Museum of Misinformation

[Furrowed Brow]

Lawrence Kraus writes in this weeks New Scientist about the new Creation Museum which has recently opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. The article is titled "Museum of misinformation". Kraus is calling for the museum to be condemned and shunned.

The Creation Museum is designed to suggest that science demonstrates the viability of a literal interpretation of Genesis. It argues that scientific evidence supports a six-day creation of the Earth, a 6000-year old universe, and a world where dinosaurs and humans happily roamed together.

In doing so the museum repeatedly misrepresents the process and results of science, and distorts the scientific record.

What, though, of the thousands of young children who may visit the museum....Are they not intellectually injured when they enter a hightech museum with an air of authority that claims, nonsensically, that according to scientific evidence the Grand Canyon was created by biblical flood?

Krauss' complaint is that the Creation Museum is misrepresenting science. It is a scientific fraud. Also the money behind the museum is "buying reality".

Does the Creation Museum worry you? Is it a harmless expression of religious freedom? Will you be paying it a visit?

[Confused]

Lawrence Kraus writes in this weeks New Scientist about the new Creation Museum which has recently opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. The article is titled "Museum of misinformation". Kraus is calling for the museum to be condemned and shunned.

The Creation Museum is designed to suggest that science demonstrates the viability of a literal interpretation of Genesis. It argues that scientific evidence supports a six-day creation of the Earth, a 6000-year old universe, and a world where dinosaurs and humans happily roamed together.

In doing so the museum repeatedly misrepresents the process and results of science, and distorts the scientific record.

What, though, of the thousands of young children who may visit the museum....Are they not intellectually injured when they enter a hightech museum with an air of authority that claims, nonsensically, that according to scientific evidence the Grand Canyon was created by biblical flood?

Krauss' complaint is that the Creation Museum is misrepresenting science. It is a scientific fraud. Also the money behind the museum is "buying reality".

Does the Creation Museum worry you? Is it a harmless expression of religious freedom? Will you be paying it a visit?

I have mixed reactions to this. On the one side, I am usually not in favor of censorship. So long as it is a private institution, funded by private investors, then I see no issue with its existence. However, I do see an issue with it being presented as scientific. I am unsure what all is included in the museum, but presenting a false picture to children is counterproductive. That being said, it may stimulate some children to ask more questions as they note the inconsistencies between what may be presented in the museum to what they have already learned about in science. The problem comes in when it interferes with a childs education because they have been indoctrinated to such a degree by "bible camp, sermons, and now a museum, that they refuse to learn science at all because it goes against what they have been taught about God and His creation.

I don't think it is directly harmful, but I suspect (though I couldn't prove it) that it's intent isn't benign.

Will I visit? No. Advertisement ploys usually disgust me.

[Greatest I Am]

Believers as well as non believers must content with many false Gods.
The merits if any of this one will be measured the same way
as all the others.

To those who recognize the value and intent of the Bible should have no problem combining the beliefs of creationists with the views of science and Darwinists.

There is no conflict when one recognizes the archetypal nature of Genesis.

Regards
DL

[melikio]

To those who recognize the value and intent of the Bible should have no problem combining the beliefs of creationists with the views of science and Darwinists.

Valid point.

But we already know that people assign various ranges of validity to things-biblical, and those people are likely to aproach the science very differently.

So, I agree, but it's likely that some people will go to the museum with the purpose of challenging anything they can get their mind wrapped around.

-Mel-

[Jose]

There is no conflict when one recognizes the archetypal nature of Genesis.

Alas, the AiG museum does not recognize this. Nor do many of my neighbors. They adhere religiously to a strict vision of Genesis from which one may not waver. Here, putting a Darwin-fish on your car is considered a hate crime.

Indeed, the museum will do damage. Unfortunately, greater damage is actually done in the name of teaching science in the schools. I have spent the last couple of years studying this carefully, only to conclude that the way science is taught is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike science itself. It actually prepares kids to go to the AiG museum and think that their alternative reality is just as valid as real science.

[Cathar1950]

There is no conflict when one recognizes the archetypal nature of Genesis.

Alas, the AiG museum does not recognize this. Nor do many of my neighbors. They adhere religiously to a strict vision of Genesis from which one may not waver. Here, putting a Darwin-fish on your car is considered a hate crime.

Indeed, the museum will do damage. Unfortunately, greater damage is actually done in the name of teaching science in the schools. I have spent the last couple of years studying this carefully, only to conclude that the way science is taught is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike science itself. It actually prepares kids to go to the AiG museum and think that their alternative reality is just as valid as real science.

Well that stinks Jose.
Sometimes I wonder if it is science we tech in our schools or technology.
The ideas seem more akin to magic then science.

[Jose]

Sometimes I wonder if it is science we tech in our schools or technology.
The ideas seem more akin to magic then science.

Actually, we mostly teach about science and technology, generally omitting what they actually are. It's pretty clear how it came about...to be on the faculty of a School of Education, one must have a degree in Education. People with degrees in the actual disciplines are only eligible for jobs in the disciplines themselves. Therefore, we've had over half a century of science teachers and science education faculty working on how to teach science--but with no input from scientists.

It's like the development of the Penitentes. When the Spanish priests were called back after introducing Christianity to Mexico and what is now Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, the people were left on their own. They remembered some of what they'd been told, but their traditions veered off over the years. When they were "rediscovered," the Pope excommunicated all of New Mexico because their version of Christian worship had become so bizarre. There are still active Penitente churches in the Southwest.

Where I come from (science), we understand that scientific knowledge is tentative because it's all interpretations of data. New data may come along and force us to change our interpretations. This is the Nature of Science.

In our School of Education, they use a textbook for their Elementary Science Methods course to teach teachers how to teach science. This book has a discussion about The Nature of Science. The person who teaches the course has told me that most scientists don't even know what the Nature of Science is.

The textbook presents it this way: take a fragment of a fossil. Make sure you know nothing about this fossil. If you do know something, then choose another. Now, draw a picture of the rest of the organism, and describe where it lived and how it got its food. See? This proves that scientific knowledge is tentative because scientists are biased. They make things up, just as you did in this "scientific" fossil study.

The textbook never mentions data.

In the education literature, the first paper telling us to teach the Nature of Science (because teachers and students don't understand it) was written in 1907. We have fully a century of studies that show that elementary teachers, at least, and students in general, don't understand the Nature of Science. The same study has been done for roughly a century, with the same results. People don't understand what science is.

Wouldn't you think that by now we'd know the answer, and think it might be a good idea to change the way we teach? Instead, we're doing the same thing, and repeating the same study to show that what we're doing doesn't work. It's not going to get better as long as the textbooks used to teach teachers how to teach present science as "stuff scientists make up."

[Furrowed Brow]

The textbook presents it this way: take a fragment of a fossil. Make sure you know nothing about this fossil. If you do know something, then choose another. Now, draw a picture of the rest of the organism, and describe where it lived and how it got its food. See? This proves that scientific knowledge is tentative because scientists are biased. They make things up, just as you did in this "scientific" fossil study.

That sounds like a text book with an agenda. If my boy had come home from school with a paragraph like that in it I'd have been down the school. But I think (hope) the UK is different from the US. However state schools part funded by evangelical millionaires have now got a foothold over hear. Reports are these schools play down evolution and talk up creationism. There are growing voices to get ID into the science class.

Why don't the a bunch of top scientists get together and produce there own book for the kids "What science is - by scientists".

[micatala]

Sometimes I wonder if it is science we tech in our schools or technology.
The ideas seem more akin to magic then science.

Actually, we mostly teach about science and technology, generally omitting what they actually are. It's pretty clear how it came about...to be on the faculty of a School of Education, one must have a degree in Education. People with degrees in the actual disciplines are only eligible for jobs in the disciplines themselves. Therefore, we've had over half a century of science teachers and science education faculty working on how to teach science--but with no input from scientists.

It's like the development of the Penitentes. When the Spanish priests were called back after introducing Christianity to Mexico and what is now Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, the people were left on their own. They remembered some of what they'd been told, but their traditions veered off over the years. When they were "rediscovered," the Pope excommunicated all of New Mexico because their version of Christian worship had become so bizarre. There are still active Penitente churches in the Southwest.

Where I come from (science), we understand that scientific knowledge is tentative because it's all interpretations of data. New data may come along and force us to change our interpretations. This is the Nature of Science.

In our School of Education, they use a textbook for their Elementary Science Methods course to teach teachers how to teach science. This book has a discussion about The Nature of Science. The person who teaches the course has told me that most scientists don't even know what the Nature of Science is.

The textbook presents it this way: take a fragment of a fossil. Make sure you know nothing about this fossil. If you do know something, then choose another. Now, draw a picture of the rest of the organism, and describe where it lived and how it got its food. See? This proves that scientific knowledge is tentative because scientists are biased. They make things up, just as you did in this "scientific" fossil study.

The textbook never mentions data.

In the education literature, the first paper telling us to teach the Nature of Science (because teachers and students don't understand it) was written in 1907. We have fully a century of studies that show that elementary teachers, at least, and students in general, don't understand the Nature of Science. The same study has been done for roughly a century, with the same results. People don't understand what science is.

Wouldn't you think that by now we'd know the answer, and think it might be a good idea to change the way we teach? Instead, we're doing the same thing, and repeating the same study to show that what we're doing doesn't work. It's not going to get better as long as the textbooks used to teach teachers how to teach present science as "stuff scientists make up."

Your analysis is both insightful and sobering. Yes, we do need to do a much better job of teaching science (including mathematics). We teach the subject as if it is only a body of knowledge without considering that it is also a process of discovering or creating knowledge.

I would suggest one possible tactic is to have a 'comparative discussion' of how knowledge is discovered or created in different fields, with an emphasis on the idea that nearly all the knowledge we have is tentative to some extent and why that is the case.

Most people would accept that even when a conviction is obtained, the knowledge we have of the crime and the activities of the criminal(s) and others is usually incomplete and often in error in some respects. We accept that in difficult cases, a different jury could reach a different decision given the same facts. We have some understanding of why this happens. We may have different views of the 'rules of evidence' and whether they are appropriate or not, but we in general understand what the rules of evidence are and we can learn to appreciate why they are the way they are. Most people accept that the criminal justice system works reasonably well in most cases, despite its limitations including the presence of human error.

Can't we help people understand that the situation in science is similar in many ways? Why do many people look with so much more disdain on science than other areas of inquiry, despite science arguably being orders of magnitude more accurate and successful than these other areas?

[Jose]

Thank you, Furrowed Brow and micatala. Alas, it's not a textbook with an agenda. It's from the most respected person in the field, known as "Mr. Nature of Science." Scientists don't see it as being very helpful, but Educators seem to be quite sold on it.

I've had the dubious pleasure of examining elementary science education closely over the last couple of years. Teaching by "inquiry" is now the trend--have the kids do an experiment/investigation, and then summarize it. One of the best inquiry curricula is the Full Option Science System, which is a set of kits that school systems purchase. In almost no instance do the kids collect data; if they do collect data, they don't do anything with it. The teacher tells them what it showed--even if it doesn't show that at all. It's quite astonishing. The National Science Foundation funded its creation...but it wasn't created by scientists. A recent study compared it to standard textbook curricula, and found that it was no better at helping students learn.

Look around on the web for Lesson Plans. There are lots of 'em, some from well-respected sources. You'll find things like making a list of similarities between hummingbirds and helicopters...but with nothing that follows making the list. You'll find a nice little experiment in which kids tie different-sized rocks to parachutes, determine that the heavier rocks come down more quickly, and thus prove that heavy things fall faster than light things--quite the opposite of what Galileo found. There's a huge amount of stuff that's just plain weird, and little that isn't.

Why don't scientists get together and do something about it? Interesting question. One reason is that universities don't give credit for teaching; K-12 stuff is for the K-12 experts in the School of Education. Another is that scientists have no credibility--after all, we've just shown with our fossil-fragment activity that scientists make stuff up. I spent the last year trying to get a Science Education Institute off the ground for the Provost...only to have every move blocked by the Associate Dean of the School of Education.

You're right, micatala, that a discussion of what science is, and how knowledge is obtained, would (and does) do the trick. But it's complicated. The Ed folks are the ones who teach the teachers and run the Professional Development programs. They sometimes ask science faculty to come lecture about a topic--which reinforces the current misconception that the reason students learn science so poorly is that the teachers don't know the "facts." I'm now convinced this is not the explanation. A few other scientists who have worked with teachers have come to the same conclusion. But it goes against tradition, and tradition is very strong. It's especially strong if the guys who challenge it are the ones "who make things up."

[Malig]

While the museum itself may be misleading, it is best that students are presented with all the information needed to make their own decision on what <i>they</i> believe in, as well as seeing how such information was obtained. My high school (fortunately) teaches the theory of evolution, with the caveat that one does not necessarily HAVE to believe in it, but to be aware of its origins/beliefs and what exactly it states.

From experience I have seen that the science curriculum (specifically in biology) is lacking for that very reason: students simply view the information as needing to be memorized, then forgot about, without understanding how it was obtained or what it actually means to science in general. My class has performed countless experiments that seemingly have no meaning, and only explain a minute part of the overall concept of science; which detergent soap is the most effective at killing bacteria, etc.

With that being said, science is definitely two different things from an educator's perspective and from a scientist's perspective. An educator tells kids that this, this, and this are "known to be true" and that they should memorize it. Scientists actually see why something works, they know the concepts behind what they work with (the human body, for example) so that one can achieve a better understanding instead of just memorizing individually useless facts.

I see a Creationist Museum acting much the same way. It will most likely not entertain both sides of the argument (evolution and creationism), and can give children a false sense of what is fact, what is still unknown, and what is based off a religious belief. There is no room for the children to make their own decision on what they believe in, which really goes against a big part of science to begin with: making conjectures and judgments based on a growing source of knowledge, and constantly challenging what one knows in order to discover more. Saying the universe started 6000 years ago, and that there is simply no other way for it to be, is not challenging any child to find new answers or make their own decisions.

And no, I would only pay a visit to that museum for entertainment value.