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It's Time To Bring Pseudoscience Into the Science Classroom
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "'Roughly one in three American adults believes in telepathy, ghosts, and extrasensory perception,' wrote a trio of scientists in a 2012 issue of the Astronomy Education Review. 'Roughly one in five believes in witches, astrology, clairvoyance, and communication with the dead (PDF). Three quarters hold at least one of these beliefs, and a third has four distinct pseudoscientific beliefs.' Now Steven Ross Pomeroy writes in Forbes Magazine that it's time to bring pseudoscience into public schools and universities. 'By incorporating examples of pseudoscience into lectures, instructors can provide students with the tools needed to understand the difference between scientific and pseudoscientific or paranormal claims,' say Rodney Schmaltz and Scott Lilienfeld." (Read more, below.)
"According to Schmaltz and Lilienfeld, there are 7 clear signs that show something to be pseudoscientific: 1. The use of psychobabble – words that sound scientific and professional but are used incorrectly, or in a misleading manner. 2. A substantial reliance on anecdotal evidence. 3. Extraordinary claims in the absence of extraordinary evidence. 4. Claims which cannot be proven false. 5. Claims that counter established scientific fact. 6. Absence of adequate peer review. 7. Claims that are repeated despite being refuted. Schmaltz and Lilienfeld recommend incorporating examples of pseudoscience into lectures and contrasting them with legitimate, groundbreaking scientific findings. For example, professors can expound upon psychics and the tricks they use to fool people or use resources such as the Penn & Teller program "Bullshit".
But teachers need to be careful or their worthy efforts to instill critical thinking could backfire. Prior research has shown that repeating myths on public fliers, even with the intention of dispelling them, can actually perpetuate misinformation. "The goal of using pseudoscientific examples is to create skeptical, not cynical, thinkers. As skeptical thinkers, students should be urged to remain open-minded," say Schmaltz and Lilienfeld. "By directly addressing and then refuting non-scientific claims, science educators can dispel pseudoscience (PDF) and promote scientific skepticism, while avoiding the unhealthy extremes of either uncritical acceptance or cynicism.""
But teachers need to be careful or their worthy efforts to instill critical thinking could backfire. Prior research has shown that repeating myths on public fliers, even with the intention of dispelling them, can actually perpetuate misinformation. "The goal of using pseudoscientific examples is to create skeptical, not cynical, thinkers. As skeptical thinkers, students should be urged to remain open-minded," say Schmaltz and Lilienfeld. "By directly addressing and then refuting non-scientific claims, science educators can dispel pseudoscience (PDF) and promote scientific skepticism, while avoiding the unhealthy extremes of either uncritical acceptance or cynicism.""
Even if you show them that what they believe is bullshit, they still choose to believe it.
Just look at religions all over the world.
You can't teach critical thinking in schools. The Texas state Republican party platform is explicitly opposed to it.
I piss off bigots.
When I was in high school, one of our teachers told us voodoo magic was real
I bet the teacher has a Geforce now. You can't change these people.
Ezekiel 23:20
A lot of the pseudo-science out there has, in a sense, adapted to having common knowledge applied. Take vaccines for example. A class might teach how they work, discuss the history of how they have stopped many diseases, but what is one to do when presented with the latest anti-vaccine goal-shifted argument, like the 'too many too soon' line? When you have people who will continuously invent new arguments as their basic premise is yet again demonstrated to be false, it is best to teach people the basics of pseudoscience along with science, so that the former can be spotted for what it is. The same applies for a slew of other common nonsenses, which could be used as case studies. I suspect giving clear case studies may be particularly beneficial. My personal anecdote, I was raised to believe in young earth creationism, and it was the realization that I was being expected to commit the same kinds of errors as homeopaths & other woo-woos that helped me to realize that what I had been taught was wrong in a great many ways.
It's a real religion with real practitioners.
And this isn't even a slight at the push for Creationism or similar bull on our kids. It's that we don't even teach our kids how science works. Maybe because else they could instantly debunk crap like Creationism as the pseudoscience it is.
Our school system still works along the lines of "it is that way because I say so". Critical thinking, which is the basis of the scientific method (because "doubting" basically IS the scientific method) is not what is asked for. What is wanted is simple acceptance of what you're told, rote learning and parroting. It's a rare class where you actually get to use applied thinking. Most of the times, what's required is simply rote learning, "sponge" learning as I love to call it. Soak up the crap, release again when required, no need to retain anything or do anything else with it.
As long as we don't teach our kids that science is NOT soaking up and spitting out what you get told, teaching them other pseudosciences on top of Creationism is something I'd consider rather harmful. They might not be able to tell the difference to real science, because from their point of view, there would be none.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
https://www.princeton.edu/~pea...
"The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program, which flourished for nearly three decades under the aegis of Princeton University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, has completed its experimental agenda of studying the interaction of human consciousness with sensitive physical devices, systems, and processes, and developing complementary theoretical models to enable better understanding of the role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality."
Disclaimer: I worked in a joint program with them when I was managing the PU robotics lab in the 1980s. The program was funded in part by the McDonnell Foundation (of McDonnell-Douglas) in part because supposedly strange unexplainable things happened in fighter cockpits especially to pilots under stress in emergency situations. Rather that give the money just to the PEAR lab, it was decided to give the money to a group of labs that would work together somehow exploring aspects of human consciousness (or something like that, not saying how effective all that was). Dean Radin is the researcher who connected the groups back then and has been active in parapsychology work since: http://www.deanradin.com/
Another person active in this field of consciousness studies is Charles Tart (unrelated to PU, but interesting in the field).
http://www.paradigm-sys.com/
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/...
Related items at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (founded in 1973 by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell) which include mention of Dean Radin and Charles Tart:
http://www.noetic.org/search/?...
Mainstream science has been apparently useful, even if it is more the tinkerers and engineers who actually invent and bring to production useful things. But ultimately, if we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit we don't very much understand the nature of consciousness or the deeper nature of reality, which together, as much as we think we know about them, still form a "great mystery" (a term some Native Americans used for God and such). And, no, mapping a few or even many neural pathways or having a chemical analysis of brain neuro-transmitters does not equate to understanding the mystery of consciousness. As Charles Tart points out, there is a step where many otherwise good scientists move from apparently solid ground in their specialties to claiming fallacious things like "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" and so create essentially a new religion of "Scientistic Materialism".
http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/a...
"His [Tart's] and other scientists' work convinced him that there is a real and vitally important sense in which we are spiritual beings, but the too dominant, scientistic, materialist philosophy of our times, masquerading as genuine science, dogmatically denies any possible reality to the spiritual. This hurts people, it pressures them to reject vital aspects of their being."
Anyway, mass compulsory schooling in "classrooms" (intended by 1920s eugenicists to segregate people by social class so they interbreed and stratify, see Gatto) is also in general another way of hurting people: ... Our official assumptions about the nature of modern childhood are dead wrong. Children allowed to take responsibility an
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com...
"The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The core problem with psuedo-science is a lot of it is unfalsifiable. Sure, you can show in a double-blind study that magic magnet bracelets have no significant effect on mood or back pain, but ghosts, ESP, etc? At most you can prove that individual instances are hoaxes, but you can't scientifically disprove their existence as a class. To claim they are bullshit as a class is itself an unscientific claim - at worst they are a hypothesis unsupported by evidence.
Of course there could still be great value in bringing them into the classroom to compare and contrast with scientific claims and the methods used to verify them - given the number of people willing to dismiss inconvenient science as a "belief" as though it had no more certainty to it than any random religious or pseudo-scientific doctrine our schools are clearly doing a poor job at conveying the qualitative difference in the level of certainty science brings to the table. But debunking should not be part of the science curriculum, it just isn't possible and claiming otherwise harms the very integrity of science we're trying to convey.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Hoyle didn't have doubts about evolution, he had doubts about hypotheses concerning the origin of life (abiogenesis). He thought life came from space via viruses and evolution happened subsequently. The biologists you are talking about for the most part have doubts about aspects of currently accepted theories within evolution, not the fact of evolution itself. Sure there is plenty of stuff to be worked out within evolution: how it has worked under varying circumstances on earth, the increasing variety of hereditary mechanisms and methods of change, how to engineer the evolutionary process in the lab to get the results you want instead of unwanted adaptations, etc. Lots of scientists would love to add their own chapter to evolution; they aren't planning to shitcan it.
While not an advocate for pseudo science, it's illuminating to consider how these seven symptoms can be applied to the practice of regular science:
1. The use of psychobabble – words that sound scientific and professional but are used incorrectly, or in a misleading manner.
Most specializations are rife with jargon, often using words that have been incorrectly appropriated from the English language and had their meaning changed. To test this at home, apply a spell check to a scientific paper.
2. A substantial reliance on anecdotal evidence.
Anecdotal evidence is there to guide your research (though not to validate it). It doesn't need to appear in your paper, but it is a critical part of the discovery process.
3. Extraordinary claims in the absence of extraordinary evidence.
I think this is a prerequisite to getting published in Science or Nature. Your claims have to be sensationalized to sell. Take your convenience sample with ten data points and spin it until it's ground breaking!
4. Claims which cannot be proven false.
Anything described as "universal" or "ubiquitous" probably falls into this category.
5. Claims that counter established scientific fact.
A dialectic is necessary to advance science. Surely you don't want dogmatic group-think to predominate?
6. Absence of adequate peer review.
Have you been through a peer review process? Why aren't you making eye contact with me?
7. Claims that are repeated despite being refuted.
You mean the type of stubbornness necessary to overcome the inertia of the currently dominant paradigm? So I should withdraw my research if a single group publishes a study indicating that they "were unable to reproduce" my results?
teaching the scientific method. Those students who can absorb (and not all can) the concept of disciplined critical thinking, do not need to have examples of pseudoscience discussed, as those examples become self evident to the properly educated. Any teacher who says "I believe" in evolution, red shifted star light, plate tectonics, etc., has already lost this battle. Saying instead "We are compelled by evidence, observation, and rigorous testing, to accept this explanation, until such time that further evidence, observation, and rigorous testing compel us to change our opinion." is the only correct way to teach science. That many teachers fall short of this ideal, is painfully obvious. Discussing faux science is a waste of precious time.
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
Your post is ironic since it's a pure straw-man attack. It's also just stupid. Can you find a school board anywhere that's pushing for astrology,etc. in the classroom?
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