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The Problem With Science

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas 

There’s really no problem with science as defined by this definition, “….the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.” There’s a problem with our societal perception of science but that makes for a title that’s a little long and complex. 

Early Love of Science 

I’ve loved science for as long as I can remember. Before I started kindergarten, my mother would help me with “experiments.” One was called Dancing Mothballs. It involved dropping mothballs into a solution (I don’t remember what it was) and watching them bob up and down in the solution for a considerable amount of time. By the time I was 7 or 8, I had a chemistry set in my room on an antique table my grandfather (who I never knew) had made. I was interested in making my own fireworks and in one test I ignited a small amount of homemade gunpowder in an aluminum pie pan. It burned through the pie pan and burned a silver dollar sized divot in the antique table before I could put it out. That was observation and experiment. It sounds really bad now, but I did learn that experiments with homemade gunpowder are probably best done outside. 

In 7th and 8th grade we had a teacher, Bill Rollins, that taught us quite a bit about chemistry and physics in a lab where we could do many experiments. For the most part, if you do “experiments” from a textbook, the outcome is known ahead of time so one doesn’t really learn anything unknown but can observe examples of how elements of the physical and natural world work together to form the environment in which we live. 

Complex World and Universe 

We live in an incredibly wonderful and complex world and universe. Real scientists research and experiment in areas where the outcomes are not known and have learned a lot over the centuries about how things work. However, we still don’t understand it all. The problem comes when certain scientists don’t fully disclose the fact that they are using a theory or a projection model to explain or predict something. Sometimes they forget to say their explanation or prediction is based on theory and they don’t know for sure what is going to happen. 

I love watching the science channel. The other night, they were talking about new theories about black holes and exploding stars. Basically, they were saying the previous black hole theories are probably all wrong, but now this is the way it is. I chuckled because it reminded me of the Kevin Nealon character in “Saturday Night Live” Weekend Update sketches where he would launch into telling you facts. Then, he would stop himself and say “You know what, that is all wrong. This is the way it really is.” He would go through that cycle several times in a way that was really funny. 

Many in Society Know Little Science 

We live in a society that by and large the person on the street has little working knowledge of science and how the physical and natural world works. (There are people who think the sun revolves around the earth.) So, when a scientist says their model predicts that 2 million people will die in a pandemic, many people just accept it as fact and go into hysteria. Often the scientists don’t mention that their model is made up of 100 assumptions, essentially sophisticated guesses, that introduce a huge variability in their predicted outcome. Some scientists are good about being humble and outrightly stating that “this is what we believe may be true, but we just don’t know.” Many imply that what they are telling you is true and that if you don’t believe them you don’t believe in science. (BTW, as a side note, in a complex world such as ours, you can’t rely solely on medical scientists’ predictions alone to determine how much of an economy to close down.) 

Science is Not an  Exact Science 

We certainly can’t ignore science or the scientists, but we have to understand that science is not an exact science. A better approach would be to sharpen our critical thinking skills and gather information from multiple sources before sizing up any situation. 

When we talk about increasing our youth’s interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) it is usually with an eye toward getting more of them into science and technology careers. However, even if they do something else with their life’s work, providing opportunities to observe and experiment at an early age will make them better critical thinkers in the complex society of their future. 

Jim Correll can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellksThe views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of Fab Lab ICC or Independence Community College. Archive columns and podcasts at jimcorrell.com. 

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