I just got off the phone with my mom. We discussed the state of affairs in the education world. I've found myself more and more interested in our education system considering my mom is a teacher and I am currently (and will be for several more years) a student at a university. To get to the point, the terrible nature of our education system blows me away; I have so many issues with how it is run from kindergarten to the collegiate level I have a hard time beginning. Here, now, I'd like to focus on our teachers our great nation has the privilege of housing.
Maybe I'm a sucker for the moment and environment, but it is becoming more and more apparent to me that our education system is using technology in the class room. Honestly, I misspoke - I should say that our education system has let itself become dominated by technology. I, of course, have zero qualms with technology in its own right, because its value can not be stated enough (although, trust me, the schools around here seem hell bent on running that statement into the ground).
Technology has almost definitively become less of a tool and more so a crutch (Skynet, is that you?) for the educational system. While I understand tech helps spread information, saves on paper, among other things, it does seem that teachers spend more time with their head buried in some gadget trying to communicate via apps to a class room equally enthralled in similar gadgetry when not a decade ago we focused more on what was directly in front of us rather than trying to conform our educational practices to the mighty dragon technology.
That is one of the major issues with the education system. It seems that we somehow went from a state of "this computer can help display your teaching material in an more efficient way" to "using this app you can communicate to the 6th graders sitting in front of you". Scarily, the joke that our generations are finding themselves so glued to their gadgetry that they may strain their necks from looking down is not only becoming a reality, but it seems our education system is feeding that mentality under the pretense that this habit is healthy - this is an almost comedic notion if it weren't so damn stupid.
Our educational administrators are taking charge of education by forcing this new, hyper tech model of education down the throats of their educational professionals. While some embrace the change, and in certain respects rightly so, others are finding transition difficult, if not repulsive. We know the benefits of technology (hell, printing double sided impressed me when I first saw it), but the repulsion doesn't get enough publicity although it exists for equally valid reasons.
Beyond the frightening reality that students are now equipped with their own personal tablets fitted with a series of supposedly helpful apps, I think idealism has completely brain washed the administration of many schools.
Let me spell this out: the administration is now teaching our kids, not our teachers.
The idea of tech is a cool one and again, it helps, but that's the extent of it. Aside from the added distraction, it seems that school administrators are more concerned with making their school seem "cutting edge", "ahead of the game", but the down sides are simply not discussed enough. Between "technology can help" to "only use technology" is a huge gap that we seem to be jumping over far too lightly.
While learning a few new tricks, a few new conveniences through computers is more than welcome, we need to re-acknowledge what the school system is and what it is not. Administration has turned schooling more into a business by which the imposition of idealist ideas is thrown at the educators themselves, even if those educators have a track record of excellence. Our greed for better is starting to walk the fine line with obsession to be the best system and less about the best school.
My biggest concern is the uniformity of it all. While uniformity can certainly have benefits, the uniformity brought through gadgetry comes off as sleek and intelligent, but as educators find themselves cut at the head trying to use this uniform system they worry more about how they can implement this new system (by pressure from the administration) rather than focusing on teaching.
Let me make one more thing clear: teachers are the professionals, they are the ones trained and passionate about their subject to a point that they can excite up and coming curiosities in their field of interest. In a sense, an educator is merely an audition by which to convince young minds that their subject is the best among all. This audition is absolutely stifled if the teacher is constantly trying to incorporate a seemingly sleek system (uniform tech) into a method of teaching that may be just the opposite of uniform.
The beauty of humanity is the uniqueness between us, especially apparent in our minds - the proof of which is found in our pursuit of passions, our curiosities. The mark of a good teacher is to be able to inspire students en mass, but also to strike the chords of inspiration in those seemingly immune from the general lesson planning. Our uniqueness as teachers, as well as students, is what allows for unrestricted creativity in the class room.
Technology is so set, so direct it fails to appreciate the magnificence of creative outlets. Besides our increasing focus on science, math, and less on foreign languages, creativity, literature, history, technology simply does more harm than good (distractions, more of our heads down instead of forward and up) in the hands of young students still trying to find themselves as rising men and women of our future society.
The free-er the system, the more ability the teachers have to grow in their instruction ability, the more variability kids have to express themselves, the better the system can be. Technology, aside from its obvious positives, is a dream of the administration that looks good on paper, but in the long run, it may just be the worst thing to ever be introduced to our education system.
We need entropy. Let the teachers teach again - do away with individual tablets, bring back some of the old methodologies, engage students with the eyes, inter personal communication (another facet that technology absolutely crushes), exploration of expression variability. We need help growing as humans, not more devices that rob us of appreciable elements of humanity.
I have so much more to write on the subject, but those are some initial thoughts. I really have a ridiculous amount more to speak on, but I have vented enough for now. Again, do away with the tablet communication and usher back in the eye contact, creativity, and fantastical education we used to have.
Listening to: Asking Alexandria, "Not the American Average".
Monday, June 1, 2015
Saturday, May 16, 2015
10 Reasons You Should Stop Disrespecting Science
10
Reasons You Should Stop Disrespecting Science
This isn’t an Elite Daily article; so, I will not be giving you a convenient list for lazy eyes to skip over the meat of an article to catch the bullet points. Why? The reason is twofold. First, science isn’t concerned with the short route, but rather, the truest route. Secondly, skimming is the first wrong in a list of issues when trying to bring forth the truth behind any subject. To be educated is to understand, and to understand is to study, and finally, to study is to put in effort.
Imagine this scenario: you are in a doctor’s office; you are sitting on those scratchy, paper overlays on the doctor’s chair. You are there because you have a problem, presumably, or you want to prevent a problem from occurring in your future. You do not take your health lightly, especially when it is already giving you issues. So, what do you do? You go to a person you and the community respects, a person who has proven they can help people in your situation time and time again. That much makes sense to you, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting for the doctor for 20, 30, 45 minutes – you need their help and you expect them to deliver relief.
What is most telling is the fact that you went to your doctor for a health issue, not your plumber or a random person walking by on the street. It is an odd statement, isn’t it?
You’re likely thinking, “Well, of course I would go to my doctor!”
And you know why, you probably don’t overtly think about it, but you know why you are going to see your doctor, and that reason is the crux for this entire read.
Your doctor went to a school, and then another school, and then another for practical experience. All of these schools are certified by national and world standards in medicine. But why should you care? Well, these schools are a melting pot of ideas, expressions, and facts from the brightest minds our known universe has conceived. Now this is where this article is going to break into two different personalities, a little like Dissociative Identity Disorder (Psychology, 1).
The Past
These schools that your doctor has attended are institutions built from the foundations of science compiled from a vast array of brilliant minds extending hundreds of years in the past.
Without making this a book, and without getting into the debate on when science began, we can look at the past, say, 500 years for the birth and rise of modern science. Here is a minute taste of what was accomplished within these 500 years:
Heliocentrism (Astronomy, 2)
Applying Mathematics to Motion (Physics, Mathematics, 2)
Dualism (Philosophy, Psychology, 2)
Laws of Motion and Gravity (Physics, 3)
Ability to measure electricity, magnetism (Chemistry, 3)
Steam Engine (Engineering, 4)
Light bulb (Electrical Engineering, 5)
Invention of the Personal Computer (Engineering, 6)
The Internet (Computer Science, 7)
So, to put things in perspective, if you believe that humans have been around for roughly 200,000 years then for 99.75% of that time, modern science did not exist. During that time, humanity went from hunting and gathering to basic agriculture, from nomadic to settlers, from stones to steel swords. Then, once the scientific revolution took hold, we went from riding horses to flying in the sky faster than the speed of sound (Aerospace Engineering, 8), hunting and gathering our own food to having food delivered to an air conditioned house (Engineering, 9), in less than 500 years (0.25% of our existence).
Now, all this is probably familiar to you in one way or another, but you don’t see how this is getting you closer to finding out how anyone has been disrespecting science. Well, to answer that and to see how the nature of you going to the doctor is all related, we need to focus our attention on one incredibly important scientific idea; the modern scientific method (10).
You see, the scientific method is the basis for all scientifically sound experiments, and the basis for almost everything we test today (medicine, food, etc). Your doctor, when he or she went to their many schools was taught information (obviously). That information was all tested by the scientific method, so it is considered foundationally sound, because that method, being used for over 500 years now, has given us a platform with which we can advance our ideas; and more importantly, give a controlled, measurable analysis of our ideas in a way that is open, honest, and above all, repeatable.
What this all boils down to is the fact that this person (your doctor) you trust with your life has spent time at an institution that bases all of its information on a platform that has paved our way to our species’ sudden heightened success in the last 500 years, and that is the fundamental reason you trust them over your plumber or a stranger off the street when it comes to your health.
So, you trust your doctor, but is every doctor trust worthy? I think we can all agree that humans are not perfect, and as such, people make mistakes. So, should you rely on an expert in the field? In most cases, you’re safer doing so than asking a stranger, but that certainty can take a hit. So, what to do?
Enter the peer review (Philosophy, 11) process.
The peer review process takes science out of the hands of the single interpretation and opens it up to criticism from experts all around the world. So, while a doctor is generally reputable for the reasons mentioned before, a team of doctors from different origins across the world would make the science far more reputable (I would feel safer, wouldn’t you?). Essentially, where the faults of one would influence/bias one’s work, the melting pot of many creates an air tight system of checks and balances.
To finish, science has not only proven its incredible influence on our world through unfathomable advances in technology, medicine, agriculture, among others, it has also provided a system for it to work in a flawless, unbiased manner by implementing a platform to guard against faulty interpretation, pure bias, and deceit.
The Present
You now understand why science is not something to be taken lightly when finding the truth to any matter. It does not change; it remains stable, steadfast, and always delivers results in the truest fashion possible. Why, then, is it treated with little care by those outside of the scientific community?
Let’s paint a new scenario: you are looking to lose weight and you look to the internet to find some answers on how to go about doing that. You run across an article that mentions eating spicy peppers will boost your metabolism, effectively burning more calories, and as a result, you will lose weight. The article makes sense as it relates the spicy peppers to a South American culture and shows picture of that culture thin and happy consuming the same diet you are thinking of starting. Not only that, the peppers need to be organic and straight from a particular website, because the owners of that site import the peppers directly from the South American culture you have been reading about. Again, this makes a lot of rational sense; you’ve probably heard that organic food is pure and healthy. Not only that, receiving the same peppers this culture uses would be ideal as it has been working for them for centuries. You’re just about sold, but you want to make sure you’re making the right investment so you read up on the author and their background. They lived with said particular South American culture for several years and prior to living there, they lived in Los Angeles where they were unhappy and severely overweight. Intrigued and slightly excited, you read on. Before moving, the author was 70lbs overweight, but after moving to this village in South America and beginning this new nutritional regime, they lost 80lbs looking far trimmer, more energetic, and above all, happier! You are sold. You shell out the $40 and wait for your package. A few weeks later, it arrives and you begin eating these peppers with some slight adjustments to your daily food intake (more eggs in the morning, less pasta in the afternoon, but more vegetables and leafy greens, and of course, peppers with almost every meal!). Just as you anticipated, you begin losing weight - ten pounds in the first two weeks! The peppers work!
Wrong.
And here is where you have dissed the scientific community. You have made many mistakes throughout your reading that a person who practices the proven scientific method could enlighten you on.
To name a few:
1. The article doesn’t have any sources.
2. If the article does have sources, you need to do your due diligence and check them for respectability (Superfoodnews.com and the like are not respectable).
3. Always watch for author bias. If they have a stake in their selling point and swear up and down it worked for them, it still does not absolve them from scientific, educated reasoning explaining phenomenon.
4. Typically, a reader should be wary of absolutes unless, again, backed by real science.
5. You need to understand that although an explanation can sound rational and well thought out, if it is not backed with controlled, peer reviewed studies; it is just about worthless until proven otherwise in the correct environment (scientific method, peer review).
Quickly, why did you lose weight eating the peppers, then?
Based on actual evidence, it is more likely your change in eating habits lead to weight loss (12), not the peppers themselves. The peppers were the guise for the real reason, a scientifically, peer reviewed, and repeatable phenomena being masked by a product.
This brings about another warning: taking things out of context.
Articles written by crafty, well-spoken writers can be convincing (maybe I’m just mind fucking you right now), but even more so when they quote or manipulate science for their own vice. If an author mentions that the president of the United States Food and Drug Administration “admitted” beef is unhealthy, you should read up on the quote itself and make your own mind up.
For example, the FDA mentions this on their website about GMO foods, “…Foods from genetically engineered plants... that have been evaluated by FDA through the consultation process… have not gone on the market…”
Without manipulating the words themselves, it is possible to break a sentence up to make it sound worse than it is in reality. The above sentence sounds as if the FDA do not approve GMO foods, but in reality, the sentence reads:
“Foods from genetically engineered plants intended to be grown in the United States that have been evaluated by FDA through the consultation process have not gone on the market until the FDA’s questions about the safety of such products have been resolved.” (13)
Or, taking full sentences out of context can make the speaker seem incriminating when they are not surrounded by the rest of the original source.
So, as much as science has given us, and as much as it proves time and time again it is an accurate and reliable way of measuring our world for truth, people can be scumbags and will manipulate the truth for their own conclusions (almost literally the exact opposite of what the scientific method attempts to do).
In conclusion, we now know science’s track record, we know that experts are fantastic, but still aren’t as reliable as the scientific method or the peer review process (especially in conjunction). We can experience the innovations of science almost every second of the day (if you are reading this on a computer or you printed this out..), and for that alone, we should have faith that it will not fail you in your attempt to find the truth. However, there are still people who are quite convincing and to the untrained eye, they can get into your mind; so, that being the case, I know I promised no lists, but I want people to benefit as much as they can from this, so here are a few rules to follow when checking if a source is scientifically sound or not:
It may be an unsound article if…
1. If the title of the website or book supports or denies the view the article is writing about as the two will almost always be predictably congruent (for example: SaynotoGMO.com or GMOsaveslives.com)
2. If the article is only substantiated by anecdotes.
3. If the article does not have sources (just like the ones linked to this article)
4. If the article has sources, but the sources are not reputable (reputable sources: peer reviewed journals.edu, government agencies.gov, university websites.edu, pubmed studies.edu).
5. The article takes isolated quotes from seemingly reputable experts (for example: The head of the CDC even stated, “Ebola is definitely… a disease of epidemic proportions.”)
6. The author or the website is trying to sell you something (inherit bias).
7. The author speaks in extremes – now, this is not always the case, but it can be a flag to watch out for (for example: “This is always the case”, “Corn slowly kills you”)
8. Sometimes a gruesome picture is shown to elicit reaction (For example: pigs with huge growths from their intestines attributed, according to the article, to being force fed squirrel meat)
These are, of course, not the only things to look for, but they are a good filter to use to at least escape the worst of articles.
In the end, you can be pretty certain that almost all, if not all, university, government, and journals in your field of interest are accurate, reliable sources to follow with confidence. Sometimes, certain people are respected for doing their due diligence, but even in those cases, it is wise to check after them from time to time.
You need to form your own opinion, but that opinion cannot form clearly in the face of unreliable, deceitful literature and influence. I hope this article was helpful to you, and be sure to check my sources!
Citations
(1) http://www.fortea.us/english/psiquiatria/history.htm
(2) http://www.friesian.com/hist-2.htm
(3) http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/528771/history-of-science/29332/Newton
(4) http://www.egr.msu.edu/~lira/supp/steam/wattbio.html
(5) http://energy.gov/articles/history-light-bulb
(6) http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/invention-of-the-pc
(7) http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/invention-of-the-internet
(8) http://www.space.com/26204-chuck-yeager.html
(9) http://www.carrier.com/carrier/en/us/about/willis-carrier/
(10) https://explorable.com/who-invented-the-scientific-method
(11) http://teachingcommons.cdl.edu/cdip/facultyresearch/Historyofpeerreview.html
(12) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3432933/
(13) http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodScienceResearch/Biotechnology/ucm346030.htm
In full disclosure, these should be in APA format, but as this is my blog and not my professional site, I'll spare myself the hour of work :P
This isn’t an Elite Daily article; so, I will not be giving you a convenient list for lazy eyes to skip over the meat of an article to catch the bullet points. Why? The reason is twofold. First, science isn’t concerned with the short route, but rather, the truest route. Secondly, skimming is the first wrong in a list of issues when trying to bring forth the truth behind any subject. To be educated is to understand, and to understand is to study, and finally, to study is to put in effort.
Imagine this scenario: you are in a doctor’s office; you are sitting on those scratchy, paper overlays on the doctor’s chair. You are there because you have a problem, presumably, or you want to prevent a problem from occurring in your future. You do not take your health lightly, especially when it is already giving you issues. So, what do you do? You go to a person you and the community respects, a person who has proven they can help people in your situation time and time again. That much makes sense to you, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting for the doctor for 20, 30, 45 minutes – you need their help and you expect them to deliver relief.
What is most telling is the fact that you went to your doctor for a health issue, not your plumber or a random person walking by on the street. It is an odd statement, isn’t it?
You’re likely thinking, “Well, of course I would go to my doctor!”
And you know why, you probably don’t overtly think about it, but you know why you are going to see your doctor, and that reason is the crux for this entire read.
Your doctor went to a school, and then another school, and then another for practical experience. All of these schools are certified by national and world standards in medicine. But why should you care? Well, these schools are a melting pot of ideas, expressions, and facts from the brightest minds our known universe has conceived. Now this is where this article is going to break into two different personalities, a little like Dissociative Identity Disorder (Psychology, 1).
The Past
These schools that your doctor has attended are institutions built from the foundations of science compiled from a vast array of brilliant minds extending hundreds of years in the past.
Without making this a book, and without getting into the debate on when science began, we can look at the past, say, 500 years for the birth and rise of modern science. Here is a minute taste of what was accomplished within these 500 years:
Heliocentrism (Astronomy, 2)
Applying Mathematics to Motion (Physics, Mathematics, 2)
Dualism (Philosophy, Psychology, 2)
Laws of Motion and Gravity (Physics, 3)
Ability to measure electricity, magnetism (Chemistry, 3)
Steam Engine (Engineering, 4)
Light bulb (Electrical Engineering, 5)
Invention of the Personal Computer (Engineering, 6)
The Internet (Computer Science, 7)
So, to put things in perspective, if you believe that humans have been around for roughly 200,000 years then for 99.75% of that time, modern science did not exist. During that time, humanity went from hunting and gathering to basic agriculture, from nomadic to settlers, from stones to steel swords. Then, once the scientific revolution took hold, we went from riding horses to flying in the sky faster than the speed of sound (Aerospace Engineering, 8), hunting and gathering our own food to having food delivered to an air conditioned house (Engineering, 9), in less than 500 years (0.25% of our existence).
Now, all this is probably familiar to you in one way or another, but you don’t see how this is getting you closer to finding out how anyone has been disrespecting science. Well, to answer that and to see how the nature of you going to the doctor is all related, we need to focus our attention on one incredibly important scientific idea; the modern scientific method (10).
You see, the scientific method is the basis for all scientifically sound experiments, and the basis for almost everything we test today (medicine, food, etc). Your doctor, when he or she went to their many schools was taught information (obviously). That information was all tested by the scientific method, so it is considered foundationally sound, because that method, being used for over 500 years now, has given us a platform with which we can advance our ideas; and more importantly, give a controlled, measurable analysis of our ideas in a way that is open, honest, and above all, repeatable.
What this all boils down to is the fact that this person (your doctor) you trust with your life has spent time at an institution that bases all of its information on a platform that has paved our way to our species’ sudden heightened success in the last 500 years, and that is the fundamental reason you trust them over your plumber or a stranger off the street when it comes to your health.
So, you trust your doctor, but is every doctor trust worthy? I think we can all agree that humans are not perfect, and as such, people make mistakes. So, should you rely on an expert in the field? In most cases, you’re safer doing so than asking a stranger, but that certainty can take a hit. So, what to do?
Enter the peer review (Philosophy, 11) process.
The peer review process takes science out of the hands of the single interpretation and opens it up to criticism from experts all around the world. So, while a doctor is generally reputable for the reasons mentioned before, a team of doctors from different origins across the world would make the science far more reputable (I would feel safer, wouldn’t you?). Essentially, where the faults of one would influence/bias one’s work, the melting pot of many creates an air tight system of checks and balances.
To finish, science has not only proven its incredible influence on our world through unfathomable advances in technology, medicine, agriculture, among others, it has also provided a system for it to work in a flawless, unbiased manner by implementing a platform to guard against faulty interpretation, pure bias, and deceit.
The Present
You now understand why science is not something to be taken lightly when finding the truth to any matter. It does not change; it remains stable, steadfast, and always delivers results in the truest fashion possible. Why, then, is it treated with little care by those outside of the scientific community?
Let’s paint a new scenario: you are looking to lose weight and you look to the internet to find some answers on how to go about doing that. You run across an article that mentions eating spicy peppers will boost your metabolism, effectively burning more calories, and as a result, you will lose weight. The article makes sense as it relates the spicy peppers to a South American culture and shows picture of that culture thin and happy consuming the same diet you are thinking of starting. Not only that, the peppers need to be organic and straight from a particular website, because the owners of that site import the peppers directly from the South American culture you have been reading about. Again, this makes a lot of rational sense; you’ve probably heard that organic food is pure and healthy. Not only that, receiving the same peppers this culture uses would be ideal as it has been working for them for centuries. You’re just about sold, but you want to make sure you’re making the right investment so you read up on the author and their background. They lived with said particular South American culture for several years and prior to living there, they lived in Los Angeles where they were unhappy and severely overweight. Intrigued and slightly excited, you read on. Before moving, the author was 70lbs overweight, but after moving to this village in South America and beginning this new nutritional regime, they lost 80lbs looking far trimmer, more energetic, and above all, happier! You are sold. You shell out the $40 and wait for your package. A few weeks later, it arrives and you begin eating these peppers with some slight adjustments to your daily food intake (more eggs in the morning, less pasta in the afternoon, but more vegetables and leafy greens, and of course, peppers with almost every meal!). Just as you anticipated, you begin losing weight - ten pounds in the first two weeks! The peppers work!
Wrong.
And here is where you have dissed the scientific community. You have made many mistakes throughout your reading that a person who practices the proven scientific method could enlighten you on.
To name a few:
1. The article doesn’t have any sources.
2. If the article does have sources, you need to do your due diligence and check them for respectability (Superfoodnews.com and the like are not respectable).
3. Always watch for author bias. If they have a stake in their selling point and swear up and down it worked for them, it still does not absolve them from scientific, educated reasoning explaining phenomenon.
4. Typically, a reader should be wary of absolutes unless, again, backed by real science.
5. You need to understand that although an explanation can sound rational and well thought out, if it is not backed with controlled, peer reviewed studies; it is just about worthless until proven otherwise in the correct environment (scientific method, peer review).
Quickly, why did you lose weight eating the peppers, then?
Based on actual evidence, it is more likely your change in eating habits lead to weight loss (12), not the peppers themselves. The peppers were the guise for the real reason, a scientifically, peer reviewed, and repeatable phenomena being masked by a product.
This brings about another warning: taking things out of context.
Articles written by crafty, well-spoken writers can be convincing (maybe I’m just mind fucking you right now), but even more so when they quote or manipulate science for their own vice. If an author mentions that the president of the United States Food and Drug Administration “admitted” beef is unhealthy, you should read up on the quote itself and make your own mind up.
For example, the FDA mentions this on their website about GMO foods, “…Foods from genetically engineered plants... that have been evaluated by FDA through the consultation process… have not gone on the market…”
Without manipulating the words themselves, it is possible to break a sentence up to make it sound worse than it is in reality. The above sentence sounds as if the FDA do not approve GMO foods, but in reality, the sentence reads:
“Foods from genetically engineered plants intended to be grown in the United States that have been evaluated by FDA through the consultation process have not gone on the market until the FDA’s questions about the safety of such products have been resolved.” (13)
Or, taking full sentences out of context can make the speaker seem incriminating when they are not surrounded by the rest of the original source.
So, as much as science has given us, and as much as it proves time and time again it is an accurate and reliable way of measuring our world for truth, people can be scumbags and will manipulate the truth for their own conclusions (almost literally the exact opposite of what the scientific method attempts to do).
In conclusion, we now know science’s track record, we know that experts are fantastic, but still aren’t as reliable as the scientific method or the peer review process (especially in conjunction). We can experience the innovations of science almost every second of the day (if you are reading this on a computer or you printed this out..), and for that alone, we should have faith that it will not fail you in your attempt to find the truth. However, there are still people who are quite convincing and to the untrained eye, they can get into your mind; so, that being the case, I know I promised no lists, but I want people to benefit as much as they can from this, so here are a few rules to follow when checking if a source is scientifically sound or not:
It may be an unsound article if…
1. If the title of the website or book supports or denies the view the article is writing about as the two will almost always be predictably congruent (for example: SaynotoGMO.com or GMOsaveslives.com)
2. If the article is only substantiated by anecdotes.
3. If the article does not have sources (just like the ones linked to this article)
4. If the article has sources, but the sources are not reputable (reputable sources: peer reviewed journals.edu, government agencies.gov, university websites.edu, pubmed studies.edu).
5. The article takes isolated quotes from seemingly reputable experts (for example: The head of the CDC even stated, “Ebola is definitely… a disease of epidemic proportions.”)
6. The author or the website is trying to sell you something (inherit bias).
7. The author speaks in extremes – now, this is not always the case, but it can be a flag to watch out for (for example: “This is always the case”, “Corn slowly kills you”)
8. Sometimes a gruesome picture is shown to elicit reaction (For example: pigs with huge growths from their intestines attributed, according to the article, to being force fed squirrel meat)
These are, of course, not the only things to look for, but they are a good filter to use to at least escape the worst of articles.
In the end, you can be pretty certain that almost all, if not all, university, government, and journals in your field of interest are accurate, reliable sources to follow with confidence. Sometimes, certain people are respected for doing their due diligence, but even in those cases, it is wise to check after them from time to time.
You need to form your own opinion, but that opinion cannot form clearly in the face of unreliable, deceitful literature and influence. I hope this article was helpful to you, and be sure to check my sources!
Citations
(1) http://www.fortea.us/english/psiquiatria/history.htm
(2) http://www.friesian.com/hist-2.htm
(3) http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/528771/history-of-science/29332/Newton
(4) http://www.egr.msu.edu/~lira/supp/steam/wattbio.html
(5) http://energy.gov/articles/history-light-bulb
(6) http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/invention-of-the-pc
(7) http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/invention-of-the-internet
(8) http://www.space.com/26204-chuck-yeager.html
(9) http://www.carrier.com/carrier/en/us/about/willis-carrier/
(10) https://explorable.com/who-invented-the-scientific-method
(11) http://teachingcommons.cdl.edu/cdip/facultyresearch/Historyofpeerreview.html
(12) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3432933/
(13) http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodScienceResearch/Biotechnology/ucm346030.htm
In full disclosure, these should be in APA format, but as this is my blog and not my professional site, I'll spare myself the hour of work :P
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Random Thought
Instagram people who post these ridiculously long quotes and inspirational words about how everyone is beautiful... LOL.
I follow fitness people; from researchers, strength athletes, bodybuilders, to models. I find it annoying when the models (and to be clear, I have ONLY seen it with the models) post the aforementioned quotes and "powerful words" in an attempt to inspire. Now, most of me sees this as a noble, positive endeavor, but this isn't called "CyNIC" for no reason. There is still a part of me, and admittedly I do not have it bad off - at all, that can't help, but think.. "it's pretty freakin' easy for you to say if you've reached such close to perfect physique already or you were born in a position to succeed". I was also born in a position to succeed, but I hate how people feed off the rabble of mindless drones that eat that stuff up like everything is peachy keen. Attractive people that try and sound enlightened are funny, because they come off as if they went through this great journey of trials and tribulations and came out of the other side hotter... and wiser. Now, of course, it is true of some people, but a good majority are just as intellectually stunted as when they began.
I guess, I sympathize more with people who started in a ditch and turned their life around to make a miraculous transformation. I think it is because I can respect their mental fortitude and their resolve, unlike someone who started in a good position and just took advantage of that position. Good for them, honestly, but to pretend you are some form of enlightened individual now is absolutely ridiculous. The main point being that most of these people's quotes are all the same reworded mumbo jumbo bull shit that you can pick up on a condolence card.
"If you believe in yourself, anything is possible!" - Brilliant.
"Focus on your life, not just your body." - Much wow, I'm blown away.
"Everything happens for a reason." - One of my all time favorites.
"It's not about physical beauty." - LOL.. says the model.
I could go on. This might not make sense to you, and that is fine, and again, I do not feel this way a majority of the time, but I truly am a cynical person at times; I just have to let it out sometimes.
Listening to: "White Washed" August Burns Red
I follow fitness people; from researchers, strength athletes, bodybuilders, to models. I find it annoying when the models (and to be clear, I have ONLY seen it with the models) post the aforementioned quotes and "powerful words" in an attempt to inspire. Now, most of me sees this as a noble, positive endeavor, but this isn't called "CyNIC" for no reason. There is still a part of me, and admittedly I do not have it bad off - at all, that can't help, but think.. "it's pretty freakin' easy for you to say if you've reached such close to perfect physique already or you were born in a position to succeed". I was also born in a position to succeed, but I hate how people feed off the rabble of mindless drones that eat that stuff up like everything is peachy keen. Attractive people that try and sound enlightened are funny, because they come off as if they went through this great journey of trials and tribulations and came out of the other side hotter... and wiser. Now, of course, it is true of some people, but a good majority are just as intellectually stunted as when they began.
I guess, I sympathize more with people who started in a ditch and turned their life around to make a miraculous transformation. I think it is because I can respect their mental fortitude and their resolve, unlike someone who started in a good position and just took advantage of that position. Good for them, honestly, but to pretend you are some form of enlightened individual now is absolutely ridiculous. The main point being that most of these people's quotes are all the same reworded mumbo jumbo bull shit that you can pick up on a condolence card.
"If you believe in yourself, anything is possible!" - Brilliant.
"Focus on your life, not just your body." - Much wow, I'm blown away.
"Everything happens for a reason." - One of my all time favorites.
"It's not about physical beauty." - LOL.. says the model.
I could go on. This might not make sense to you, and that is fine, and again, I do not feel this way a majority of the time, but I truly am a cynical person at times; I just have to let it out sometimes.
Listening to: "White Washed" August Burns Red
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