By David Wojick
The vigilant folks at the CO2 Coalition have been saying we are no longer teaching the scientific method in public school science education classes. This puzzled me because the new rules for science education claim to teach kids to think like scientists. I figured the kids would be awash with scientific method.
I was wrong. With the help of some Coalition experts, I investigated this strange situation and here are my basic findings.
In a nutshell, which is explained more fully below, only the happy half of the scientific method is being taught. This is the fun formulation of possible hypotheses and models that might explain what we observe. The hard half, where these tentative explanations get evaluated and likely fail, is not taught.
Now, let’s look at it in some detail. It is all about what are called “standards” which are actually State regulations saying what topics will be taught at each grade level. About two decades ago, there began a push for national standards because while most states taught the same topics, they were often in different grades, which created problems –textbooks, for example.
The Feds paid the States to adopt Common Core standards in math and English, but they punted science to the National Academy of Sciences. Agencies often did this with science issues.
In 2012, the NAS produced its blueprint for science standards — “A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas”, which is often simply called the Framework.
A bunch of State people then formed a huge working group that wrote standards to fit the Framework. These are called the “Next Generation Science Standards,” or NGSS for short. Today, 20 States have officially adopted the NGSS, while another 29 are reported to have standards that are based on the Framework. (The sole holdout is Florida.)
The Framework and NGSS are very different from the pre-existing State science standards. These older standards taught scientific knowledge, basically the fundamental facts that underlie each of the primary scientific areas. Electricity, cell structure, the solar system, and stuff like that.
Some of this is still taught as the Core Ideas, plus there are Crosscutting Concepts like causality. But the method is what is called Practices. These are supposed to be how scientists work, plus they have added engineering. Students do projects instead of learning facts.
Here are the listed practices from the Framework (and the NGSS):
1. Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering)
2. Developing and using models
3. Planning and carrying out investigations
4. Analyzing and interpreting data
5. Using mathematics and computational thinking
6. Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering)
7. Engaging in argument from evidence
8. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information
Note that the list basically is sequential. It ends with formulating, arguing for, and communicating explanations.
There is nothing about testing, evaluating, or criticizing these explanations. But this sort of critical evaluation is the essence of science. It sets science apart from unconstrained belief. This is the very heart of the scientific method, so the CO2 Coalition is dead right.
Then, it gets very puzzling because the Framework actually presents evaluation as a central activity. The Practices list is Box 3.1 in the Framework. Just three pages later, we find Figure 3.1 which looks to be a diagram version and is labeled “The three spheres of activity for scientists and engineers.”
The central sphere is labeled “Evaluating” and lists “ARGUE, CRITIQUE, and ANALYZE” as its activities. There is an arrow pointing directly to “FORMULATE HYPOTHESES” under the heading “Developing Explanations.”
I have no idea why evaluating proposed explanations (and models) was not included in the list of practices. Perhaps they simply wanted to make science fun by avoiding the unpleasant part. After all, progressives are often against grading students and especially against failing them.
But whatever the reason, the Framework and NGSS only teach the happy half of the scientific method. The crucial part where hypothesis meets reality is not there. So, they are actually failing to teach how scientists think and work.
I propose a simple fix taken right from the Framework. The NGSS and the States should simply add this activity to the list:
“Activity 9: Proposed models and explanations will be evaluated using analysis, critique, and argument from evidence.”
Now we just have to get this out to the 49 States.
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Arguing over what some bit of evidence really means is doing “science”. Reciting a catechism is not.
At one time, Young Earth Creationists were the group opposing teaching science. Now, it is the Progressive Left. And, I would argue, for the same reason, that what they are advocating cannot withstand close examination.
It is “Don’t you give me no lip!” from the extremes.
Does learning only half the scientific method make today’s students half wits?
I may use this!
ok, off-topic anecdote. When i was a kid (back in the 70’s) one of our friend’s dad was a nice guy but could be pretty tough on his kids. One day he asked one of his kids to do something (don’t remember what after all these years) and, bluntly, the kid didn’t do a good job. His dad yelled at him and said everything he did was half-assed. For Christmas he was going to get him half a toilet seat.
Probably be considered child abuse today.
Even further off topic. From Clear the Decks! Mass Market Paperback – December 1, 1976,by Daniel V. Gallery (Author)
He was in command of a squadron of PBY 5’s, flying anti-submarine patrols out of Iceland covering ‘the gap’ in mid Atlantic. When their base was built there was a toilet left over. He had it cut in half and glued to the wall in his own quarters. “That’s for my half-fast friends.”
(He later commanded the USS Guadalcanal, and came up with the idea of boarding and capturing a damaged U-Boat. The U-505 on display in Chicago was the result.)
Dan Gallery wrote some of the funniest books I have ever read.
In other words :”It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period” Richard Feynman
I love posting this.
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” – Albert Einstein.
I believe there have been many instances of the right answer appearing to be wrong based on experimentation, even multiple times over a considerable period, basically because the instrumentation, or some step(s) of the testing process, were inadequate to reach the right answer. The process can be long drawn out.
Consider the very long period of the debate on spontaneous generation of micro sized life, or larger forms such as flies, arising spontaneously in food. Debate and experimentation went on for a very long time before experimental procedure became precise enough to prevent contamination of prepared sterile media.
Consider, for instance, the “real” results of additional CO2 in the atmosphere. No attempts to test that, so far, can be considered definitive. “It’s complicated.”
Experiments cannot prove a theory correct. They can only prove an hypothesis wrong.
I have a theory that some people post idiotic tripe on these threads. I need Simon to prove it for me…just one post…please???
And spontaneous generation experiments proved people like Pasteur wrong for quite some time, consistently supporting the belief that rotten meat, dead birds, whatever organic substance, could spontaneously produce maggots and small critters, including microscopic ones through the work of many bright scientists..
And since there was a consensus- the science was settled!
Here is the man, himself, Prof. Richard Feynman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIxvQMhttq4
“If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.”
And it is often far from cut and dried through the most rigorous work of decades, even centuries. Consider the ongoing debates about the Hubble constant and the expansion rate and age of the universe, all of which might be quite wrong according so some hypothesis and observational results. The mainstream, perhaps rightly, just keeps adding new details to try to support observations within the mainstream beliefs.
If they want to teach science, then they ought to be teaching “Feynman”. He will tell the students what science is, and how it should be done.
Your #3 assumes everything is normally distributed.
You took the words right out of my keyboard. If 100 data points are skewed, 1 million data point can also be skewed, or binomial or uniform or any number of other distributions. Sampling theory is sorely lacking in the basic statistics classes these days.
“If you actually want to perform experiments, that’s more expensive to schools than just creating the hypotheses.”
This isn’t necessarily true. My high school had 100 students. My class had about 28 of those. In Chemistry class there was one setup for titrating. The teacher had each student use that one setup over a period of time. You *can* do some of this inexpensively. And that’s far better than not doing it at all.
Reminds me- a doctor once told me to titrate the pain medicine. I thought “WTF?”. I’m rather sure most people wouldn’t understand that. It dawned on me that he meant slowly increase the dose. I later told him that he shouldn’t use that word with most people.
Jeebus, teaching the scientific method to school kids doesn’t need to be so complicated. I don’t know if they still do it, but when my two kids were young they were still doing science fairs and making trifold posters.
You posed a question at the top.
You formulated an hypothesis, basically statement of what you think the answer/result would be.
You described your procedure to test your hypothesis.
You tabulated or listed or otherwise described your test results.
You stated your conclusions and whether your test results supported your hypothesis or not.
That may not be everything, it’s been a while, but some of them were fun. One of my kids did one on which cereal had the most iron in it (or, is there actually iron in cereal)? He got first or second place that year (can’t remember which).
Teaching the scientific method to kids does not have to be that complicated or expensive, and if you try to get too complicated I think you risk losing them, which is even worse.
Well said. But students could study experimental design and, importantly, metrology.
Documented experiments could be introduce, such that students could learn something about experimentation, without the cost or time.
REJ, with respect I guess where I’m confused is the title of the article says, “We teach kids…” and the article references, among other things, k-12 education. Yet a lot of the discussion seems to be college level, or at least AP high school level. It seems to me that metrology, experimental design, hypothesis critique, etc. may be above the level of this article. At least that’s the way I read it.
The best introduction to science and the scientific method I had was in my Freshman general science class, because I had a good teacher and got me interested in science instead of turning me off. I probably followed a similar course to a lot of people who went into a science, engineering, or tech-related field. I followed up with biology, chemistry and physics, then college-level chemistry an physics and ended up with a degree in geology, but I still think back on my first high school general science teacher, even after all these years (which is reflected in this post). Kids need first and foremost a good k-12-level teacher who cares about science and teaching kids, and I think good science teachers, and good teachers in general, are becoming a rare commodity.
I guess my introduction was repairing mechanical things. My father owned a Farmall dealership for a while and closed it and went to work elsewhere as the chief shop mechanic. I grew up working on all kinds of farm equipment, especially engines, transmissions, and diesel pumps. You learn quickly that if you take sloppy measurements, things also fail quickly. If you put standard bearings in a camshaft that has 3000 hours on it, I’ll guarantee your oil pressure will be far below what it should be. Same for main bearing. You can pop off the end plates of a generator and replace the bushings. But, if you don’t disassemble it and replace brushes, lathe the armature and undercut the segments you’ll get it back very quickly.
We are fast losing the ability to teach children to work with their hands. To design physical experiments and make them work. Computer models are physically easier to create, but the validation part is always overlooked.
Thanks for the response and story. my dad grew up during the depression in coal mining country in NE Pennsylvania. His dad was a coal miner then a plumber. My dad used to help my GF on plumbing jobs. Later he got an engineering degree in mechanical engineering and designed HVAC systems for buildings. I learned a lot from him too, and I guess we don’t remember often enough how much we learned from our parents.
Oh, and I just had my youngest son (he’s 24 now) help me drain the radiator and replace the radiator hoses in our car. As a side note, I grow Caroline Reapers that my older son uses to make a Reaper salsa. But he learned that on his own. I didn’t teach him. 🙂
I accept your comments. I guess I was fortunate to have gone through K-12 before the educational establishment decided to run uncontrolled experiments on the student body, introducing The New Math, for example, and many other improvements. Or, maybe, I just went through K-12 with exceptional teachers (yes), and my fellow students were above average (of course)!
So you grew up in Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. And I will add, all of the teachers are exceptional. We need more places like that.
There are lots of ways to critique a hypothesis besides controlled experiments. Questioning hypotheses, pointing to alternative possibilities, finding contradicting data, etc.
“Actually, one of the realities of ‘real science’ is that results are usually messy.”
I agree, the final paper is really telling a story. The scientific method implies a step by step process. It’s actually many false starts, wrong turns, backtracking, and dead ends.
At least 60% of the time in my physics and chemistry classes at secondary school in the late 50’s and 60’s was taken in practical work that gave me a love and understanding of the subjects.
I think many of the experiments involved wouldn’t be allowed these days owing to health and safety issues (handling mercury and making nitrobenzene come to mind) but we learnt to assess risk and avoided accidents with concentrated acids and caustic materials etc.
Modern chemistry sets don’t have most of the chemicals they used to have when i was in HS.
I have a book: “The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments”. It hasn’t been published since the 60’s because it was considered too dangerous. Wikipedia says there are only 101 copies of the book known to exist in libraries – worldwide.
I see you can buy a (?reprint) copy from Timeless Classics via Amazon for £20.07.
“Argument” is not a scientific term. “Debate” is the scientific term for communicating and defending competing notions of how the real world works.
Science is the search for understanding of how the real world works – it is not the end point of the search, it is the process, and an acknowledgement that there really can be no “end point” to the science. That’s the fundamental lie of the warmunists, who keep claiming that “the science is settled”. They object to the search for and defense of alternate notions (or hypotheses, or theories). Which means they are practicing ideology, not science.
If it could be communicated effectively to children that what we think we know about the real world is always expected to be challenged with new and better data, and new and better explanations of how the real world works, then that is really all we can expect most kids (other than those who dedicate their lives to science) to take away from the standardized study of science. Few will ever remember or ever think on “the scientific method”.
Our forebears from the “Age of Reason” hundreds of years ago understood science far better than the self-proclaimed scientific genius of today’s warmunists. Reason was thought to be a far better method of deciding how to think and act than superstition, religious faith, or ideology. The founders of the United States of America were for the most part people who preferred reason.
Well. climate “science” is “settled“.
In a fashion.
That is – good enough for government work.
Not when so much is riding on their poorly supported conclusions.
Argument is the Framework’s term but it is also the standard term in logic so I have no problem with it. A statement in support of a hypothesis is an argument for it. One against is a counter argument. This is standard language in the cognitive science of reasoning (my science).
Reading about most studies, it seems like the “practices” have been around for quite a while.
A long time ago in 2008 I decided it was time to get serious about understanding global warming, I quickly found WUWT, then soon stumbled across a great YouTube presentation by a fierce supporter of the scientific method, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI
I contacted the presenter, Bob Carter, and included a link to it in my first climate web page. I pretty quickly realized Bob deserved all my respect, even though James Cook Univ. thought otherwise and “canceled” him later.
Years later it occurred to me the woman who introduced Bob might be useful too. Jennifer Marohasy. By then we’d been in contact about stuff, so I dropped her a note apologizing for not doing that sooner.
The video is in four parts, watch them all at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI&list=PLA2DA7F33E2B09673. Sadly, his talk is still well worth sharing today, there are very few things that need correction for 2024. WUWT readers won’t learn much from part 4 though but may enjoy the review.
They want to do some sort of strange control, politics. I read many papers where it is difficult to find if their models are validated with realty. They claim expertise in wide fields. Models (hypotheticals with varying evidence) are not necessarily reality. It is very easy to be concerned about politician’s dumb policies. Examples.
“First, I’d like to draw your attention to the recent publication of the areas of consensus and debate results from last year’s Communicating Science for Policy conference. In August 2015, Sigma Xi and Institute on Science for Global Policy coordinated this event, which focused on linking scientifically credible information to the formulation and implementation of sound, effective policies.”
Carbon choices determine US cities committed to futures below sea level
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/44/13508.full.pdf
https://www.sigmaxi.org/meetings-events/science-policy-bootcamp
“Hack-a-thon: Final day where participants form teams and put their new tools and knowledge into action by developing and presenting a real world science policy solution.”
I agree with your comment but respectfully need to make one correction:
Period, full stop.
“4. Analyzing and interpreting data”
Sadly, far too many “teachers” today don’t understand how to do measurements and analyze/interpret the data they produce. Even worse, far too many university professors don’t understand it any more either!
“What is the college student rate in the US?
39 percent
The overall college enrollment rate for 18- to 24-year-olds (the age range representing the majority of students who are enrolled in college1) was 39 percent in 2022.”
There are a lot of university professors.
A house of cards stands until a gentle breeze knocks it down.
This has been going on for a long time, and it ain’t no accident, chi’drens.
Here’s an example, in this paper, where common and dependable methodologies and analytical techniques and methods are _not_ accepted, for “reasons” (does not agree with previous orthodoxy in scientific conclusions esp. the orthodoxy in QM); Rather, this is an example of observational science in action:
https://pure.tudelft.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/126823930/1_s2.0_S0360319922022406_main.pdf
testing:
Planning and carrying out investigations
evaluating:
Analyzing and interpreting data;
Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering)
criticizing:
Engaging in argument from evidence
I don’t know what goes on in the classroom but I’m sure there is considerable variation that depends upon the teacher and local rules. However, there is nothing in the outline that says just because basic concepts are explicitly presented in separate steps there is any attempt to prevent conceptualization and use of the processes independently or in any rigid order.
Teaching the basic steps in an additive manner, from course to course, may be the most efficient way to assure that more students actually learn and come to understand the aspects that are important to the total endeavor.
This is, in general, done in papers and textbooks. It isn’t necessarily the job of those doing that step to provide counter hypothesis. That tends to come after the paper is published. We see more than a little of this on WUWT. There is nothing in that outline that says example sessions, of criticizing and evaluating, to teach the basic concepts, cannot occur in the classroom.
I am not claiming that everything is fine or even close to the best possible in teaching but I don’t see that the criticisms presented in this article, about the proposed teaching process, are valid. Nothing there suggests that critical evaluations cannot, or should not, come at any time.
There is nothing that says they cannot occur but also no call for them to occur. My 9th activity does that. Challenging proposed explanations and models is just as important as formulating them.
It is a complex task to wade into the swamp of K-12 teaching and standards. I’ve done it on many occasions; so I’ll add an extended comment or two.
It’s one part of the science/engineering education problem to look at standards and find them wanting. The problem is much larger, though. It involves history, teacher preparation, the increasing influence of advocacy and so forth.
Regarding history, the education establishment or bureaucracy for want of a better label, has worked furiously over the past five or six decades to make education more about the teachers and bureaucracy and less about education. One manifestation of this is to encourage grade inflation which makes the job of teaching easier and less confrontational. Another manifestation is to make teaching like cooking. Follow a recipe and you, dear teacher, will have done a good job. The list 1-8 in the article is what results. It is very linear and easy to teach, but doesn’t resemble the scientific method all that accurately. In fact, the term “the scientific method” is misleading as there are many methods, that if done well, will be recognized as scientific in the end. Teaching nebulous things like scientific methods that one might learn about by reading science history is not easy to do in K-12.
A dozen years ago I got an invitation to attend a state meeting of the Professional Teaching Standards Board (PTSB) involving only physics teachers that had been organized by Educational Teaching Service of Princeton, NJ. I was the only college instructor of physics or engineering who attended. I have no idea why I was invited. I was shocked at the terrible disconnect between what we in college engineering or physics assumed was learned in high school and what was actually going on. However, a more interesting insight was afforded with ETS having us all work a short physics test. The high school teachers were mortified by their performance and even being asked to perform on command didn’t go over well. At first I thought they’d simply become rusty, but later I began to research teacher preparation. I learned that most people teaching physics had, at best, a certificate in natural science which never involved physics at all, and what sciences were included involved science content at the lowest level of college courses — what we call “conceptual science” courses.
In fact, a university education in science or engineering is filled with holes, too. These holes mostly involve a lack of emphasis on experiment design, statistics, and more generally the logic of inference. Chemistry does a pretty good job in this regard.
In summary, focusing on standards is worthwhile, but is not going to cure the ills of scientific illiteracy and innumeracy. The standards seem to me not a root cause but instead are a reflection of other malign influences.
My high school years were the end of the 1950s, the beginning of the 1960s. It wasn’t different then. There were teachers that had some background and understanding and others that were just shoe horned in teaching science or math without the proper background. They could do little other than present the lessons provided for them.
While no expert in anything, I found reading about various science and mathematical topics quite interesting so I occasionally saw significant disconnect between what I had read and what was presented, mostly in that limited aspects of some particulars were being presented as absolutes. Also, I had developed some limited ability to use libraries to find information about topics that interested me. Questions to the teachers were not always welcome.
Something that has been forgotten is that when Sputnik was launched in 1957, there were many that were concerned that we were behind the Russians in critical skills. As a consequence many places (California in particular) made the high school curricula more rigorous. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long, and before I was even out of college, it was being dumbed down. By the time I started teaching in the ’70s, Foothill College was giving out 50% A’s and B’s. While Foothill wasn’t a typical community college, drawing primarily from upscale Palo Alto, Los Altos Hills, Menlo Park, and the Stanford environs, I discovered that Palo Alto high school students didn’t realize that multiplying by 10 could be accomplished by moving the decimal point; that was by the mid-’70s.
These are certainly interesting issues. My expertise is strictly with science standards because 16 years ago the Energy Dept’s Office of Science gave me $600,000 to map the cognitive structure of K-12 science education based on the existing standards.
Just what was taught at each grade level, in order to build a search engine that recognized the grade level of educational content. Fourth grade electricity is very different from middle school for example.
We were building the Scienceeducation.gov portal to centralize access to all the sci ed content in the government just as Science.gov does for the scientific content. It worked and we fielded the portal but then the funding went away and it was pulled.
How many times has the Federal government allocated funds to improve secondary science education with scholarships or some other effort to have secondary education majors get degrees in science rather than just a certificate like natural science only to have the project last only a couple of years and then pull the funding? Can’t keep their eye on the goal.
Oh the problem of teacher ignorance or partial/complete illiteracy of science, physics, biology, etc goes back a lot further than a dozen years ago. In high school, circa 1973, grade 11 if memory serves we had a biology teacher who essentially read the lesson plan the night before the class and a group of us who were somewhat smart and most certainly ahead of the age group, would routinely embarrass and humiliate him when he made numerous errors of fact. And this kind of revelation that (many/most of) the teachers were in fact ill equipped to even grasp the material themselves – was most instructive to even those young minds at the time.
On the other hand back when we had real shop classes with actual electrical/electronic benches and equipment, actual machine shops with lathes and milling machines and forges. and actual auto shops with engines, cars and lifts – those teachers came from industry and were a huge wealth of practical and real knowledge and imparted invaluable teaching.
That old adage “that those cannot do, teach” applied back then and most certainly now. (in a general sense, though not all teachers or profs are idiots with letters behind their names)
I learned more from the shop teachers, one a retired maintenance electrician from a large factory, one a retired tool and die maker, and one a retired auto mechanic – than all the teachers of all grades up to that point.
The so called education system is spitting out minds which are deficient in so many areas, not the least of which is critical thinking, pragmatism and objectivity and has been doing so for several generations. But the overarching plan has been for some time, that dumb or ill equipped minds are easier to control.
This puzzled me
I’m surprised. The BBC carries educational content for schools…
“”What is climate change? A really simple guide
Human activities are causing world temperatures to rise, with more intense heatwaves and rising sea-levels among the consequences.””
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24021772
It doesn’t puzzle me.
What puzzled me was the claim that the NGSS did not teach the scientific method. Climate change is just a tiny part of the NGSS so not really relevant to my puzzlement. The issue is the whole of K-12 science education.
It is disheartening that the NAS actively opposes teaching the Scientific Method. They tell educators (in chapter 7, on page 44) that:
That’s just wrong. The Scientific Method is the one thing which distinguishes science from other scholarship. Without it, there is no science.
The Scientific Method is an algorithm. Here’s how it works, in seven steps:
1. The scientist observes the available data.
2. He or she formulates a hypothesis (or perhaps several plausible tentative hypotheses) to explain the observations.
3. He derives testable predictions from the hypothesis.
4. He devises experiments or observations to test the predictions.
5. He does the experiments or makes the observations.
6. If the test results match the predictions, he cries “eureka!” and publishes. He can now properly call his hypothesis a scientific theory or theoretical model. He publishes it along with his data and detailed calculations, so that other scientists can reproduce and verify his work.
7. If the test results fail to match the predictions, the hypothesis is said to be “falsified,” so he discards or revises it and starts over at step 2, with the new observations or experimental results added to the body of available data.
Step 7 is a test of a scientist’s integrity. If, instead of discarding or revising falsified theories or models, a disappointed researcher revises the data, to make it fit his predictions, or if he skips testing his hypothesis altogether, he’s no scientist worthy of the name.
7b…. There is also the case of specifically hunting for, or fabricating, data that fits the hypothesis.. ie IPCC.
Their reasoning is a whole-part confusion. Their eight activities are all part of the scientific method. What is missing is my ninth activity.
A required essay in a history class was graded by a teaching assistant. Most of the content for the topic I found interesting enough to pursue came from one one good book on how developments in science and engineering drove much of the expansion of the US from the original colonies to a continent spanning country becoming a cultural and economic giant. I was afraid I was going to be marked down significantly because, while I put it all into my own organization and own wording, the details came mostly from that one book. It was sure to be obvious that the basic concept was not my original idea.
I did get marked down a grade. The TA was very tart in telling me that the western way of knowing the world was not the only legitimate path (something I had written not one word about). That was his only criticism.
It is also useful, though embarrassing, to publish on falsified hypotheses.
This has 2 benefits.
1/ If it fell in a screaming heap, it saves others wasting their time doing the same thing
2/ The hypothesis might be revised, or alternative experiments or observations devised.
“What passes for science includes opinion, arguments-from-authority, dramatic press releases, and fuzzy notions of consensus generated by preselected groups. This is not science.”
– Climatologist John Christy, Sept. 20, 2012
True but not relevant to the present issue. In fact activity 8 calls for evaluating outside information.
A lot of the alleged peer review research the IPCC uses, as it turns out, are newspaper clippings.
Bless Florida.
Yes I wonder if the good Governor plays a role here?
Understanding that actual testing and experimentation of a developed hypothesis is challenging due to cost, time, quantity of observations necessary to reasonably test, etc. as discussed, I think this can be dealt with differently.
After developing a hypothesis, the student should be taught how to test it, challenge it, and falsify it. The student for purposes of examination can be presented with a developed hypothesis, the information it is based on, and be required to describe methods that can be used to test, challenge, and falsify the hypothesis.
This teaches the method without the obstacles of the actual experiments and field study that might not be practical.
It will also teach some of the most important parts of the scientific process – that a hypothesis is NOT the end of the road, that skepticism is the foundation of scientific inquiry, and that a hypothesis MUST be FALSIFIABLE.
When I was in high school- ’63 to ’67, there was the fear if the Soviet Union and the space race. Many schools set up very demanding math and science courses. I had chemistry as a junior and physics as a senior. Both had 2 classes 5 days a week. I believe the feds promoted the idea. I think such intense science education prepared students better for college. When I took chemistry in college it was hardly any more difficult- the first semester anyway. I recall sitting in the college chem course reading the Boston Globe. The teacher chewed me out over that- but I was bored.
I guess Massachusetts was behind the curve even then. California tightened up in 1958! 🙂
The simplest solution is to get the federal government out of the education business. We can start by eliminating the Department of Education.
And eliminate the EPA. That was started by Nixon and was/is a bad idea.
They should move the Secret Service back into Treasury. It was better run and more competent there.
I think, the first priority should be that the kids in school learn to read, write and do math (without common core). Otherwise, science in any shape or form is simply over their heads …
Exactly correct. We have ceased to teach real science in schools. All that is needed is to spend a few lessons talking about the problem with so called ”consensus science’ (which is not science at all), then to any and all hypotheses that do not agree with observation or experiment (which always means they are rubbish) and finally to list as many examples as the class can come up with where a forecast (like the supposed future flooding of the Maldives, the non-existent problem with corals) which never materialise, the consequences on the world from the Paris agreement and its spending on the Maldives which money is being used to build five new airports at beach level.
Well, if Trump is elected there will probably be some big changes in education, as Trump says he is going to reduce the U.S. Department of Education to caretaker status, and put the education decision making with the individual States.
The teacher unions are not going to like this. That’s understandable, but the teacher unions are the problem, and need to be dealt with. Trump is going to deal with it by sending the decision-making process to the local level, taking it out of the hands of national teacher union officials.
to reduce the U.S. Department of Education to caretaker status, and put the education decision making with the individual States.
To leftist
thinkinghysteria that means he wants children to stay dumb and not learn to read, write, or do math (which they’re not doing all that well with currently). Which in and of itself demonstrates the poor state of public education.“4. Analyzing and interpreting data
5. Using mathematics and computational thinking
6. Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering)
7. Engaging in argument from evidence”
Number 4 above is extremely important, because experimental data tends to have variations that don’t always follow the equations in a textbook, and students need to be taught to have some skepticism even about well-established theories to be able to explain deviations from the “expected” result. There are frequently problems with unexpected friction, instrument drift, poorly calibrated measurement devices, etc.
I distinctly remember an experiment in a high-school chemistry lab, where we simply put distilled water in a flask and heated it with a Bunsen burner, with a thermometer accurate to 1 degree C dipped in the water, and we wrote down temperatures every minute. The students had all looked up the boiling point of water in the textbook as 100 C. The students were divided up into teams of two students, with about a dozen teams. When the water started boiling, every thermometer was only reading 99 C, and the students started wondering whether there was something wrong with the thermometers. The teacher told us to write down the results we saw, without worrying about whether they were “correct” according to the textbook. The next day, the teacher told us that since the school was located about 1,000 ft above sea level, the atmospheric pressure was lower than sea-level pressure, and water has that vapor pressure at about 99 C. All the students who had “fudged” their data to 100 C got failing grades for that experiment!
Number 7 is also very important, because any hypothesis needs to be supported by evidence, but if the “evidence” (measured data) contradicts the hypothesis, the students need to be able to either explain the discrepancy or throw out the hypothesis.
That much???