On World Cup Hydration Breaks and Science Abuse

Mandatory, universal hydration breaks are a new feature of the 2026 World Cup, which is poised to enter its quarter-final stage on Thursday. The tournament has not been lacking for excitement and controversy, giving fans and commentators plenty to talk about. Yet, opinions about the hydration breaks skew largely negative.

That may come down partially to resistance to change among the fans, but there’s also widespread skepticism about the breaks’ purpose. FIFA’s original policy was to mandate them when the wet-bulb temperature exceeds 32°C. The official rationale for the new one is to ensure an equal playing field. However, many suspect that the actual reason is to make time for more ads.

That opinion isn’t held only by casual fans. Harry Brown, a postdoctoral research associate in the field of heat-related health, penned an opinion for Nature decrying the policy. He says science-based heat policies are more nuanced than FIFA’s, and echoes the theory that its decision-making is driven by commercial goals.

Brown’s worry is that frustration with hydration break ads will lead the public to dismiss genuine heat-related concerns and policies elsewhere.

“In this World Cup, there’s a gap between policy and practice,” he writes. “Breaks appear in every match, regardless of conditions, even in climate-controlled stadiums. Although it might seem fair to treat all games in the same way, this blanket approach risks undermining trust in heat-safety measures.“

As a counter-example, he points to the Australian Open in tennis, which has five different levels of heat protocol based on conditions.

The perception that public trust in science is unusually low at present may not be entirely correct. However, it is low among the politically right-of-center, while the far-left’s faith in science might be described as selective—high in climate science, for instance, but low when it comes to economics.

Scientific Authority is a Double-Edged Sword

Done properly, science is objective and neutral, which is what gives it authority. However, there will always be those who would abuse statistics, scientific language, or “expert” status for personal or political ends. Unfortunately, that has the effect of undermining the authority of genuine science.

This is particularly a problem in the more human-related sciences like biology, psychology, and economics. Even when scientists are acting in good faith, they’re prone to the same biases as anyone else. It’s very hard to do research with real-world human impact without personal political and philosophical beliefs tainting the results.

At one time, science was abused to provide justification for racist and sexist policies. Today, some argue that the opposite bias exists. For instance, evolutionary psychologists meet resistance when exploring the genuine differences that exist between men and women out of fear that their findings could reinforce sexist tropes.

This isn’t an idle fear. Politicians of all stripes are prone to cherry-picking research and statistics — often used out of context — to support whatever policy their constituents and lobbyists are pushing for.

The consequences of public mistrust in science were plainly visible during the COVID pandemic. On the one hand, the anti-vax and anti-mask movements undermined attempts to contain the damage. Yet on the other side, those who proudly proclaimed that they “believe the experts” when it came to masks and quarantine turned around and declared those same experts to be in the pocket of big business when they began to recommend a return to work.

Science Abuse Can Also Lead to Enduring Myths

There is also another danger when it comes to pseudoscience. Instead of doubting the real stuff, the public might instead buy into the lie wholesale. This tends to happen when the claims support intuitive beliefs, not even necessarily bigoted ones.

Take the idea of “Type A” and “Type B” personalities. A great deal of business wisdom is based on this popular dichotomy, yet few know the source: a theory concocted by two cardiologists — not psychologists – and promoted by the tobacco industry to defend itself from lawsuits.

The original theory, which probably has some truth to it, is that people who are more intense and stressed-out are at higher risk of heart disease. As a simple way of testing that hypothesis, these two cardiologists used a questionaire to separate patients into two categories.

The tobacco industry seized on that to do its own studies showing that the “Type A” group also smoked more. Their goal was to break the causal relationship between cigarettes and heart disease, by presenting the alternative hypothesis that smoking and heart disease are both symptoms of being Type A, with no direct relationship between them.

There’s no evidence, however, that people actually fall into two distinct types. In fact, most personality traits follow a bell curve distribution that would place most people directly on the line between such buckets.

So, when it comes to the science of heat exhaustion, there are a few ways FIFAs policies could backfire. On the one hand, frustration with ad breaks disguised as a safety necessity could lead to people being dismissive of genuine precautions. On the other, people who mistake it for good science could end up tinkering unnecessarily with other sports or worrying whether school athletic programs are putting kids at risk if they don’t break every 20 minutes.

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