Understanding Science
The United States is a funny place, full of self-contradictions. We know that science education is getting slammed, and has been for years. Yet in surveys (admittedly from a few years back) we also know that people love science news, and want to hear more about it. Many people understand that science has a big impact on their lives, but have a limited understanding of how science works, or even what it is.
And, of course, the past few years we’ve seen an unprecedented attack on it, both from government and from self-styled "think tanks" where thinking appears to be the last thing on their minds.
There’s a clear need for us — scientists, educators, hobbyists, and just plain old lovers of reality — to do more to educate people. And more than that: we need to excite them. Science isn’t just another topic to learn from a dusty book or a dry website, it’s an aspect of the Universe itself to be experienced and to revel in.
Enter Understanding Science. It’s a website designed to get people started in, well, understanding science. And as if they were sending a message straight to my heart, this is what they say about science:
Science is, in one sense, our knowledge of … all the stuff that is in the universe: from the tiniest subatomic particles in a single atom of the metal in your computer’s circuits, to the nuclear reactions that formed the immense ball of gas that is our sun, to the complex chemical interactions and electrical fluctuations within your own body that allow you to read and understand these words. But just as importantly, science is also a reliable process by which we learn about all that stuff in the universe. However, science is different from many other ways of learning because of the way it is done. Science relies on testing ideas with evidence gathered from the natural world.
The emphasis above is mine, because this is something I tell kids all the time. They think of science like a dictionary: a bunch of facts to memorize. But science is also the way we know those things. It’s a method.
But it’s far, far more than that. It’s discovery, it’s understanding, it’s trying, it’s thinking, it’s asking, it’s investigating, it’s questioning, it’s being clever, it’s doubting, it’s wondering, it’s solving, it’s uncovering, it’s finding things out.
It’s us, being curious. That’s science.
Well worded. Looks like my high school science classes will have another website to visit early in the year.
Although I have no knowledge of the author, this is an article that more than deserves publishing, it is required. Sadly, the MSM and general populace of the U.S. have little to no interest in “science” that doesn’t support comforting beliefs.
Bravissimo, sir. Science is a method, and at that, a self-inspecting, self-correcting one. Which far exceeds in it’s abilities to perpetuate understanding, than any other system, past or current, attempted.
I just wonder why the bent on excitement? If discovery of how the Universe works and unfolds isn’t exciting in its own right, the individual lacking excitement probably finds reality T.V. “stimulating”. All are not equal, genetics makes that abundantly clear.
CSI (3), Bones,Numbers,Criminal Minds, NCIS, National Geographic,Discovery….there must be more. Entertainment and science around the clock. The crime shows do exaggerate somewhat but they stress the necessity for empirical proof, which is always a good thing. The possibilities are there. It’s getting people to open their minds to the possibility of changing their minds that’s hard. Here in Denmark people often say that “the faith I was brought up in is good enough for me”, which means “don’t make me think”. That’s so often the default defence. “If you make me think then YOU are being cruel. Leave me alone”
A separate bu topical point. I remember a programme about 3 years ago on NatGeog. Europe claiming that Eastern Jews and Palestinians are genetically identical: they are cultural subsets of the original Canaanites. It’s never been repeated, which is very unusual for NGCE.
Has anybody else seen it? Has it been discredited or have the oil suppliers/orange growers/bible thumpers had it quietly taken out and killed?
If the claim is true and can be verified, think of the ramifications!
Thanks for the heads up, it looks like a great site. I’ve recommended the UCMP site for years as a resource for students taking my courses, so I’m very excited about the idea of the team who built the UCMP site constructing a bigger, more comprehensive site offering information on a wider range of themes. This is great news.
Good post, entirely agree. I think there are two main issues
(i) there is a great public interest in science which should be tapped into
(ii)there is a great need to counter the misinformation of certain think tanks.
I have a blog on introductory cosmology – what seems to fascinate people most is not the facts, but that the science is alive, with differning viewpoints on subjects such as Dark Matter etc..
Interesting site. Just wanted to add that readers may also want to check out this article series which is appropriately titled “How To Tell What’s Bullshit And What’s True”:
http://www.startbreakingfree.com/504/how-to-tell-whats-bullshit-and-whats-true-part-1/
It covers some of the stuff people mess up most commonly including:
* Anecdotal evidence
* Correlation vs Causation
* Logical fallacy
* Double blind
* Peer review
* Sample size
Great post. One of the things that I often harp on to colleagues is the ‘science as a body of facts’ approach that we often take in general science courses at all levels of education. This approach makes scientific literacy impossible. No one can learn all the facts about every natural phenomenon. I am a geologist, and it is all I can do to keep up with developments in my sub-discipline of geology, let alone in other sub-disciplines or sub-disciplines of other fields.
We simply must do a better job of teaching our students, at all levels, the fundamentals of the process of science. Students must be well-versed in how science works (observation, hypotheses, testing, using multiple lines of investigation to understand processes, statistical analysis, peer-review, etc., etc.). I am not trained in astrophysics, yet, because I understand the nature of science as a process, I can evaluate, to some extent, the validity of claims put forth in popular science magazines, newspapers, television, and internet sources.
Solid training in the methods used by scientists to understand natural phenomena will make it easier for each citizen to critically examine new claims (e.g. the Kangan water post) to see if they withstand scrutiny. Fewer of our citizens will be taken in by alien abduction hoaxes, bottled water scams, holocaust deniers, creation science/intelligent design proponents, bogus websites that misappropriate science to support astrology, etc., if we do a better job, from kindergarten through at least the baccalaureate degree, with respect to teaching that science is both a body of knowledge and the system by which that knowledge is derived.
I think there are too many people being brought up to fear science – “oh, that’s only for super-intelligent people” and such nonsense. Unfortunately many science teachers in schools seem to be of that ilk (especially in third world nations). Students are bombarded with things they are to take as fact and don’t understand what people were investigating and the fairly simple ideas they were testing (well, this is true of physics and chemistry; I don’t know about other fields). The way science is taught often obscures the most interesting things such as how discoveries were made and why people did certain experiments. It’s not that good books do not exist – I’m re-reading ‘General Chemistry’ by Linus Pauling and wondering why my school didn’t use it as the text for first year chemistry (instead using some book so vastly inferior that I poo-pooed it as a freshman). I also have a series of books on Calculus by Courant and John and I wish most other books on Calculus could simply be banned.
There is another insidious attack on science which is going on at the moment and that is to put the word ‘science’ into titles to give themselves some undeserved credence (and simultaneously debase science). As an example, take shows like ‘CSI’ (which are full of anti-science) where everyone is a ‘forensic scientist’. Now forensic scientists do exist, but they are a pretty rare beast. Most people gathering forensic evidence at crime scenes would be forensic technicians, not scientists. These people do as they’re told following a strict set of rules but really aren’t part of science; they do not develop new techniques of investigation or further learning in the field in any way. So technicians calling themselves ‘forensic scientist’ not only debase scientists in general but debase genuine forensic scientists in particular. This isn’t a new phenomenon of course; for example there is ‘scientology’ and the ‘church of christ the scientist’ and there are probably other examples over the past few hundred years.
Thanks for the links folks; I’ll probably set up a bookmark for most of these pages. :)
Good website on textbooks:
http://www.textbookleague.org
Richard Feynman on science textbooks
http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
“But that’s the way all the books were: They said things that were useless, mixed-up, ambiguous, confusing, and partially incorrect. How anybody can learn science from these books, I don’t know, because it’s not science.”
As a 29 year old man going back to school I am amazed that both science and math could interest me so greatly, I really feel that I missed the boat in high school.
As a Father what distresses me is how science in the media is being portrayed as some sort of supernatural ability. Take Jimmy Neutron for instance, when faced with a problem he has a “brainblast” and comes up with a solution seemingly by magic. Which I fear gives the idea to my kids that you have to be some super genius in order to be a scientist.
One science related book which I recommend reading is Joseph Carr’s “The Art of Science”. My dad wouldn’t even look at the book because it had “art” and “science” in the title, but ‘art’ is often meant to mean ‘skill’ so I don’t complain about the title.
I think there should be an entire course in primary school or early high school on how to think critically. One of the great challenges of course will be finding teachers who would do a good job of it …
I have nine kids and early on noticed a trend in our local schools, namely that more often than not, the public school teachers who taught science and math had education degrees in other topics, mostly English and education, and were covering science and math because the particular school didn’t have any specifically science or math teachers. This is a problem.
@Devil’s Advocate:
I think a lack of science teachers has always been a problem. A friend was trying to talk me into getting a certificate to teach in Australia; she said the schools are desperate for qualified science teachers and that it wasn’t so unusual to have science taught by the P.E. teacher. Teaching en masse just isn’t interesting to me though and I certainly wouldn’t take a year off work to get a certificate stating I’m qualified to teach in primary school and high school.
As always, inspirational stuff from Phil. And here’s my humble variation on the same theme:
http://nodrylight.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/understanding-science/
Just so, MadScientist. A couple of my kids have taken my attempts to interest them in science seriously and the ‘star’ is currently a 14 yr old high school freshman. She tells me its excruciating to watch her freshman biology teacher read from her course curriculum, line by line, without much apparent understanding of what she’s ‘teaching’. she reports that most questions cannot be answered when asked, and the teacher defers to a later class after she might look it up. The freshman math appears to be more solid, but the science is abyssmal.
What I find most disturbing is that on “Science and education” television channels like Discovery, Science, National Geographic, History… on any given night, over half the programming is woo garbage like archeology shows bending history to fit the bible stories, ghost hunters, ufo shows, hauted houses or hotels, psychic detectives, psychic dogs, cats and kids… and all sorts of non-science or educational programming.
The scariest thing is that those shows are not clearly identified as “entertainment”, but instead constantly display pseudo-science techno babble to legitimise their woo.
With such an assault of nonsence on TV, there is no wonder so much of the US population is hostile to REAL science.
I wonder if it’s because of the whole ID vs science … I mean Evolution.
People love science. People love little ‘science knowledge’ tidbits. People love what they can do with science. What people don’t like is the claim that science is ‘the only way to knowledge’ or that ‘science has disproved religion.’
Here is what Albert Einstein had to say-
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
sonic: I sort of agree, but in my opinion only the mediocre ever claim to have absolute knowledge. The best scientists freely admit that our modern science is “the story so far”. But what a story! The truly never ending story. There’s always more to discover and understand.
Sonic – You’ve quoted Einstein out of context and I suspect that you may have missed the point. I suggest you actually READ the post and the links given in the comments.
Nobody makes the claims you stated; science cannot “disprove religion” because religion is a behavior. If you mean that people claim to disprove the existence of a supernatural omnipotent being, well, that’s not possible either. Religion is blind faith in something untestable, about which science has nothing to say.
Science does not claim to be the “only path to knowledge” in the sense that knowledge is information that we believe to be true. People are free to believe anything, but if your definition of knowledge involves an acceptable level of certainty that can be shared, science IS the only way.
Einstein’s statement was not meant to be literal and he used the word “religion” to refer to blind leaps of faith. What he meant to illustrate was that science can only limp forward slowly if scientists are not passionate and do not, on occasion, test a hypothesis that is based on little more than faith (normally, only theoretically-likely hypotheses are tested). It does NOT mean that scientists draw conclusions about untestable or untested hypotheses. It means that the formation of hypotheses should be creative.
By contrast, the statement that religion without science is blind, is quite clear: faith without evidence is just blind faith (not genuine knowledge).
What people dislike about science is pretty simple, really. Many people love knowledge and how we acquire it until it threatens their current beliefs. When science is rejected, it is rejected for the facts produced, not the method. Enough “unsavory” facts, and the method is called into question.
Unfortunately, human nature is such that we hold onto our beliefs about what is true tenaciously and, when information disagrees with those beliefs it is rejected on that basis alone, rather than to examine its merits.
It is a well-documented behavior that we are biased toward our beliefs and seek confirmation for, rather than accept challenges to, those beliefs.
The problem is, you cannot change the truth just because it isn’t pretty or because you don’t like what it says about you.
Ian-
I agree.
Is there a Higgs boson? What is an electron?
If we discover answers to those questions how might that change what we think of everything else?
I think Feynman put it this way-
“Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.”