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Re: possibly OT: NYT article on GA creationism/evolution debate




>From: John Clement <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>

Well the textbooks are certainly no help. They still
teach "the scientific
method" which has been thoroughly discredited. See
the latest issue of Jour
of Res of Sci. Teaching.

Okay THIS got my attention. The scientific method has
been discredited? While I know that different authors
define the scientific method with different numbers of
steps, I didn't know the process had been discredited.
Could someone elaborate?


Please notice I said "The Scientific Method" has been discredited. Perhaps
I should have also capitalized it. By this I mean the idea that there is 1
scientific method which is embodied in 5 (or any number of) easily
memorizable steps. I am not saying that the scientific method(s) have been
discredited. Teachers and texts continue to teach the easily memorizable
version. As a result most students stop there and tend not to develop a
more mature view of science. While the 5 step method can have its
usefulness, its primary use is a source of factoids to put on tests. A
number of students who question the 5 step method will then develop a
cynical attitude toward science rather than seeing it as one person's view
of science.

For a recent paper that explores this see "Views of nature of science
questionnaire: Toward valid and meaningful assessment of learners'
conceptions of nature of science", Norm G. Lederman, Fouad Abd-El-Khalick,
Randy L. Bell, Renée S. Schwartz, JRST, Aug 2002. This paper in the intro.
pages explores various aspects of scientific methods and also references the
papers in which various authors have proposed fixed models of scientific
inquiry, and the other papers in which these models have been disproven.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX