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Re: [Phys-L] teaching "science research methods"



Here is is a link to a relevant 2013 paper.

http://mac.appstorm.net/general/kindle-for-mac-a-simple-way-to-catch-up-on-your-reading/

The author is an MIT professor. I did listen to several of his presentations (at scientific conferences devoted to Cold Fusion).

He started writing theoretical papers about Cold Fusion, in 1989, when the "discovery" of CF was announced by F and P.

Comments will be appreciated.

Ludwik Kowalski (see Wikipedia)
===============================================

On Sep 17, 2015, at 5:16 PM, John Denker wrote:

On 09/14/2015 10:39 AM, rjensen@ualberta.ca wrote:

if anyone has a Science Research Methods course at
their institution, I would *greatly* appreciate the instructor
contacting me off-list.

The following doesn't directly answer the question that was asked,
but may nevertheless be of some value.

1) The IB program has a rather detailed requirement for ToK:
Theory of Knowledge
http://www.ibo.org/en/programmes/diploma-programme/curriculum/theory-of-knowledge/
http://www.ibo.org/en/programmes/diploma-programme/curriculum/theory-of-knowledge/what-is-tok/

There is a lot of support for teaching this topic. I get a
quarter million hits from
https://www.google.com/search?q="IB"+"ToK"+resource

Alas, many of those resources are of low quality; see next item.

2) Another name for Theory of Knowledge is "philosophy". You have
to be careful, because a great deal of the progress in philosophy
over the last 400 years has been made by people who were not
originally trained as philosophers:
++ Newton was trained as a mathematician, and was appointed to
the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics. However, he wrote a book
on philosophy that had a big impact:
_Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica_
++ Boole was largely self-taught, and was generally considered
a mathematician. However, his contribution to philosophy had
a big impact ... and should have had more impact than it did.
For example, 60+ years later, Wittgenstein spent a major section
of his book trying to re-invent Boolean algebra, and not doing
a very good job of it.
++ Kurt Gödel was trained as a mathematician. His impact on
philosophy was immeasurable.
++ Karl Popper was trained as a psychologist.
++ Thomas Kuhn was trained as a physicist.
++ Planck. Physicist.
++ Dirac. Physicist.
++ Heisenberg. Physicist.
++ Glauber. Physicist.
++ Bell. Physicist.

Like so many other things, philosophy is hard to do well, and easy
to do badly. I reckon that a lot of people who call themselves
philosophers are not very good at it.

Reputable scientists tend to have zero interest in what typical
so-called philosophers are saying. Calling it ToK (instead of
philosophy) was an attempt to get around this problem. However, as
usual, changing the name doesn't solve the problem. As Shakespeare
almost said, A Rafflesia by any other name would stink the same.


3) If you're looking for a specific *course* on the topic of research
methods, or problem-solving methods, or ToK ... there are very few
such courses, for good reason.

The development of thinking skills should be part of every course,
on Day One and every day thereafter. The topic needs to be baked
in, like the oatmeal in oatmeal cookies -- not sprinkled on as an
afterthought.

There are many reasons for this. One big reason is that in order
to exercise thinking skills, you need to think about /something/.
In other words, there needs to be some context, perhaps physics,
math, chemistry, computer programming, or whatever. The resulting
thinking skills are remarkably portable from one context to another,
but still some sort of context is always needed. It's roughly
analogous to electric charge: The charge can be transferred from
one object to another, but charge by itself cannot exist in the
absence of any object.


4) Research is a rather small subset of science. For example, you
want a forensic DNA lab to be "scientific" but generally you don't
want them doing research; you don't want them to be creative;
instead you want them to strictly adhere to established protocols.

Research requires creativity, artistry, and panache. Useful reference:
Lockhart's Lament
https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
(a book-length version is also available)

The whole topic of "research methods" is very nearly an oxymoron,
because research is a whole lot less methodical than most people
imagine. If you're looking for a methodical way of teaching people
to be less methodical and more creative ... I'm not sure such a thing
exists.

Nobody can be creative on demand. It's like slaying dragons: Nobody
can slay a dragon on any given day. The best you can do is prepare
yourself, so that if a dragon happens to wander by you can do battle.
Feynman deliberately turned down a research-only job at IAS. He
explained that he wanted a job with a certain amount of routine
responsibilities, so he would have something useful to do on days
when didn't have any particularly imaginative ideas.

In a teaching situation, the best you can do is to provide flexibility.
Wait until a student has a creative idea, and then tell him to drop
everything else and pursue that idea. The second-best thing is to
tell him to bookmark the idea, and then schedule some time to pursue
it.

*) Possibly useful resource:
George Pólya,
_How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method_

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