Podcasts Education Lab Out Loud Episode 12 - Skepticism and The Bad Astronomer

Episode 12 - Skepticism and The Bad Astronomer

Published: March 17, 2008, 4:05 a.m.

Today's guest calls himself the Bad Astronomer. \xa0Phil Plait is an astronomer, an author, and a well-known blogger at www.badastronomy.com. \xa0Phil talks to us about\xa0myths and skepticism in the science classroom.

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\n\nPreview from the show:
\n\nPlait: I\nam in fact a skeptic. \xa0In the public mind - if you ask somebody "what's\na skeptic" - most people think it's a cynic or a denier, somebody who\njust doesn't believe in anything. \xa0And that's not strictly true. \xa0All a skeptic is, is someone who demands evidence for a claim. \xa0If you come\nup to me and say the sky is pink, I'm going to say "what is your\nevidence for this?". \xa0Or I'll say, "that's an interesting claim, but\nhere's the evidence against it." \xa0It's someone who applies critical\nthinking, logic, evidence, observation, the scientific method to any\nsort of claim.
\n\nScience is all about skepticism. \xa0They are\nhardly different - I mean skepticism is a tool of science. \xa0Richard\nFeynman (the physicist) said "science is a way of not fooling\nourselves. It's a way of figuring what's out what's really going on". \xa0\nAnd skepticism is just a way of looking at things. \xa0It's making sure\nthat if you're thinking about something, if there's a claim that's\nbeing made - whether it's by a person or even yourself, there's a way\nof examining it so that you can test its reality or not. And the\nproblem is, it's not something we teach our kids. \xa0In fact, we teach\nthem exactly the opposite. \xa0We teach them to believe in Santa Claus and\nthe Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. \xa0We go to movies where the skeptic\nis always a jerk, and the end is always the supenatural cause or trust\nin humanity or whatever."
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\nPlait:\nScooby Doo was a great cartoon because\nin the end, it really wasn't a ghost or whatever, it was always old man\nMarley wearing a mask, who didn't want the developers to come in and\ndestroy his farm or whatever."
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\nPlait:\nWhen you're teaching kids to the\ntest, and you're saying "here's how you do the math" without explaining\nwhy, "here's what you're supposed to get in the results in the lab"\nwithout explaining why, we're not teaching our kids science. \xa0We're\nteaching them nothing, we're teaching them belief, faith - and that's\nnot what science is about. \xa0Science is not about belief, science is\nabout evidence.
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\n\nFollow the Bad Astronomer:\n

\n\n\n\nPosts from badastronomy.com discussed on the show:
\n\n\n\n\nBooks:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSkepticism on the Internet:
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