Author Archives: Victor Dominocielo

Religion in Science Classroom

Around this time of year, Biology curriculums nationwide usually turn their focus toward the central tenant of all life on earth, Darwin’s scientific theory of Evolution by natural selection.  Also at this time, some states and school districts embarrass themselves tremendously by attempting to inject religious belief into the Science curriculum in the form of Creationism and Intelligent Design.  School districts in 15 states over the last forty years have tried to inject religion into science classes.  In 2005, a Kansas school district went so far as to attempt to change the definition of Science to accommodate their Creationist beliefs.  The Supreme Court routinely knocks down these challenges as violating the “establishment clause” of separation between church and state.

Approximately 46% (Gallup poll) of the American people do not believe in Evolution (a more recent poll puts the number around 40%).   In 2011, U. Penn researchers, Berkman and Plutzer, polled 926 high school biology teachers and found that only 27% taught Evolution as the central, unifying theme of all biology.  13% actually advocated Creationism/Intelligent Design in their public school classrooms.  The remaining 60% are described as “cautious” because they are not educated enough in the subject (a course in Evolution is, shamefully, not required to obtain a biology degree at many universities) or because they want to avoid controversy with parents and administrators.  Unfortunately, this “cautious” 60% of biology teachers fail to explain the differences between religious thought and the nature of scientific inquiry.  In doing so, these teachers actually undermine established experts and over 150 years of scientific research in the field of Evolution.  The cautious 60% even encourage students to get other explanations for life on earth and so legitimize religious arguments in a scientific field of study.  It is a confusing juxtaposition to suggest to students that well-established, evidence- based, scientific theories can be debated as if they were personal opinions and beliefs.

Every Science teacher has to deal with teaching scientific methodology to students who have a variety of different secular and religious beliefs.  One of the foremost evolutionary biologists, Richard Dawkins, has taken a decidedly abrasive tone when categorizing those who don’t share his appreciation of Science.  He calls these religious people “ignorant, stupid, wicked and insane” and has even written a book, “The God Delusion”, in which he soundly trounces his religious critics.  Although brilliant, Dawkins is making an elementary mistake by “talking out of school” or outside his area of expertise about religious belief and philosophy.  Dawkins was even chided by astronomer Neils degrass Tyson, for using his position to pick a fight and expound on his personal beliefs and feelings instead of sticking to his outstanding evolutionary research.

I could not imagine having such an attitude in my biology classes.  I have a very simple and direct method to clearly establish the lines between science and religion for my impressionable 14 year olds.  On the first day of class, on the first page of their notebooks, I have them write the following concepts:

  • “No one can tell you what to believe, least of all me”
  • “My job is to give you the tools to think critically and scientifically about biology”
  • “Learn the science and then believe what you want”.

These simple “rules of the road” put the students at ease and establish an atmosphere of mutual respect.  I’ve had very religious, Creationist and ID students in my classes and I feel it’s important to be very respectful of their beliefs.  At the same time it’s important to distinguish between personal beliefs and scientific research and evidence during classroom discussions.

In the process of teaching biology to these young people over the years, I have made an important discovery: almost everyone “believes” in evolution.  While the word “belief” is questionable to use in the context of science, I use the term since it is routinely used by opponents of Evolutionary theory.

The general understanding for the development of evolutionary theory proceeds in the following manner: since the beginning of agriculture and herding some 10,000 years ago, farmers and ranchers have used selective breeding to pick the parents of the next generation in order to produce healthier plants and animals.  These small changes from generation to generation, which produced longer growing seasons for corn, larger pigs and faster horses, are the observable evidence for evolution.  This process of small changes over observable time periods is called microevolution.  While great philosophers and religious leaders debated the origins of Man, farmers and ranchers were using practical genetics and basic evolutionary theory long before Darwin and Mendel codified their observations.  Darwin’s great addition to this common knowledge was to reason that if the farmers and ranchers didn’t select the parents of the next generation, then, by what natural process, were the parents selected?  He then described the five part process (overpopulation, non-random survival of the fittest, environmental adaptations, random genetic mutations and species isolation) in which nature selects the parents of the next generation.  Given enough time and many generations, the billions of years of the development of life on earth, one species could accumulate enough small changes to become a different species.  Evolutionary biologists call this process macroevolution or speciation.

Now it is very obvious to my 14 year old students that they are not exact copies of their parents and that they may have inherited Mom’s hair color and Dad’s eyes with changes and combinations of these characteristics.  So, the process of microevolution is quite evident to them every time they look in the mirror.  However, the great realization for these 14 year old biology students is that the microevolution they see every day, over a very long period of time and many generations, is also macroevolution, one species slowly evolving into another.  Evolution is evolution, whether that time period is a single generation or many generations.  If you acknowledge and “believe” in changes from one generation to the next, changes that you have inherited from your parents and have given to your children, then you are observing Evolution in action.

So, we are not that different in our beliefs after all.

 

By Victor Dominocielo, 2/22/14

Victor Dominocielo, M.A., a California-credentialed teacher for 36 years, is the human biology and health teacher at a local middle school. He earned his Master of Arts degree in education from UCSB. The opinions expressed are his own.

Science Makes Mistakes

When I talk about a scientific explanation of events and cause and effect, I am sometimes told that, “Science also makes mistakes”.

True enough: Science makes mistakes.  However, it would be more accurate to say that Science makes mistakes and then, as part of the scientific process, vigorously and even viciously purges those mistakes from its system by experimentation, repetition and peer review over time.   This adversarial element of science to its own body of work is exemplified by the “null hypothesis” or, more colloquially, “What you said is wrong”.  If your hypothesis can withstand the onslaught of professionals in your field trying to shred your work and prove you wrong, then your idea/hypothesis wins provisional and temporary acceptance.   It is a brutal performance standard.

Einstein said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong”.  This is a very high bar of legitimacy to maintain and it is the reason why Science holds a respected place of authority in our society.  When Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905, he was immediately ridiculed.  He remained a patent clerk for four more years.  Gregor Mendel, the founder of genetics, was complete ignored when he presented his work…for 40 years!  Charles Darwin was petrified about publishing his work and offending the prevailing religious/professional establishment of his day and so he waited for 23 years after his famous voyage.

Many people who question scientific findings still think their beliefs and ideas have the same weight as scientific theories.  This may be a semantic misunderstanding between the use of the term “hypothesis” (a proposed explanation with no evidence at the beginning of the scientific process) and a scientific “theory” which is usually the result of years of research, evidence, experimentation and peer review.  As an example, our personal ideas and beliefs about Evolution are hypotheses.  Darwin’s work is a scientific theory which has withstood the test of time: generations of experts trying to prove the “theory” of evolution wrong with no success.

If you Google up the ten worst mistakes of science, (http://www.sciencechannel.com/strange-science/10-science-mistakes) you get a very interesting list.  From Galen’s faulty idea of the circulatory system and Ptolemy’s earth centered solar system in the second century to the theory of the four humors and spontaneous generation and on to alchemy and astrology, it appears that Science has made some incredible mistakes.

Except that when these events took place, there was no Science as we know it today.  In the second century, Ptolemy watched a few sunsets and without any theoretical astronomy framework and only rudimentary tools, wrongly concluded that the sun revolved around the earth.  Galen was dealing with the incorrect medical framework of the Four Humors when he proposed a completely wrong idea for circulation.  To be sure, throughout history there have always been scientific individuals and in our more recent past there were local, coordinated groups of scientists.  However, Science as we know it today, as civilization’s organized, worldwide, multicultural network of research based, experimental explanations of cause and effect, did not exist until the 1870’s.  By that time, travel and communication between global research institutions allowed knowledge to be standardly measured and reliably repeated with the process of experimentation, data collection and repetition insuring that mistakes were purged from the system over time.

We, as individuals, have no such performance standard.  We consistently and continually make mistakes with no idea that we even made a mistake.  We claim to be our own expert but we are a completely biased, anecdotal story of one.   Science, over time and repetition, is a process that points the way to an ever more accurate picture of reality.  Individuals, over time, can continue to make the same mistake generation after generation after generation.  For millennia we continued to fabricate emotionally pleasing philosophical and spiritual explanations for natural events instead of adopting the very simple procedure of scientific methodology: observe, measure, propose an explanation, test it and have someone else check your work because we are all prone to mistakes.  Why was this simple approach so elusive?  Why couldn’t communities from 500, 1000 or even 2000 years ago process observations and information in a scientific manner?   Humanity needed a tool to prevent us from making these individual and then collective false associations, generation after generation.

Mathematics seems to have escaped the disuse that has plagued Science through the millennia and a comparison may suggest a reason for the reluctance to accept and use scientific methodology.  Mathematics offends no one and its logic is impossible to refute.  Science on the other hand, has an inverse relationship with one of the other pillars of our society: religion.  As Science explained more and more of the natural world, mystical/spiritual explanations were less and less necessary.  This process may have inadvertently offended many religious people and slowed the acceptance of various scientific theories.

Science is humanity’s method for not fooling itself.  It’s not an opinion or a belief.  It is not my way against your way.  Science is a tool for collecting repeatable evidence: a tool that insures that beliefs, opinions, individual false associations and prejudices are purged from our collective understanding of the natural world.  In the words of Carl Sagan:

“Science is not perfect.

It is often misused.

It’s only a tool, but it’s the best tool we have.

Self-correcting, ever-changing, applicable to everything;

With this tool, we vanquish the impossible”.

 

Victor Dominocielo, M.A.

 

Victor Dominocielo, M.A., a California-credentialed teacher for 36 years, is the Human Biology and Health teacher at a local middle school. He earned his Master of Arts degree in Education from UCSB. The opinions expressed are his own.

How Do We Know What We Know In Science

Why is Science better than our individual observations and opinions or even thousands of observations and opinions over thousands of years?  The short answer is that you and I can be completely wrong and pass those wrong explanations down through the centuries.  Several different cultures throughout history looked at the night sky and concluded that it was a dome and that the stars were pinholes of light from heaven on the other side.  For three thousand years we explained bloodletting as helping to balance the four humors in our bodies and return us to good health.  Even today, every single one of us makes the same mistake Ptolemy did in the second century when we say, “The sun is setting”, which implies that the sun is moving around the earth.

Scientifically minded individuals worked in isolation when our species began farming and ranching some 10,000 years ago.  As villages became cities, science minded people were able to experiment and learn together in small groups and as universities were established in different cultures, various scientific standards were produced.  These different scientific standards had to deal with the prevailing politics and religions of their cultures and this remains true even today.

So it was only about 150 years ago when global industrialization, travel and communication (telegraph, telephone and radio) became reliable and routine enough that scientists were able to begin a network of standardization for the scientific process.  Experiments by Pasteur in France were communicated, replicated and verified in around the world as the germ theory of disease finally displaced the defunct theory of the four humors.  Marconi in Italy shared the 1909 Nobel Prize for wireless telegraphy with Karl Braun of Germany.  As the world became a smaller place, scientists increasingly shared their work and a standard methodology for scientific investigation developed.  As Neil deGrasse Tyson said at the beginning of the new “Cosmos” series:

“Test ideas by experiment and observation.

Build on those ideas that pass the test;

Reject the ones that fail.

Follow the evidence wherever it leads and

Question everything.”

 

This worldwide, multi-cultural standard of a well controlled scientific experiment is used when anyone wants their explanations for cause and effect to go beyond their personal beliefs and whimsical suppositions.  Experiments and the repetition of experimental results is the key to this scientific standard.  Experiments, and especially experiments involving people, must be arranged with specific controls in order to get reliable results.  For example, in testing a new drug, experiments would have to include a significant group size and randomly chosen subjects.  Ideally only one variable would be tested.  There would have to be a placebo control group and, since subjects often improve on their own, an additional “spontaneous remission” group.   The results of the placebo control group and the spontaneous remission group are subtracted from the results of the test group in order to find out the actual scientific effect of the drug.  Also, the test would have to be double-blinded, meaning that the subjects and the experimenters would not know who was receiving the test drug and who was receiving the placebo.

Amazingly, some scientists don’t always adhere to these rules.  Some experiments are not blinded.  Some peer reviewers don’t carefully read the studies they are supposed to read.  Papers are published with “non-randomized” subjects and insignificant group sizes.  Fortunately, over time, these poorly designed studies are exposed and discarded.  So, while a single experiment does not usually produce significant advancement, repeat experimentation, over time, does produce the correct direction for continued scientific investigation.

This leads us to the next level of scientific reliability: “multiple lines of converging evidence” (MLCE).  In addition to the Scientific Method and rigorous experimental design and implementation, when different branches of science all point to and support a common explanation of the natural world, a Scientific Theory, explaining a broad range of natural phenomena, is usually the result.  For example, the Theory of Evolution is supported by years of experimental findings from the fields of geology, genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, bacteriology, virology and ecology.  While there is no absolute proof in Science, multiple lines of converging evidence point to the best explanation of cause and effect in the natural world.

“Science is a cooperative enterprise spanning the generations.  It’s the passing of a torch from teacher to student to teacher…a community of minds reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson, “Cosmos”.

Victor Dominocielo, M.A.

Victor Dominocielo, M.A., a California-credentialed teacher for 36 years, is the Human Biology and Health teacher at a local middle school. He earned his Master of Arts degree in Education from UCSB. The opinions expressed are his own.