Education
pharyngula | May 14, 2006Here's a controversial topic to discuss, especially for a science blogger.
Science is overrated. This is my contention.
Last night in chat I evidently hit a nerve by (perhaps not so) casually suggesting that maybe it's not the end of the world that fewer and fewer American students are going into the sciences.
I read that first bit, and you may be shocked to learn that I'm willing to agree. There are some really good arguments to support the position. Science is hard, and it's true that the majority of people aren't going to be able to grasp it. We're oversubscribed and overextended right…
stcynic | May 10, 2006One of the things that has happened in competitive debate over the last decade or so is the development of the "kritik" (pronounced just like critique). This was just beginning to come into use when I was getting out of coaching and judging in the early 90s and at the time I thought it was a healthy development. Explaining how and why it began will require a bit of background in how a debate is structured. After an explanation of the general structure of how such arguments are used, and the levels on which they are used, I'll make it specific to the type of kritik that the Louisville Project…
oracknows | May 10, 2006RangelMD asks: Do student doctors really need to know anatomy and that other basic science stuff? And Dr. RW chimes in sarcastically, Who needs all that basic science bunk?
Naturally, as you might expect from recent posts, I can't resist putting my two cents in on this topic as well.
The discussion was provoked by this article:
TEACHING of basic anatomy in Australia's medical schools is so inadequate that students are increasingly unable to locate important body parts - and in some cases even confuse one vital organ with another.
Senior doctors claim teaching hours for anatomy have been…
oracknows | May 5, 2006Lately, I've been frequently lamenting how easily physicians can be seduced by the pseudoscience known as "intelligent design" (ID) creationism (or even old-fashioned young earth creationism). Yesterday, I even hung my head in shame after learning of a particularly clueless creationist surgeon, to the point of speculating that I might not be able to show my face in ScienceBlogs for a few days.
Then, just as I was getting set to show my face in ScienceBlogs again after only a one day absence (having decided not to let one clueless surgeon deter me), I see this on Bill Dembski's blog.…
oracknows | May 4, 2006Damn you, PZ!
I know I spent three whole posts discussing the problem of credulity towards creationism among physicians. I spent a lot of time in those posts explaining potential reasons why physicians might be susceptible to the blandishments of creationists and even used the example of a medical student who is a proud young earth creationist as an example of the perils to medicine of not taking a stand regarding this sort of pseudoscience.
Leave it to PZ to one-up me.
Sadly, PZ has found an example of a physician who makes Alice (our blogging young earth creationist medical student) look…
pharyngula | May 2, 2006I get lots of hate mail, but it's actually not that often that I'm cc'ed complaints sent to my acting chancellor and the university PR person. Since he's willing to share, so am I…so here's Mr Daryl Schulz's defense of free speech:
I have known a few people through the years that have gone to UM Morris and thought it to be a reputable institution affiliated with the University of Minnesota. But you can't be serious about being proud of one of your Associate Professor's blog winning an award when it contains such hate towards religion or faith of any type (http://www.morris.umn.edu/webbin/…
pharyngula | May 1, 2006OK, this Dean Dad fella substituting for Dr. B got me a little sniffy with his first post (telling little kids easy lies about heaven is a pet peeve. Dead is gone, sugarcoating it is the first step to a life of delusions), but his latest is much more interesting and sparked some cranky comments—is it just me, or are the trolls on a hair-trigger everywhere lately?
Anyway, it's a good snarl.
It's not unusual for downsized or early-retired professionals to show up asking for faculty positions, thinking that we'll be tripping all over ourselves for the opportunity to bask in their reflected…
dmunger | May 1, 2006Family lore has it that my uncle was influential in instituting what is now a fixture in college education: student evaluation of college instructors. He was class president at the University of Washington in the 1960s, when tensions between students and the school administrators were high, and he suggested implementing one of the first student course evaluation systems in the nation as a way to address the problem. Needless to say, the idea caught on.
While college faculty complain unceasingly about the fairness of the now nearly universal student course evaluation system (I did it myself,…
stcynic | April 22, 2006I have been effusively praising the president of Northern Kentucky University, Jim Votruba, for his understanding of the true nature of free speech and the way he handled the situation where a teacher led her students in destroying an anti-abortion display on that campus. But FIRE, which is rapidly becoming an indispensible organization at fighting for freedom on college campuses, points out that NKU still has a vague and highly problematic speech code, bad enough that FIRE has given them a "red light" rating in that regard. I'll post a long excerpt from their post on the subject below the…
oracknows | April 19, 2006I've been meaning to write about this topic for a long time.
In fact, ever since our illustrious Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who also happens to be a Harvard-educated cardiac surgeon, came out in favor of teaching "intelligent design" creationism alongside evolution in public school science classes back in August, I've been meaning to write a bit about a tendency that, as both a surgeon and a scientist, I find disturbing. That tendency is for physicians to be far more susceptible than one would think they should be to the siren call of the pseudoscience known as "intelligent design."…
evolgen | April 8, 2006I'm sure most of my readers are familiar with the Canadian funding agency that rejected Brian Alters proposal to study the effects of intelligent design on the teaching of evolution. I don't have anything to say that hasn't been said already, but I will point you to EvolDir which has posted the summary of the grant proposal. In case you were wondering, here is the purpose of the study from the horse's mouth:
The purpose of this study is to measure the extent to which the recent large-scale popularization of Intelligent Design is detrimentally affecting Canadians' teaching and learning of…
jstemwedel | April 7, 2006Lately, I've been blogging a bit about science teaching. Most of my focus has been on teaching at the secondary level, but it turns out that there are issues to be tackled with science teaching at all levels, including the college level. You'd think, then, that when a scientist who has proven himself in the research arena (and even picked up a Nobel Prize) wants to direct his formidable talents toward improving undergraduate science instruction, he'd be in a good position to get things done.
Sadly, you'd be mistaken.
From Inside Higher Ed comes the story of Carl Wieman, a physicist at the…
stcynic | April 7, 2006Christopher O'Brien, an anthropologist from Cal State-Chico, picks up on my fisking of George Sim Johnston's very bad article about the Darwin exhibit at the AMNH and adds a bit more detail specifically concerning Johnston's claims about human evolution. I also came across an old post of his that contains a really great passage that I want to quote in full. I'll put the long quote below the fold and urge you to read it:
As Brown points out in response: "teach the controversy" is nothing more than "verbal ju-jitsu", playing on the sensibility of fairness. But science is not "fair" as Brown has…
oracknows | April 4, 2006One of the key arguments by advocates claiming a link between mercury in childhood vaccines is that there is an "epidemic" of autism. They'll claim that autism was unknown before the 1930's, when thimerosal was first introduced into vaccines. (Never mind that there are plenty of descriptions of autism-like conditions dating from as far back as the 18th century.) They'll then claim that there is an "epidemic" that accelerated in the 1990's, when additional vaccines were added to the recommended childhood schedule, and that it was the additional mercury from those vaccines that was responsible…
jstemwedel | March 26, 2006Hey, guess what? A California school district has adopted a new science policy aimed at getting students to think more critically ... about evolutionary theory. It is not entirely clear whether members of the Lancaster School District board of trustees recognize that the policy effectively singles out evolution for scrutiny, or whether they were duped. But I'm pretty sure I've heard this song before.
Here's the coverage from the Antelope Valley Press:
LANCASTER - The Lancaster School District board of trustees voted to implement a "philosophy" of science instruction that encourages…
pharyngula | March 9, 2006My morning was spent at the local high school today, talking to the biology classes about the evidence for evolution. This wasn't in response to any specific worries—in fact, talking to the instructor, it's clear that they're doing a decent job of covering the basic concepts here already—but that my daughter is in the class, and she thought it would be fun to have her Dad join in the conversation. I will say that it was very obliging of the Chronicle of Higher Ed to publish this today:
In a packed IMAX theater in St. Louis last month, a middle-school teacher took the stage and lectured some…
grrlscientist | March 7, 2006A colleague apparently read the essay about avian influenza that I wrote this past weekend and was inspired to send me a portion of an email written by Ted Cable, Assistant Chairman for the Department of Horticulture, Forestry and Recreational Resources at Kansas State University. Cable is currently on a sabbatical leave in France. In his message, Cable is very concerned about the "bird flu" misinformation presented to the public and the effect that this is, and will, have on wild birds. He writes;
On another note, here in France there is tremendous panic about the bird flu and it is causing…
stcynic | March 4, 2006Okay, now that I've had a nap and I'm reasonably refreshed and alert, I can talk some more about the rest of the conference. On Friday (the day I thought was Saturday), we had one guy come by the table who was a student at Cornerstone University and he was a young earther. He's not a teacher, but he's getting his degree in education and hopes to teach science someday. We can only hope that he doesn't.
Greg engaged him in conversation for a bit and asked him, just out of curiosity, what he had been taught at Cornerstone about the geological evidence for a 4.55 billion year Earth. His answer,…
razib | March 2, 2006Life is about choices made in the context of scarcity and constraint. In an ideal world (OK, my ideal world) I would be dictator, and all would do my bidding and satisify most proximate desires. Alas, it doesn't work that way. We all have to jump through hoops to get where we want. Whatever our core, or ultimate, values, most people have to compromise to fulfill them. If you are a religious soul for whom God and family are the summum bonum of your existence, well, by the nature of your two ultimate ends you can't go into the cloister or spend all your waking hours with your family. You…
jlynch | March 2, 2006Since I am busy, I thought I'd post this oldie from April of last year. The book in question, now titled "Darwin's Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement" will, according to Dembski, ship soon. I will offer a real review when I can.
Over at his website, Bill Dembski had published the front matter [pdf] for A Man For This Season: The Phillip Johnson Celebration Volume to be published by InterVarsity Press in 2006, and edited by Dembski and Jed Macosko. The volume is a festscrift for PEJ that stems from the celebration that was held at the opening of the Intelligent…