Truthiness

As Stephen Colbert vaguely defines it, truthiness is the interpretation of the information you feel to be true as fact.  This is a vague definition, as are most definitions that involve “feeling” any type of emotion.  However, I most relate truthiness to a intuitive “gut” feeling that I get when interpreting a story that you have just read.   These intuitions usually come from preliminary data that you have collected from friends, political propaganda, parents, etc.  Lets say we have just read an article about red wine.  This particular article is in the most recent Food and Wine magazine and states that red wine is in no way, shape or form good for your cardiovascular health.  I would immediately look at this article with suspicion mostly due to the exceedingly large amounts of articles stating that red wine IS good for you, but also because I like red wine!  The fact that I like it and that I somehow feel just a bit more relaxed and healthy after two glasses at night makes me feel that perhaps this article is not giving us the whole “truthiness”, and nothing but the “truthiness”.

With respect to science writing, there is a fine line between incorporating truthiness amongst fact, and straight out lying.  Often times, a composite between hard fact and its relation to truthiness is the best answer to how scientific writing can best incorporate truthiness. If we were to say, for instance, that red wine is healthy for you due to the high levels of tannins in the grape skins, and to somehow relate this to how red wine makes you feel warm, it would give the audience something to relate back to their preliminary data (supposedly from drinking enough wine to feel warm).  This is perhaps the most effective way to incorporate “truthiness” into science writing.  Although I can definitely say that I hate the word “truthiness” both because it sounds bad, and because a gut feeling is never to be obeyed blindly without preliminary data, or new findings.  However, it does have some merit in terms of making dry science writing more effective and relatable.