Sep 21 2006
They Just Can’t Help Themselves
There’s a lot to say about Ken’s article on High Tech High, but I’m going to zoom in on one educrat statement he quotes:
“You are trying to teach kids how to make claims and support them with evidence. It’s a very sophisticated way of thinking,” she said. “It’s much closer to what scientists do than what goes on in conventional science classrooms.”
First, no, this is most emphatically not what scientists do; this is what junk scientists do. Seriously, are “science ed” people as ignorant about basic scientific method as “math ed” people are about basic math?
Scientists observe data. From the data, they extrapolate a hypothesis. They then test the hypothesis. Note that this is crucially different from making a claim, then looking around for evidence to support it. That’s called cherry-picking data. It is not science. It is junk science — you know, like all that “second-hand smoke” or “global warming” nonsense. Anybody who’s teaching students in a science class to first make a claim then find data to support it should be fired, immediately, and never allowed again near a science classroom.
Second, what, exactly, is “sophisticated” about teaching students to commit academic fraud?
Like I said, you can’t parody these people. They do it themselves everytime they open their mouths.
3 responses so far
3 Responses to “They Just Can’t Help Themselves”
I think you’re being too hard on them. You’re right; it’s not a rigorous application of the scientific method. But, if they teach the student to let the data guide them on their ‘claim’ they’re close. If they just beat the idea that a plausible explanation is insufficient without data they’re doing better.
I work in industry, and you’d be surprised how often a logical explanation is used in place of actual data.
A better aphorism would have been “You are trying to teach kids how to make claims and figure out what would refute or tend to refute those claims. Then teach them to look for evidence to that effect.” At some point somebody has to explain why an unfalsifiable claim is meaningless and unproductive in the scientific context.
prof, i’m with you. you don’t ‘make claims and support them with evidence’. you look at the evidence and make a claim. when you do it their way, you introduce bias.
we did a pH experiment with a bunch of kids the other day. a big part of that was explaining that ‘guessing’ what something’s pH would be was fun, but not science. guessing [making claims] before you see the data introduces bias. even my 7 year old got it.