resistance to science

By Alison Campbell 17/01/2011











The authors conclude:





0 Responses to “resistance to science”

  • Great posting, Alison
    In some areas, I guess the way to dispel “alternative” explanations is to show students experiments (or even better get them to do them themselves) that show what happens e.g. the curved hose example you give above. At the same time such an experiment could be used to discuss “common sense” and how it can lead one astray and why the scientific method when properly applied should help avoid such errors.
    I guess it might be more challenging in biology to demonstrate evolution, although so called “microevolution” has always seemed quite convincing to me. And once you accept that, and then consider the timescale for “macro” evolution it seems fairly obvious to me.
    If the resistance to an idea comes from religion then I guess it is more of a challenge as such beliefs are ingrained early on.

    • One of the things we do in our evolutionary bio paper is to give students the opportunity to look at different ‘explanations’ for the evolution of organisms & ask them to seriously consider which one best does the job. Generates some really interesting discussion :-).

  • so “teaching the controversy” works? _ so long as it is explained in a scientific manner, there are experts on hand to help with the reasoning and the students are mature enough and knowledgeable enough to understand how science works.

    Do you ever get any students who try and argue the ID approach makes sense?

  • I haven’t taught in that paper for a couple of years but no, that never came up. We did (& do) have students with creationist leanings, & I remember one saying to me later in the paper that they really appreciated the opportunity to review their beliefs in that particular context. Not sure that it changed their minds in the sense of altering beliefs, but it did open them up to seriously thinking about evolution.

    So yes, ‘teaching the controversy’ works OK, provided you do it carefully & well. And have the time – I wouldn’t advocate it in a school setting unless the teacher was a) particularly knowledgeable about the whole thing & b) had plenty of time, because you really need to give the opportunity for students to reflect on things.

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