Evolution 101
Open your minds and share your results, says Geoffry Boulton, asking that scientists make data available to the public and to other researchers, because “Science’s capacity for self-correction comes from this openness to scrutiny and challenge”.
Science as an open enterprise is a report from the Royal Society that highlights 6 main changes needed to improve the openess of science:
- “a shift away from a research culture where data is viewed as a private preserve;
- expanding the criteria used to evaluate research to give credit for useful data communication and novel ways of collaborating;
- the development of common standards for communicating data;
- mandating intelligent openness for data relevant to published scientific papers;
- strengthening the cohort of data scientists needed to manage and support the use of digital data;
- the development and use of new software tools to automate and simplify the creation and exploitation of datasets.”
This means that science education is not simply a matter of learning new theories. Rather, it also requires that students unlearn their instincts, shedding false beliefs the way a snake sheds its old skin."
Why we don’t believe in science
46% of American adults believe that: “God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years.” and only 15% agree with the notion of evolution without divine guidance. Also, these percentages have remained almost unchanged at least for the last 30 years.
The article explores a couple of studies about how our brains store intuitions that contrast with scientific facts: for instance people pause before agreeing that air is composed of matter, or that the earth revolves around the sun. The delay shows that something in those statements push against our instincts.
That’s true, but let’s just not blame our brain, again. The problem here is education.
![Rubber Chicken in Space
A group of high school students from California launched an helium balloon sending “Camilla”, a rubber chicken, to an altitude of 36.5 kilometers. The mission of Camilla is part of an astrobiology project, that aims to find out if microbes can live at the edge of space. Camilla was launched right into a solar storm to be exposed to high-energy solar protons and she was equipped with a pair of radiation badges to measure the radiation, a ship full of instruments (four cameras, a cryogenic thermometer, GPS trackers, seven insects and 24 sunflower seeds), and a knitted space-suit.
Camilla flew twice: on March 3 and on March 10. The second launch coincided with one of the strongest proton storms of the year, with satellites reporting solar proton counts at about 30000 times normal.
Eventually Camilla returned back to Earth. […]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m38784eYCr1qb3iw0o1_500.jpg)
A group of high school students from California launched an helium balloon sending “Camilla”, a rubber chicken, to an altitude of 36.5 kilometers. The mission of Camilla is part of an astrobiology project, that aims to find out if microbes can live at the edge of space. Camilla was launched right into a solar storm to be exposed to high-energy solar protons and she was equipped with a pair of radiation badges to measure the radiation, a ship full of instruments (four cameras, a cryogenic thermometer, GPS trackers, seven insects and 24 sunflower seeds), and a knitted space-suit.
Camilla flew twice: on March 3 and on March 10. The second launch coincided with one of the strongest proton storms of the year, with satellites reporting solar proton counts at about 30000 times normal.
Eventually Camilla returned back to Earth. […]
Working in Space by V. Bétoulaud.
Not so good, but since the most common vocabulary size for non-native English spearkes is from 2,500–9,000 words, at least I’m in the average.
Test Your Vocabulary: how many words do you know?
Physicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool
[…] lecturing has never been an effective teaching technique and now that information is everywhere, some say it’s a waste of time. Indeed, physicists have the data to prove it.
I’m glad physicists now realize (or, as the article says, they now have the “hard data”, except that these data are not that hard, neither are the techniques used to collect those data) of something that psychologists and educators have known for a long time.
Harvard Academic Starts Initiative to Boost Accuracy of Wikipedia's Psychology Articles
With more than 18 million articles and 365 million visitors every month, Wikipedia is the king of online references. Academics have long been critical of its accuracy, but, other than a few isolated efforts, scholars haven’t been too involved in improving article quality. But, thanks to Harvard University psychology professor Mahzarin R. Banaji, that might just change for the site’s psychology content. Banaji’s created the APS Wikipedia Initiative, an effort to get the 25,000 members of the Association for Psychological Science to take responsibility for representing the discipline “as fully and as accurately as possible and thereby to promote the free teaching of psychology worldwide.” […]
[…] Banaji’s goal through the initiative is to improve the 5,500 psychology articles currently on the site by ensuring they’re accurate, up-to-date, complete, and are written so that everyday people can understand them. Articles also need to represent controversial topics in a neutral manner and be based on reliable sources. […]
