Notes
1. The National Science Foundation (NSF) posts the results of polls of 1,500 to 2,200 Americans taken by educational and other institutions over the years. One measure that aggregates responses to several science-related questions indicates that roughly 40% of Americans know something about science, but only about 25% understand how scientists go about their work (i.e., by testing theories, hypotheses, etc.
https:// www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/index.cfm/chapter-7/tt07-09.htm). The numbers show no improvement from 1995 (when the aggregate number was first calculated) until 2014.2. TheKhan Academy; https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/intro-to-biology/ science- of-biology/a/ the- science-of-biology.
3. Understanding Science: How Science Really Works; https://undsci.ber2ley.edu/ar- ticle/intro_01. Publicly accessible website established by the University of California, Berkeley. One of the best general resources for science students, teachers, and anyone else interested in an easy to understand overview of what science is all about.
4. National Science Teachers Association (NSTA); http://www.nsta.org/.
5. The Next-Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were developed by the National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Achieve, nonprofit educational organization, based on the NRC's K-12 Framework for Science Education http://ngss. nsta.org/About.aspx. See also NGSS development https://www.nextgenscience.org/ developing-standards/developing-standards.
6. NGSS is closely associated with NSTA, and many essays posted on the NGSS/NSTA website expand on topics that are integral to the NGSS program. The succeeding discussion draws heavily on these essays. See http://common.nsta.org/search/default.asp x?action=browse&text=hypothesis&price=&type=&subject=&topic=O&gradeleve l=&sort=1&page=0&dep=&coll=&author=.
See also http://ngss.nsta.org/Practices. aspx?id=1&exampleID=318. http://ngss.nsta.org/NSforCC.aspx?id=4&detailID=69.7. See Note 3 in Chapter 2 regarding theories, laws and hypotheses. As the distinctions among are not precisely defined, I have lumped them together throughout the book.
8. Kimberly J. Davis and Tracy L. Coskie, Hypothesis Testing: It’s Ok to Be Wrong, http:// static.nsta.org/files/sc0902_58.pdf.
9. Students must state their hypothesis before doing the laboratory exercise; see http:// ngss.nsta.org/Resource.aspx?ResourceID=54.
10. Louise M. Baxter and Martha J. Kurtz, When a Hypothesis is NOT an Educated Guess; http://static.nsta.org/files/sc0104_18.pdf.
11. Page Keeley, To Hypothesize or Not, http://static.nsta.org/files/sc1012_24.pdf.
12. Kristy van Dorn, Science Sampler: Hypothesis-Based Learning, http://static.nsta.org/ files/ss0511_57.pdf.
13. Kristy van Dorn, Mwarumba Mavita, Luis Montes, Bruce J. Ackerson, and Mark Rockely, Hypothesis-Based Learning, http://static.nsta.org/files/ss0401_24.pdf.
14. Richard Konicek-Moran and Page Keeley, Teaching for Conceptual Understanding in Science (Arlington, VA: NSTA Press; 2015), pp. 10-11.
15. Argument-driven inquiry (ADI), https://www.argumentdriveninquiry.com; http:// www.activatelearning.com/#home-section/.
16. Claim, evidence, reasoning (CER); program offered by Activate Learning.
17. Resources for teachers from NASA are available at https://www.windows2universe. org/?page=/teacher_resources/sunspotplot_edu.html; http://static.nsta.org/files/ ss0009_40.pdf.
18. See Note 8; “fault words.”
19. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, The Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury; 2011), p. 267.
20. Caleb W Lack and Jacques Rousseau, Critical Thinking, Science, and Pseudoscience: Why We Can’t Trust Our Brains (New York: Springer; 2016).
21. Massimo Pigluicci, Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 2010).
22. Galen A. Foresman, Peter S. Fost, and Jamie Carlin Watson, The Critical Thinking Toolkit (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell; 2017).
23. Reid Hastie and Roby Dawes, Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; 2010).
24. Ronald N. Giere, John Bickle, and Robert F. Mauldin, Understanding Scientific Reasoning, 5th ed. (Belmont, NY: Wadworth Cenage Learning, 2006).
25. The distinction between a “model” and a “claim that the model is true” might be related to the correspondence theory of truth which I mentioned in Chapter 1; that is, although we cannot directly compare a physical thing, such as a model, with an abstract concept, such as truth, we can directly compare a statement about a model with a statement of a concept, such as truth. The need to keep these sorts of considerations in mind may be why you decided to go into science and not philosophy.
26. The full context is “The idea that science is distinguished by the scientific method is... doubtful, at best, because scientists use methods that are as varied as the subjects they study.” This is the same misinterpretation of Scientific Method that I discussed in Chapter 1.
27. “If hypothesis were clearly false, which is to say, if some significantly different model provided a better fit to the real world” [emphasis in original],” p. 33.
28. Most scientists accepted the verdict of global warming even in 2005; the fifth edition of the book came out in 2006; see for example, Naomi Oreskes, “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Science 306:1686-1688, 2004. See also https://www. skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm and an article on the US government report released by the Trump administration on the true costs of climate change: https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/11/23/us/poli- tics/23reuters-climate-change-usa.html.
29. They fill in the matrix like this: the value “0” is assigned to the box representing “doing something and having warming occur anyway”—it is the worst outcome.
“Doing something and avoiding warming” gets 0.9; “doing nothing and having warming occur” is assigned 0.1; and “doing nothing and having no warming occur” gets a value of 1.0—it is the best outcome. According to the matrix analysis, “do nothing” is the best choice. Even overlooking the gross simplification behind these numbers, the analysis ignores any mention of realistically complex outcomes—what if the worst cases are near- global famine, widespread animal extinctions, wars, the degradation or destruction of civil society, etc.? How would these outcomes be costed in the analysis? What about the benefits of reducing air pollution, even if warming doesn't occur? The list goes on. No doubt the authors are aware of such complications. Unfortunately, it is likely that the sole exposure to scientific thinking that many students will ever have is the teachings of this book. It is deplorable that the authors have chosen to trivialize such a serious issue without at least alluding to the profound issues at stake.30. See Note 28.
31. Costs of global warming to U.S. economy; https://www.nytimes.com/2018/ 11/23/cli- mate/ us-climate-report.html
32. William F. McComas, The Nature of Science in Science Education: Rationales and Strategies (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic; 1998).
33. NIH Rigor and Transparency (formerly, Rigor and Responsibility): https://grants. nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-16-011.html; https://www.nih. gov/ research-training/rigor-reproducibility. “ Two of the cornerstones of science advancement are rigor in designing and performing scientific research and the ability to reproduce biomedical research findings” (see https://grants.nih.gov/reproducibility/ index.htm).
34. https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2016/01/28/scientific-premise-in-nih-grant-applications/. https://grants.nih.gov/reproducibility/index.htm-rigor and transparency.
35. Michael Lauer, Open Mike; https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/category/blog/
36. Definition of hypothesis, courtesy of NIH: http://nihgrants.blogspot.com/search? q=hypothesis.
37. Jon Lorsch: https://loop.nigms.nih.gov/2014/03/hypothesis-overdrive/.
38. The most informative material about the hypothesis that I could find at NIH was from the NIAID (https://www.niaid.nih.gov/ search/niaidsite/hypothesis); NIMH (https:// www.nimh.nih.gov/search.jsp?query=hypothesis); and NIDA (https://search.usa. gov/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&affiliate=www.drugabuse.gov&query=hypothesis& commit=Search) websites.
39. Stuffed animal science; https://www.drugabuse.gov/ stuffed-animal-science.
40. Information r9garding the hypothesis in science from NIAID: https://www.niaid. nih.gov/grants-contracts/ application-missteps-unfocused-hypothesis-specific- aims; and https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/prepare-your-application.
41. National Science Foundation reports: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsb20161/ #/downloads/ report.
42. Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn from Their Mistakes—But Some Do (New York: Penguin; 2015). The “black box” in the title refers to the famous “black box” carried on commercial airplanes—officially, it is a “flight recorder,” and it is bright orange, not black—to record information about the plane's mechanical performance, pilot actions, voices, and other vital statistics that help investigators discover what went wrong after a crash. Syed is British, and the typical American sense of “black box” as a mysterious machine or source of information is not what he has in mind.
43. Airline travel safety: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/2015-was-the-safest- year-in-aviation-history/; http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm.
44. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-many-die-from-medical-mistakes-in- us-hospitals. John T. James, “A New, Evidence-Based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated with Hospital Care,” Journal of Patient Safety 9:122-128, 2013.
45. Estimated total visits to US hospitals during this period is the sum of the overnight stays lasting at least one night (23,749,000; data for 2015) plus 125,700,000 ambulatory visits, for a total of 149,449,000 total visits.
46. Statistics for overnight hospital admissions from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/ hospital.htm; ambulatory visits from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ahcd/nhamcs_ outpatient/2011_opd_web_tables.pdf. (data for 2011).