The climate of fake news and anti-science during the last few years have given me the impetus to be more conscious and deliberate in alerting my students on how we analyze something, on making rational judgement based on evidence, and how we come to such-and-such conclusions. To me, the issue of believing in fake news and accepting something based on flaky evidence does deeper than what it seems. It boils down to the inability to systematically and analytically evaluate the validity of something. This inability is really a serious issue and could be the root cause of what we are seeing today.
This type of skill is exactly what we use and practice all the time in science. So when I get a group of students, especially if they are non-science students who are taking the course only to fulfill their science credits, then I can't waste the opportunity to instill in them this invaluable technique and methodology that are often used in science.
Using the period where the pandemic forced us to teach remotely, I made extensive use (and still do) of the discussion forum. This is one form of student engagements that many online training courses have deemed to be essential in making sure that students feel connected and engaged with not only the subject matter, but also with other students. This medium gave me the opportunity to get the students to think things through and to present logical and rational arguments.
One of the topic that I presented was to require them to critically address a belief about the cause of the Earth's four seasons. We were going over the reason why we (at about latitude 41 degrees North) experience seasons. I presented a topic whereby someone claims that since the Earth orbits the Sun in a slight elliptical orbit, the seasons are caused by the varying distances between the Earth and the Sun, meaning that when the Sun is closest to the Earth, we have summer, and when the Sun is farthest from the Earth, we have winter.
The task was for the students to come up with typical and common everyday observations and/or knowledge to show why this idea is wrong. In other words, find a very direct and convincing way to falsify the argument.
I thought this was a straight-forward assignment and discussion topic. Unfortunately, I was quite surprised that almost 3/4 of the students didn't fulfill the briefs. What they did instead was to give the explanation for the cause of the seasons, which is the tilt of the Earth's spin as it goes around the Sun. While this is the correct explanation, it does not falsify the original argument. I tried to tell the students that what they did was to present to this person an alternative explanation on why the seasons happen, but they haven't shown evidence why the original premise was wrong! They have not falsified the first idea.
When we do that in an argument/discussion, the person who holds that idea can easily say "All you have done is showed another possible explanation. You haven't proven to me why my idea is wrong. So why should I change my mind?"
Providing an alternative explanation, even if it is the correct one, is distinctively different than falsifying an idea. In falsifying an idea, you do not need to actually have an alternative, correct explanation. In this case, you really don't need to know that the Earth's tilt is the cause of the seasons on Earth. All you need is to examine the original claim, and find evidence that contradicts that claim. In this case, what you can do is assume that it is true, that the seasons are caused by Earth's varying distances from the Sun. If that is true, then the entire Earth would have the same season at the same time of the year, because the entire Earth is at the same distance away from the Sun. Yet, it is common knowledge that Australia, New Zealand, South America and Antartica are in their deep winter freeze while we in the Northern Hemisphere are basking in our summer heat. This observation is clearly contradictory to the original claim, which means that this is a falsification of that idea. It carries no other "baggage", i.e. it doesn't promote an alternative explanation on the cause of Earth's seasons.
It found it challenging trying to convey this message to the students. They learned about the Earth's tilt and the cause of the seasons, and when they were given this topic, they immediately jumped on providing the explanation that they just learned (and understood) without thinking about how to actually address the topic of the discussion and knowing the difference between falsifying an argument versus providing an alternative explanation.
Sadly, the same situation happened again later in that semester when I brought another scenario for them to address: the claim that the phases of the moon are due to Earth's shadow of the light from the Sun. Once again, they were asked to falsify the claim, and once again, more than half of the students provided an alternative explanation on the cause of Moon phases rather than falsifying the idea.
In teaching science courses to non-science majors, I've grown more skeptical about the public's ability to analyze something. What I have observed regarding the "controversy" surrounding vaccines, the wearing of face masks, and even climate change, reinforced my skepticism about someone 's ability to either think things through, or even know what a valid evidence is. My post on the nurse who claimed that the COVID vaccine makes her becoming magnetized is one such example. Something that should have been easily checked and verified by a high-school physics student now somehow is gaining traction. That claim can be easily falsified (and have been), even by people without much scientific training and without knowing any alternative explanation on why certain objects might stick to one's body.
It requires skills to look at an idea, analyze it thoroughly, and rationally argue on its validity or its fault. It also requires skills to know what are valid evidence and what are not. Often times people confuse opinions and conclusions with facts/evidence. Talking heads on TV often spew out opinions that a lot of people mistaken for facts. In a science class, it is more important than ever that instructors make a deliberate effort to show the process of how a scientific idea becomes accepted, what kind of evidence would be considered to be scientific (why do we have to measure the forces at various extensions when just one is sufficient to find the value of the spring constant in Hooke's law experiment?), and how to challenge an idea and show that it may not be correct.
A science education is now more important than ever, not just for the scientific content, but also for the skills that come with it.
Zz.
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