Worse still, there is a powerful selection bias in what scientific studies we end up hearing about in the popular press and on social media. The research studies that are reported in the popular press are not a random sample of those conducted, or even of those published. The most surprising studies are the ones that make the most exciting articles. If we fail to take this into account, and ignore all of the less surprising findings from related studies, we can end up with an unrealistic picture of how scientific knowledge is developing.
