A Twist on Climate Change, Risk, and Uncertainty

In this country, we teach kids that science is a collection of hard facts. We teach them that scientists come up with a hypothesis—an idea that might explain some aspect of how the world works. Scientists then test their hypotheses and find out whether it’s correct or not. If it’s correct, then it becomes something that children must memorize. That story is true. But it’s also vastly oversimplified. It gives people the impression that every scientific question can be answered with “yes” or “no.” And if it can’t, then the real answer is probably “no.”

That perspective might work okay when you’re sitting in a high school science lab, studying the digestive system of a fetal pig. But it doesn’t work as well in the real world. And it leaves people completely unprepared to understand something like climate change, and how we assess the risks associated with it.

I note that “That story is true” is correct, but we would be better off if it weren’t. That’s one of the common themes in any discussion in the blogohedron about scientific literacy and science education: reducing science to a list of facts misrepresents the essence of science and also tends to kill enthusiasm for learning science.

That’s not to say that facts aren’t a part of science and science literacy. I think you can distill literacy down to three components — facts, concepts and procedures. You can’t do much without remembering a few facts, and you need to have a basic grasp of some concepts in order to see how those facts fit together. That’s part and parcel of any discussion/vote on what the most important element of scientific literacy — everyone trots out their favorite “must know” tidbit.

Uncertainty is inescapable in science, and you have to account for its presence in interpreting any scientific result, which is a concept that needs to be included in the list of what comprises basic science literacy. We have to fight the attempts to turn it into a pejorative, since a common implication is that any uncertainty means that we know nothing — a world is portrayed that’s black and white, with no tolerance for shades of grey.

Nature has a special edition out on the future of the PhD

I will admit that I have not read all of the articles/editorials, but in my sampling, I see they fall into the familiar and perhaps comfortable view that the sole purpose of a PhD is to get you a job in academia. My familiarity, of course, in physics, and perhaps things are different for the varied flavors of chemists and biologists (biology and life sciences are seeing the largest uptrend in degrees awarded), but only around a third of physics doctorates go into academia. I can’t seem to dredge up the statistics from historical data for physics (the keepers do not seem to have committed it to being readily available online, or perhaps my Google-fu just sucks ATM) but I suspect this has been true for a while; research professors have been churning out multiple graduates for a number of years. If academia were the only market, a professor would be limited to two or three: his/her replacement, and one or two for institutions that do not have graduate students. The data from 1990-2206(pdf alert) for all STEM fields in OECD countries shows that it’s around half for the US and perhaps a little larger in that grouping; it varies by country. But the notion that a STEM PhD necessarily leads to an academic position is a fiction perpetuated and persists within the community.

One also might wonder, in the US, why we issue H-1B visas to bring in people with PhDs, if there is this glut of people with doctorates on the market.

Physics and Physicists: “What Is The Most Important Thing You Learned In Becoming A Scientist?”

Let’s cut to the chase:

[L]earning how to learn is the most important thing I learned in becoming a scientist.

The Triceratops Panic: Why Does Science Keep Changing Its Mind?

One of the nice things about growing up is you don’t have to spend time thinking about planets, digestion or awesome dinosaurs if you don’t want to, because what you were taught was “science” so those things are supposed to stay that way forever.

And then, suddenly, there is “news.” Someone in authority says, “Wait a second! New information has come to our attention, and that thing we told you was true may not be true any more. Or not as true. Please pay attention so we can un-teach what we told you.”

“WHAT?” is a lot of people’s first reaction. “I thought you knew this. I believed you…”
And then they get mad.

Perhaps the first failure of science education is the notion that “things are supposed to stay that way forever.” The facts and realities of science are always the best interpretation that we have available at the time, but it’s subject to change as we get more information. New information will always be interpreted according to the best theories of the day. (And someone in the media will always distort it to the point that its wrong.) What science won’t (or at least shouldn’t) do is be dogmatic and push information that’s become outdated, even if it’s for the comfort of the casual observer. There are sources for reassuring lies, but science should not be one of them.