Science: "Data, Information and Slogan"

I got a deadline for a review article. The scope was only roughly defined so far. So that last several days while doing research, I easily wondered off to some loosely related, interesting, modestly relevant subjects. Although it is nice to catch up with missed papers and to update my knowledge, as the deadline looms, I got to start thinking about how to organize the information I read.

Contemporary research technologies have expanded the amount of data available. As a scientist/specialist, an important task (besides generating primary data for our own research) is to put the available data into perspective and to extract information for others. And it is getting more difficult, because of increasing amount of data. Some of the data are even contradicting each other.

A saving grace is that research for medical science or natural science is less murky than research for political issues. You know what kind of murkiness I am talking about. Even if you pretend not to, Presidential election is coming up in the US and you will see how biased "facts" can be. A statistics result is a dataset and a fact, but it can be interpreted and concluded in so many ways, depending on how you see it.

I digress. I got to find ways to translate undigested, overwhelming and confusing pile of data to organized information. At the same time, I should be careful against temptation of oversimplifying things. Slogans are nice and easiest to understand. They have appeal and are memorable. "This drug [unpronounciable-something-something-zomib] works" is a good slogan, but we got to elaborate the slogan for a scientific writing.


Scientific training can make us aware of the difference between Data, Information and Slogan. It is good to know. Many of facebook posts are slogans. Quotes from Bible or great people are slogans. They can become relevant and valuable information only when you put them back in context and apply to your life. The knowledge regarding how to distinguish the three can make us more resistant to manipulators.


We are preparing for moving, and I just bought a bunch of solar lights for landscaping and for lighting things up practically. Somehow I like something glows in the dark. I am certain I am not alone for this one.