovery of the general principle of vaccination, like many other great discoveries, was made thanks to sloppiness. According to the description given in Paul de Cruy’s wonderful book “Microbe Hunters,” Louis Pasteur infected chickens with chicken cholera and was looking for a way to treat it, but one day he introduced an expired, spoiled culture to the birds. They fell ill, but did not die, but recovered quickly. When Pasteur then tried to use these chickens for subsequent experiments, with a good culture of bacteria, it turned out that it was now impossible to infect them. This made it possible to formulate an idea that was later confirmed for a variety of diseases: “Contact with a weakened pathogen protects against subsequent severe illness.”

In some cases, you don’t even need to deal with the whole pathogen: it is enough to pinch off a piece of it and show it to the immune system.

There is an interesting study from the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The authors calculated the average number of diseases and deaths in the United States before the introduction of vaccinations against the relevant diseases and compared them with today (Fig. 1).

Rice. 1. Impact of vaccination on morbidity and mortality

People often fear side effects from vaccinations. Yes, they exist, but the harm from side effects cannot be even close to compared with the benefit from reducing the risk of disease.

Chapter 3. “HIV does not lead to AIDS”

We caught the immunodeficiency virus in monkeys. Infection is possible through any contact with its blood (until recently, residents of many African tribes hunted monkeys to eat them; it is enough for a person to cut himself while cutting up freshly caught prey). In the vast majority of cases, the human immune system successfully destroys this virus. But over time, the virus mutated and acquired the ability to be transmitted from person to person and destroy our immune system. There were no problems as long as people lived in small settlements scattered throughout the jungle. The situation changed radically in the 20th century, when globalization began, African cities began to grow rapidly, many migrant workers appeared in them, and people began to actively travel between continents.

By the beginning of 2014, according to WHO, 35 million people on our planet were infected with the immunodeficiency virus. This figure increases by 2 million annually due to those who become infected with HIV - and, alas, decreases by 1.5 million due to people dying from AIDS. These huge numbers are mainly generated by Africa.

If the infection is detected in time, if antiretroviral drugs are prescribed in time, then the life expectancy of an HIV-positive person will be quite comparable to the life expectancy of an uninfected person.

1. Patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, regardless of where they live, are infected with HIV.
2. Without treatment, most people with HIV infection develop AIDS within 5 to 10 years. HIV infection is detected in the blood by detecting antibodies, genetic sequences or viral particles. These tests are as reliable as tests used to detect any other viral infection.
3. People who receive a transfusion of blood or blood components containing HIV develop AIDS, but those who receive uncontaminated blood do not.
4. Most children with AIDS are born to HIV-infected mothers. The higher the mother's viral load, the higher the risk that the baby will become infected.
5. Medicines that block HIV from reproducing also reduce the viral load and slow the progression of AIDS. Where treatment is available, it reduces AIDS deaths by more than 80%.

Since 1996, highly active antiretroviral therapy has become the new gold standard recommended for all patients. Without treatment, the virus is transmitted to the child from an infected mother in approximately 25% of cases. When treated with zidovudine in the early 1990s, the risk was reduced to 8%. Retroviral therapy used in the early 2000s resulted in 2% of infants born to HIV-positive mothers becoming infected with HIV. In 2010–2011, this figure was 0.46%.

Chapter 4. “Acupuncture is a serious method of treatment”

The words “reflexology” and “acupuncture” are often used interchangeably in Russian (due to the fact that Soviet doctors actively studied acupuncture and at the same time explained its effects primarily due to the reflex response of nerve endings).

Generally speaking, when we evaluate the degree of scientific validity of any medical practice, it is desirable to analyze two aspects.

1. Can the technique be explained within the existing scientific paradigm, without involving additional mysterious entities?
2. Do studies on patients confirm that the technique works more effectively than placebo?

Homeopathy completely fails this test on both counts, but antiretroviral therapy against HIV successfully passes this test. Acupuncture falls somewhere between these two extremes. A typical explanation for the effect of acupuncture is that there is Qi energy in the body. It circulates through channels (meridians). Acupuncture points are areas for access of external Qi energy to the internal organs, and the channels form a complex network between the surface of the body and the internal organs. When energy circulation is disrupted, a person becomes ill. Stimulating acupuncture points affects the movement of energy.

By 2009, there were 32 Cochrane clinical studies mentioning acupuncture. Their overall review was written by Dr. Edzard Ernst, citing the conclusions of each study: “Accumulating evidence does not support acupuncture,” “Evidence is not broad or rigorous enough,” “Insufficient data,” “The quality of the studies does not allow any conclusion,” “No evidence of benefit.” actions”...in a total of 25 out of 32 cases, the Cochrane researchers concluded that acupuncture did not work for this disease.

Part II. Scientific holivars

Chapter 5. “GMOs contain genes!”

For many years there were practically no popular science books about pseudoscience in Russian. The gap was partly filled by translations by Carl Sagan and Pseudoscience and the Paranormal by Jonathan Smith.

The year of birth of genetic engineering is considered to be 1973, when recombinant circular DNA (plasmids) created in a test tube were introduced into E. coli cells and successfully began to work there. From that moment on, it became clear in principle that it was possible to transfer any arbitrarily selected genes from one organism to another. However, people did not start using GMOs in medicine and agriculture right away (the first medicine was in 1982, and the first agricultural crop was in 1992). According to 2013 data, 174 million hectares of the world are sown with genetically modified plants (this is more than the area of ​​Spain, France and Germany combined).

The technology of genetic modification grew out of basic research and did not immediately begin to be commercialized. And it was precisely this circumstance, due to the openness and impartiality of the scientific community, that contributed to the early emergence of concerns. At the same time, the general public has never opposed selection. Meanwhile, in fact, traditional crop breeding uses much more terrible methods than when creating GMOs.

Genetic modification is the next, more advanced stage in the development of crop improvement technologies. A 1977 article by Stanley Cohen, the creator of the first transgenic bacteria, states:

Today, as in the past, there are people who would like to think that maintaining the status quo provides freedom from risk. However, even the status quo comes with unknown risks, as well as a large collection of known dangers. Humanity continues to be threatened by ancient and new diseases, malnutrition, and environmental pollution. Recombinant DNA techniques allow us to reasonably expect a partial solution to some of these problems. So we must ask ourselves whether we are willing to allow concerns about dangers we don't know exist to limit our ability to deal with dangers that do exist. 

Genetic modification is possible because we all descend from a common ancestor. All living things on Earth still use the same genetic code. For example, to create the famous golden rice with a high content of beta-carotene, it was necessary to introduce three new genes into ordinary rice. Improved Golden Rice seeds contain an average of 25 micrograms of beta-carotene per gram of dry weight. Beta-carotene still has to be converted into retinol ("true vitamin A") in the body, and this process generally doesn't happen very efficiently, whether you eat transgenic rice or organic carrots.

Therefore, in order to 100% satisfy the daily requirement for vitamin A with golden rice alone, you need to cook and eat 150 grams of this cereal every day. This seems like a lot considering how much rice swells when cooked. But, firstly, the method is, in principle, aimed at the poorest people who do not buy any fruits and vegetables for their children, but feed them only rice. Secondly, even partial satisfaction of the need for vitamin A can prevent the development of blindness caused by its lack in food (according to WHO estimates, at least 250,000 children become victims of it every year).

Golden rice was created back in 2005, but it is still not grown on an industrial scale. Unfortunately, the process of introducing golden rice faces enormous public resistance - for example, in 2013, an experimental plot in the Philippines was simply trampled clean. In fact, blindness is common and understandable, but modern biotechnology is a mysterious and incomprehensible danger from which our children must be protected at all costs.

The argument that there is not enough research into the safety of GMOs has been exploited by opponents of GMOs since the seventies. In those days it still made sense, but over the last fifteen years the progressive public has finally ceased to understand: how much is “enough”? In 2014, employees at the University of California at Davis carried out an absolutely titanic job, collecting all available American statistics on the feeding of farm animals from 1983 to 2011 and all the research on their health and its impact on our health.

The researchers had data characterizing 100 billion animals at their disposal. One hundred. Billions. Animals. And no one was hurt. And no one found any traces of GMOs in their meat, milk and eggs. But we are still afraid of GMOs. And, in fact, this is why about 70% of these beautiful, modern, proven plants are used to feed livestock. That is why politicians pass laws that practically block the development of biotechnology, and meet with complete public approval.

Chapter 6. “Who saw a bird with teeth?”

This chapter is not really about creationism or the controversy with its proponents. It seems to me that if a person is seriously convinced of the need to involve God even to explain things that work just fine without such a hypothesis, then this probably means that God is fundamentally central to that person's worldview. In this case, you can bring as many scientific arguments as you like, but all of them will be far inferior in importance to the initial conviction that already exists in your head, and will certainly fly past your ears.

I'm most interested in people who are in the middle of the normal distribution. This is the most rewarding audience for any person eager to spread memes - if they can find a way to do it well. A publication by VTsIOM showed that 35% of supporters of the theory of evolution live in Russia, 44% of creationists.

Charles Darwin was not the first evolutionist. But it was Darwin who first proposed a mechanism that could explain the processes of speciation without involving any unverifiable abstract entities such as the “striving for perfection.” If some random change increases the chances of surviving and leaving offspring, then in the next generation it will occur more often, precisely because its owners survived and left offspring more often. This phenomenon is enough to explain why we have all become so complex and so adapted to our habitats.

But this explanation implies one thing that is difficult to grasp: evolution has no purpose. And we are not used to complex structures appearing by themselves. We tend to attribute meaning and purpose to everything. This is a basic feature of human psychology. In some cases, confidence in the perfection of the structure of animals is associated with insufficient knowledge of anatomy. Structures that are not arranged in the best possible way, but somehow sewn together with a living thread from scrap materials, can be found in any living creature in abundance. The most striking example, perhaps, is the recurrent laryngeal nerve. In modern animals it is inherited from fish. And now its location makes life difficult for us.

Another problem in understanding evolution is that it is very difficult for us to imagine really large numbers. Further, we are very anthropocentric, we think of ourselves as the crown of evolution and we imagine all the other figures in the biology textbook as a ladder leading to us, and not as the top of an evolutionary tree, not as beings as advanced as we are, who have evolved for just as long. In this regard, we are very surprised every time when complex signs are discovered in some simple creature.

Another non-obvious evolutionary principle is the possibility of changing functions. Innovations are often developed for one thing and then are used for something else. And finally, we find it difficult to believe that something good can come out of random processes, that the accumulation of mutations as DNA is copied can be a mechanism leading to progress rather than degradation. By itself it really can't. Mutations merely provide material for subsequent selection.

Evolution not only has a huge amount of evidence, but also good predictive power. Today, evolutionary biology helps predict how pests will become resistant to pesticides and bacteria will become resistant to antibiotics. In addition, mice and I are close enough relatives (we separated only 90 million years ago) for the physiological processes in our bodies to proceed more or less similarly. And this opens up broad prospects for experimental work, allowing us to learn more about humans using the example of mice.

Part III. Holy wars about life

Chapter 8. “Meat is harmful to health”

Our distant ancestors also faced the problem of choosing food. It’s safer to eat plants alone: ​​here they are, growing everywhere. But they contain few nutrients, so a vegetarian in the wild is forced to chew food all day long. Eating everything at once may be more effective. But today we live in a completely different reality. Today, eating meat is, generally speaking, not necessary.

Beef contains a lot of leucine. Leucine is an essential amino acid. Essential amino acids must be obtained from food because they are not synthesized in the body. But it’s not just beef that contains a lot of leucine. In principle, there is a lot of it in any foods high in protein. When a person eats to his fill and is more or less varied, it is difficult to bring him to a severe protein deficiency even on plants alone.

A much more serious and common problem is vitamin B12 deficiency. Neither plants nor animals can produce vitamin B12. Plants don’t need it, their enzymes are different. But for animals it is produced by bacteria living in the gastrointestinal tract. In addition to meat, vitamin B12 is also found in dairy products. According to researchers from Saarland University (Germany), approximately 60% of vegetarians have vitamin B12 reserves in their bodies that are on the verge of depletion. At this stage, people still feel normal, but already experience difficulties in performing tests assessing spatial thinking, short-term memory, the ability to perceive new information, etc.

Other substances that vegetarians often lack include iron, zinc, calcium, omega-3 unsaturated fatty acids, and vitamin D. Some of these can be obtained from dairy products, some from plants, but it’s better to buy yourself some pharmaceutical supplements. .

To assess whether vegetarianism is beneficial, you need to recruit several thousand vegetarians, several thousand meat-eaters, observe them for many years and see what the representatives of each group will get sick with and at what age they will die. The vast majority of research shows that being a vegetarian is beneficial. People who give up meat or sharply limit their consumption are 29% less likely to die from coronary heart disease, 18% less likely to experience malignant tumors, and their life expectancy increases by more than 3 years.

Studies in which fish lovers are compared with ordinary people demonstrate that its consumption has a beneficial effect on the state of the cardiovascular and nervous system, reducing the risk of death from coronary disease and stroke by about a third. The benefits of fish probably come primarily from omega-3 fatty acids, so if you don't like fish, it makes sense to take them separately. At the same time, sausages, sausages and other processed foods are more harmful than red meat. Another problem is the presence of sodium nitrite in sausages and frankfurters, which gives them a nice pink color.

Chapter 9. “We must eat natural”

Sea levels are currently rising 3.2 millimeters per year. This is due to the melting of glaciers, and the melting of glaciers is associated with the accumulation of greenhouse gases, and the accumulation of greenhouse gases is associated with human impacts, including the raising of cows, and the relative contribution of cows living on organic farms is especially large.

During the digestion process, cows intensively produce methane; when processing manure, ammonia and nitrogen oxide (N 2 O) are formed, and, of course, no economic activity can be done without carbon dioxide. According to the most radical estimates, livestock farming is responsible for half (!) of all greenhouse gas emissions.

The authors of a meta-analysis that compared the environmental impact of European organic and conventional farms came to interesting results: organic farms are actually safer when measured by pollution per square kilometer; but they are less productive, so the picture changes if we take the hundredweight of food grown as a starting point.

Why am I so obsessed with organic food? Honestly, just for balance, to restore justice. Do you know how many people have died or been hospitalized because of GMOs? Here's how much: not at all! Someone is regularly poisoned by organic food: either a dangerous strain of E. coli lives on spinach, or poisonous dope grows in fields with buckwheat and gets into the cereal.

Should I take synthetic vitamins? I personally, after viewing several dozen reviews, have the general impression that taking additional vitamin supplements may even be harmful if you are an elderly resident of a prosperous country; does not have a serious impact if you are a middle-aged person from a developing economy; very important if you are a child and live in a poor country.

Chapter 12. “If there is no God, then everything is permitted”

We have an innate tendency to see faces in any picture that contains anything remotely resembling eyes and a mouth. And it would be okay if we just saw faces - so we also, without any problems, endow their owners with some specific characteristics, at least age, gender and social status, and evaluate them the same, regardless of whether we grew up in Austria or in Ethiopia.

When we compare the moral qualities of modern atheists and believers, we do not find any clear advantage in favor of the latter. Our moral values ​​are largely shaped by the society in which we live. But any system of moral principles created by mankind does not grow out of nowhere. It winds up on those intuitive innate ideas about good and evil that are already embedded in our brain. We see their origins already in animals or very young children.

Monkeys have fairly developed ideas about good and bad. Frans de Waal, a famous American primatologist, in a popular science book describes the behavior of capuchins as an example of first-order justice, that is, the ability to be indignant when someone else gets more tasty food than you. In the experiment, two female capuchin monkeys, sitting in adjacent cages and able to see each other, perform the same task: they give the experimenter pebbles and receive a reward. But only one monkey is given cucumbers (which completely suits it out of context), and the second one receives grapes for the same task. The first participant in the experiment, realizing the injustice, throws it at the experimenter with a flourish, begins shaking the bars and squealing.

Not only animals, but also small children have basic ideas about morality. We seem to have an innate tendency to empathize, especially when it comes to people we know. We have innate ideas about fairness. We have a tendency to approve of those who do well. And the tendency to approve of those who do bad things to bad people. And the tendency to consider as bad those who do not love the same things as we do. And on the basis of all this, man created God in his own image and likeness. And then in the name of God he committed many very good deeds and many very bad deeds. Because religious precepts can be interpreted within very wide limits.

Many articles have been devoted to attempts to explain religion from an evolutionary point of view. A number of researchers believe that religion itself is a useful adaptation that promotes intragroup altruism. In this regard, studies of expensive rituals useful for the survival of communities, which I described just above, are often mentioned. Others believe that religion is a by-product, a consequence of the existence of other important properties of the brain, such as our tendency to look for logical explanations for everything, or our equally important tendency to assume that other beings (sometimes imaginary, but often real) and we ourselves are capable of feeling and thinking.

According to Gallup, in 2011, 92% of Americans believed in God and only 7% declared themselves atheists. Among biologists, physicists and mathematicians members of the Royal Society of London (analogous to our Academy of Sciences), 86.6% of scientists categorically disagree with the existence of God and only 5.3% are firmly convinced that God exists. There is, although weak, a statistically significant negative correlation between religiosity and IQ level.

A short course in the search for truth

One of the most common cognitive errors is the tendency to look for materials that support your own point of view and ignore everything else. I am convinced that the world would be a much better place if supporting any of your statements with references to scientific research became the generally accepted norm, the gold standard during any holivar. So that any person making loud statements would immediately be faced with a polite request to support them with links to authoritative sources. And so that none of the readers take his words seriously if they are unable to do this.

To do this, it is necessary that as many people as possible understand how, in principle, scientific sources differ from non-scientific ones and how to look for these scientific sources. In a very short way, the difference is that it is much more difficult to publish nonsense in a scientific journal. Because scientific journals are peer-reviewed journals.

Of course, the peer review system does not provide an absolute guarantee that nonsense will never leak into the journal. Such a study may seem quite correct to reviewers, and they will pass it by. But if the research is bright and surprising, then after its release the adventures are just beginning.

First, the study will be read by hundreds of scientists working in the same field. They will not be lazy to write to the editor if they see gross methodological errors in the article, violation of the rules of statistical data processing, or some other problems. An avalanche of justified criticism can lead to the retraction of the article, and relatively quickly, within a year or two. This means that the article is saved on the journal’s website, but is crossed out with the bright inscription RETRACTED and somewhere nearby there is a link to an explanation: what happened and why the already published article was considered unreliable.

Secondly, many scientific groups interested in the same topic will try to reproduce the results of the pioneering researchers. If many careful studies are conducted on large samples and no one can find any connection even close, this could lead to the journal retracting the article ten years after publication.

Finally, a situation is possible when different studies of the same problem yield results that are not entirely consistent or even contradictory to each other. This happens quite often - you never know who has minor differences in samples and methods. This is where systematic reviews and meta-analyses come to the rescue - works whose authors collect 50 studies of the same problem and formulate general conclusions. It is almost always a more reliable source than any single research paper.

Unfortunately, I cannot offer a universal demarcation criterion, an absolutely accurate way to distinguish a reliable scientific publication from an unreliable one. In any case, a scientific publication always has a list of references at the end, which also consists of scientific articles. Now, if there is no list of references, then there can be no doubt: this material is definitely not a scientific article. What can you talk about with an author who is not familiar with other research in his field? The reverse is not true.

The best formal criterion that allows you to make a fairly informed assumption about the quality of a scientific article is the rating of the journal in which the article was published. The numerical characteristic of a journal's strength is called the impact factor, IF. This is the ratio of the number of citations that a journal receives to the total number of articles published in that journal. Among the leaders: Nature (IF = 41.5), Science (31.5), The Lancet (39.2), The New England Journal of Medicine (55.9), Cell (32.2).

How are things in Russia? The list of the Higher Attestation Commission includes 2269 publications in Russian. The record holder, the journal Aviation Materials and Technologies, has a citation index of 6.98. In total, the list includes 17 publications with a citation index greater than two and 104 publications whose citation index exceeds one. To search for scientific articles, I recommend Google Scholar.

(I couldn’t ignore the following rather lengthy quote, because it largely coincides with my own worldview. – Note Baguzina)

There are not many things that I believe without citing sources. I believe that the skills of searching and analyzing scientific information are necessary for every person. I believe that the very habit of intellectual activity changes the brain in the right direction, forms such neural networks with which it is much more difficult to be not only stupid, but also angry or unhappy, bored or scared - simply because the world becomes clearer, and therefore, safer and more interesting.

A person who is accustomed to working independently with sources becomes less susceptible to any manipulation, be it emotional blackmail or political propaganda. A person becomes more friendly because he gets used to being interested in the diversity of the world around him. A person feels more confident and less anxious because he is able to structure a chaotic flow of information, recognize familiar fragments in it and compare disparate facts with known patterns and models.

Life becomes safer because reading scientific articles makes it possible to objectively assess the various risks that a person faces. Knowledge increases communication value. The ability to recall relevant scientific research in a conversation impresses your interlocutors much more than even the ability to recall a funny joke. And finally, constantly absorbing scientific information makes a person happier. This allows you to realize what an interesting time you were born in, and to feel to some extent involved in scientific progress.