I'll bet you do – I use Google a lot myself. It's a great tool for finding images or information quickly. But – what about when you are looking for material for a biology assignment, or to broaden your knowledge on a particular topic?
Continue readingCategory: critical thinking
creationist argument #3: Darwin –> Hitler
This one has been getting a lot of air time in the US lately. Basically, what it says is that Darwin's theory of evolution (they tend to call it 'Darwinism') was used by Hitler to justify the Holocaust, and therefore evolution is evil and should be rejected. This particular argument has the usual logical flaws […]
Continue readingfish oil & exam results
Last year I put up a couple of posts to do with suggestions that taking fish-oil capsules would enhance exam performance. You might be interested in this latest comment from Ben Goldacre on the issue, following the Durham 'trial' of fish-oil supplements in the UK.
Continue readingsome historical reading: darwin on human ‘races’
The other day one of my students came by my office to ask about his essay. He’d found a book that suggested that the human species was split into 3 races (black, white, & oriental, in case you’re wondering), & that these races differed in things like fecundity and birth rate. Should he include this […]
Continue readingthe nature of science (again)
The new Science curriculum has the 'nature of science' right up there at the top. And why? Because it's so important for people to learn, not just science facts and concepts, but also about what science is: how it's done, the tools and methods scientists use, how they communicate, its history, & how science is […]
Continue readingcell phones & male fertility
Orac's just blogged on a new study that seems to show that heavy cellphone use contributes to male infertility. No doubt this will be all over the headlines in a day or so – so I thought I'd get in first & give you some practice in critical thinking while I'm at it.
Continue reading(pseudo)science runs amok
Those of you who've come to one of my Scholarship preparation days may have noticed that I've got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about pseudoscience. It really annoys me when I see science being mis-used to sell a product or promote a particular point of view. A good friend of mine has […]
Continue readingthat milk ad on youtube
Back to the dinosaur/caveman milk ad. (If you followed the link you may have found & watched a whole bunch of similar ads. All quite funny – I like the dino trying to wipe squashed caveman off its foot, in the one I linked to! – but all based on a (sadly) fairly common misconception […]
Continue readingfact & theory
A couple of science concepts that people often seem to have difficulty with are fact and theory: what the terms mean, and how we distinguish between them. One of my scientific heroes, the late Stephen Jay Gould, covered this very well in a 1981 essay. I've just been re-reading it & thought I'd post the […]
Continue readingthink carefully about what you read
A headline in a recent edition of the New Zealand Herald caught my eye: "Revealed: a dino's bugbear". The article kicks off: Biting insects might have killed off the dinosaurs, rather than a cataclysmic meteor impact, a new theory claims. Scientists now say disease spread by ancient mosquitoes, mites and ticks was probably the major […]
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