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New Science Museum - Now With Real Science!
OpenYourEyes writes "There is a new
science museum, run by the National
Academy of Science, that has opened in DC. So what? Unklike many
museums which simplify their message or use fake data, the exhibits at
the Koshland Science
Museum are all based on real research, real reports, and real
science. Each one contains references to the research reports and
data they are based on. Exhibits on
DNA, for example, use actual (and long!) DNA sequences to help
illustrate how DNA plays a role in disease, agriculture, and
criminology. There are also exhibits on
Global Climate Change and
The Wonders of Science."
Finally! I've long outgrown the simplified explanations of the Boston Museum of Science (though it's still a lot of fun to visit) and the various science-related exhibits touring places like the Museum of Natural History in NY. Definitely putting this one down on my list of places to visit. Just because we're not in middle school anymore doesn't mean we lost that same curiosity...
--- "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." ~ Ben Kenobi, 'Return of the Jedi'
Unklike many museums which simplify their message
I doubt they do this because they want to, think about it.. joe average would much rather see flashy presentations than boring old research papers. It's sad but true.. and museums have to do this in order to bring people in..
As a big fan of the St. Louis Science Center, I don't what's wrong with simplifying science for exhibits, especially when they're aimed at kids. I hear alot on Slashdot how America is being dumbed down and losing it's focus on science and industry. If science museums, while maybe slightly flawed, keep kids interested in science and help them gravitate towards science and engineering, what's the problem?
ce n'est pas un Sig.
Which science museums FAKE their data?
(I can understand simplifying it, but outright faking it?)
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged"
So many museums have pretty diagrams showing "facts" but not much of the thinking that shows how we discovered and got to those facts (or conclusions or theories as the case may be).
Science is not facts. It's not bullets. It's not a list of terms describing a cross section of the earth. It's problem solving, experimentation, cross examination, peer review, drawing conclusions, making inferences, designing experiements . . . it encompasses higher thought processes than memorization of facts. Why don't most of the museums make an effort to show this?
If knowledge is presented in the right way, with plain English and interactive exhibits, why can't we also have the background, and references to actual research as well?
Mod parent up!
Van Gogh, Gaugin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Whistler, Matisse - they were all considered "TRASH OF NO VALUE!" at some time in their career. Good thing the Dr. Gachets of the world don't listen to your ilk. Art is art, science is science. Leave money out of it, it has nothing to do with value.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
The Mona Lisa is just a plank of wood with paint slathered on it. Rembrant's sculptures are just chunks of rock; hell I can get those for free.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not art. If a musuem paid a million dollars for something shiny, and it's the only one of its kind, then that's exactly what it's worth.
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Hear, hear! If I see one more Monet, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Van Dyke, Picasso, Degas, Botticelli, Rodin, Raphael, or Bosch--I swear, I'm gonna flip out. You pracically trip over these things at your typical so-called art museums, and they've been around for ages!
Note to curators: go visit the Centre Pompidou, MoMA and Tate to see what real art looks like. Quit wasting money and space on the same old tired trash.
</mock>
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Most non-scientists don't go to museums because they want to learn what an RNA hairpin structure is, or to read up on the latest advances in quantum physics...they go to see something cool like some tool used by cavemen or a huge ass dinosaur skeleton. They may not learn stuff like how to draw carbon bonding to oxygen, but they do come away with more knowledge they came in with. The general public is more interested in their physical experience at the museum - where they can say "wow I just saw this new painting/fish/mummy and it was really incredible" not "hey I went to XYZ museum and learned the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle!" Maybe this type of a museum has it's place, but most likely will not draw the huge crowds that most popular museums like the Smithsonian or American Museum of Natural History do.
Without making an argument about the validity of Global Warming I would point out that there is a difference between correlation and causation. We also do not have enough statistics to make an accurate judgement. That chart looks at 140 yrs out of how many billions of years of earth history. That is like Aliens landing in the middle of Australia and determining that the whole earth is made up of Aborigines.
On the other hand, why must the whole exhibit be geared at the introductory level? A museum is a big place. Surely at least a little bit of room could be spared for some more sophisticated information in parallel with the simplified stuff? 10-year-old and Dad ought to be able to learn something.
(I have a similar criticism of the educational system. Why should we expect every child to 100% master the same math? Instead, set a baseline, and include varying levels of math in the same lessons. Especially as you get into Algebra and beyond, it's increasingly easy to challenge your students while making sure everyone understands the baseline, even in the exact same classroom. The myth that every student should perform 100% on every assignment is one of the worst blocks to educational reform today. We should expect children to get things wrong... because next time they try, they'll do better, and next time, they'll do better, and next time, they'll do better, etc.... and those children end up way ahead of the ones confined to just what they can do ~100% the first time... and as we've seen, 100% perfection has a habit of receding over time, instead of advancing as we need.
It's all the same fallacy, playing out over and over again, museums, schools, college, television shows, everywhere.)
Getting to Washington, D.C., is not exactly challenging, and while it can be expensive, it's one of the few cities in America where you can see the sights for next to nothing, if you plan properly.
As for not having the desire to go there, well, we can't exactly bring the world to everyone's doorstep. Besides, it's easier to visit one place and see many great things than it is to visit many places to see one great thing in each of those places.
As for the "one clean hit" fear--good grief, man. Live life. Don't brood on the "But THEY could wipe it all out in a second!" scenarios. Our lives and achievements are ephemeral, and they'll all be destroyed eventually. Don't cower in the face of this--get out and enjoy the time you have!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
ok, let's go back 1000 years and then look at some model results. (graph in the middle of the page, the IPCC site is slow at the moment)
True, but on the grand scale of me, or a city, or a civilization, 140 years is quite a long time. And applying theories to data (and data to theories) is what science is all about). If you're doing historical science you can make a prediction about what you expect to see in data obtained from the past. Do you not believe in geology?
"Global Warming" is a debate, albeit a lop-sided one. The causes and ratios of climate change is a fierce debate. (Have humans had an effect? Oh, sure. But are they anywhere near 100% responsible? Now thats a much more inflammatory question. Personally, while I know humans aren't 0% responsible, people trying to put the number in, oh, say, the high 90%'s or even 100% I find much less compelling then those with lower ratios.)
The inevitability of some change is not a subjuct of debate... except among some environmentalists who seem to think the status quo is the only good, and the only reason it's not being maintained is human action, and that if we only did the right things, somehow magically stasis would occur.
I have honestly seen old documentaries about global cooling. If you look at the past few million years the earth has always either been warming or cooling. Congratulations to all the scientists that proved it's currently getting hotter. Now tell me why we should all change our lives for something that has been happening off and on since before humans even existed. That said, less pollution is always a good thing, but enough with the scare tactics.
Typical dicovery channel/TLC/history channel shows:
1. WEEEE!! BIG EXPLOSIONS/DEATH ROBOTS/FAST CARS!!!!11111
2. the bible code/nostradamus/crop circles are stupid, but lets take them completely seriously anyway.
3. this isn't about the movie that's Opening Friday! it about a topic that is tangentially related to the movie that's Opening This Friday!
4. lets replace your interesting house/clothes/hairstyle with one that conforms to our inane social standards!(they replaced a room filled with giant lego stuff, including a FUCKING WORKING GRANDFATHER CLOCK, with a lego THEMED room, taking apart everything and gluing the pieces to the walls, and making a coffee table that looked like a giant lego block.)
My joke got modded as Insightful and my insight got modded as Funny.
I actually agree with the general sentiment here, but for the record:
... nylon stockings.
1) a intricate diorama of two (white, male) 19th century scientists arguing about who got the credit for inventing saccharine,
Weren't most of the American (meaning from the US) scientist in the 19th century white males? Although it certainly doesn't reflect today's demographics, this sounds like an accurate representation of history.
2) control panel for a nuclear reactor, and some of the flash-ash images from Hiroshima,
Well, this sounds pretty uninformative, although it does reflect two prevalent uses for discoveries in nuclear physics.
3) blamed the invention of birth control pills for the decline of the American family,
Much as I would not discourage anyone from use of birth control pills (assuming it is medically safe), I am (sadly) not convinced that this is inaccurate. However, I also haven't seen any research that actually supports this view, so its inclusion in the exhibit sounds dubious.
4) the ONLY use for nylon they could come up with was
To be fair, after DuPont introduced nylon at the 1939 world's fair, nylon stockings have been one of the most successful and prevalent products based on nylon. Of course, there is an awful lot of other great nylon stuff.
Of course we can sort out whether or not warming lagged CO2 or vice versa. We're burning a large (quantified) amount of fossil fuels. We also have an idea how much CO2 is moving into and out of the atmosphere through biological and geological processes. Therefore we are reasonably certain that the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is from us. We can also (and do) look into confounding variables (clouds, solar variability, aerosols).
Global climate change research is a very tricky field of science, but it's certainly valid.
You are quite correct on all points. The inaccuracy of the exhibit comes from not pointing out that few technical professions in the 19th century had members that were women or people of color, that birth control was a significant factor in women taking control of their lives (and reducing the risk of overpopulation), that radioisotopes are also used in the treatment of cancer, and that nylon (and similar plastics) are used in artificial joints. In other words, the exhibit had NO examples of positive aspects of science. (if you think nylon stockings are positive, you clearly have never worn them ;-)
A realistic discussion of science in American life should include the good as well as the bad.