In my basic concepts post on theory testing, I set out what I take to be a fairly standard understanding of “theory” in philosophy of science discussions:
Category Archives: Teaching and learning
The best graduate (chemistry) writing assignment ever.
As part of my graduate coursework in chemistry, I took a biophysical chemistry course from Professor Wray Huestis — not because my research was in biophysical chemistry, but because I was curious. Possibly my best move ever in choosing my classes, since she gave us one of the smartest and most useful writing assignments I’ve ever encountered.
Learning to write like a scientist: factors worth noting.
I’m following up on yesterday’s post on where scientists learn how to write (and please, keep those comments coming).
First, Chad Orzel has a nice post about how he learned to write like a scientist. It involves torturing drafts on the rack, and you owe it to yourself to read it.
Second, I’ll be putting up a post tonight about the best scientific writing assignment ever, at least in my graduate school experience. It’s one more professors teaching graduate students might consider adapting.
In the meantime, I want to throw out a set of factors that probably make a difference in the process of helping scientists learn to write. (Use the comments to add factors I’ve forgotten.)
Where do scientists learn to write?
During my office hours today, a student asked me whether, when I was a chemistry student, the people teaching me chemistry also took steps to teach me how to write. (The student’s experience, in an undergraduate major in a scientific field I won’t name here, was that the writing intesive course did nothing significant to teach good writing, and the assignments did very little to improve students’ writing.)
It’s such a good question, I’m going to repackage it as a set of questions to the scientists, scientists-in-training, and educators of scientists:
Basic concepts: theory testing.
I’m a little cautious about adding this to the basic concepts list, given that my main point here is going to be that things are not as simple as you might guess. You’ve been warned.
We’ve already taken a look at what it means for a claim to be falsifiable. Often (but not always), when scientists talk about testability, they have something like falsifiability in mind. But testing a theory against the world turns out to be more complicated than testing a single, isolated hypothesis.
Keeping score in academe: blogging as ‘professional activity’ (or not).
During the discussion after my talk at the Science Blogging Conference, the question came up (and was reported here) of whether and when tenure and promotion committees at universities will come to view the blogging activities of their faculty members with anything more positive than suspicion.
SteveG and helmut both offer some interesting thoughts on the issue.
I must have missed the line in my contract that said this is volunteer work.
The faculty where I teach is at a bargaining impasse with the administration of our university system over our contracts. We are hoping that the administration will come back to the table for a real negotiation*, but in the event that that doesn’t happen, there are plans for a system-wide “rolling strike”, with staggered two-day walkouts at each of the 23 universities in the system.
This prompted some opinion pieces in the school newspaper, including this one. There’s a lot I could say about the claims in this piece (the university is going to hire replacement teachers or drop courses from the catalog because of a two-day strike? unlikely!), but there’s a single sentence that I think merits real attention:
If the teachers care more about getting paid rather than the education of the students, I say let them walk.
Basic concepts: falsifiable claims.
Here’s another basic concept for the list: what does it mean for a claim to be falsifiable, and why does falsifiability matter so much to scientists and philosophers of science?
Basic concepts: arguments.
As my first contribution to the growing list of basic terms and concepts, I’m going to explain a few things no one asked about when I opened the request line. But, these are ideas that are crucial building blocks for things people actually did ask about, like falsifiability and critical thinking, so there will be a payoff here.
Philosophers talk a lot about arguments. What do they mean?
Is ‘what is this good for?’ a question to be discouraged?
Larry Moran posts a response to my response to his earlier post on the advisability of putting ethical discussions into science classes. Careful fellow that he is, he’s decided to stick to a single issue per posting, so he starts with “the relationship between science and technology and where ‘ethics’ fits in”. Larry opines:
Part of what we need to do as science teachers is to make sure our students understand the difference between science and technology — between the uses of science and the accumulation of scientific knowledge. …
The goal, as far as I am concerned, is to convince students that knowledge for its own sake is a valuable commodity regardless of whether or not the knowledge can be applied to the betterment (or destruction) of Homo sapiens.