You might have seen a “scientific study” that said chloroquine can cure #COVID19…and then another one that shows that it can’t. Wondering what’s up with this? Are scientists lying to us? Are they just confused? Usually not. It all has to do with how we do science. A thread.
Imagine you asked me what the weather was like and I said it’s 60 degrees out. You then walk outside and find that it’s 60 degrees and raining. I wasn’t wrong and I wasn’t lying to you, I just didn’t have all of the information.
Science is similar. When scientists publish a paper, they are saying “this is what we know.” They have posed a question, gathered some data, and drawn the best conclusions they can from those data. 
What is not always clearly stated, but needs to be assumed, is that there is also a “this is what we don’t know.” That can be assumed to be everything else.
So, when two “scientific studies” arrive at conclusions that clash with each other, it doesn’t always mean that someone is wrong. It could just mean that different groups of researchers have gathered different sets of knowledge within the bigger reality.
Let’s come back to the studies on chloroquine + azithromycin. The space that we need to explore is vast. How well does a drug work on people just starting to show symptoms vs in critical condition? How well do different doses work? How long does treatment need to be given?
All of these are different pieces of that big circle, and covering the entire circle is so much work that no single study can accomplish it. So, instead, each study seeks to add something, and as we keep doing this, the fuller picture will start to emerge.
It’s also important to know how scientists put together each circle of knowledge. As I mentioned above, we design experiments, collect data, and then analyze the data to draw the best conclusions we can.
It’s like trying to put together a puzzle, but without having the picture on the box to guide you. As we gather data, we’re trying to put pieces together and see if they fit. Sometimes it seems we have a match, but we later realize that there’s a piece that fits better.
In these cases, we have to step back, take a new look at all of the data, and possibly revise our conclusions. While it may seem like science is a well-ordered process, in reality it’s complicated, messy, and always changing.
The take home from all of this is that when you hear that a “study has shown…” there is a good chance that it is accurate, but as scientifically engaged citizens, we also need to think about what the study didn’t show and what we still need to learn.
