Hey, it's Ira Flato, and this is Science Friday.

Today on the podcast, the uncertain science of what is truth?

COVID was just this situation where a lot of this knowledge, we to some extent, had to build from scratch.

You didn't get the benefit just to wait and see for a few years.

One of the foundational qualities of the human race is a search for truth. We can trace this through

history, from the ancient Greeks and their belief in a universal truth, to early

scientists like Isaac Newton, uncovering core concepts in physics and math, to our founding fathers

writing, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. It feels like

these days our relationship to the truth is a little different. In a world of

disinformation, people who have their own different set of facts, the rising influence of artificial

intelligence, where does the truth fit in? And how do we determine what it is? Joining me to discuss is my

guest, Adam Kucharski, author of

proof, the art and science of certainty. He's based in London. Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you for having me. You're quite welcome. What's your personal relationship with

uncertainty? Are you comfortable with it? I think it's something I've become increasingly comfortable

with. So my background was in mathematics, which is obviously this world of supposed

certainty and proofs that last forever. But increasingly, I've moved into the world of real world

data, real world problems. And I think that's really made me much more aware,

not only of the uncertainty we have in trying to work out what's happening, but also the

subjectivity that people can have in the level of evidence you need to eventually act on something.

And where do we set that line?

It varies quite a lot.

...