Eugene+Week+1

In reading Terry Halwes’ “Dispelling Some Common Myths of Science”, I disagree with much of what he mentions in his article. I feel he tries to prove a point that isn’t necessarily the common perspective of the population. The myths Dr. Halwes discusses are what I believe to be basically “just myths”. I think anyone with a higher education than that of grade school can discern that science is not actually that truth on the golden pedestal. We know science is relevant in everyday life and a part of other facets of learning. The article makes the general public out to seem very ignorant or stupid to the idea of science. Dr. Halwes seemly takes an elementary definition of the word “science” and broadens it to the mass of wise and experienced adults.

Dr. Halwes mentions the fact that the scientific method is nothing special and not really a novel way of thinking. “I am merely saying that we have so far, no compelling reason to suppose that the curiosity, awareness, thinking, learning and communicating involved in science are different from their ordinary counterparts.” I agree with the point that the scientific method isn’t exactly a new cognitive process but he neglects the fact of what it actually is. In short he disproves something the scientific method is not. The scientific method in its own right does offer the scientist to systematically and methodically work through a series of experimentations or observations. It allows the tester to control for many uncertainties and also verify that the experiment actually tests the hypothesis accurately. As people we regularly base our learning on intuition and what we see with our eyes. However, often times there are hidden confounding variables that are not aware to the spectator. We jump to conclusions and make causal relationships when there has not been experimentation with random assignment. Thus the scientific method is indeed an asset.

Secondly, there is a small section about the story of Florence Nightingale who made advancements in knowledge and was not a scientist. Specifically she showed “that the British Army was losing more soldiers to unsanitary hospital conditions than to enemy fire”. Yes, she wasn’t actually an engineer or a statistician but the fact that she was curious and wanted to empirically understand the world around her makes her a scientist. She wouldn’t have been able to convincingly prove her belief if she told the general of the army that from what she was seeing she had a feeling more people were dying outside of battle. Clearly she needed hard evidence and in the process of obtaining such, she was a scientist – though without the lab coat.

In all, I think that Terry Halwes hasn’t really assumed a general opinion of science but rather how he suspects others to understand science. In my opinion he offers nothing interesting and only blandly reiterates what a high school graduate should already know. Only in the end does he really come around and asserts a positive role that science plays and acknowledges that the body of knowledge that is science is continually being shaped and amended.