Scientific Method / Science & Exploration

TED organizers help sniff out bad science for TEDx

New guidelines help local events identify pseudoscience then keep it off stage.

The organization behind the TED talks took what might have been an embarrassing bit of publicity and turned it into an opportunity to define what constitutes decent scientific information. Although TED is most famous for organizing two sets of talks each year, it has branched out into licensing local affiliates that host smaller events. Many of these pick up on the main program's themes of tracking developments in science, technology, and medicine.

Unfortunately, the TEDx events don't always have access to the same competencies TED proper does. This has sporadically resulted in problems with speakers too far outside the mainstream. Take a case in Valencia, Spain for example, where things like crystal therapy and homeopathy ended up being promoted by speakers. That, in turn, led to a Reddit thread highlighting the problem.

Rather than pretending it never happened, TED's editorial staff got together and put down some guidelines for TEDx organizers. The new guidelines don't draw a sharp line between science and everything else (partly because there's no consensus on how to do so), but they do highlight a lot of the warning signs to determine if a potential speaker's focus might not be on solid ground.

Emily McManus, one of the TED editors who helped to put the guidelines together, told Ars "this letter wasn't about TED laying the science smackdown on TEDx," but rather an attempt to "give the TEDx community some tools to make better decisions when they curate." ("Curate" in this case meaning arrange speaker lineups.) She also pointed to a Reddit post by the director of TEDx, Lara Stein. Stein wrote that, in the past, issues like this had normally been handled informally. With the increased profile, the editorial team felt like it was time to make a more public statement.

The guidelines themselves are pretty heavily focused on fringe medicine, with an emphasis on recognizing when "cures" haven't been tested or identifying when speakers have a financial interest in promoting their ideas. Beyond that, there is advice on recognizing behavior that would get someone a high score on the crackpot index, like disdain for the scientific establishment and claims of persecution. All of it is packaged into language that's casual and sometimes humorous. "It would have been weird to recast our final draft into a lot of 'thou shalt nots,'" McManus told Ars. "Talking down to people or yelling at them just makes them retreat."

Other aspects of the advice should be on anyone's check list when faced with a scientific claim: look at the credentials, affiliations, and research history of the person making the claims. Then, if possible, talk to an independent expert in the field to see if there's any consensus about the ideas in question.

What isn't there is a checklist that will leave you knowing whether something is or isn't science. "There's less of a clear line than you might wish," McManus said. (And she's right; philosophers have been arguing about this for decades.) Still, she felt it should be possible for even non-experts to tell whether a given claim has been rigorously tested.

This also doesn't mean that either TED or TEDx should be expected to go strictly mainstream. McManus said the organization won't shy away from presenting "iconoclasts and controversial ideas;" what it will do is try to provide enough context so anyone who sees the talk knows if ideas are on the fringes. An example of this we discussed is a talk by a proponent of the "aquatic ape" idea. This proposal, which posits that humans evolved in an aquatic environment, is based on a very selective reading of the available evidence. It's completely incompatible with the fossil record.

To McManus, there's enough context in the aquatic ape talk that a viewer should be able to know that it's a fringe idea where the evidence is lacking. "The issue for me is when someone takes the stage and presents non-scientific work in a vacuum such that the average viewer doesn't know whether it's true or not, or runs down the scientific establishment to erode trust in it for their own cynical purposes," she told Ars.

So, are the guidelines any good? In general, I think they are, although they're a bit narrowly focused. A lot of the behaviors they note as signs of potential problems are ones I use myself. And, although their list of "red flag topics" (which includes GMO food and autism) is much shorter than mine, it's definitely a subset of the list I use. It correctly notes these are just warning signs, meant to indicate you've got a topic or person that needs to be approached with caution then vetted through outside expertise.

McManus emphasized the guidelines are meant to be the first shot at an evolving set of advice specifically targeted to TEDx organizers. But, at least in their first incarnation, they seem to be worth the consideration of a wider audience.

Corrections: fixed a link and corrected a person's title.

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