Mars & The Teachable Moment 483
Gallenod writes "In this article at space.com, Edna DeVore, Director of Education and Public Outreach for SETI, states that people are being continually exposed to pseudo-science from watching television and reading tabloids. Her examples include the "face" on Mars (which she discusses in detail in the article), alien autopsies, Area 51 in the Nevada desert as alien storage quarters, the "non-landings" on the Moon, UFO's, and alien kidnappings. DeVore describes the current Mars missions as a "teachable moment," an opportunity to teach factual science and astronomy in the context of sensationalistic psuedo-science and the legion of money-grubbing opportunists who make their living churning it out."
Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Laptop computers, over a modem connection, have the capability to do full 1024x768 resolution video conferencing with sound. (sometimes you don't even need the modem...)
You can get by password security by simply typing "OVERRIDE SECURITY"
If the system you're using doesn't support the "OVERRIDE SECURITY" feature, you can either A) defeat the cryptography in less than a minute or B) guess the password in less than a minute.
Computer viruses and worms are so fast-spreading and technically advanced that they can turn machines against their owners, such as making the robots in a factory will begin ripping the factory workers to pieces.
Every program ever written runs on any computer regardless of architecture or operating system.
Desktop workstations and laptops have the 3D rendering capabilities of an SGI Origin cluster.
The list goes on...so many things are done for dramatic effect, and so that Joe Blow can follow the "high-tech" plot line. Sigh. Well, back I go to explaining to my mother that the computer is running slow because it's bogged down with spyware, not because the government has taken control of it and is reading all her documents.
more than just dramatic effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Waiting for a PC to boot up, or seeing the real quality of video conferencing, or even watching people use the relatively user-unfriendly interfaces of real software would be boring.
Re:more than just dramatic effect (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:more than just dramatic effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, I dunno... Austin powers used it to extremely funny effect, if you were paying attention.
The 60's video phone in his car was crystal clear. The 90's video conferencing on his laptop was horrible. A bit of a subtle joke that most people didn't see, I think.
Re:more than just dramatic effect (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing, because it didn't actually exist. It was a joke, playing on old 60's spy movies and such. The video phone was the one portrayed in *movies*, not a real device. And then the real device from 30's years later was noticably not as cool looking. That was the joke. Laugh, it's funny.
At least make the rules work internally (Score:4, Insightful)
What kills me is that we see computers used in a way that doesn't even make sense within the loopy rules established for them in the same danged story. Everything's dumbed down, that's to be expected, and okay, they exaggerate what today's machines can do. (You expected long moments while the characters wait for a good carrier signal?) But I at least want the rules to be consistent.
Good example: The Star Trek computers show radically different amounts of independent agency according to situation. They can make holodeck characters act according to their characters in a freely-branching story, but they can't, apparently, problem solve the task of looking for the meaning of alien symbols without specific verbal commands from a human. We're talking about a simple correlation between sounds and meanings, you know?
The quintessential pop culture computer would be Doogie Howser's. Enormous, colorful screen with GIANT letters being typed slowly enough for the camera to follow, at excruciatingly slow "silent film dialog card" pace, D-O-O-G-I-E-'-S T-R-I-T-E D-I-A-R-Y E-N-T-R-I-E-S. If Doogie was to ask for the meaning of life, and the computer was to whir and grind and maybe show an outsized Windows "progress" bar, you'd have the archetypal TV computer. (In the movies it'd maybe be more like "WOPR" from War Games.)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
The entirely lame resolution of "Independence Day" always made me crazy: feeding a virus to the aliens' mainframe. So we're surpised when they attack us, but we sure know their OS...
Most annoying recent movie moment: Neo, putting on his best Superman impression, snags Trinity moments before she splatters at the base of some huge skyscraper. He's apparently going pretty darn near the speed of sound, intersects her at a 90 degree angle, and never touches the brakes.
There would have been a big pink splash. But I guess that might have made that third Matrix movie a bit difficult. Which probably would have been a good thing, in retrospect.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I think I'm the last person on earth who enjoyed the latter two Matrix movies (well, maybe about two-thirds of Revolutions).
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you're not the last one. It has become a very popular activity here @
Like pictures in a novel... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly like having pictures in a novel that don't corespond with your mental image of the characters and the scenery. After watching the first movie, possibly the second as well, theories started to form. Most people had a personal theory as to the reasoning behind the matrix, or even the "Matrix in a Matrix" theory to explain the multiple existances of Neo. The disallusionment came from the third movie being too simple and not satsifying the expectations a
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Funny)
I think your SoDD (Suspension of Disbelief Device) is suffering from a major malfunction. Works part of the time; totally shuts down at odd moments. You might want to have that checked.
If it keeps up you might start believeing in redistribution of wealth, kynesian economics, and that the government is not out to get you.
Deskset (Score:4, Insightful)
My wife loves this old movie (starring Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn). She loves to watch it whenever it comes onto AMC.
I for one hate the movie because of the butchering they do to the IBM computers back then. To some extent, it's a byproduct of our education and experience, we can recognise the major inaccuracies in a movie or TV show, and want to fix it.
On the other hand, when a show comes on that utilizes speech pathology or audiology (what my wife has a masters degree in) she cringes and tries to explain what they've done wrong.
In short, it depends on your level of knowledge about the props or plotpoints in the movie.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Funny)
HEY!! Who told you my password?!?!
Mr. Heywood U. Rootmybox
Head of Security
Microsoft Corp.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Informative)
I thought it was very funny, and I'm certain it was done that way on purpose... maybe just to piss off people like you, and amuse people like me.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Because everyone knows that a fantastically advanced species capable of destroying whole cities uses Mac OS 8. Duh.
Re:And don't forget (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are writing a script for a spy thriller, hacking into a computer system becomes identical to a safe-cracking: A specialist does arcane tech stuff while the hero brandishes a gun and stands guard. This should never take more than a minute or so, unless you have a "B" story to cut away to, in which case it can take hours.
Crucial data must exist on only one copy of portable media, which can't be duplicated (more than maybe once), erased, or even remain on the computer it came from. Otherwise, the file in question fails to work as a "McGuffin", and lazy writers can't make use of it.
People who understand computers are like good mechanics. If a grease monkey can make a working airplane out of two broken ones of completely different designs, then a good hacker can log onto the alien computer systems with his Powerbook.
Film directors tend to be old guys who don't really understand how computers work, so they frame them in contexts which they grok. This is also why sci-fi directors almost never get deep-space physics right. Ships on Star Trek move like naval vessels because directors know how to do that. When there's no "up," no gravity, no friction to slow your inertia, and no objects close enough for your movement to be observed by the naked eye, the typical director is utterly lost. Hense, when Kirk outwits Khan's "two-dimensional" thinking patterns, he does so by moving the Enterprise "down" while retaining the same Y axis. It's essentially a submarine attack, rather than a battle between free-moving objects with no fixed reference apart from the nebula they are drifting through. Film directors get submarines. They don't get the void of space.
Re:And don't forget (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And don't forget (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't see many flying pigs in movies, and when you do, the filmmakers will usually go out of their way to explain how the pigs are able to fly. This is because most NORMAL people understand that pigs, on average, don't normally fly. An unexplained flying pig in a movie would increase the suckiness of the movie.
If most people understood the correct physics of space travel, they would be less likely to accept the bad physics and the filmmakers would make sure it was correct.
Re:And don't forget (Score:5, Insightful)
It never ceases to amaze me how people can complain about physics in a movie, but be able to completely buy into the fact that they're in OUTER FUCKING SPACE surrounded by MIDGET BEARS and massive turd-shaped monsters. It's called "Suspension of Disbelief". At some point you have to give up your pedantic whiny-assing and just say "Fuck it. It's cool."
uphill battle (Score:5, Interesting)
I respond, "I am familiar with it, and have found equivalent websites that debunk their "evidence" as pseudoscience, with their own, solid, evidence."
He responds, "Oh no dude, you just GOTTA read it again, it was totally faked."
Though one example is not a representative sample, his actions seem consistent with those of the masses....people simply will not bother to consider true evidence objectively, nor to educate themselves to the point at which they can even discern good evidence from crap. They respond better to a good story, and good rhetoric, and that is just the way it is.
Oh well, its just one more way in which geeks are better than other people.
Re:uphill battle (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:uphill battle (Score:5, Insightful)
--Robert Anton Wilson
This quote sums up your post quite nicely. First, what it means is that there is this really small part of the human mind which we can label the thinker. Once the thinker thinks something is true, the prover (the rest of the brain) goes about seeking evidence to support the belief of the thinker.
People will hop over good evidence to read something that will support what they already believe, and ignore even the best sources of information if they contradict those closely held beliefs.
I do have a different opinion about people than you do when it comes to this. I think that EVERYONE has this problem, regardless of their intillectual disposition. In fact, educated people suffer from this in a far worse manner. Their "facts" have support, and they feel justified in their beliefs because of their intillectual superiority and their education.
This makes it doubly hard to present them with contradictory information. Not only is their experience and knowledge in the way, but now you also have to contend with their ego. Knowledge and experience can be mitigated with new facts and information, but the ego is unbelievebly stubborn, resisting and rejecting the truth, sometimes even until death.
One has only to read about the history of scientific development to see that those most educated are also those most likely to hold on to false information. Stupid people will believe whatever new thing comes along that is more outlandish or spectacular than the last thing they believed.
Re:uphill battle (Score:3, Insightful)
Like the bible?
Anyone who does not question their beliefs on a daily basis is far from "intellectually superior". The best scientists are the ones that have no ego (or don't let it get in the way of research
Re:uphill battle (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, no... Not even the Hubble has a fine enough resolution to see the rover (it's only about 8 feet long).
However, the Apollo missions did leave a reflective disc up there which thousands of people (including school children) have used to bounce lasers off to measure Earth-Moon distance.
-T
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Funny)
Well, um, call them if you want. They'll send you to the Ikonos people. GPS satellites don't have cameras. (Navstar is the real/original name for GPS, but it's fallen out of use.)
Hey (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hey (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hey (Score:3, Insightful)
undeniable definitive proof of martian shenanigans (Score:5, Funny)
At my child's school... (Score:5, Interesting)
Factual science not what the target audience wants (Score:5, Interesting)
The sad truth (Score:5, Insightful)
But if I said we found evidence of Martian civilization that killed themselves because of high-carb diets? I might end up on Oprah.
The problem is the American public wants exciting news so much, they'll believe anything. I mean, look at your local news. Then look at BBC. BBC would put most people to sleep in America. Our news quality is done in Europe, but there they call it "The Sun."
What science needs is more Page 3 girls.
Re:The sad truth (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The sad truth (Score:5, Funny)
Lets start a petition to have Playboy feature a "NASA's sexiest" spread.
What science needs is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Learning is made easier with immediate results that make students wonder 'Why? How?' Otherwise, it's dry, boring, and students don't learn anything. They memorize what they'll need just long enough to pass the test and then forget it.
Re:The sad truth (Score:3, Funny)
And I will lift my drink for a toast to that!
The closest thing to that here in the US are the ladies of TechTV. Damn Comcast, damn the Roberts family to hell for *pink slipping* the channel.
Re:The sad truth (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been watching a lot of the Discovery/History-esque channels recently, and one trend that's become clear is that a large percentage of the documentaries made in America have one or more of: Over the top graphics, pointless superimposed sound effects, over-hyped, gung-ho narrator who insists on presenting the entire film in the style of that guy who does the voice over for the trailers for Hollywood action
The truth is where? (Score:3, Funny)
Or is it that she is just another cog in the vast conspiracy machine trying to detract people from what is really going on? I mean, it would seem so simple for the Illuminati to put an "actual scientist" in a place to debunk the "myths" that about. Come on, we know what is really going on! Stop covering things up! Maybe they should reveal the truth behind the s786fh&^23b!@}{!n7afy23jsdf.... NO CARRIER
FNORD
I've often wondered... (Score:5, Interesting)
This was covered, on a tangent, in a STNG episode. The short-version is Picard attempts to make first contact, but the political leaders decide that the populous isn't ready - and that a public education project will be started/expanded.
For example, there are the persistant rumors that Orson Welles radioplay was an experiment designed to gauge public response, and that shortly thereafter it was decided that *we* aren't ready.
Continuing rumors like that the original Star Trek didn't have enough advertising income to keep it on the air for a single season, and certainly not enough to carry it for three.
Now the government is getting publicly involved in the effort, with the 'life on Mars' possibilities that were thrown about in the last few years.
40 years ago, how would people have reacted to the government saying that there might actually be life on Mars? Today, it's no big deal - because we've been "educated".
Re:I've often wondered... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I've often wondered... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, I see where you are going with it, and the theory is an interesting one, but does it have any factual basis? Where did those "persistant rumors" originate from? Who is running the "education program"? A special secret department in the government? What event or "truth" would the government be preparing us for? Who has access to that information? The president? Wouldn't there have been leaks by now?
To me, this post is exactly why people don't find science interesting any more. The lines between fantasy and reality have been blurred so much that pure reality pieces just seem boring. So rather than publish just reality, why not spice it up with some baseless conspiracy theory?
I think the underlying problem is a lack of diversified sources for information. People overwhelmingly go to the major networks for their news and entertainment. The major networks realize that news doesn't sell as well as news+entertainment. The public, therefore, overwhelmingly gets news + entertainment, which they mistake for news.
Taft
Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I've often wondered... (Score:3, Interesting)
However, they did miss one point (though I think it was more for practicality reasons) - any aliens we do meet are unlikely to look like us, but in the episode, the "aliens" (us) looked enough like the natives that some
Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course it was faked! (Score:5, Funny)
But it's not what people think. NASA did actually get to the moon; the problem was that it was deemed too controversial to allow footage of what was actually found there to be released to the public. Thus, faked landing footage was created.
Silly rabbit.
I was kidnapped once... (Score:2, Funny)
Isn't it obvious?? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Isn't it obvious?? (Score:5, Funny)
sensationalistic psuedo-science (Score:3, Interesting)
As weird as it sounds... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure what flipped the switch from credulity to skepticism, but those early things got me interested. Maybe it was like the old myths of our ancient ancestors: wrong, but they still showed some drive towards explanation and understanding, however over-simplified.
I'm not saying we should have classes on UFOs, but I wouldn't be too alarmed to see my kid reading about them.
Unless he started growing strange mushrooms in the basement or wearing a tin-foil hat...
Re:As weird as it sounds... (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless he started growing strange mushrooms in the basement
Nothing wrong with that. It was the strange mushrooms and magical herbs that got me into pharmacology. If you think about it, psychoactive drugs provide a unique opportunity for perterbational analysis of consciousness. It's a pity our culture is so afraid of them.
Re:As weird as it sounds... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sadly... (Score:5, Insightful)
The scientific community shares some blame as well - "popularizing" science is seen as a vulgar activity by many, when in fact it should be seen as essential as long as the truth is not distorted along the way.
I don't know.... (Score:2, Interesting)
critical thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that schools don't do a very good job of teaching critical thinking.
Does what I am reading/seeing make sense ?
How do I verify that what I'm someone is telling me is reasonably true and accurate ?
I think the author does a very nice job of pointing out that something like the face on mars is a great way to teach those skills with very specific examples.
It certainly should not be limited to science.
The ability to reason and think critically is also being severely hurt by the increasingly abusive marketing aimed at children, IMNSHO.
I'll even go out on a limb and say that this is in large part the cause of the political polarization in the US. Critical thinking includes taking in opposing views and trying to understand if they are valid or not.
Media biases on communication (Score:3, Insightful)
He also touched upon issues with manipulated information [juneauempire.com], and how most kids these days just think if it's on a website, it's got to be true. [which was the slogan of ScoopThis.com, since gone, but by the same person who did the Metallica Hoax [erikashley.com]].
One of Dr. Ohler's points about deception in communication was that it's best to make it seem plausible,
Failure of teaching (Score:5, Insightful)
"Now, imagine being a science teacher with a classroom full of 15-year old students who believe the television accounts of the face on Mars, cities on the Moon, alien autopsies, etc., and you are teaching your unit on space and astronomy. A careful excursion through the characteristics of the planets and their moons interests your students; the red spot on Jupiter would hold at least 3 Earths, a cool factoid, but it doesn't grab them. The face on Mars does. And this was what I discussed with the science teacher at NSTA. "
Have you've ever thought it is the failing of teachers, not of the students or tv producers? If these shows are wrong, prove it to them. Show the students how to questions these things. You could talk about media motivation, about what other scientists points of view are. You can talk about past things which were thought that were wrong. There are a lot of things that a teacher can do. Don't blame the student for being a weak teacher.
Re:Don't compare US secondary system to the world' (Score:3, Informative)
Erm, no, that's not how it works.
The first 4 years all German kids go to the same form of school - Grundschule(loosly tranlated: basic school) - where you learn to read and write, basic math and all the rest.
After that there are three forms of schools which cover 5th - 10th year.
Which school form you go on to, is not decided by a test, but from ov
The scary thing is... (Score:5, Interesting)
As much as I desperately want to believe that most people are fairly intelligent and take this stuff with a large grain of salt (like a salt block) I continually meet people who absolutely stun me with their gullability (stupidity is too mean a word, but perhaps more applicable?).
I have an Uncle who was absolutely convinced that the Mars rover had snapped a picture of a "Martian Cat" with big "martian-looking" eyes and then thought for sure the government was covering it up by removing all the copies of the "World Weekly News" from the stands before anyone else could buy a copy. The obvious fact that the store sold out is perhaps even more depressing though. Who buys that crap? Oh yeah, my Uncle.
It's easy to call something pseudoscience (Score:3, Insightful)
But I agree in general, pseudoscience is everywhere and quality science is scarce. Science Fantasy tends to dominate, whereas Speculative Fiction is very thin on the ground, and pure science is almost extinct.
Part of the blame is with the scientists. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan managed to combine science with art. So did Isaac Newton (pianist) and Steven Hawking. If the rest can't be bothered to reach the unwashed masses, then they can't object too hard when the unwashed masses try to figure out the world for themselves.
The other part of the blame is with politicians. Science and arts get next to no budget, whereas the military gets a fortune. Guess the mindset of the next generation - it's not going to be on physics or painting!
The arts and the sciences need EQUAL time and EQUAL budget, and the artists and scientists have to do whatever it takes to get that, or their discipline will die out, to be replaced with re-runs of Scooby Doo. If that's not what you want, then show the world why it should care.
Re:It's easy to call something pseudoscience (Score:4, Insightful)
It's possible - all you have to do is show that the existance of extraterrestrial travel is a self-contradicting notion. If you cannot, then you have just shown that some planet X -is- being visited by extrasolar aliens from planet Y, and that Earth is just as valid an X as any other planet.
That's not how proof works at all. If I claim that there is an invisible gorilla in my kitchen and you aren't able to disprove the gorilla's existence, that doesn't prove that the gorilla is there. Similarly, if no one disproves the possibility of interstellar travel, that doesn't mean that interstellar travel is actually occurring. (And btw, there are very strong reasons to believe that interstellar travel is impossible, or at least impossible in practice, not the least of which is the special theory of relativity.)
Teach Critical Thinking... (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble with psuedo-science is that it sounds good to the untrained mind. But the thing I love the most is when a purveyor of psuedo science says the me something like, "You need to be more open minded to understand this". I have a relative that was trying to sell me a "Ozone Generator" and air purifier ( filter ) for my home. I had one of these units in my home as a trial ( I paid no money ). I checked out the supposed "science" behind the device and found that there was ample evidence that high concentrations of ozone are actually dangerous to people especially asthmatics. Since my wife has had asthma in the past, I became very concerned. I called my relative and told him I would be returning the device and that he should think twice about making outrageous unsubstatiated claims of scientific evidence where none existed. He had the gall to tell me I would understand the "science" if I were more "open minded".
It is muddy headed thinking like that that results in most of the worlds troubles.
Ozone generator (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, I've got one of those in my home too! Although mine's called a 'laser printer'.
Re:Teach Critical Thinking... (Score:4, Informative)
For the sake of argument, let's assume that it is possible to read license plates from space. The angular size of the numbers on a license plate (~1 inch) as viewed from low Earth orbit (~200 mi) is on the order of about 1e-7 radians.
The closest approch of Mars to Earth in the last fifty thousand years was about thirty-five million miles. Assuming the same angular resolution, that same telescope pointed at Mars should be able to resolve details about five miles across under absolutely ideal conditions.
In practice, the idea that satellites can read license plates is a myth. See here [satobs.org].
To actually read license plates, you'd need to put something like the Keck telescope in orbit--and ten-meter scopes don't generally fly well. Even then, you can't get great pictures of Mars. The only way to get high-resolution photographs of Mars is to send a probe there and take pictures from Mars orbit--which is exactly what NASA has been doing. So far, there hasn't been anything which suggests more than microbial life on Mars, and even that's still very much an open question. We do know there aren't obvious large-scale features of civilization--dams, highways, walls, skyscrapers.Re:Teach Critical Thinking... (Score:3, Informative)
The resolution limits of a telescope are bound by the laws of physics. The military has excellent hardware, and probably some image processing algorithms that are head and shoulders above what civilians have access to
Infotainment (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly, in my experience, the opposite has been true. Friends of mine with little to no post-secondary education, blue-collar types, seem to be more grounded and sensible, whereas the highly educated literate I dealt with in University were so gullible it was ridiculous.
But that's besides the point.
I know Nessie and Bigfoot are just ghost stories. I know ghost stories are make-believe. I know no spaceship crashed at Roswell, I know Neil Armstrong really did land on the moon, I know the face on mars is as real as the faces in any random cloud. So do 99% of the population, I'd imagine.
So why do I watch the alien abduction "special reports" on sci-fi, or the hunt for Nessie on history channel? Because it's ENTERTAINING.
Sure, you could replace those shows with dry astro-geology lectures, etc, but people will just tune out.
TV (and I'd say all mass media) are primarily forms of entertainment to people. That's the primary reason so few share the slashdotters outrage that $NEWSCHANNEL may be biased. Endless reporting/speculating about the latest little kid to be raped and murdered is entertainment to people. They don't know or care about the child, have no personal stake in the story, yet we'll keep having news about Jon Benet et al forever.
Nothing on TV is factual, everyone knows it. I watched one of the designers on "trading spaces" install what had to be 500 square feet of laminate flooring one episode, and then at the end sit there with a straight face and say that the entire room was less than $1000 bucks.
The day I care about the "factual science" of martian geology or microbiology, I'll pick up a textbook.
I don't watch TV for "factual" science, just like I don't read slashdot for "factual" computer science.
Re:Infotainment (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind02/toc.htm [nsf.gov]
13% of Americans believe that both evolution and creationism should be taught as scientific theories in science class.
16% percent want no mention of evolution at all.
More than 25% of the public believes in astrology, that is, that the position of the stars and planets can affect people's lives.
60% of respondents agreed that "some people possess psychic powers or ESP" in a 2001 NSF s
Carl Sagan on Pseudo-Science (Score:4, Informative)
Debunkers part of the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, some UFO debunkers have created some rather elaborate psychology theories to explain the alleged hallucinations of airline pilots and cops with regard to some rather detailed and unusual UFO reports. (Surprisingly, most UFO debunkers don't think outright fibs are the biggest cause.) If you don't have a decent counter-explanation, just say so. Just say something like, "Just because it is odd does not necessarily mean it is from outer space". Instead they will point out a case were a train driver mistook Venus for an oncoming train in the fog and imply that all sightings are the same kind of thing. Sometimes you just plain don't have an answer. Leave it at that. If you force explanations, you start to resemble the "believers".
Signal to noise ratio would still drown it out (Score:5, Interesting)
DeVore describes the current Mars missions as a "teachable moment," an opportunity to teach factual science and astronomy in the context of sensationalistic psuedo-science and the legion of money-grubbing opportunists who make their living churning it out.
I think it's a great idea, but probably doomed to fail for a couple of reasons.
First off, pseudo-science is usually described as sensationalistic because it is fairly sensational. Light on reality, but very sensational. It's much more entertaining to see faces on Mars than trace water. If you doubt this, examine the headlines on the tabloid rack the next time you're checking out in the grocery store. Style usually beats substance.
Also, given the huge volume of crap that people believe about space, any useful information will probably be lost. My last attempt to fix this problem was a discussion with a family member who is a conspiracy theorist. This person does not believe we landed on the moon. And had loads of total crap pseudo-science to back him up. As I calmly talked him through the problems with his "facts", he became more and more agitated. I was ruining his world view.
After a while I gave up. He wanted his belief, and anything I said was because "they" had gotten to me, and I couldn't open up my mind to other possibilities. Facts be damned.
I think really the only people who want the truth about what's out there are the scientific types in the first place. We don't need to see faces on Mars to get excited. Trace water is exciting enough, because we know what it implies. If the Teachable Moment finds a few of these people, that's great. Just don't expect many converts.
Weaselmancer
I no longer believe... (Score:3, Funny)
*TheDarb
Shazaam! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Teachable science" is a cool concept and a good practice, but most science will always look like magic to some people simply because of their I.Q.s and/or mindset.
They'll continue to be unable to differentiate between genuine discoveries and pseudo-science, no matter what. But we have to try to explain these things, because they'll also continue be able to breed and to vote. However, I could be wrong, I often am.
many scientific believes is non-science today! (Score:4, Insightful)
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking
since the advent of the movement of enlightenment, science has more and more become a replacement for religion. but instead of making every one of us enlightened, rational persons this process has led to a situation in which we no longer question our "scientific" believes. instead we just assume that somebody else will have proven it, and that things couldn't be different from our expectation and our world view.
in fact, we are little better off today than the population before the enlightenment, who had serious problems with superstition, general fear of the unknown, etc. superstition is still a non-negligible factor in the lives of many today, even if outwardly sniggered at.
but most of all we tend to cling to a set of believes without ever questioning them! as my prime example I often use the phases of the moon, which nicely demonstrated my own "illusion of knowledge" which I had acquired during my childhood and never questioned.
ask yourself how the shadow on the moon is produced while it goes through one "monthly" cycle and how the sun and the earth are involved.
I will bet that more than half of you will actually have a wrong model of what is going on!
this in itself is not such a bad thing because the shadows on the moon are of such relevance for our daily lives, but it vividly demonstrates how little rationally we tend to be on topics which are not related to our "special field" of interest!
even more disturbingly it showed me with what fervor people will give blatantly wrong answers when asked about such problems. and this surely is a major problem of our para-scientific society today: applying scientific certainty and zeal to scientifically wrong statements!
jethr0
Re:many scientific believes is non-science today! (Score:4, Informative)
ask yourself how the shadow on the moon is produced while it goes through one "monthly" cycle and how the sun and the earth are involved.
Sun, Earth, and Moon are all, more or less, orbiting each other in nearly the same plane. The moon moves around the Earth roughly once every 28 days or so. When the moon moves to be furthest from the sun (instead of the Earth), the light reflects off of it and comes back to us on Earth, giving us Full Moon. When it moves closest to the sun, we can't see it because all the light from the sun hits the side away from us and thus isn't reflected to the Earth, and thus we get New Moon. What's so hard to understand about that?
ask yourself how the seasons come into being and what role the precession of the earth axis plays in combination with the sun
The Earth is tilted at an angle from its plane of orbit around the sun. This angle is what gives us seasons. Considered from the Northern Hemisphere, during the months of roughly June to August, it's summer. Summer means that the angle of the earth's rotation combined with its position in orbit about the Sun puts the Northern Hemisphere more directly under the sun at noon. The difference is only that of a couple hundred miles or so, compared to winter, but that's enough. The seasons get reversed in the southern hemisphere because it's on the opposite side, obviously.
Precession is the fact that, like a top, the Earth's rotation angle rotates around a circle, describing a cone if you consider the motion of the line along the axis of rotation. After a large amount of time (millions of years), the Earth will have precessed enough to, essentially, move the times in it's orbit that coincide with the seasons. And thus the seasons, slowly, gradually, move along the calendar year. After a long time, the seasons will have rotated and the southern hemisphere will get summer in June-August instead of from Dec-Feb like it does now.
Again, what's so hard to understand about that? Every schoolchild should have learned these things. I did, in like 2nd or 3rd grade.
NASA profits from psuedoscience (Score:4, Insightful)
Earth is the only worthwhile real estate in the solar system. Mars and Luna are both essentially airless. Venus is way too hot. Everything else is worse. Even the places we've explored have boring geology. Space is boring.
Rocketry has hit a wall. After sixty years of rocketry, the things still barely work. In aviation, sixty years took us from the Wright Brothers to the Boeing 707. In rocketry, by 1970 we had the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle. In the 35 years since, there's been essentially no progress. (Even if the X-prize succeeds, it will have accomplished less than Yuri Gagarin did in 1961.)
If it weren't for psuedoscience and hype about space, NASA would be funded like ocean exploration. NASA would be on the Discovery Channel, like Jacques Costeau, asking for money. Psuedoscience keeps the funding flowing.
Re:NASA profits from psuedoscience (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with some of the issues about Rocketry hitting a wall here (though we do have ion drives and nulcear propulsion is comming soon) However to say that NASA benefits directly from the psudoscience is misleading. Interest in space is what creates both of these things.
Re:NASA profits from psuedoscience (Score:3, Funny)
That's why way before we start launching humans to Mars or bring back man to the moon, we need to build and launch those big giant air making things like in the second or third Alien movie.
Re:NASA profits from psuedoscience (Score:3, Interesting)
Nuclear propulsion or, you know, a space elevator or skyhook. Or a massdriver for cargo and air-launches for humans. And "put up" an O'Neill habitat? Why would anyone bother launching it, or even all the bits needed to make it? O'Neill's plan, if you could actually be bothered to read it, involved three stages of habitats of escalating size, with each providing the infrastructure and jumping-off point necessary to construct the one above it. You say "yeah right" to mining and mass drivers on the moon, but o
Entertaining Lies (Score:5, Interesting)
Fortunately, the article is really about teaching students critical-thinking skills, not deriding a "legion of money-grubbing opportunists," so the submitter of this article has [perhaps inadvertently] provided an example for this lesson.
--
"Hello. I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is: No."
- Leonard Nimoy {The Simpsons, "The Springfield Files"}
Re:Entertaining Lies (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that sometimes there's more to it than that. A perfect example is the Fox special about whether the moon landing was faked. All sorts of pseudoscientific nonsense was put forth to support the theory that the landing was faked, but the best critic of the argument that was given any screentime whatsoever just said "Well, there's lots of crackpots out there". They never showed him refuting any of the so-
I've had teachers who did not know better (Score:5, Interesting)
* Atari video games were funded and developed by the department of defense in order to improve our reflexes to prepare us for 21st century automated combat... the company name "Atari" was just an acronym for special black ops project.
* The United States could easily bring the Soviet Union to its knees at any moment simply by flying the space shuttle at supersonic speed back and forth high above Soviet cities, the barrage of sonic booms would cause mass confusion and panic that would cause the Soviet republic a catastrophic collapse... therefore we do not need nuclear weapons, we have the space shuttle.
There were many other examples of his wit but those two stood out in my mind. This teacher was highly regarded by students for many years because his insights, and also he would buy Chinese food for the entire class on Fridays, so we all listened to him intently... it wasn't until some years later that most of us figured out how far off base he was. I wonder how many of his students still to this day accept everything he said as fact.
The sensationalization of science (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of teaching people about robotics we now have "robot war death matches". Instead of Paleontology we have the story of the lonely Velociraptor fighting for his life in an epic miniseries. Instead of archeology we have shows teasing the viewer over whether or not aliens from Mars built the Mayan temples. No more "scientific-themed" shows about weather, geography, or geology unless they involve tragic sinkings of famous ships, cars being blown through the air, the search for amazing lost treasure, or cities overrun by lava with frantic cameramen running for their lives.
Your average person nowadays, can't seem to stomach "pure science", unless something involved isn't bleeding, exploding, covered with gold and diamonds, or posessed by a supernatural/alien presence.
Teaching Critical Thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that our educational system doesn't teach basic critical thinking skills - those aren't developed until college (if then). The problem is that our educational system is a garbage-in, garbage-out system with a watered-down politically correct curriculum that warps context and is rife with inaccuracies and some outright lies. They're designed to increase "self-esteem" for some, at the expense of actually being able to be a productive and informed citizen.
There is an excellent article that was online a while back called Sesame Street, Epistemology, and Freedom that gives a good background into some of the problems, causes, and solutions in terms of our educational system's woeful lack of critical thinking skill-building. Thankfully the Internet Archive still has a copy [archive.org] since I've not been able to find it online. A sample:
If we can't teach children to think abstractly and learning how to quantify and qualify the streams of information that blast them every day, we can't expect to maintain an informed and reasonable democracy. Unfortunately we have an education system build by people like Horace Mann that were designed for the Industrial Age and are wholly inadequate for the intellectual demands of the Information Age.
Case in Point (Score:3, Interesting)
Believe me, I've tried to correct her, but she's clinging to this dream.
Of course, then there's my grandfather who thinks that Venus is actually a chunk of another planet that existed between Mars and Jupiter. It was in some book he read, so it must be true!
Partof the lack of critical thinking... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, you have liberal relativists, for whom no fact is concrete, and who cheerfully will advance kids through schools whether they can read/write or not, simply to make sure their "self-esteem" is intact.
On the other, you have conservative absolutists who will not only excoriate dissent, but both deny obvious facts and assert such ridiculousities as truth (or, more likely, Truth) that all actual facts become valueless.
Yeah, THAT's an atmosphere that's really going to bring out the intellectual cream of a civilization.
Now, tell me that's not flamebait!
Conspiracy theorists will never buy it (Score:4, Interesting)
Factual rebuttals are always refuted by claims of faked evidence or collusion based on the political/military capabilities of the people behind the phenomenon. You can't refute this -- if the person believes that the contra-evidence is faked and it can be logically fit into the conspiracy as a whole, it just reinforecs the conspiracy.
Logical rebuttals at least cause a pause, since asking how the government is able to maintain an effective, secret program that requires the participation of tens of thousands of people and billions in expenses and equipment when the CIA/FBI/Military/et al fail so spectacularly to maintain even minimal secrecy over other aspects of their operations is tough one to counter.
Regardless, there are just too many conspiracists with too much time on their hands to ever be satisfied with factual, logical explanations. In the case of the Mars rovers, it's all too easy to just deny that stuff even happened, just as they've been doing with the moon missions for decades.
In some ways the Internet makes it worse. It used to be that a conspiracy theorist focused on a single conspiracy (ie, Kennedy's assassination). Nowadays, they have access to so many conspiracies that they all get tied together, and are all part of a conspiracy universe that is self-referential and self-reinforcing.
I can only presume that the conspiracies fill some social/psychological vacuum that religion has failed to do so in modern society, that, or whatever they're putting in the water is breeding paranoia....
Must start with real, examples close to home (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's much harder to deal with the kinds of issues in the article; issues that most people have little or no direct experience with (Who's been to the moon or Mars or even JPL? Who's actually been to Area 51?). I think it is much more productive addressing issues that either come up in everyday life, or that can be demonstrated directly (hands-on) in a classroom. Then use these to build a good scientific skepticism.
Plenty of pseudo-science can be debunked by properly teaching probability. There are plenty of fun, hands-on demonstrations related to false coincidences. But these are all too rare. I remember a middle school math class argument among several of the top students in the class in a top district. They spent much of the class arguing over whether the probability of getting 2 heads from independently flipping two coins is 1/4 or 1/3, and never came to a resolution. It would have been simple enough for the teacher to run the experiment. My point is that if it's this difficult to get across even a simple result among bright students, then the lesson plan is wrong to begin with, and it certainly doesn't scale up to the more interesting fallacies related to coincidence.
There are plenty more demonstrations that can debunk ESP. Imagine a teacher giving a mind reading demonstration, then showing how it was done, and afterward explaining how the pros do it.
As for the "face" on Mars, the article starts to suggest some of this by bringing in examples closer to "home": local clouds and mountains that look like objects but are much more clearly coincidence.
And another avenue would be to critically examine in class some commercials or other easily accessible and refutable examples of TV propaganda. The goal would be to break down the idea that any media source is unconditionally reliable.
But as long as the gambling industry continues to grow, and particularly those games with fixed odds against the players like the slots and lotteries, I see little hope of wide success.
"money-grubbing opportunists" (Score:4, Funny)
Its called Capitalism: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't believe these "pseudoscientists" are the problem. Hell, they are just making an honest buck selling their stories to the masses. If the masses choose to believe them, why are they to blame?
(Its not like they're spammers).
No. The problem is with the educational system that allows these people to finish high-school without even having the ability to critically think about what they are being fed.
However, smart consumers are bad business.* Given the current non-separation between big-business and state, there is too much short-term gain to be made by keeping the population stupid.
*As an IT management book I was reading on the weekend stated, IT people don't care why the Marketting people believe that consumers want an intimate, emotional relationship with their hand soap, we just implement the web-page.
Save Us Penn and Teller! (Score:3, Interesting)
You want to fret about pseudo-science? In Georgia, they modified the textbooks to remove references to Darwinism, or in some cases, put it up against some cockeyed theory wrapped in a vaguely reasonable name, "Intelligent Design".
There are entire relious groups in the American South dedicated to "Intelligent Design". It postulates an absolute literal reading of the bible. The heavens and earth really WERE created in 7 days. 6 actually, he rested on the seventh. No word on the 8th or 9th. Adam and Eve were real, we did not evolve, we were blond haired and blue eyed right from the start, etc etc.
Penn and Teller then proceed to smash these idiots in the mouth. But, it's pretty scary. When the religious factions of the U.S. start re-writing textbooks, and debunking real science in favor of pseudo-science, it's scary. They interview this moron who thinks the Grand Canyon proves God created the earth in 6 days. How, I'm not sure. But he has an entire museum, well funded, dedicated to smearing Darwin. He tells people that at the end of his life, Darwin recanted all he said, and begged forgiveness from God. That and a bunch of other lies.
Penn postulates at the end of the episode that bullshit science is usually easily spotted for it's adherence to some sort of faith based postulate. Dogma eventually gets exposed.
That's why I love P&T, promoting a different kind of lifestyle. They call it, "Intelligent Skepticism". Thank your God for guys like them.
Teacher underqualification (Score:3, Interesting)
Take for another example the intelligent design propaganda piece Ten questions to ask your biology teacher [arn.org] - excellent and compelling answers to all of those questions exist, but they are seriously tricky and would trap an average educator. You need to be very well trained in biology and other natural sciences to field those questions. Most teachers with an undergraduate degree in science and an education after degree simply don't have the knowledge.
Best teaching moment... (Score:4, Insightful)
I use this in lecture and lab as an example of why we just can't assume the next person will kind of know what we are doing, even if we don't completely specify it. Ironically, I just mentioned it today before reading this story - but maybe I shouldn't mention that. Maybe someone will take it as evidence of a psychic connection between
_____________________________________
Don't disagree... (Score:3, Interesting)
- In Search Of...
- Art Bell
- Weekly World News
- etc..
There is no point to arguing with them. Any outright contraditions to their beliefs, even when backed by hard science, are simply ignored as being part of the "plan". Whose plan, I'm not really sure. At any rate, according to the aforementioned accounts, we're currently being experimented on, mind controlled and invaded by soviets/aliens/time travellers/elvis/whatever.
Here's what has been working with them. Every time they mention [insert appropriate psudeo-science here], I counter with something completely factual and only marginally related to what they are talking about. If they mention alien cities on mars, I talk about the latest findings in martian geochemistry and don't mention aliens at all.
This has two effects:
1) They sometimes learn something.
2) I have factual ammunition that I can use later. For instance when Art Bell says that mars is made of pocket lint, I can bring up the conversation we had last week on mineral salts. And then they listen to reason (sometimes).
Hope this helps (despite some very hopeless people in the world).
Area 51 is real (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of cool stuff but no space people I am afraid.
They didn't fall out of favour... (Score:5, Informative)
Current science says that it would be extremely unlikely that you would find liquid water, on the surface of Mars given it's current conditions (temperature, pressure).
Evidence found by the Rovers indicates that at some point in Mars past, there was likely a standing body of water, probably a highly saline "ocean".
These statements are not contradicting each other.
Re:Don't forget Cassini! (Score:3, Informative)
badastronomy.com has an execelent debunking of that rediculous claim and many others.
Re:Do you mean... (Score:4, Interesting)
True...but most of the wild ideas are the utterings of nutballs.
You want acceptance? Prove it. Publish in a peer-reviewed journal; don't just hold a press conference. Invite criticism; don't rant about censorship on a website.
Scientists, just like everyone else, have a bit of inertia. If you want to introduce something radically new, you have to expect resistance. Quite frankly, the system wouldn't be working if people accepted dramatic findings without questioning them.
You're right. We should abandon clinical trials as a means to evaluate the efficacy of new drugs and therapies. We should just take the word of Pfizer and/or the faith healer down the street.
The term "pseudo-science" is used by the closed-minded to justify their continued obsessions with The Way Things Are(TM).
Actually, the term "pseudo-science" is used to describe the use of sloppy or incomplete data--possibly in combination with outright fabrication--and inadvertant or wilful ignorance to present theory as incontrovertible fact...particularly on Fox. Pseudo-science involves presenting as fact ideas that are either unsupported or directly contradicted by experiment. Usually it is liberally dosed with dogmatic statements about Establishment conspiracies.
Re:SETI not totally sane (Score:3, Interesting)
O