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Mars & The Teachable Moment
Gallenod writes "In this article at space.com, Edna DeVore, Director of Education and Public Outreach for SETI, states that people are being continually exposed to pseudo-science from watching television and reading tabloids. Her examples include the "face" on Mars (which she discusses in detail in the article), alien autopsies, Area 51 in the Nevada desert as alien storage quarters, the "non-landings" on the Moon, UFO's, and alien kidnappings. DeVore describes the current Mars missions as a "teachable moment," an opportunity to teach factual science and astronomy in the context of sensationalistic psuedo-science and the legion of money-grubbing opportunists who make their living churning it out."
The examples given are more like pseudo-reality than pseudo-science... I was thinking more along the lines of the show 24, where they can track a suspect from their cell-phone to the exact room they are in.
... I know that they have all been following the progress of both rovers on Mars. It has been an ongoing "project" for them since the rovers were launched and it has even driven a few parents to donate various bit of hardware to the school's computer room.
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I have a few friends that seem otherwise rational, but are fascinated with the pseudo-science. From what I can see this stuff is a new age religion for people who think they are too educated for classical religion. It provides a framework of an intelligence beyond understanding, that has a plan for us and provides a reason for our existence. Instead if God, you have Greys. Factual science is not going to convert people away from this.
if a lot of Sci-Fi on TV wasn't a big "public education" project.
This was covered, on a tangent, in a STNG episode. The short-version is Picard attempts to make first contact, but the political leaders decide that the populous isn't ready - and that a public education project will be started/expanded.
For example, there are the persistant rumors that Orson Welles radioplay was an experiment designed to gauge public response, and that shortly thereafter it was decided that *we* aren't ready.
Continuing rumors like that the original Star Trek didn't have enough advertising income to keep it on the air for a single season, and certainly not enough to carry it for three.
Now the government is getting publicly involved in the effort, with the 'life on Mars' possibilities that were thrown about in the last few years.
40 years ago, how would people have reacted to the government saying that there might actually be life on Mars? Today, it's no big deal - because we've been "educated".
Thats if the people are teachable, you still have those people who think the moon landing was faked, and then some people do not trust the government all together. I realize that this may seem extreme, and maybe a lil OT, but honestly, I think a private corporation reaching space will do a better job of teaching. Like X-Prize for instance.
je suis parce que j'aime
Edna, I don't know but I would be happy that people are talking about space on any level. For all of us who grew up watching Star Wars and Star Trek, I think some sensationalistic psuedo-science has it merits in getting people interested about space. I don't know what would be more sensationalistic than finding aliens.
I always took those reports with a grain of salt and enjoyed them as bits of entertainment. I remember when the "face" came out. I was in my high school science club and we had a scientist from NASA show up to our school. He gave us this pretty neat (geek alert) report discussing the face. Just remember, half of what you hear is a lie, the other half is a mistake.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
There really are people who believe this stuff. And forget the pseudo-science, just having a dumb story in the media, ANY media, is enough to convince a lot of people.
As much as I desperately want to believe that most people are fairly intelligent and take this stuff with a large grain of salt (like a salt block) I continually meet people who absolutely stun me with their gullability (stupidity is too mean a word, but perhaps more applicable?).
I have an Uncle who was absolutely convinced that the Mars rover had snapped a picture of a "Martian Cat" with big "martian-looking" eyes and then thought for sure the government was covering it up by removing all the copies of the "World Weekly News" from the stands before anyone else could buy a copy. The obvious fact that the store sold out is perhaps even more depressing though. Who buys that crap? Oh yeah, my Uncle.
I was in college when Cassini launched, and I thought it seemed like forever until it would reach Saturn. My alma mater has a few instruments on-board Hyugeuns or however you spell it. Anyway, there will be another great opportunity to teach REAL science. When was the last time a major probe reached one of the outer planets? I remember when Voyager II passed Neptune in the 80's, kids in high school now weren't even alive! To them, Voyagar is some relic of an ancient era.
I hate egghead articles like this. She seems to assume that everyone without her credentials and background is a moron with no common sense.
Frankly, in my experience, the opposite has been true. Friends of mine with little to no post-secondary education, blue-collar types, seem to be more grounded and sensible, whereas the highly educated literate I dealt with in University were so gullible it was ridiculous.
But that's besides the point.
I know Nessie and Bigfoot are just ghost stories. I know ghost stories are make-believe. I know no spaceship crashed at Roswell, I know Neil Armstrong really did land on the moon, I know the face on mars is as real as the faces in any random cloud. So do 99% of the population, I'd imagine.
So why do I watch the alien abduction "special reports" on sci-fi, or the hunt for Nessie on history channel? Because it's ENTERTAINING.
Sure, you could replace those shows with dry astro-geology lectures, etc, but people will just tune out.
TV (and I'd say all mass media) are primarily forms of entertainment to people. That's the primary reason so few share the slashdotters outrage that $NEWSCHANNEL may be biased. Endless reporting/speculating about the latest little kid to be raped and murdered is entertainment to people. They don't know or care about the child, have no personal stake in the story, yet we'll keep having news about Jon Benet et al forever.
Nothing on TV is factual, everyone knows it. I watched one of the designers on "trading spaces" install what had to be 500 square feet of laminate flooring one episode, and then at the end sit there with a straight face and say that the entire room was less than $1000 bucks.
The day I care about the "factual science" of martian geology or microbiology, I'll pick up a textbook.
I don't watch TV for "factual" science, just like I don't read slashdot for "factual" computer science.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Part of the problem is that "regular" press reports much of the shadier stuff because many debunkers are not very good, and have lost credibility with journalists. Most debunkers try to paint everybody and everything as superstitious idiots. They focus more on personality patterns than the evidence itself. This triggers reporters to dig into the personality of the debunkers as well (to be even-handed), and being human, they sometimes do stupid things or jump to bad conclusions also. It thus becomes a personality shoot-out instead of an evidence shootout. If the debunkers don't have a good answer for something, they should just say so rather than point to some past "believer" transgressions.
For example, some UFO debunkers have created some rather elaborate psychology theories to explain the alleged hallucinations of airline pilots and cops with regard to some rather detailed and unusual UFO reports. (Surprisingly, most UFO debunkers don't think outright fibs are the biggest cause.) If you don't have a decent counter-explanation, just say so. Just say something like, "Just because it is odd does not necessarily mean it is from outer space". Instead they will point out a case were a train driver mistook Venus for an oncoming train in the fog and imply that all sightings are the same kind of thing. Sometimes you just plain don't have an answer. Leave it at that. If you force explanations, you start to resemble the "believers".
Table-ized A.I.
DeVore describes the current Mars missions as a "teachable moment," an opportunity to teach factual science and astronomy in the context of sensationalistic psuedo-science and the legion of money-grubbing opportunists who make their living churning it out.
I think it's a great idea, but probably doomed to fail for a couple of reasons.
First off, pseudo-science is usually described as sensationalistic because it is fairly sensational. Light on reality, but very sensational. It's much more entertaining to see faces on Mars than trace water. If you doubt this, examine the headlines on the tabloid rack the next time you're checking out in the grocery store. Style usually beats substance.
Also, given the huge volume of crap that people believe about space, any useful information will probably be lost. My last attempt to fix this problem was a discussion with a family member who is a conspiracy theorist. This person does not believe we landed on the moon. And had loads of total crap pseudo-science to back him up. As I calmly talked him through the problems with his "facts", he became more and more agitated. I was ruining his world view.
After a while I gave up. He wanted his belief, and anything I said was because "they" had gotten to me, and I couldn't open up my mind to other possibilities. Facts be damned.
I think really the only people who want the truth about what's out there are the scientific types in the first place. We don't need to see faces on Mars to get excited. Trace water is exciting enough, because we know what it implies. If the Teachable Moment finds a few of these people, that's great. Just don't expect many converts.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
My friend says, "The moon landings were faked, and I found a website with lots of evidence."
:)
I respond, "I am familiar with it, and have found equivalent websites that debunk their "evidence" as pseudoscience, with their own, solid, evidence."
He responds, "Oh no dude, you just GOTTA read it again, it was totally faked."
Though one example is not a representative sample, his actions seem consistent with those of the masses....people simply will not bother to consider true evidence objectively, nor to educate themselves to the point at which they can even discern good evidence from crap. They respond better to a good story, and good rhetoric, and that is just the way it is.
Oh well, its just one more way in which geeks are better than other people.
Fortunately, the article is really about teaching students critical-thinking skills, not deriding a "legion of money-grubbing opportunists," so the submitter of this article has [perhaps inadvertently] provided an example for this lesson.
--
"Hello. I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is: No."
- Leonard Nimoy {The Simpsons, "The Springfield Files"}
I'm not saying we should have classes on UFOs, but I wouldn't be too alarmed to see my kid reading about them.
Unless he started growing strange mushrooms in the basement
Nothing wrong with that. It was the strange mushrooms and magical herbs that got me into pharmacology. If you think about it, psychoactive drugs provide a unique opportunity for perterbational analysis of consciousness. It's a pity our culture is so afraid of them.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This article assumes teachers know the truth and ought to correct students misconceptions, but sadly back in 7th grade I had a social studies teacher who filled our naive young minds with such gems of truth as:
* Atari video games were funded and developed by the department of defense in order to improve our reflexes to prepare us for 21st century automated combat... the company name "Atari" was just an acronym for special black ops project.
* The United States could easily bring the Soviet Union to its knees at any moment simply by flying the space shuttle at supersonic speed back and forth high above Soviet cities, the barrage of sonic booms would cause mass confusion and panic that would cause the Soviet republic a catastrophic collapse... therefore we do not need nuclear weapons, we have the space shuttle.
There were many other examples of his wit but those two stood out in my mind. This teacher was highly regarded by students for many years because his insights, and also he would buy Chinese food for the entire class on Fridays, so we all listened to him intently... it wasn't until some years later that most of us figured out how far off base he was. I wonder how many of his students still to this day accept everything he said as fact.
I think the trend with pseudoscience is a reaction to the fact that mass media has basically given the populace attention-deficit-disorder.
Instead of teaching people about robotics we now have "robot war death matches". Instead of Paleontology we have the story of the lonely Velociraptor fighting for his life in an epic miniseries. Instead of archeology we have shows teasing the viewer over whether or not aliens from Mars built the Mayan temples. No more "scientific-themed" shows about weather, geography, or geology unless they involve tragic sinkings of famous ships, cars being blown through the air, the search for amazing lost treasure, or cities overrun by lava with frantic cameramen running for their lives.
Your average person nowadays, can't seem to stomach "pure science", unless something involved isn't bleeding, exploding, covered with gold and diamonds, or posessed by a supernatural/alien presence.
Believe me, I've tried to correct her, but she's clinging to this dream.
Of course, then there's my grandfather who thinks that Venus is actually a chunk of another planet that existed between Mars and Jupiter. It was in some book he read, so it must be true!
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I have a friend who has gotten more and more "involved" in the chemtrails phenomenon, and despite my best efforts to convince him otherwise (both factually and logically) he refuses to believe otherwise. I used to think it was a kind of tongue-in-cheek joke, but since he's started building "emitters" (large bits of copper tubing encasing helical copper wound-crystals, titanium shavings..) and claiming their power attracts forced entry into his house and black helicopters I'm kind of convinced he's slipping into a delusional paranoia.
Factual rebuttals are always refuted by claims of faked evidence or collusion based on the political/military capabilities of the people behind the phenomenon. You can't refute this -- if the person believes that the contra-evidence is faked and it can be logically fit into the conspiracy as a whole, it just reinforecs the conspiracy.
Logical rebuttals at least cause a pause, since asking how the government is able to maintain an effective, secret program that requires the participation of tens of thousands of people and billions in expenses and equipment when the CIA/FBI/Military/et al fail so spectacularly to maintain even minimal secrecy over other aspects of their operations is tough one to counter.
Regardless, there are just too many conspiracists with too much time on their hands to ever be satisfied with factual, logical explanations. In the case of the Mars rovers, it's all too easy to just deny that stuff even happened, just as they've been doing with the moon missions for decades.
In some ways the Internet makes it worse. It used to be that a conspiracy theorist focused on a single conspiracy (ie, Kennedy's assassination). Nowadays, they have access to so many conspiracies that they all get tied together, and are all part of a conspiracy universe that is self-referential and self-reinforcing.
I can only presume that the conspiracies fill some social/psychological vacuum that religion has failed to do so in modern society, that, or whatever they're putting in the water is breeding paranoia....
Can't agree more. Real science is extremely extremely boring. I have fallen asleep in every science class at least once. And considering I am not even an X-files fan, I haven't fallen asleep on any episodes yet.
Rent or buy Penn and Teller's Showtime series "Bullshit!" on DVD. Put on the episode about creationism.
You want to fret about pseudo-science? In Georgia, they modified the textbooks to remove references to Darwinism, or in some cases, put it up against some cockeyed theory wrapped in a vaguely reasonable name, "Intelligent Design".
There are entire relious groups in the American South dedicated to "Intelligent Design". It postulates an absolute literal reading of the bible. The heavens and earth really WERE created in 7 days. 6 actually, he rested on the seventh. No word on the 8th or 9th. Adam and Eve were real, we did not evolve, we were blond haired and blue eyed right from the start, etc etc.
Penn and Teller then proceed to smash these idiots in the mouth. But, it's pretty scary. When the religious factions of the U.S. start re-writing textbooks, and debunking real science in favor of pseudo-science, it's scary. They interview this moron who thinks the Grand Canyon proves God created the earth in 6 days. How, I'm not sure. But he has an entire museum, well funded, dedicated to smearing Darwin. He tells people that at the end of his life, Darwin recanted all he said, and begged forgiveness from God. That and a bunch of other lies.
Penn postulates at the end of the episode that bullshit science is usually easily spotted for it's adherence to some sort of faith based postulate. Dogma eventually gets exposed.
That's why I love P&T, promoting a different kind of lifestyle. They call it, "Intelligent Skepticism". Thank your God for guys like them.
A big problem with science education is just that; teachers often are ill equiped to answer important and difficult questions. I've most often seen evidence of this in the evolution versus creationism debate. If a kid asks (probably in highschool) how evolution could be possible in light of the second law of thermodynamics, most high school teachers cannot give an adequate answer. That doesn't mean that adequate answers do not exist (they do).
Take for another example the intelligent design propaganda piece Ten questions to ask your biology teacher - excellent and compelling answers to all of those questions exist, but they are seriously tricky and would trap an average educator. You need to be very well trained in biology and other natural sciences to field those questions. Most teachers with an undergraduate degree in science and an education after degree simply don't have the knowledge.
I dunno about you but I wouldnt wanna see someone take a 10 minute dump in a movie. The movie pleasantville shows it best when the sister goes to the bathroom in the diner and finds there are no toilets in the stalls. Just an empty space.
My Gawd WTF...
Except we're not talking about theories and conjectures that cannot be proven or disproven. We're talking about wild hoax and conspiracy theories can be objectively and fundmentally shown through science and fact to be utterly false. Alien landings fall more into the former category, but even then - how likely is it that, over the tenure of the history of the universe, two intelligent species rise to power on planets near enough to each other to transmit any kind communication before one or the other is wiped out? I romanticize the notion of aliens as much as anybody, but I think our civilization will rise and fall, for whatever reasons, without ever so much as finding evidence of intelligent alien life anywhere else. The chances are just so damn slim. What's the chances of a star developing a planet capable of life? And the chance of that planet developing lif? Developing intelligent life? Being situated with a Jupiter-like planet to absorb/throw off interplanetary debris? That intelligent life surviving long enough to defend itself from a worldwide catastrophe, like an asteroid collision, but WITHOUT also wiping itself out with that same technology? We've had some close calls in the history of the earth. And what's are the chances that two such civilizations survive long enough to develop these capabilities - the ability to communicaet or locate each other, something we've only had a realistic shot at for a few decades, and survive long enough to find each other. To TRAVEL to each other's systems? Our society has had this technology for the cosmic equivilant of NO TIME at all, and we're failing to really go anywhere with it as explorers.
No, I think it's very unlikely that, if human civilization survives another 10,000 years, we ever discover another intelligent species. As much as we as nerds hate to admit it, there may be none more advanced than us. There may be none at all that can reach us. Or there just plain may be none. If anything, we're most likely to intercept some kind of communication sent by a long-dead species. But not in any of our lifetimes.
They may have thought it was a joke, but I saw it as a perfect example of a single general-purpose device (the PC) gradually becoming able to compete with a vast number of single-purpose widgets (telephone, videophone, copier, fax, TV, VCR, tape recorder/CD player, typewriter, encyclopedia/dictionary/thesaurus/phone book/generic office library stuff, etc, etc) in some respects and far surpass them in others.
Dyolf Knip
Ahh, but what else was the car videophone capable of doing?
;)
Nothing, because it didn't actually exist. It was a joke, playing on old 60's spy movies and such. The video phone was the one portrayed in *movies*, not a real device. And then the real device from 30's years later was noticably not as cool looking. That was the joke. Laugh, it's funny.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
True...but most of the wild ideas are the utterings of nutballs.
You want acceptance? Prove it. Publish in a peer-reviewed journal; don't just hold a press conference. Invite criticism; don't rant about censorship on a website.
Scientists, just like everyone else, have a bit of inertia. If you want to introduce something radically new, you have to expect resistance. Quite frankly, the system wouldn't be working if people accepted dramatic findings without questioning them.
You're right. We should abandon clinical trials as a means to evaluate the efficacy of new drugs and therapies. We should just take the word of Pfizer and/or the faith healer down the street.
The term "pseudo-science" is used by the closed-minded to justify their continued obsessions with The Way Things Are(TM).
Actually, the term "pseudo-science" is used to describe the use of sloppy or incomplete data--possibly in combination with outright fabrication--and inadvertant or wilful ignorance to present theory as incontrovertible fact...particularly on Fox. Pseudo-science involves presenting as fact ideas that are either unsupported or directly contradicted by experiment. Usually it is liberally dosed with dogmatic statements about Establishment conspiracies.
~Idarubicin
I have relatives who believe everything in/on:
- In Search Of...
- Art Bell
- Weekly World News
- etc..
There is no point to arguing with them. Any outright contraditions to their beliefs, even when backed by hard science, are simply ignored as being part of the "plan". Whose plan, I'm not really sure. At any rate, according to the aforementioned accounts, we're currently being experimented on, mind controlled and invaded by soviets/aliens/time travellers/elvis/whatever.
Here's what has been working with them. Every time they mention [insert appropriate psudeo-science here], I counter with something completely factual and only marginally related to what they are talking about. If they mention alien cities on mars, I talk about the latest findings in martian geochemistry and don't mention aliens at all.
This has two effects:
1) They sometimes learn something.
2) I have factual ammunition that I can use later. For instance when Art Bell says that mars is made of pocket lint, I can bring up the conversation we had last week on mineral salts. And then they listen to reason (sometimes).
Hope this helps (despite some very hopeless people in the world).
#include "humorous_pop_culture_reference.h"
I will pass up moderating this thread.
This is exactly like having pictures in a novel that don't corespond with your mental image of the characters and the scenery. After watching the first movie, possibly the second as well, theories started to form. Most people had a personal theory as to the reasoning behind the matrix, or even the "Matrix in a Matrix" theory to explain the multiple existances of Neo. The disallusionment came from the third movie being too simple and not satsifying the expectations and theories the first two movies raised.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Nuclear propulsion or, you know, a space elevator or skyhook. Or a massdriver for cargo and air-launches for humans. And "put up" an O'Neill habitat? Why would anyone bother launching it, or even all the bits needed to make it? O'Neill's plan, if you could actually be bothered to read it, involved three stages of habitats of escalating size, with each providing the infrastructure and jumping-off point necessary to construct the one above it. You say "yeah right" to mining and mass drivers on the moon, but once you've got a few Island 1 habitats in high orbit, it suddenly looks a lot more feasible to mine enough for some Island 2 habitats...
And chemical fuels ARE powerful enough - again, its NASA and its massive top-heavy bureaucracy that's killing launch costs. And given that rocketry is basically controlled explosions, and satellite deployment involves numerous intricate steps that must take place out of contact with a human, a 90% launch rate is pretty damn impressive. But again, this doesn't have much to do with launch capability.
Sure, the X-Prize guys aren't trying for orbit... But neither was van Braun, not at first. The tech they develop will probably be USABLE in a vehicle that will reach orbit.
I also had to stand in the right place to see the "bear"; otherwise, it just looked like a mountain peak. Like the bear, to see the face on Mars, you have to "stand" in the right place, and at the right time of day.
Sorry, but 'That Face' was photographed from multiple angles by multiple spacecraft and has never been explained to any satisfactory degree. If it was looked at from a different angle and ceased to be a face, then these comments would be valid.
What's more, this face is not in the middle of a rocky region of Mars - it is out by itself in the middle of nowhere. If it was in the middle of a huge mountainous region then this could easily be explained. The chances of an exact face being carved into the surface in the middle of a fairly featureless region are extremely remote.
No conspiracy theories. This just needs to be explained, and not with all the usual dismissal. Let's land there!
Hopefully my Anonymous Coward status won't bury this post too far. I didn't see Snuffed Candle Award in the other posts.
/War Room out in Parumph Nevada.
Didn't the Skeptical Inquirer's http://www.csicop.org/si/ Snuffed Candle Award go to Larry King this year?
I don't really listen to Larry, I am more of an Art Bell http://www.artbell.com / http://www.coasttocoastam.com Wildcard Line type of guy. (note: I use real Science to speed dial the line.)
Art got his Snuff Candle Award http://www.csicop.org/articles/19981113-awards/ in 1998. And he displays it proudly in his Radio
But I like Richard C. Hogland too! And all the others, like Linda Multon Howe and the crop circle, cattle mutilation, deformed frogs; man this stuff is great, and when Art Got sick and the radio show dried up, something inside of me died, I LIVE for this stuff late at night. George Noory does a half decent job of holding this all together. BUT THE MASTER IS ART!
PS. For added Karma Points email Wayne Green @ AOL.COM (hahahhah) and have a dull discussion about ham radios and switch to Healthy Food, and then . . . Landing on the moon. He'll write you back more than once! Tee Hee Hee
Oh ... I see where you are coming from ... "intelligent, purposeful. design". Sorry. I'll let you get back to your prayer meeting.
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.