What Science is Like

Nature of Science
STEM
Environmental & Science Education
Edward Hessler


Neil deGrasse Tyson is a champion and gifted tweeter.

This tweet is an example. It demolishes in 15 words climate deniers' favorite argument. 

And it is also instructive about the nature of science.  I have previously mentioned  one of my favorite science educators, the late Mary Budd Rowe. She wrote a science methods text a long time ago, Teaching Science as Continuous Inquiry (1973).  It remains an intelligent and wise book.

The Wiki entry includes comments on some of her important ideas: wait time, praise and fate-control

Rowe noted in that book that science is a social enterprise but not always sociable. Scientists argue, sometimes even angrily, about data and evidence, enough once in a while to become personal and lasting. After all, like us, scientists are human.  

Joe Humphreys writing for The Irish Times (April 10 2016) describes one row this way. "A few years ago, (Richard) Dawkins trashed  (Edward O.)Wilson’s book The Social Conquest of the Earth, saying in a memorable review, “this is not a book to be tossed lightly aside. It should be thrown with great force.” Wilson later dismissed his Oxford (University) counterpart as a “journalist”. Unlike the author of The God Delusion, Wilson said, he had “actually been with scientists doing research. Meow."

Humphreys article for which see here is about a project on disagreement among scientists.