All major news outlets have a health and wellness section. That’s because Americans, who in general have a weakness for the self-help genre, love to read about all things fitness. But keeping those pages filled, day after day, presents something of a problem, which can be illustrated through a hypothetical research study: what’s better, four-wheel drive or two-wheel drive?
Which Is Better, Four-Wheel Or Two Wheel Drive?
Imagine a simple study that goes like this: researchers would like to know whether four-wheel drive or two-wheel drive vehicles are more stable on slippery roads. To find out, they set up an experiment comparing the two versions on a slippery track. They run the experiment and determine that four-wheel drive clearly performs better. Good to know.
If this were then going to be reported in the paper, a headline might read something like “Four-Wheel Drive Vehicles Safer For Your Family, Study Shows” or “Four-Wheel Drive Outperforms Two-Wheel Drive, Research Says” or some other varient. And so, the results of the research would be spread to the masses.
What About Context, Individual Tailoring, And Practicalities
Each of those headlines is performing an arguably important function. They draw the reader in by personalizing and sensationalizing, which raises the chances that a person will actually read the article. That in turn serves the important function of distributing valuable information to people who might need it. However, there are several problems that can crop up. Firstly, what if the person only reads the headline? What they will walk away with is the idea that four-wheel drive is simply better. They may miss entirely the part about a slippery road.
Let’s say they do read the article. Hopefully, the article will mention the slippery road in the summary of the experiment. That is important, and it should be in there, however, all too often that is all that the article will do. They will state they were testing slippery conditions and what the results were. They will not contextualize by asking, say, in what states are slippery conditions a major worry? Certainly Northeast Ohio, with long cold and snowy winters, would be a place that could benefit from vehicles that do very well in such conditions. The Southwest, with mostly warm dry weather, perhaps not. Suddenly, the information obtained in the research has a different level of value depending on where you live, but many articles fail to emphasize such caveats.
To add another layer of complexity, now lets consider that climate does not have hard lines or boarders. Climate changes gradually as you move north or south, east or west. That means that the usefulness of four-wheel drive is on a spectrum. It may be very useful in Canada, somewhat useful in Kansas, and totally unnecessary in southern Arizona. Further, if you do a lot of traveling, that might influence your own personal decision regardless of where you technically live.
Of course, even a nuanced evaluation might have to bend to other factors such as practicalities. Maybe you live in England, where roads can often be slippery but they are also narrow. In that case, you might find that most four-wheel drive vehicles are simply too big to be practical. Or, one might find that four-wheel drive is too expensive, either from the sticker price of the vehicle or from the increased gasoline expenditure that often goes along with it.
Or maybe you just hate every four-wheel drive vehicle on the market…
It’s Hard To Report On The Nuances
As it goes with hypothetical car experiments, so goes it for health and fitness. Most reporting on fitness science fails to put the research into context, with all its many nuances. It rarely includes advice on how to evaluate whether or not the topic in question applies to you. This is not because the newspapers or magazines don’t care. It is simply because a topic as huge as human health is difficult to adequately discuss in one article. Moreover, complicated subjects can often exceed a person’s attention span. We all have a lot on our minds, even without distractions like our smart phones.
The key is to realize that the subject of health and fitness can be complicated, and the research that is performed and reported on is usually far more complicated than an article would have you believe. Bear all of this in mind and, if you have the opportunity, consult an expert on subjects that you find of particular interest.