Adam Kucharski

I mean, I think a lot of it comes to the sort of work I do in my day job where we have to deal with a lot of evidence under pressure, particularly if you work in outbreaks or emerging health concerns.

And often it really pushes to the limits our methodology and how we converge on what's true subject to potential revision in the future.

I think particularly having a background in maths, I think you kind of grow up

with this idea that you can get to these concrete, almost immovable truths.

And then even just looking through the history, realizing that often isn't the case, that there's these kind of very human dynamics that play out around them.

And it's something I think that everyone in science can reflect on, that sometimes what convinces us doesn't convince other people.

And particularly when you have that kind of urgency of time pressure, working out how to navigate that.

Yeah, sure.

So I think it's a problem that's been around for a while and it's based on this game show.

So you've got three doors that are closed.

Behind two of the doors are a goat and behind one of the doors is a luxury car.

So obviously you want to win the car.

The host asks you to pick a door.

So you point to one, maybe door number two.

Then the host who knows what's behind the doors opens another door to reveal a goat and then ask you, do you want to change your mind?

Do you want to switch doors?

And a lot of the, I think, intuition people have, and certainly when I first came across this problem many years ago, is, well, you've got two doors left, right?

You know, you've picked one, there's another one, it's 50-50.

And even some quite well-respected mathematicians, people like Paul Erdosch, who has really published more papers than almost anyone else,

That was their initial gut reaction.