I think equally important is letting students know when they’re being taught a simplified model, and that serious academic discourse of the subject is still evolving and/or involves much more nuance (which is pretty much always). some people who do pay attention in science classes nonetheless think that what they learned is gospel and never re-examine it, or stubbornly refuse to acknowledge when said nuance is relevant because it seems to contradict the simplified model they’ve cemented in their brain as the whole truth. the kind of people who say things like “I know there’s two genders because I learned it in high school biology” and apparently never considered why there would be collegiate and post-graduate studies on biology and gender (or why those are two entirely different fields of study) if we all already learned everything there is to know in high school.
you're doing ReSeArCh rong!!
Submitted 1 day ago by slothrop@lemmy.ca to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/e86caa20-5667-493e-9364-ab5b0f288413.jpeg
Comments
arctanthrope@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 hours ago
I think chemistry is APPALLINGLY bad at this to be honest.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago
Tbf this does kind of imply we are doing something wrong. Maybe instead we should teach people to learn and judge information, rather than train them to take information presented to them at face value.
There are as many irrational science fanatics as there are religious fanatics.
MiddleAgesModem@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
There are as many irrational science fanatics as there are religious fanatics.
I really doubt that.
Also, how are they to judge information presented to them if there is no agreed upon valid source?
eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
Loooooool
DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
Vaccines could cause autism since they contain immune system steroids. GMOs can also be dangerous although not likely. Flat earth is a troll.
slothrop@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
Vaccines could cause autism since they contain immune system steroids…
Source, LIAR?
WraithGear@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
no.
steroids are a specific thing, and are not used in vaccines. steroids can’t cause autism even if that was the case. vaccines can not cause autism at all. vaccines work by incapacitating a viral or bacterial agent, sprinkling some red flag on it and dumping it in your system for the immune system to stumble across
autism is a developmental issue, either selected genes at conception mess with developmental plans, or something interrupts development before birth. vaccines do not have a chance to be administered before that period is over.
also!
GMO’s are a meaningless designation to determine harm in any regard. all it dictates is whether humans have in any fashion altered the organism. bananas are GMO not because we went mad with genetic code splicing, but because we artificially selected for maximizing the food portion and minimizing the seed output, and use cuttings from the result to grow the same plant over and over. you might as well have said “red foods can also be dangerously although not likely”
also,
there are people who do believe in flat earth, because otherwise their religion is false.
ICastFist@programming.dev 8 hours ago
To be fair, most schools give those classes only out of obligation. Doing dumb calculations of mols and atomic masses in high school is definitely teaching kids to ask “why the fuck am I even doing this?”
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 hours ago
Kids are wired to ask that, so what, basic chemistry knowledge is extremely useful.
LePoisson@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Learning some chemistry basics is probably still good though. Not that we’re using it daily but just in the “hey mixing this stuff can kill you” or, in the same vein, seeing how it only requires small amounts to make big changes.
We’re surrounded by chemicals in our everyday lives, learning a healthy fear of them is probably for the best.
Also high school is meant to prepare you for further education, if you want to pursue that, so it really does cover a lot of ground for basic concepts you need to learn to understand and gain further education in whatever field applies.
Zerush@lemmy.ml 7 hours ago
Yeah, like an German Comedian said, while the Teacher shows how an Morse communication works, the childrens with their Smartphones already are logged in his Pacemaker.
Marinatorres@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Real talk: those “boring” science classes aren’t about memorizing facts — they teach you how to spot bad claims and check sources. That skill pays off forever.
nek0d3r@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
As a kid I always thought a lot of stuff taught was like, duh, so obvious. It took being thrown in the adult world to see hmm… I guess… not obvious enough???
OpenStars@piefed.social 1 day ago
Stay curious‼️ 🤔
kazerniel@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I hated chemistry in school, because it was teaching us irrelevant shit like electron structure of atoms. But when I’m interested in something, I’ll look it up, and may get lost in a Wikipedia wormhole for hours about the most random topics. (some recent ones were: image file formats, the history of feminism, Serengeti National Park)
Imho the difference all lies in when knowledge is shoved down our throats vs exploring it out of curiosity.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
I hated chemistry in school, because it was teaching us irrelevant shit like the electron structure of atoms.
It’s only unimportant because you don’t care. Reading random facts on Wikipedia isn’t learning, it’s just reading. You can read the Wikipedia page on juggling, (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggling) but I wouldn’t expect you to understand (much less, perform) a 3 ball cascade, reverse cascade and waterfall after just reading the page. Those are very basic juggling patterns and fundamentals to more advanced patterns, such as juggler’s tennis, mills mess, boston mess etc… and that’s the difference between learning, and reading.
Not ripping on going on a Wikipedia dive here, it’s one of my favorite things to do, but recognize that it’s not the same as learning
BanMe@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
It’s funny how as adults we become interested in elements of stuff we were taught and found boring before. But I’m not sure how you’d teach science without “shoving it down people’s throats” because most teenagers simply don’t give a shit about any of it, so pretty much anything you teach will be shoving it down someone’s throat. The better solution would be explaining why electron structure is important foundational stuff. About 98% of the time, in HS, they didn’t explain why we needed to know it, how it would be contextualized in later life - it was simply “learn this so you can pass next week’s test.” And for me, knowing why is crucial to me caring enough to learn.
sakuraba@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
I used to think like this until I found out you can explain a lot of chemical interactions by just knowing how the electron structure of atoms lead to those reactions. Helpful when you try to wonder if anything could be toxic.
58008@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
The “do your own research” people need to have it explained to them that even experts in their respective fields aren’t automatically capable of parsing scientific literature. A family doctor with 50 years experience who prescribes antidepressants every day will have no deep understanding of what any particular scientific peer reviewed study on SSRIs is telling them. They need a grounding in statistics more than anything else, which most people just don’t have. So the idea that a non-educated, non-scientist can read peer reviewed studies and come away from them with some sort of understanding of the issue is the thing that needs to be highlighted, preferably in high school science class (earlier, frankly). A willingness to slog through scientific papers in pursuit of deeper knowledge is admirable, but is dangerously misguided without proper training. I don’t even mean training in the specific science, but just in how to speak the language of peer reviewed studies more generally. It’s very much its own discipline.
I want someone to ask Joe Rogan what ‘regression to the mean’ means. I want someone to ask him what a ‘standard deviation’ is and how to apply the concept. I don’t want to know what papers he’s read, because you could read 50 true scientific papers a day on one topic and still have no idea what the current scientific consensus is on said topic, absent the requisite training. You’ll almost certainly come away from it with a very wrong but very confident belief. Dunning-Kruger on steroids.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 hours ago
Hard disagree, if research findings were more accessible, NOT PAYWALLED, and published with some degree of intent for a wide audience then WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY more people would dabble in reading scientific research and the benefit could have potentially saved science from collapse in my country (the US).
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 13 hours ago
The ‘research’ that the “do your own research” people are referring to isn’t peer reviewed scientific literature.
It’s other fools’ social media rantings.
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
IMO: GMOs are sus. Fuck the rest though.
roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
The problem with GMOs isn’t the GMOs themselves, it’s why they’ve been GM’d. If they’ve been modified to be “roundup resistant” so they can dump a truckload of glyphosate on them, or something similar to that, that might be a problem.
If I’m buying fresh produce it’s not a problem, I can can make double sure to wash it properly. But if it’s processed food, I definitely do not trust food manufacturers to get all that shit off the vegetables.
Looking for GMO free canned or frozen vegetables is, in my opinion, a good idea. But a fresh cucumber just wash it.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Most of the foods you eat are GMOs and have been for centuries
Bloomcole@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
selective breeding is not not the same as GMO
allcretansareliars@lemmy.ml 11 hours ago
GM is just a technology, which can be put to many uses, and there are many methods. All pasta wheats, for example, are derived from radiation mutants.
newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
The risk isn’t derived from the technology but how it is used. The proprietary technology is used to prevent farmers from creating their own seed (including using copy right laws) while increasing their dependency on matching pesticides. Industrial agriculture is not sustainable - insect populations are dwindling because every square foot of landscape is sprayed with poison. GMO is used to further industrialize agriculture, e.g. by making crops resistant to poison, which in turn can (and will) be used more liberally.
Gladaed@feddit.org 10 hours ago
Nature does evolve quickly when posed with harsh conditions. Roundup and other poisons used agriculture make the targeted pests resistant quickly.
Some GM features can be fine, but there are no cheats in real life. Constructing an environment that makes resistance and strength the viable strategy for pests will not work. Harmony is the only sustainable choice.
1984@lemmy.today 11 hours ago
The vaccines have side effects that destroy lives, and its almost impossible to prove that their deceases come from the vaccines. But Im not going to take the chance to be one of these people.
newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml 11 hours ago
If this person takes the risks of sickness and its life destroying consequences over the risks of vaccination, they’re an idiot.
www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0264410X25011399 …org.nz/…/comparison-of-possible-disease-complica…
themaninblack@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
The propagation of these ideas will lead to the maiming and death of children
the_strange@feddit.org 9 hours ago
You’re one of the people the meme is talking about.
Rbnsft@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
The Chance for a serious side effect is lower vs the permanent damage you could get from covid.
mack123@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
It is purely a numbers game. Risk vs Risk. Any meal you eat has the possibility of you ending up in hospital. This happened to me, developing a sudden allergy to food I ate before with no problems. It does not stop me eating though 😉
Allergic reaction is your greatest risk with a vaccine. And even there you will the chances slim for such a reaction. We simply take that risk for the vaccine in question, take its effectiveness into account and compare that to the risks of getting the decease in question.
I would not wish long covid on my worst enemy. The never ending brain fog, the tiredness that simply does not go away, the lack of taste for food. It really sucks the joy out of living. So if a vaccine can prevent that, and help shield those around you, that you may infect, I think the risk of side effects are more than justified and worth taking.
MrShankles@reddthat.com 8 hours ago
Sticking to your opinion without openness to changing them (especially due to fear)… that’s how you become inflexible and risk breaking something (or something breaking you)
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
You question vaccines and yet you probably don’t have any problem asking for antibiotic when you get flu, even though antibiotics don’t work on viruses and only kills the healthy bacteria in your gut. Or, taking painkillers for headaches, even though one of its side effects for constant use is eventual hearing loss.
You question vaccines as if they are all the same, but don’t question other medicinal products that are made in the exact same process as vaccines. And all medicines have some side effects nonetheless. Heck, almost anything you consume has side effects. As another person mentioned, we take medicines and they are approved because the benefits outweigh the risks. They are tested first for crying out loud.
BananaPeal@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
And billionaires love people like that because it keeps the most obsessive of us focused away from the greed.
MiddleAgesModem@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
LOL, school curriculums are part of the “billionaire conspiracy” too?
FFS.
SleepyPie@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
They are saying people who don’t understand how to reason beyond high school basics are useful idiots for billionaires because they’re easily manipulated
Nothing about a school curriculum conspiracy was mentioned
Peanutbjelly@sopuli.xyz 2 hours ago
As someone aware of decades of legal battles to prevent the gutting of education systems, usually noticeable around local levels, you almost always end up at corpo think tanks like the heritage foundation.
If you’re familiar with the heritage foundation, they’ve been trying to run a project2025 style playbook for decades, and it is only through their success that current administration is a billionaire playground. Reminder that elon musk could directly choose for hundreds of thousands of children to die this year by taking aware their food and medicine, because he wanted to. Also billionaires got an unimaginably generous treatment at the same time, worth much more than all of the food and medicine.
It’s more an amalgam of cooperatively evil assholes, most of which have an absurd amount of money for some reason, but yeah, billionaires are a good chunk of why there are whole groups being funded to spend all day every day trying to kneecap educational efforts, or painting academics as evil satanists who are corrupting your children with science.
logicbomb@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If we want children to learn these things, we should teach them these things directly, instead of relying on science classes. I’m not saying we should get rid of science classes, but the people who are saying these stupid things did actually take science classes in school.
We desperately need to teach classes that are specific. I learned a lot about problem solving from math classes, but I was shocked when I tutored other kids, and they only learned the math, but had no idea how to approach problems. And I don’t mean just word problems, but literally even if you just give them multiple equations and variables.
My tutoring often went like this: “I can’t solve this!” “What information to they give you? What answer do they want? What can you do with the stuff that they’ve given you to get the answer?” And then they get the answer. Literally no math involved in the tutoring for math class.
So, we need required classes, early, like in elementary school, that specifically teach problem solving, critical thinking, how to detect misinformation, and what I’ll call empathy. By “empathy”, I mean the ability to imagine yourself in another person’s shoes so that you can predict why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s essential for detecting misinformation because you need to trust somebody at some point, so you need to understand how to tell who is more likely to be trustworthy. I also think we should teach children meditation techniques.
merc@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
we should teach them these things directly, instead of relying on science classes
Ok, so by “these things” you mean logic, argument analysis, media literacy, critical thinking, etc.
Yes, I had classes like that, and I think they’re much more important than science and math classes. You can learn science and math on your own from YouTube videos, but you need the media literacy to know which YouTube videos you can trust.
Manjushri@piefed.social 1 day ago
So, we need required classes, early, like in elementary school, that specifically teach problem solving, critical thinking, how to detect misinformation, and what I’ll call empathy.
Good luck. The 2021 Texas GOP platform specifically opposed the teaching of critical thinking skills. Needless to say, the entire GOP feels the same way to this date. Also, empathy is now considered a weakness or moral failing in those circles.
Face it. The federal government and the state governments of a large fraction of the states are diametrically opposed to our desires.
Don’t get me wrong. I think you’re correct about what our goals should be. But calling it an uphill battle to achieve them would be an understatement of epic proportions.
Luxyr@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 hours ago
It is very much intentional in a lot of places to keep the status quo.
Daryl76679@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
But how do you teach those skills directly
logicbomb@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You simply apply your problem solving skills as an adult. You want students to understand how to do these things. Well, how do you do these things? Then teach the students the method that you use. That’s the simplest version. But there’s been a lot of research about how to teach things, so following the best research is the better version.
I think I gave a small example of teaching problem solving in my 3rd paragraph where I described tutoring math. But you can use any problems instead of simply math problems.
Really, I say this as a very introverted person with a strong STEM background, I think the most important skills children learn from school are their interpersonal skills, but we rarely teach them directly. So, you can work through typical problems in class, like for problem solving, say, you want to use the gaming console, but your sibling is using it. What can you do?
Similarly, how do YOU know when something is misinformation? Just teach the children to take the same steps you do. “I doubt this information because based on these previous incidents, I’ve seen that this person has a reason to lie about this.” Or, “If I think about it, there is somebody who is profiting from people acting on this information, and so I that makes me dubious about this.”
How do you know when a conspiracy theory is very unlikely? The more important it is and the more people who must participate in it, the less likely the theory is to be true. That’s why you can write off flat earth theories almost instantly with very little knowledge of science.
You can teach critical thinking via debate class, for example, but I think there are some other methods, too. Critical thinking is probably the hardest to imagine a way to teach.
Infynis@midwest.social 1 day ago
Art! Where logic fails to motivate, artistic expression can lead to emotional understanding
Mediocre_Bard@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
You take time to answer questions in class rather than force feeding standardized test questions down their throats. Kids don’t lose their curiosity. They just get tired of hearing some variation of, “I’ll answer that later.”
Zerush@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
Internet contains the whole knowledge of humanity… the other 98% are influencers, ChatGPT posts, memes, cat photos, fake news, bots and flat earthers.
iatenine@piefed.social 1 day ago
I found by high school the kids who said that (that hadn’t dropped out) moved onto a different argument by that age
Honestly, I know it ruins the joke, but I don’t think there’s as much overlap between the top and bottom groups as one may suspect
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
There are something like 10 million students attending Christian school and the like, and another 5 million or so being home schooled.
They don’t really believe in the scientific method and critical thinking, in general. At least in my experience as a student of a Christian school. I had no idea.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
On a related note having 6 different classes a day 8 hours total each and 5 days a week made it impossible to learn properly.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I don’t agree with this. The stuff written by, for example, the “vaccines cause autism” people can sound as sophisticated and authoritative as any textbook. A high-school education isn’t going to help someone judge it according to its merits. The problem is a collapse of trust in authority rather than a lack of basic knowledge.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
But understanding how science works is key to having trust in it. If you lack that understanding you may just think it’s a bunch of stuck up eggheads who pick whatever truth is convenient to them.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
But both sides sound as if they have done real science, so a basic understanding of how science is done won’t be enough to tell them apart. The only difference between the two visible to an ordinary member of the public is that one side represents “the establishment” and the other side doesn’t.
Venator@lemmy.nz 1 day ago
It really depends how science is taught: whether they’re tought to memorise a bunch of facts and formulas, or actually use reasoning…
JamesBoeing737MAX@sopuli.xyz 22 hours ago
People like this argument, because they can then hate autistics. They could say we are inherently broken and need to be “fixed” or genocided.
At this point, I only respect people who were discriminated/abused/mistreated in their childhood.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 18 hours ago
I took the minimum amount of science classes in highschool. Lack of science education is less of a problem than teaching you how to sort through bullshit and analytical thinking. I basically think that our school system needs to stop focusing so hard on teaching things from the textbooks in an ever-changing world that’s cherry picked from an endless wealth of knowledge and focus more on learning how to be skeptical and check various sources and such. In school it seemed like research was always just a backseat to the goal, instead of the goal itself.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Ngl I like learning from textbooks now that I am out of highschool. I learn faster too. And weirdest part is that I still can’t study through my highschool textbooks.
I am geniuenly wondering if they were just simply terrible at picking good textbooks.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 3 hours ago
Maybe now you’re just being able to read things that interest you?
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Ignorance is piss
funkajunk@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Kiss my piss
nil@piefed.ca 16 hours ago
“those people” are drinking piss, literary
pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 hours ago
rong? like the estonian word for train?
Wren@lemmy.today 21 hours ago
My highschool chemistry teacher almost got kicked out of her university for trying to pipette hydrochloric acid with her mouth. That’s who I want teaching chemistry, the crazy woman who knows what it means to fuck up, bad. Not some honor roll, life plan having baby bitch.
RaoulDook@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
We made some ether in my HS chemistry lab for a lab exercise, and I was goofing around pretending to inhale it but accidentally did get some in, and I got a loopy dizzy feeling for a minute or two.
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 13 hours ago
One of my high school’s two chemistry teachers was missing a hand… due to an (undisclosed) chemistry incident.
gravitas@pie.gravitywell.xyz 22 hours ago
I always found science and history interesting even though i hated school.
Maths though, i always resented “you wont always have a calculator” … but now as im older i imagine kids today having a similar idea about “AI” and i can see that not ending well for anyone.
the_q@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Yeah it’s what they’re being taught and their own personal failings and absolutely not the capitalism and control propaganda machine!!
paid for by the Capitalism and Control Propaganda Machine, LLC copyright 1983
the_abecedarian@piefed.social 1 day ago
so… you’re blaming children?
SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 1 day ago
“Adults” who act like children.
vivalapivo@lemmy.today 12 hours ago
Baa
MiddleAgesModem@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
The sad thing is those people did take those classes.