A Introduction
Why don't scientists state their hypothesis when they have one? This question has been lurking throughout much of the book, and I've touched on several possible answers, including cognitive factors in the previous chapter Our educational background is also important.
Survey results (Chapter 9) showed that fewer than 20% of biomedical scientists had received a significant amount of formal instruction in scientific thinking, and 70% of us had almost none. What we do know we acquired informally via the apprenticeship system that defines our graduate and postgraduate education—discussions, trial and error, and exposure (we absorb through a sort of “osmotic” process). Because we learn from mentors, reviewers, and colleagues, all whom have idiosyncrasies and biases of their own, our training varies in quality and quantity. While 89% of scientists surveyed said they felt confident in their knowledge of the hypothesis, the osmotic method isn't wholly satisfactory, as 92% of them also said that formal training in hypothesisbased methods would be “useful or highly useful.” Our haphazard training in scientific thinking could help explain why many of us aren't more explicit in putting forth our hypotheses. We can't say much about the informal system, but we can ask “What sorts of formal educational information are available to scientists?” This chapter explores answers to this question.Science education is not only important for the development of professional scientists. Many more people take science classes in high school and college than become scientists, and these nonscientists form the nucleus of a scientifically aware citizenry whose education is in the interests of modern society. However, polls of thousands of Americans over the past 20 or so years have repeatedly shown that only about 25% of us have even a rudimentary grasp of how science works.1
How do we get our information about the hypothesis? To get a rough idea, I sampled sources at three levels of our educational system.
Science education standards in public school systems vary widely, so I initially focused on national science education standards and policies. I then shifted up a level and evaluated books on critical thinking that are aimed at university students and the educated lay public. Last, I consulted the policies of two federal agencies that fund scientific research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Although an exhaustive investigation was not possible, we can get idea general impression about what information on scientific thinking is available for students and others.There are good, publicly available sources that I don't cover. For instance, The Khan Academy, an online trove of knowledge on all sorts of educational topics, has lectures on the Scientific Method and the hypothesis.2 Another first- class, publicly accessible website is maintained by the University of California, Berkeley, Understanding Science: How Science Really Works.3 The site defines many terms, discusses misconceptions associated with scientific concepts and practices, and presents a range of age- and grade-appropriate instructional materials supplemented by interactive graphics. Wikipedia has a cursory article (as of November 2018) that skims over several meanings of “hypothesis” including logical and statistical as well as scientific hypotheses without providing much detail. While science professionals and students might consult such web resources individually, I decided to limit my focus to materials targeted at specific groups.
The information in the bulk of the materials that I assessed was remarkably inconsistent. There does not seem to be a common pool of principles covering hypothesis-based reasoning, and the hypothesis was often misrepresented when it was not ignored altogether. There are plenty of opportunities for improvement in educational, social, and governmental policies regarding scientific thinking, and, at the end of the chapter, I will make a few suggestions for how to accomplish this.
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