You might try group assignments, for example a three student group might
be given the assignment to present the case in favor of astrology, while
another three student group is given the assignment to present the case
against.
This reduces the chance that one case will be presented with greater
strength than the other.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Crowell [mailto:physldonotsendmailhere@YAHOO.COM]
Sent: Monday, December 23, 2002 10:31 AM
To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
Subject: student debates on pseudoscience
I'm teaching a conceptual physics course at a
community college, and would like to have my students
debate each other on issues related to pseudoscience.
Can anyone give me any tips on what might work? I can
easily imagine that if I don't set it up correctly,
the results could be bad. For instance, I could ask
one student to present the "pro" side on astrology,
and another to take the "anti." The "anti" student
doesn't prepare, does a lousy job, and the class then
votes that astrology is a real science.
So far, what I'm thinking is this:
- No votes. The whole idea is silly anyway, since
science isn't a matter of majority rule.
- Do the debates online via e-mail. This way there
might not be such a high probability of getting a bad
debate because one student just forgot to prepare, or
procrastinated.
I'm thinking of doing maybe one of these every two
weeks, which would mean I'd need about 6 topics. I
don't want every single topic to be something that
they know I consider to be complete nonsense. Some
possibilities that come to mind are:
- acupuncture
- chiropractic
- homeopathy
- the claims that the moon landings were a hoax
- NASA's research groups working on hydrino propulsion
and vacuum-energy propulsion (scandalous!)
- astrology
- Freudian analysis
I'm also thinking of requiring them to read certain
specified sources on the topics they're debating, in
order to raise the level of the debate. And I'd like
to try to tie it in to the physics curriculum as much
as possible. For instance, I emphasize the
correspondence principle in my course, which is
interesting vis a vis astrology. Western and Chinese
astrology make contradictory predictions, and I've
heard believers in astrology say that they're just two
different techniques for getting at the same thing,
like quantum mechanics and relativity. This is of
course nonsense, since the correspondence principle
can't be applied to astrology.