freshmen seminar “weird science” 2010 thinking critically about weird things

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Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things John Do CAMCOR (Center for Materials Characterization in Or donovan@uorego (541) 346 “teaching students to use uncommon sense to evaluate knowledge claims...”

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Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things. “teaching students to use uncommon sense to evaluate knowledge claims...”. John Donovan CAMCOR (Center for Materials Characterization in Oregon) [email protected] (541) 346-4632. “Uncommon Sense”. Knowledge:. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010

Thinking Critically About Weird Things

John DonovanCAMCOR (Center for Materials Characterization in Oregon)

[email protected](541) 346-4632

“teaching students to use uncommon sense

to evaluate knowledge claims...”

Page 2: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Knowledge: Justified belief or belief based on evidence

“Uncommon Sense”

•Useful (science, technology, medicine, etc.)

•Fruitful (improved understanding, insight, avoidance of undesirable outcomes)

•Valuable (advantage of information, get paid for your knowledge)

•Beautiful (complexity of universe, diversity of life, interconnectedness of systems)

Knowledge really is power!

Page 3: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

So What’s Wrong With Being Wrong?

•Over the last 15 years 90% of the rhinos have been killed by poachers who sell their horns on the black market.

•600 Black bears were killed in the Great Smoky Mountains during the last three years and their gall bladders exported to Korea.

“The Lancet today finally retracted the paper that sparked a crisis in MMR vaccination across the UK, following the General Medical Council's decision that its lead author, Andrew Wakefield, had been dishonest.”http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/02/lancet-retracts-mmr-paper

CDC estimates that 463 children have died in the US from not being MMR vaccinated in the last 3 years

Page 4: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

ATSC (UK) Ltd

‘ADE "Advanced Detection Equipment" is said by its makers to be able to detect "all known drug and explosive based substances", using "non-vapour" methods. A simple plastic holder is fitted with a special piece of cardboard which has been prepared using "the proprietary process of electrostatic matching of the ionic charge and structure of the substance" to be detected. There is no power source or electronics - the device is said to be "charged" by the body of the user.’http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/22/dowsing_rod_bomb_detector_bust/

‘The device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board” - the power of suggestion - said a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack,

The Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the ADE 651, at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Nearly every police checkpoint, and many Iraqi military checkpoints, have one of the devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles.’ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/middleeast/04sensors.html

Page 5: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Case Study: Homeopathy•First proposed by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796

•“Like Cures Like” (observed that cinchona bark, used as a treatment for malaria, produced symptoms similar to malaria when ingested in overdose)

•What does homeopathy claim to cure diaper rash?

•8X (or 10-8) is allowable concentration of arsenic in US water•12X (or 10-12) is “a pinch of salt in the Atlantic Ocean”•24X (or 10-24) has a 60% chance of containing one molecule per mole•33X (or 10-33) dilution commonly seen in pharmacies and stores•60X (or 10-60) Hahnemann recommended as “standard dose”•100X (or 10-100) dilution for poison ivy “dose” (1080 atoms in universe)•400X (or 10-400) dilution for popular flu remedy “Oscillococcinum”

“Claims of homeopathy's efficacy beyond the placebo effect are unsupported by the collective weight of scientific and clinical evidence.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy

Page 6: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Sources of Knowledge•Genetic, intuitive (instinctual behavior)

•Personal learned experience (contingent experience)

•Revelation or introspection

•Tradition/authority (culture/society, taboos, laws, etc.)

•Scholarly (scientific, historical, legal, medical, etc.)

Page 7: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Knowledge at the University

•Scholarship: science, history, literature

•Medicine: disease causation, treatment, prevention (nutrition, hygiene, etc.)

•Law: forensics, criminal justice, social justice, political justice

•Life: decision making, deceit detection, advertising, propaganda, risk avoidance

Page 8: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Impediments to teaching scholarship and critical evaluation of sources

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to

fool” Richard P. Feynman

Page 9: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

1. We prefer stories to statistics

We prefer anecdotal/personal information

We evaluate risk non mathematically

We relate to emotional accounts

Units of deaths per billion with one hour of risk exposure:

Giving This lecture: < 1 Being vaccinated: 1.3 Living where snakes are present: 3.8 Rail or bus travel in USA: 10.0 Child asleep in crib: 140 Being struck by lightning: 200 Amateur Boxing: 450 Climbing Stairs: 550 Coal Mining: 910 Hunting: 950 Automobile Travel: 1200 Air travel: 1450 Cigarette Smoking: 2600 Small boat boating: 3000 Swimming: 3650 Motorcycle riding: 6280 Serving in Vietnam: 7935 Canoeing: 10000 Motorcycle racing: 35000 Alpine Mountaineering: 40000 Professional Boxing: 70000 Giving Birth: 80000

Page 10: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

2. We seek to confirm rather than question our beliefs

•Pattern seeking animals

•Behavioral biases

“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.”Bertrand Russell

Page 11: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

3. Misunderstanding the role of chance and coincidence

Lottery games

Casino games

Gambler’s fallacy

National Enquirer effect

Statistically speaking, coincidences MUST occur sometimes!

Page 12: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Are you paying attention?

Page 13: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

4. Trusting the reliability of our senses

Distraction and hallucinations are common

Perception is influenced by expectation

Page 14: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Are You Hallucinating Yet?

Page 15: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Are squares A and B the same shade of gray?

Page 16: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things
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Page 18: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

5. We oversimplify our thinking and trust our instincts too easily...

Evolution of accurate, reliable (economical) behavior, although imperfect and fallible...

Cognition is faulty (much more than we’d like to believe)...

Page 19: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things
Page 20: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

pareidoliaa psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant

Page 21: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Good Clean Fun?

Thatcher

Page 22: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

6. Inability to grasp magnitudes/properties outside of evolutionary historical experience

Deep space

Deep time

Deep size

Page 23: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

50% of American adults think that the world is around 10,000 years old!

How much of an error is that? It’s like believing that the distance from New York to Los Angeles is 30 feet.

Assume 13.7 billion years = 1 year, then:January 1st = Big bang 26th = first galaxies formSeptember 1st = Solar system forms 21st = first stirrings of lifeNovember 8th = first oxygen atmosphere 30th = first sex by algaeDecember 15th = multi-cell life 19th = algae on land 21st = land animals (millipedes) 25th = dinosaurs 30th = mammals (rodents) 31st 1:00 AM = early apes

10:30 PM = stone tools 11:54 = homo sapiens 11:59:37 = agriculture 11:59:57 = zero invented 11:59:59 = Copernicus

Page 24: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Quantum dots

Page 25: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

And this is good for what exactly?

Page 26: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

7. We prefer bad explanations to no explanation at all

Natural disasters, floods, storms, earthquakes

Cosmogenic (origins)

Luck, disease, insanity

HAAD

(Hyper ActiveAgency Detection)

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays (1950), "Outline of Intellectual Rubbish"

Page 27: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

"Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever." -Thomas Edison, 1889

"Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value." - Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre

What was that again?

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." -Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology France, 1872

"The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine." -Ernst Rutherford, 1933

"Space travel is bunk" - Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of Britain, 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik

“No one will ever need more than 640K of RAM” -Bill Gates, 1981

Page 28: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Results From Science:

All knowledge claims are tentative and subject to revision given new evidence.

Science does not prove its claims-yet it is widely agreed that scientific claims are more trustworthy than other kinds of claims.

Scientific knowledge is reliable knowledge, but individual scientists are not infallible!

The strength of science lies in the way that its theories are put up for falsification, and are continually being modified and improved in accuracy.

A scientific theory is not accepted until it has been battle-tested by a skeptical scientific community.

Page 29: Freshmen Seminar “Weird Science” 2010 Thinking Critically About Weird Things

Conclusions for All of UsWe must be aware of our cognitive biases

We must appreciate how much we do not know

We must understand we do not require absolute certainty for reliable knowledge

We must cultivate a skeptical and questioning approach to life

We must not be afraid to say: “I do not know”

“Trust your gut instincts- but don’t assume that it’s enough”

-Kermit The Frog