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Classroom Clashes Over Science Education
cheezitmike writes "In a two-part series, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science examines two hot-button topics that create clashes in the classroom between science teachers and conservative-leaning students, parents, school boards, and state legislatures. Part 1 looks at the struggle of teachers to cover evolution in the face of religious push-back from students and legislatures. Part 2 deals with teaching climate change, and how teachers increasingly have to deal with political pressure from those who insist that there must be two sides to the discussion."
Why 2 sides to discussions that have been scientifically settled? Have the other side of the discussion in Sunday School.
Climate change: the majority of climate scientists think it's true and a component is man-made, but a small and decreasing percentage of climate scientists disagree.
Evolution: There's all but no doubt, and essentially no reputable scientists in the field disagree with the core concepts.
QED.
Gonna post AC on this since it's a little off-topic, but isn't this the third or fourth 'science/evolution/education' article posted in the past 24 hours? It's an important topic, for sure, but it's beginning to smell a bit of spam sensationalism (not sensationalism as in over exaggeration but rather in over reporting to get ad clicks).
How do you think you should teach science then? The actual problem is that most students are stupid, and they are raised by stupid parents. Throughout most of human history almost everybody hunted or worked in the field, and it's only now we expect the average individual to be able to think rationally.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
There is no scientific debate about the theory of evolution; why, then, should any such debate be taught in a science classroom? A science teacher who is "skeptical" of evolution had better have some extraordinary proof that there is a problem with the theory, or else they should not be teaching science.
Palm trees and 8
They're trying to, but they're getting resistance for that, too: With few exceptions, teachers' unions fight against efforts to ground teacher evaluation in data and simultaneously resist giving administrators the discretion to remove teachers.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
...as long as all churches are required to have an atheist (e.g., Daniel Dennet) or a historic biblical scholar (e.g., Bart D. Ehrman) come in for every sermon or Sunday school lesson to present an alternative viewpoint.
Quoth TFA:
McDonald advises teachers to start the year off with a short section on the nature of science. “Once I started to do this, I had fewer challenges in my classroom,” he says.
Sounds like a good way to deal with the "just"-a-theory crowd.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Realistically, you can't. Science is hard and learning about it doesn't pay off in the obvious or self-gratuitous ways that matter to most people. So, the motivation will always be low, lower still if you have to work a job that does not require you to know any science, as most jobs today are.
It is a lost fight, especially in a world in which the future looks increasingly likely to be much bleaker than the past, for everybody.
Just have the Conservatives provide the peer-reviewed science behind their assertions. If it's actually science, there should be something testable to support it. If it isn't science, it doesn't belong in science class.
But "science" also deals with the realm of things that cannot be immediately verified and confirmed or refuted by (easy) experimentation. No one has in their lifetime, seen an organism give birth to a distinctly different organism (when 2 of the same organisms have mated), for example, no one has seen 2 cats mate and then give birth to a dog. Same thing with climate change, we only have a few sets of data we cannot look at the weather reports (beyond a few scattered accounts) of life in the 13th century. And so a lot of information has to be taken from the known and transported into the unknown, exactly like politics where we can take the known (what happened after a policy changed was made) and apply it to the unknown (what will happen if a similar policy change was made today).
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I would imagine it is the role of the science teacher to educate, not pontificate - if students enter the classroom with different ideas, theories, or beliefs I would expect the teacher to entertain their ideas, beliefs, and theories and then work with the student to understand how their ideas, beliefs and theories balance against scientific facts.
The teacher is not obliged to give equal time to all theories that the students preset, but the science teacher has the task of equiping the students to come to their own conclusions based on facts. A science teacher that can't (or doesn't want to) defend the ideas and concepts they are teaching needs to find another profession.
Religions typically teach the "One True Belief" on a subject and ask the followers to "believe without proof, as an exercise of their faith," not science.
Ken
I was doing some science outreach stuff at a museum a while back, and a seemingly intelligent looking thirtysomething woman with two children asked me if the Sun goes around the Earth, or the other way around. That is when I gave up.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
The phrase "just a theory" means that you do not know what you are talking about. Educate yourself.
That does not matter. As long as the theories explain the available observations and are falsifiable.
Ideally the theories should suggest experiments that can be used to falsify them. Whether or not these experiments are possible to perform is another issue.
Of course not. That would be evidence that the theory of evolution is wrong.
Which is pretty much exactly what I was getting at.
Don't tell student "evolution exists, remember finch #1, #5 and #13 for this Friday's test." Show them where the evolution theory comes from, present the evidence and let them figure it out for themselves.
P.S. Gravity was still just a "theory" less than 100 years ago.
This signature is false.
Is to teach skills that make people able to participate in society. If you're going to be catching alligtor for a living, you don't need much education. However the trend is for increasingly complex jobs as computers fill-in the easy, repetitive parts.
Then lets look at creationism. It posits a "because god made it this way" which provides a limit to understanding because we cannot possibly do what god has, because then we would be gods ourselves, and that's heresy. But call it "evolution" and "biology" and "chemistry" and we can teach these and they lead to skills and discoveries in genetics, medicine, disease therapy, etc.
And that's why creationism has no place in schools. It does not teach a skill.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I don't "believe" in either one.
I accept as fact Darwin's theorems concerning evolution based on observation and proven fact. As a Christian, this does not conflict with my beliefs.
I accept on fact that climate change as a constant thing that has happened before mankind and will likely continue afterwards. The only question that remains unsettled (in spite of shouting from either side) is how strongly mankind can and does alter climate, and what, if anything, we could *safely* do to reduce mankind's influences if indeed they are strong enough to provide adverse reactions to the system as a whole.
I limit my beliefs to matters of spiritual faith and of human emotion. Everything else requires hard evidence.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Why do we let politicians write the text books, instead of having a quorum of people in their respective fields with masters degrees? Shouldn't the most educated in their respective fields have a say in what the younger generation is being taught, so they can be more prepared for higher education?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html?_r=1
I'll just bet their a ha moment doesn't come about as a result of the teacr simply repeating "settled sciece" ovr and over again, but in working with the students to understand why their misconceptions are wrong, and why the what the teacher is saying is correct.
Ken
I don't see how evolution requires sexual reproduction to produce "distinctly different" (whatever that means) progeny. There are ample examples of speciation, if that's what you mean by "distinctly" different, wherein a population of animals are separated and over time, for instance, the two separated populations are no longer able to reproduce with one another. We have strong evidence for this, even if we haven't witnessed the event with our eyes, in the same way that you have incontrovertible evidence that your great-great-great-great grandfather was born, even though you know no one who was present, and there probably exists no written record of the event.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Some people aren't sold on the theory. It really doesn't make any sense to a lot of people because 2 controdictory things must happen: the organism must first be best adapted to the environment, and the organism also must have mutations (most of which are not immediately beneficial) to continue change.
Since existing organisms are already in existing environments the first thing you state has been observed and is what most people would call a fact.
Since mutations have also been observed in organisms this would also be considered by most as fact
To continue what I perceive as implied (that these observation can't make evolution happen).
We have also observed that dna is responsible for the traits displayed in the organism. We have observed that if we change that dna, traits of the organism are changed. We have also observed that we can select the largest organism of a given population and that over time the average size of the organism will increase (e.g. cows or strawberries or my fruit flies in 10th grade). We have observed that selection pressures exist in nature so that when the environment changes traits observed in populations change. (loss of sight for organism isolated underground, colors of moths as pollution-soot changes or reproductive ages of fish changing with fishing laws)
We have observed that the same trait can be detrimental in one environment and beneficial in another (pigmentation's benefit/detriment depends largely on latitude; Sickle Cell Anemia depends on the threat of malaria.)
I'm not sure I'm seeing the problem.
We don’t let people who can’t read teach kids how to read.
We don’t let people who can’t add/subtract teach kids math.
It should just be a hiring requirement for science teaches that they accept evolution as fact.
When it comes to attitude towards modern science, three types of people develop:
Sadly, most of the science teachers in schools gravitate towards the third group.
I guess there are two trends that collide to this sad outcome. One is, as I said above, the complexity and hardness of it all. The other is that politicians in modern democracies dislike educated population. Add to this the lack of motivation from a powerful adversary in the past 20 years or so, and the picture is really bad.
"Namely that there has never been an observed case of one species becoming another species (species being defined by the ability to reproduce withing the species, but not outside of it)"
Only, of course, while a rare event (it couldn't be otherwise) it *has* been observed and even produced in a lab. See i.e. http://www.sciencemeetsreligion.org/evolution/speciation.php
But even if that wasn't the case, it so obvious that darwinian evolution *must* happen that there would be no point discussing it anyway: as soon as you know that there are random mutations (trivially probed in a lab), that these mutations affect fitness (trivially probed in a lab) and that fitness affects alleles distribution (trivially probed in a lab), speciation is nothing but an unavoidable fact.
"My point is that there are legitimate alternative theories besides evolution"
No, there aren't. There are legitimate *ideas* about evolution (i.e. lamarkian versus darwinian) already disproved that nevertheless make for a good case about how scientific ideas get concieved and accepted or rejected.
So, after someone you had judged intelligent based on a visual analogy of phrenology asked you a question about science she may or may not have had good reasons - such as being home-schooled by a crazy cult - to be ignorant about, you gave up on educating people on science? Because, obviously, having given birth twice should have given her the basics of astronomy.
How very logical of you.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Realistically, you can't. Science is hard and learning about it doesn't pay off in the obvious or self-gratuitous ways that matter to most people. So, the motivation will always be low, lower still if you have to work a job that does not require you to know any science, as most jobs today are.
It is a lost fight, especially in a world in which the future looks increasingly likely to be much bleaker than the past, for everybody.
Actually no, science is easy, we start using it long before we learn to talk as we build up a mental model of the rules governing our universe. Several studies have shown that infants and children attempting to understand a new phenomena generally experiment in a fashion very near the statistically optimal pattern for exploring a new problem-space, it's only later in life that we start expecting things to behave in neat, well behaved patterns and get stymied by counter-intuitive behaviors.
The problem is science classes generally make no attempt to teach science, just scientific knowledge, and much of that *is* complicated. And without an understanding of science itself, the knowledge is just so much trivia that you're being asked to take on faith. Teach real science, do experiments where the answer *isn't* completely known beforehand, and ideally where the answer actually matters, or at least is interesting, and you can start getting students to appreciate that unlike almost every other subject (except math) science is a living, breathing, cutthroat combative subject where theories don't get widespread acceptance without considerable evidence. Once they *really* understand the rules of the game then it becomes clear that science, while still flawed, is far more authoritative than any other field on the planet.
Heck, ideally I'd say hold a class-wide experiment once a month or so to figure something out - students work in small "research groups" attacking the problem from different angles, but by the end of the "research window" (days?, weeks?) everyone needs to reach a consensus on what the "real" answer is, with some sort of prize (pizza party? movie break?) if they're correct within a certain margin of error so that they actually care. Then, once everyone has agreed, bring in a professional who can provide a conclusive answer in an understandable manner to verify the results. Not only would that provide a taste of real science, but it would also provide a periodic reminder of the fact that in the face of an implacable universe the best speakers and most inspiring/popular/attractive students generally aren't the ones you want to be listening to if you want to get it right.
Because, at the end of the day, all you really care about in most pre-university science classes is
(A) giving everyone a general background knowledge of how the world works (they'll soon forget most the details anyway, so the big picture is the important part)
(B) inspiring those so inclined to pursue careers in research or technology (and nothing like an occasional project were you're one of the respected "inner circle" to inspire a lonely nerd)
(C) instill a certain level of respect for scientists in the form of an understanding that, unlike in virtually all other fields of life, when it comes to questions of how the world works within their area of expertise, their opinion really is worth a heck of a lot more than yours.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If the religious parents of a child explain "give the answers they want even though we know they are wrong thanks to the Bible," the fact remains that the student is being exposed to evidence that undermines his faith.
This is what the religious practitioners all fear. When a young and impressionable mind is exposed to challenging information, no amount of preparation can prevent at least some of it from making an impression. So, it is not sufficient to keep religious discussions in the church and to allow secular discussions at school. Any exposure to religion-undermining memes *at all* is a threat to parent's goal of keeping control over their child's beliefs.
No amount of enlightened philosophizing will convince such parents that it is ok to keep secular education secular. And telling them to send their kid to private school is no good either; most religious parents either can't or won't pay for it. They want the property-tax-funded public education for their child, and they want to filter out anything that might challenge their religious beliefs, and they are going to fight for this tooth and nail.
You can't silence them through rational argument. There is no convincing them, and we are stuck with them. Your only option is to get just as involved, and just as pushy, and just as loud as they are.
We've also never seen tectonic plates move thousands of miles, but we have evidence that they have done so. We've never seen the inside of the sun, but we have evidence that hydrogen fuses into helium. We've never even seen a nucleus of an atom either! Science doesn't work by directly observing the phenomena it explains. Science works by making hypotheses about things and making testable predictions about things that we can observe. If we fail to observe what the hypothesis predicts, that's evidence that the hypothesis is incorrect.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
A complete failure to understand evolution. There are two kinds mutation and selection. Selection does not really add to the top it clips from the bottom and as such shifts the average over time so the species becomes more competitive in it's environment. Mutation generally requires vacancy within an environment, whether by major disaster, meteor, major volcanic action, planetary shift, climate change etc. This tends to generate mutations through genetic stressors and also allows them to survive in altered less competitive environments. Then over time the mutation is refined and becomes far more competitive. Some people can't grasp the passage of time a million years is simple beyond their comprehension, well a million years is beyond anyone comprehension how ever most people can readily comprehend the level of evolutionary change that can occur over that time coupled with natural disasters and mutation.
When you are one step removed from chimpanzees rather than the delusion of one step removed from the supreme being of the universe, you learn to accept your intellectual limitations. I mean, seriously how deluded are elements humanity to look in a mirror and believe they are one step short of a supreme being of the universe, talk about arrogance and delusions of grandeur and that's what it is all really about, jealous idiot's trying to pretend they are a whole lot smarter than they really are.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Okay, as long as we also make sure to point out that gravity, electromagnetism, chemistry, the atomic model of matter, and all other scientific knowledge upon which our civilization is based are also "just" theories, and that theory is a "term of art" in science that means something completely different than it does in in casual conversation.
As for speciation - the development of descendant populations no longer capable of interbreeding - we actually *have* observed it. It's not common because it generally takes a long time, but we've spotted it a couple times, and even intentionally caused it in fruit flies in the lab where only took about 30 generations. Keep in mind that's with us intentionally trying to cause speciation, it almost certainly generally takes much (probably VERY much) longer, and nobody's been keeping records for the many centuries necessary to have a good chance of catching it in action in nature.
If there's a legitimate alternative theory to evolution I haven't heard it - there are numerous different theories about the particular mechanisms involved (sub-mechanisms really, genetics is pretty universally accepted as the fundamental one), but the basic premise of natural selection stands unchallenged. There are other *ideas* out there but they don't rise to the level of theory, generally they don't even rise to the level of hypothesis since there's no way to prove them wrong. And without being able to prove something wrong it has no place in science outside of cocktail-party conversation.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I went to a public high school in Vermont in the late 90s and science was as you described. Evolution wasn't a question because we worked with fruit flies and selectively paired them to achieve a desired outcome. This taught you what evolution was and that it was real. It isn't hard to think that if I could make it happen in a few weeks in school that nature surely could accomplish a lot given a few billion.
I agree though, science is a process and you should teach the process. That's what was done for me though so I'm not sure if my experience was very similar to what appears to be the majority of other schools out there. My graduating class was maybe 200 students so it wasn't exactly a big school, you actually knew your teachers though. My chemistry teacher in high school was crazy, but his passion for the subject lead to some fascinating experiments which almost always proved the math done beforehand. That's what I always liked about that class, teach the abstract, then show the real life association with the abstract math.
Some people still didn't care about science but I feel like everyone got at least a decent education and could tell you the basics even years later.
One person sees the glass half full, the other sees it half empty. You see a world that looks increasingly likely to be bleaker while I see a world that looks better and better with pollution levels going down and a world which looks better and is warming.
Its all a matter of perspective. But if we constantly tell children they are stupid and their parents are stupid, you are doing no good to helping matters. The children are neither stupid nor smart (same goes for parents.) (As GF says.) The problem is those who constantly tell people they are stupid and they have no hope in learning science. There is always hope to teach science, but the building blocks will never be there if people have this insane idea that they are smarter then anyone else and that most people are just stupid monkeys.
I find it odd that the theory of evolution is shown in a light of being an evolving science which is correct in that the theory changes as more and new evidence is discovered. Yet the theory of climate change is shown as more of a dogma where the scientific community is a consensus which it is not and any dissent to the contrary is put down as being "unscientific".
There is plenty of evidence refuting the claims of anthropogenic climate change which is available to anyone who has an internet connection and can find google.com
Teaching science as a dogma is contrary to the scientific method. The ACC folks just can't see that the dogma they're teaching is just as bad as the scientific consensus against plate tectonics which was taught in schools well into the 60's. Real science is not a consensus. Only in the fullness of time will the truth be discovered but wrecking our economy in the name of a theory which is far from proven is the wrong way to go.
Here is a particularly scholarly site which puts the "ACC consensus" in the proper light. http://geologist-1011.net/
Sounds like you're just looking for an excuse to disbelieve. Why not look at the evidence and see for yourself what the facts are?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
it so obvious that darwinian evolution *must* happen that there would be no point discussing it anyway
This is your fundamental error - you think Darwinian evolution is obvious therefore it must happen. Not everyone has your level of faith in the ability of natural processes.
No-one doubts that natural selection occurs, and that organisms change. We can observe change in the lab. But it is a tremendous step of faith to extrapolate that to how organisms *originated*, and how they obtained their incredibly complex features. That can't be observed, and it is dependent on the presence of an initial self replicating organism. Fossil evidence is poor and often contradictory. And almost all commonly cited contemporary examples of evolutionary change haven't compared genomes to see if change really did occur, rather than changes due to phenotypic plasticity.
Great Windows SFTP Server!
The science topics don't cause controversy. The controversy is caused by people who for religious and political reasons refuse to accept scientific evidence.
This is the classic "I am not creative enough to imagine how these features could have evolved and therefore evolution must be false" argument. It is not at all hard to understand how eggs could have developed a very thin shell which offered some amount of protection and which did not require a tooth to break, but for which a primitive tooth or even just a little bump was helpful in getting a baby out of the egg faster than its siblings; nor is it hard to imagine how these features could have evolution together, with ever stronger shells and better formed egg tooth shapes gradually emerging. Honestly, this may be the worst example of "irreducible complexity" I have ever heard of; I am not a biologist, and even I can see a possible way for an egg shell and an egg tooth to have evolved.
These arguments are tired and played out. I thought these sorts of arguments had died when a biologist managed to demonstrate that even a mousetrap does not exhibit "irreducible complexity."
Palm trees and 8
That's because, barring some sort of parasitism, organisms DON'T give birth to distinctly different organisms, that's not how evolution works. Two house-cats mate and give birth to slightly different cats that possess some combination of parent attributes, plus some tiny random mutations, some of which will be advantageous, most of which will be harmless or damaging . Separate those cats into an environment where they can't interbreed with the other cats, especially if their "traditional" ecological niche is unavailable so that new selective pressures are at work (small isolated islands work especially well for this), and you'll start to see some of those slight differences spreading throughout the population as they give an advantage to those who possess them. Wait for a while for those tiny difference to add up, probably somewhere between 100 and 10,000 generations, depending on mutation rates and selective pressures, and you'll have a population of cats that's so different from the originals that they can no longer interbreed with them.
Meanwhile the rest of the cats in the world will have continued changing as well, in some other completely different random directions, and (eventually if not already) will also be incapable of interbreeding with the original population. They'll still be able to interbreed with each other because they've been doing so the whole time, but they're no longer the same species they started out as, and they won't be the same species as your isolated population. So really you have three species - the original, the "mainline descendants", and the "isolated descendants", which is why you can't really say that one species is "more evolved" than another - we've all been at this game for the same 4 billion years since life first got a foothold on this rock, when comparing different species it's not a question of how far we've gone, just which direction.
(Hmm, actually, you could make an argument that you should count evolutionary time in generations rather than years, in which case bacteria and virii have us all beat hands down - and there are in fact several species that have genomes far larger than,say, corn, which in turn has a genome notably larger than humans)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
My big hang up with people who just hate god/religion/whatever is that you have no proof these things do not exist and there is certainly proof, according to the conjecture put forth by the religious, that god does exist. And science doesn't work by "proving" things it works in the opposite way, you disprove things. So until god has been falsified, please stow the "god doesn't exist" talk because you sound very arrogant. People much smarter than you (not me) believe in god. You certainly don't know that with 100% certainty, so don't tell everyone else as if it was a proven fact.
This is the major point at which you stumble. Let's leave words like hate aside for a moment. People are frustrated with god/religion/whatever because people who claim to be acting on behalf of god/religion/whatever (g/r/w) have done some awfully horrible and stupid things. I'm not saying others haven't. But we've generally been able to speak directly on those issues. Whereas when we try to confront the g/r/w crowd, they claim a special status as unassailable because their belief is taken on faith. Let's create laws that are bigoted toward gays. We don't have to legitimize our claims by reason, it's simply faith. We should all hate gays because g/r/w tells us so. We should all teach creation in science class because our belief in g/r/w tells us this is how the Earth was made. We have no obligation to use reason to explain our claims, as such.
And you are a bit mistaken. Science doesn't work by either proving or disproving things. It creates hypotheses and then attempts to test those hypotheses using evidence, often gleamed through experimentation. The "god theory" isn't a theory at all. We don't start positing theories until we start to accrue some evidence. This is where you really fall down. There is no evidence that necessitates god. No one is required to disprove god. Science says the burden is on the hypothesizer to come up with a preponderance of evidence.
You also cannot, to take a common example, disprove my belief in a giant, flying spaghetti monster, and therefore, it too should be taught in school. Similarly, I have a particularly strong belief in the transfer of spiritual energy in which the great being Zaltamore approaches Earth every 7 years on the third full moon, and those are lucky enough to pass gas and also to have been given the grace of Zaltamore at 02:38 GMT will suddenly have a heart attack and have his soul taken to eternal paradise. I suspect you have a great deal of work to do to disprove my theory. Otherwise, I think we have some more addendums to make to science and medical texts in Texas.
No, it should be a requirement that people who teach a scientific subject can explain the evidence for the prevailing theory, carry out experiments to test it, and use this to teach what science is all about. They should teach the scientific method and critical thinking. That is what science is about.
People who merely believe something without understanding the evidence for it have no business teaching science at all.
Try this experiment once: Try to convince someone that the sun goes around the earth that the earth actually goes around the sun. The chain of inference we had to use to deduce that is complex. That's why we didn't know until just hundreds of years ago. You can teach these things as science, even though you can't provide all the evidence from scratch.
Teaching climate change is easy. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. When fossil fuels are burnt, they produce carbon dioxide. This will warm the planet. You can then show charts of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the global mean temperature. It's actually pretty easy to understand the chain of evidence.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Many scientists have also been racist, or occultist, or all sorts of other -ists, that doesn't make those -isms rational or acceptable. In fact, scientists have no more trouble holding inconsistent beliefs in their heads as any other human being.
When it comes to the Christian God, proof of his existence or non-existence isn't the primary issue. The real issues are that the God described in the Bible is a reprehensible being, that parts of the morality and teleology preached by Christianity are offensive and immoral, and a lot of the writings and dogma are inconsistent and have obviously been manipulated and altered over time for political and economic purposes.
We might also point out that the phrase "just a theory" is very useful, because it tells us that the speaker isn't speaking in scientific English. In the common speech, "theory" is basically a synonym for "guess", while in scientific speech, it means a hypothesis that has passed a lot of tests. These are essentially unrelated definitions, and anyone who uses the "just a theory" phrase in a scientific discussion tips off the listeners that they don't understand the most basic scientific terminology.
There are a lot of other common-speech terms or phrases that are useful as similar tipoffs that the speaker or writer isn't familiar with scientific terminology. One of my favorites is the phrase "quantum leap". This is similar to the physicists' phrase "quantum jump", but nearly an antonym in meaning. Again, anyone who uses "quantum leap" in a scientific setting has discredited themselves to knowledgeable listeners.
In the biological sciences, it's even easier. I've known a number of profs in bio fields who've commented that a major task in their introductory courses is eliminating the term "purpose" from their students' vocabularies. It's well understood among biologists that use of this word is a very good tipoff that the speaker/writer has little or no understanding of modern biology. Sometimes other phrasing will be used. Thus, a student may explain that giraffes grow long necks "in order to" reach the leaves of trees. This wording also shows that the speaker doesn't understand what's going on. Giraffes don't knowingly grow long necks for any purpose, any more than humans knowingly grow short necks. Neck length is determined by DNA, which is an unknowing, unthinking organic polymer, and can't be modified by intent or purpose.
Readers can probably think of other terminology that tells the listener that the speaker doesn't know much about their field(s) of expertise.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
yes, double digits (in years).
belief != religious faith.
also, social faith and trust in another person never equates religious faith. it's our experiences and trust that builds upon these experiences which allow such social structures to hold. why would a trust in another person ever require a religious belief ? (that one might hide behind words like "spiritual")
Rich
There are also two sides to the discussion of whether (obligatory Godwin) Hitler was right, or pi is three, or the moon landing was faked.
Ooh boy, that's a lot of controversy to teach.
Finally, I would like to point out that modern science is the result of, and is perpetuated by people not simply accepting what they're told. So, it's definitely not reasonable to criticize someone for not accepting a scientific "consensus." Quite the opposite, there is little value is repeating what everyone else is saying, and that's all you're doing when you appeal to authority.
If you're going to go against a scientific consensus they you better be able to back up your position. There is even less value in being a contrarian simply to be a contrarian.
The problem is that you are using "appeal to authority" in the context of education, where it doesn't really fit. If someone tells you something, and you believe it, that's not an appeal to authority because nothing was in dispute.
But if an authority tells you something and it doesn't make sense to you or you think it is wrong I would contend that you should not simply accept it based on the reasoning that they know more than you do (to do so would be fallacious). There are a number of good reasons for this. First of all, just because someone knows more than you does not mean they are always correct or unbiased. Secondly, if they are correct, you don't understand what they've said and you ought to question them for further information.
So no, our schools should certainly not be encouraging people to accept things because scientists say so. Teaching that is the same as teaching ignorance (if that is possible).
In the context of global warming, or evolution, an argument from authority is always going to be fallacious. The other party already knows what scientists have said on the issue and has other reasons to believe otherwise (reasons which you will not discredit by appealing to authority). This carries over to basically any other context where an argument from authority is used.
We did the fruit fly experiment in the 80's also. That experiment alone should not have convinced you. That experiment only showed that existing genes get passed along from the parents, and that some are recessive while others are dominant. The other piece that you should have been taught was mutation. It is mutation + inheritance that = evolution.
The problem with that is that the AGW crowed is overloading the definition of 'climate change'. They use the definition of "The climate changes. It always has and always will" to 'prove' that everyone agrees with the definition that "humans are making the planet unlivable". The term "Climate Change" is now tainted, and if you use it to strictly refer to the changing of the climate, you will be unknowingly telling the students something distinctly different than you think you are.
Sorry, I've been too busy to point out the other errors in your arguments. Since you ask, experiments that you can do in high school include: observations of planetary motions and moons, direct observations of planets through a telescope, spectrographic measurements of the sun, torsion balance measurements of gravity, tides and their relations to the moon, approximate distance from the sun via parallax measurements, observations of the moon relative to the sun, falling objects in a vacuum, among many others. Students can verify that observed orbits follow predicted orbits closely when using the right masses, which no other model of planetary motion does (in particular, none of the proposed geocentric models). Students can verify that the sun is made mostly from hydrogen and its approximate size, which lets them place bounds on its mass. For the size and composition of earth, simple travel reports, plus direct gravitational measurements suffice to get good bounds. Etc. So, even if students trust no published results, they can verify the heliocentric model of the solar system.
Yes, scientists believe that others aren't lying about experiments and raw measurements, and in the case of planetary and the heliocentric system, they have tens of thousands of independent sources of measurements that each individually are consistent with the theory; not so in the case of climate change. Furthermore, even stipulating that the reported results are correct, in the case of planetary motion, students can verify the consistency precisely with basic math and physics, while for climate change, they cannot.
Yes, de Saussure and Fourier suggested that the greenhouse effect is responsible for elevating temperature on the earth's surface; a good thing too because without that, we'd be living in a frozen wasteland. They didn't demonstrate the effect that is causing climate change, didn't relate this quantitatively to first principles, and certainly didn't show, or even provide a basis for showing, that a small elevation in CO2 concentration could lead to catastrophic warming.
It seems like you don't even understand the mechanisms that climate change is based on.
Let people who don't believe in evolution be forbidden from accessing those medical treatments which are completely, 100% dependent on researchers understanding the ultra-fine details of the evolutionary process and, in fact, dependent on evolution being true for their advancement.
That pretty much covers everything from the proper use of antibiotics and the avoidance of MRSA, to gene therapy, to the attenuation process that creates vaccines and the defense they give against diseases like polio, rubella and smallpox. Let's see then there's pathogen tracking, so no CDC information for them oh and molecular epidemiology also.
Oh and here's one just for deniers, the molecules being developed which are capable of binding to bioterrorists agents like anthrax spores and ricin molecules are of course entirely dependent on the artificial, directed evolutionary processes utilized by the biotechnology industry.
Yes deniers, let's create a generation of students who don't believe in evolution but who do believe you can pray away the gay. What a fucking shining city on a hill we'll become under that regime.
Indeed - the US National Academy of Science was asked by Congress to investigate the "hockey stick" and found that it was valid back in 2006.
Climate myths: The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong:
Details of the claims and counterclaims involve lengthy and arcane statistical arguments, so let's skip straight to the 2006 report of the US National Academy of Science (pdf). The academy was asked by Congress to assess the validity of temperature reconstructions, including the hockey stick.
The report states: "The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world".
Most researchers would agree that while the original hockey stick can - and has - been improved in a number of ways, it was not far off the mark. Most later temperature reconstructions fall within the error bars of the original hockey stick. Some show far more variability leading up to the 20th century than the hockey stick, but none suggest that it has been warmer at any time in the past 1000 years than in the last part of the 20th century.
It is true that there are big uncertainties about the accuracy of all past temperature reconstructions, and that these uncertainties have sometimes been ignored or glossed over by those who have presented the hockey stick as evidence for global warming.
Climate scientists, however, are only too aware of the problems (see Climate myths: It was warmer during the Medieval period), and the uncertainties were both highlighted by Mann's original paper and by others at the time it was published.
Update: as suggested by the academy in its 2006 report, Michael Mann and his colleagues have reconstructed northern hemisphere temperatures for the past 2000 years using a broader set of proxies than was available for the original study and updated measurements from the recent past.
The new reconstruction has been generated using two statistical methods, both different to that used in the original study. Like other temperature reconstructions done since 2001 (see graph), it shows greater variability than the original hockey stick. Yet again, though, the key conclusion is the same: it's hotter now than it has been for at least 1000 years.
In fact, independent evidence, from ice cores and sea sediments for instance, suggest the last time the planet approached this degree of warmth was during the interglacial period preceding the last ice age over 100,000 years ago. It might even be hotter now than it has been for at least a million years.
Further back in the past, though, it certainly has been hotter - and the world has been a very different place. The crucial point is that our modern civilisation has been built on the basis of the prevailing climate and sea levels. As these change, it will cause major problems.
I love all of these articles and arguments about how teachers' unions are responsible for stymieing education in the US. Come down south to Texas sometime. The teachers' unions here are completely powerless, and our education system is still one of the worst in the entire country.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Fundies aside, there is no "consensus" at all on evolution
Sure there is. The consensus is: species have changed and diverged over time and are continuing to change and diverge.
Nice removal of context. Always a useful way to provide a logical fallacy in the course of rhetoric.
The consensus is that there are species, and that it appears many species are closely related and a good explanation for that is that they share a common ancestor. Evolution is an excellent, abstract, hand-wavy way of explaining this observation, on its own conveniently devoid of useful scientific information but by gum if you don't believe it, whatever it is, you're a kook! Nobody has ever in fact observed speciation taking place, and that's where the consensus breaks down. Ask an evolutionary biologist how speciation takes place, you will probably get an awnser. Ask another one, you will probably get a completely different answer. Nice consensus, if everybody is busy disagreeing.
Here's a question for you, then: how have species changed and diverged over time, and how do they continue to change and diverge? Will you quote Huxley? Gould? have you even read them? Was this taught in school, or was it considered too policially risky to not toe the consensus?
What the hell is a "post-hoc" science?
I did give four examples. There are dictionaries available on the internet for those of you who know how to use them. Here's a brief background, chosen at random from a google search.
Is anthropology not a "real" science?
Anthopology is clearly a post-hoc science, as are sociology, most of behavoural psychology, and a good chunk of medicine.
What about cosmology?
Find out the difference between a hard science and a post-hoc science and decide for yourself.
It is impossible to teach history if you do not teach about religion. So yes, religion does have a place in school, but it's in history class - where it has pretty much been removed, sadly - not in science class.