And that might take the record for the longest title so far! This week's blog started with me talking with my colleague Anne about Is no science better than bad science? We were discussing some of the resources out there and how they could be used to promote better teaching and a higher understanding of science for students but just as easily be a 'formula' lesson that, at the end of it, children have sort of done science but may not be any the wiser in thinking about how science works and its particular style of thinking, action and communication.
I also had the chance to read a flaming competition after a facebook post writing about how the paperbags from Countdown reminded her of the 'old days'. One person was posting about how plastic bags were better and shared a link: http://www.allaboutbags.ca/papervplastic.html and this reminded me of the recent "Ban the straws" movement. I think it was on National Radio where two people were arguing this with one stating how important straws were from a medical care point of view and another asking whether this was the most important thing to focus on when reducing plastic use.
Whether these are right or not isn't the point of this blogpost. It's really asking Do we check science reported by the media or our friends? Do we accept that what someone says is 'right' straight away? I know that there have been times media have jumped on a bandwagon to report something only to find out a couple of days later that they got the wrong end of the stick.
So with these examples, who's right? Do I just say plastic bags are bad because that's what my stuff app on my iPad says? Or the TV news? Who are the ones saying that it's bad? Do they have a particular view or bent that might be biased? How would I find out or know? One thing that I'm quite interested in is that whole 'fake science' thing. My son is adamant that the moon landings were faked despite the plethora of evidence that proves him wrong. I'm speaking tongue in cheek a little as he has the same amount of facts proving me wrong! So who is right? This isn't one of those we can agree to disagree because we either did land on the moon or we didn't!
A while ago I read an interesting article about a reporter who did a pseudo-science investigation into whether chocolate can help you lose weight and was surprised at the amount of media outlets that simply ran the story without delving deeper (https://io9.gizmodo.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800?IR=T). From memory only one interviewer asked about the methodology... I guess the rest were just wanting a good sound bite: Chocolate helps you lose weight (and who wouldn't!).
I remembered about some articles that showed how most science journals will only publish investigations that have positive results and how this is affecting the science that is happening -you have to make sure that you succeed to get published. I wonder how this might affect the quality of the science happening? You certainly wouldn't want to take risks. At the same time, I came across some articles about how people had managed to get papers published in science journals that were clearly fake. These journals required you to pay to be published and purported to be peer reviewed but again, how would you know? Maybe Starwars' the Force is real!
I sometimes use The Onion or Babylon Bee (which is Christian-based) to give articles to children that are very clearly fake. Feel free to email me if you'd like a copy. I use them more for Year 7 and 8 children but they have fooled teachers too. They look scientific and they have scientist's names on them so maybe they are true...
So wrapping this all up... How do we support our students to develop critical thinking skills? How do we support them to know how to be critical and what to look for when reading an article or investigating a bit further? With resources that arrive at school, how can I use them to grow this sceptism or critical thinking? How can I challenge what they find out after doing the various experiments?
As an aside, I wonder what questions they might have that weigh on them. I'm always surprised how deep children are in terms of 'the big issues' and if all they've heard is mum and dad or the tv news, how could they check or confirm these problems? Sceptism is certainly a part of the curriculum, and something I have in spades -and yes, you can feel sorry for people I chat with! The important bit is that I'll go off to check out claims and facts and I think we need to be helping our students do the same! If they are worried about Rotorua disappearing in an almighty eruption next year, how can we investigate this claim and check its veracity?
Keep sciencing
Paul
Weblinks:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/05/28/410313446/why-a-journalist-scammed-the-media-into-spreading-bad-chocolate-science
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/02/fake-research-paper-based-on-star-trek-voyagers-worst-episode-was-published-by-a-scientific-journal/
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/07/scientific-journals-publish-bogus-paper-about-midi-chlorians-from-star-wars/
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