Dear social science majors,
The natural laws of the universe are not subject to your interpretation, no matter how important a roomful of people listening to you makes you feel.
Also, telling me to shut up doesn't make what you have to say any less wrong.
Love, the (very) lone real scientist in the class.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
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According to many people's calculations, the end of the world will happen on December 21st 2012. There are so many people who agree with that, it can't be wrong.
ReplyDeleteOh dear… what did they say this time???
ReplyDeleteWe were talking about how to determine the quality of information to make educated decisions. For some reason I can't fathom, 4 of the social science majors were arguing with me about whether good information is something we can determine ourselves. They were talking about science like it's this "mysterious force," and that what's true and what isn't is beyond our ability to determine. When I explained to them that the point of science is to test the world and determine that correct answer, and that through science we can discover what's true and what isn't, another girl started arguing with me saying that I don't understand how complex the world really is and that it's possible to have two contradicting ideas and both be completely true. I tried to tell her why she's wrong and she told me to shut up. lol..
ReplyDeleteSounds to me that you got into the old astronomer versus amateur debate. :( You sometimes have to let those people live in their blissful ignorance...
ReplyDeleteLOL. YES. Exactly! That was another one of my arguments in class.. a different student asked why we should trust the information that scientists give us. I tried to explain the peer review process, and how published papers are held to a certain standard, but even the professor was debating whether all published papers on climate change should be believed. One girl said "we need some kind of process that helps us publish only the best information we have on climate change and weed out everything else." I said, what do you think the IPCC does??
ReplyDeleteTo them, what we do seems like voodoo or tarot cards. Maybe at the next class I will ask them: you call yourselves "scientists," so why is the scientific process (question, hypothesis, analysis, experiment, etc.) so mysterious to you?
ReplyDeletePeople these days....
ReplyDeleteI feel like I'm teaching more than I'm learning in this class..
ReplyDeleteWhy should we trust the scientists? We shouldn't. But that's the beauty of science: you can take your measurement devices and try to see by yourself if the things the scientists say are true. If they are, you saw them with your own eyes. If they aren't, you can tell the scientist that he/she is wrong and you have evidence to prove it! :)
ReplyDeleteAhh, but here's the difference between the astronomer and the amateur; none of these points exemplify a true scientific "proof." A mathematical proof requires that there is no room for alternative answers, and that the proof is true beyond a shadow of a doubt. Naturally we can disprove every single one of these "proofs" because they're all wrong; even basic concepts learned in an introductory Physics course can disprove many of these proofs. It's what sets real scientists apart from philosophers; we don't simply use logic and come up with answers, we rigorously test the world around us through experimentation to come up with the answers.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I like the last link I posted about "Personal Science". It looks like it describes pretty well your teacher (the "believer") and classmates (the disciples). It's funny :P
ReplyDelete