science education
What is National Center for Science Education (the Darwin in the schools lobby) doing now?
Speaker bounced from science teachers’ conference recounts his experiences
National Science Teachers group calls security over questioning Darwin
The war on knowledge seems quite serious at Cornell University
The Problem of “God-talk” in Biology Textbooks
PLOS editor reflects on teaching evolutionary biology “sensitively”?
Educator proposes a more humane way to teach evolution
Babylon Bee: Earth cools due to Bill Nye’s ego
“We noticed the trend about three years ago, but it really accelerated over the past few months,” an EPA representative told reporters. “After controlling for solar activity and weather patterns, we determined that the biggest factor is the exponential growth in Bill Nye’s self-admiration. His expansive, pretentious hubris now casts a shadow large enough to shield most of the Earth from the warming effects of the sun.” See also: Bill Nye as “a terrible spokesman for science” and “Neil DeGrasse Tyson” Debuts At The Babylon Bee In An Op-Ed and Goes Around, Comes Around: 500 Women Scientists Are Eating Bill Nye…
A flat earth is popular among iGen – kids who grew up with the internet
Denmark: Slowly developing a conversation about design in nature
If scientists get elected, will they confront the war on STEM education?
Some scientists hope to influence society by running for office: On the verge of Election Day in the U.S. a political movement focused on getting scientists into public office is hoping that results at the polls will lead to more scenes like this one at state houses, city councils and school boards across the country, not just at a federal level. At least 70 scientist–candidates launched bids for office at the state and local level this election cycle, most of them first-time campaigners and part of a record wave of scientists bucking a long-established penchant to avoid the political arena. Organizers hope this will become a deep bench of up-and-coming policy makers with science and technology backgrounds who might contest Read More ›
J. P. Moreland: How scientism leads to post-modern relativism
From an interview with J. P. Moreland, author of Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology (2018): RC: How does science differ from scientism and why does it matter? JPM: Claims of science—water is H20, electro-magnetic fields behave in such and such a manner—what science is limited to. But scientism is a philosophical claim about science, not a claim of science. Scientism is a theory of the nature of knowledge (it can only be obtained through physics, chemistry and the other hard sciences) and limits of knowledge (based on the nature of knowledge, it is limited to the the hard sciences and absent from all other fields, e.g. religious claims or ethical assertions). These types of claims Read More ›
Education prof: Upend science to benefit the oppressed
Published in a Springer journal: Another University of Alberta professor published a piece in the Canadian Journal of Science, Math, Technology, and Education, saying that to simply teach students science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is objectively bad, apparently because it cultivates, and I am listing this directly from the document: “[P]atriarchy, heteronormativity, white supremacy, Eurocentrism, (neo-)colonialism, ableism, classism, labor inequity, anthropocentrism, and/or others.”Keean Bexte, “University of Alberta prof calls for upheaval of science to benefit the “oppressed”” at Rebel Media Marc Higgins and colleagues’ paper (open access) is here. From the opening: It has been argued many times over the course of decades and across diverse paradigms that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education practices-as-usual (re)produce systems of Read More ›
Psychology undergrads misled about science by their textbooks?
Could that be a factor in the recent meltdowns? A recent open access study of textbooks out of the University of Nevada addresses that case: Almost a quarter of the sampled textbooks explicitly and boastfully stated that there is no difference between psychology and other “hard” sciences such as chemistry and physics. Yet only one textbook discussed “methodological freedom” – the idea asserted by the philosopher-critic of science, Paul Feyerabend, that all scientific techniques are different. Only one textbook mentioned the issue of improper use of ad hoc hypotheses, a characteristic of pseudoscience. Similarly, there was only one reference to the ideas put forward by Feyerabend and Alan Gross that persuasion and rhetoric are a key part of science – i.e. Read More ›