Re: science fair petition?

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Wed, 6 Oct 1999, Joel Rauber wrote:

> They still need rules, I think this proposed statement should have
> guidelines as to rules.  Bill, what rules do you think are needed?

What does it mean to "do science"?   The answer is too large.  I would
answer thus:  go to the University, get some scientists together, and ask
them.  (Heh.  Will the biologists and the physicists get into a yelling
match?  What will the Astronomers say?  The Psychologists will watch the
fun and smile knowingly.)    :)


The problem is that the schools want to trust Authority, as opopsed to
trusting authorties.  They want a single "The Scientific Method" to be
distilled down and sanitized, and printed in their holy book.  When some
actual working scientists object to it, the science fair committees ignore
them.


> Very little in the above statement prevents a project comparing the poetry
> of Lord Byron to that of Tennyson.  (Which I think is an entirely worthwhile
> intellectual endeavor).

True, but I doubt that anyone would lable such a project as "doing
science."

If the whole point of science fairs is to compete and to "win", then the
criteria used by the judges determines what is "winning science", what is
"acceptable science", and what is "not science."

There are all kinds of science fairs, with all kinds of differing
criteria.  If we tried to impose criteria on people, or even if we tried
to impose MINIMUM criteria, i think we would fail.  Right now the whole
problem involves the imposition of overly-narrow criteria.  A faulty
"Scientific Method" is handed down from above, and educators who know
better are being forced to follow it.  PHYS-L subscribers, when judging
science fairs, are not allowed to ignore or even to question the
distorted, faulty rules!  This is screwy.

What does it mean to "do science"?  Well, I'd think that the first step
would be to ask a scientist.  Instead, the science fair committees are
TELLING scientists what it means to "do science", and are IGNORING
scientists when they object to the hypothesis/experiment/conclusion stuff.

Also, if we try to define "doing science," we would miss the whole goal of
my 'petition', which has little to do with imposing criteria.  My goal is
to do some damage to that mythical "Scientific Method" which excludes so
much of science from the science fairs.  (No astronomy?  No investigations
of amplifiers?)

If we take "The Scientific Method" away from school science fairs,
something terrible will happen.  This quote describes it:

  "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
   really make them think, they'll hate you."   - Don Marquis


If people want to impose minimum Science Fair criteria for defining
"science", then that's a whole separate petition.  In my opinion, it
would be a mistake.  We should trust ourselves and our colleages to define
"science" in a large variety of ways, all of which are correct.
Astronomical observations are "science", as are classifications in
biology, but this doesn't prevent particle physics experiments from being
science, even though these three definitions of "science" contradict
each other.  I could say it like this:  Science is what professional
scientists do, and if you want to know a single, simplified "Scientific
Method," you are probably in trouble, because every field of science has a
different set.

Here's another angle on the problem.  It's the "single right answer"
mindset held my many educators.  If we should ask "what is the scientific
method?", and if there are several right answers, then it collides with
contemporary education thinking; the "Single Correct Answer" is the
only one which can be accepted.  Educators don't want to hear about the
many right answers regarding the methods of science, so they choose the
"best" one (the one which resembles the process of 'doing physics'), and
they discard the ones associated with Biology, Astronomy, etc.  According
to the "single right answer" mindset, there can only be one 'real'
science, and as a result we end up wrongly elevating experimental sciences
above others.  Want to build a 12" reflector and go hunting for comets?
That's not science!  Right.

PS

My quotes-collection is getting large.  Here's one I recently heard
regarding science heretics. I laughed so hard I accidentally drooled upon
myself!

  http://www.amasci.com/weird/skepquot.html

  "I can't see any farther.  Giants are standing on my shoulders!"
                                                       - unknown


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William J. Beaty                                  SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb@eskimo.com                                  http://www.amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits          science projects, tesla, weird science
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