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Critical Thinking in Science Fairs

billzbub

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Hello everyone. I have a daughter in 9th grade, and she's a critical thinker. We've spoken about skepticism and critical thinking often. She has the opportunity to do a science project/experiment in the near future, and we've been discussing how helpful it would be to the advancement of skeptical thinking amongst high school students to debunk some of the woo circulating in the world today.

The project is to do an experiment using the scientific method. She's learned about double-blind studies and experimental biases in her psychology class and wants to put her new knowledge to good use.

Two of the general areas of woo we've discussed as possible topics are the accuracy of astrology and the effectiveness of prayer. We're looking for ways we can test these things without doing crazy amounts of work or involving tons of other people, and we're looking for other general topics to consider as well.

I've heard that the new president of the JREF is leading the organization into the classroom with various lessons that improve critical thinking. Is there also a list or discussion of science project topics that would also further this goal?

Thanks,

Billzbub
 
Well, there are a lot of experiments that could be designed that are rather complicated and some that involve number-crunching. I've got an idea that is fairly simple but involves a little number-crunching.

Find an astrology book (or magazine) in the local library. Try to find one that REALLY makes it sound like there's some science behind Astrology, and see whether it lists the qualities or personality traits of people of each star sign. For example, the author might say that Leos are thrifty, inventive and yearn to travel, while Libras are meticulous, forgiving, and have trouble with their weight.

Identify the sets of qualities for each star sign (hopefully no two star signs will share any of the same traits). Have a computer present all of the sets of traits (without saying what star sign each set relates to) on a display screen. Invite a number of users (visitors to the science fair) each to enter her/his birth date (which will give you the user's star sign) and to select the set of qualities that the user identifies as being closest to his/her own personality. Mark each user's hand with an indelible marker so that no one can vote twice.

If there really is a correlation between star sign and personality traits, a few hundred entries will so indicate. If the whole thing is bunk, there will be no obvious patterns, with about one out of twelve users on average selecting the set of traits that correspond to his/her own star sign.

Doing a thorough analysis of the results would require some college-level math skills, but it is possible to present a running total (updated after every twenty users, for example--can you think of a reason why you might not want to do it after EVERY user?) showing how many correct guesses were made. In other words, the computer could display a graph that showed how many people picked the personality traits for a Taurus, and how many of them really are Taurus. Better still, you can prepare a 12-by-12 grid that shows what star sign people actually are and what star sign's traits they think they have. If astrology is bunk, chances are that the numbers will be spread all over, with some grid squares having some impressive numbers and some grid squares being small or empty. What result would you expect if astrology had some validity?
 
Following up on my previous post, WHAT'S WRONG with this experiment?

Actually, there are quite a few things wrong with it, but these things can be acknowledged as part of the experiment.

For example, the consulted source, from which you derive your personality traits for each star sign, does not speak for all astrologers. Astrologers do not agree among themselves as to what traits go with what star sign, and some even say that the whole star sign business is worthless (if you want to know what the stars say about you, you need to cast a chart, not consult a list of star signs, they say).

Also, what is to stop your users, who are your sources of data, from consulting with one another, perhaps to skew your results? Nothing, really.

There are a couple of other weaknesses, too, making this test questionable as a university thesis... but for a grade-school science project, it might not be too bad.
 
billzbub said:
Hello everyone. I have a daughter in 9th grade, and she's a critical thinker. We've spoken about skepticism and critical thinking often. She has the opportunity to do a science project/experiment in the near future, and we've been discussing how helpful it would be to the advancement of skeptical thinking amongst high school students to debunk some of the woo circulating in the world today.

The project is to do an experiment using the scientific method. She's learned about double-blind studies and experimental biases in her psychology class and wants to put her new knowledge to good use.

Two of the general areas of woo we've discussed as possible topics are the accuracy of astrology and the effectiveness of prayer. We're looking for ways we can test these things without doing crazy amounts of work or involving tons of other people, and we're looking for other general topics to consider as well.

I've heard that the new president of the JREF is leading the organization into the classroom with various lessons that improve critical thinking. Is there also a list or discussion of science project topics that would also further this goal?

Thanks,

Billzbub
Click to expand...
Hello, Billzbub, welcome to the forum. Science fairs have been discussed before, here in the Education sub-forum and in the Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology sub-forum. Here are links to some of the threads:
If you want to look for more links, just do a search of the forum (using the google search is better because you can enclose science fair in quotes).

Good luck to your daughter in her science fair endeavor.
 
Thanks, FattyCatty. I feel embarrassed that I didn't just search for them myself. The homeopathy experiement is pretty interesting, and the Power Balance idea is too (though it would be expensive).

I'm suprised there is not already an edited list somewhere of skeptical/critical thinking science fair topics kids can use to learn about and demonstrate how to tell the woo from the true. DJ Groethe mentioned on an interview somewhere (probably an SGU episode) that the JREF was working on a classroom experiment involving ESP for this very purpose. A great companion to such lessons would be a list of science project topics kids could investigate.

Thanks again for pointing me to those posts.
 
billzbub said:
Thanks, FattyCatty. I feel embarrassed that I didn't just search for them myself. The homeopathy experiement is pretty interesting, and the Power Balance idea is too (though it would be expensive).

I'm suprised there is not already an edited list somewhere of skeptical/critical thinking science fair topics kids can use to learn about and demonstrate how to tell the woo from the true. DJ Groethe mentioned on an interview somewhere (probably an SGU episode) that the JREF was working on a classroom experiment involving ESP for this very purpose. A great companion to such lessons would be a list of science project topics kids could investigate.

Thanks again for pointing me to those posts.
Click to expand...
You're welcome. And you idea for an edited list as highlighted above sounds good. Maybe you should send the idea to JREF. I think education@randi.org would get it to them. I like your phrase "tell the woo from the true." :)
 
If you go the JREF website at http://web.randi.org/educational-modules.html they have a few education modules that have some ideas and advice for setting up tests of the paranormal.

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for something more from JREF. Those 4 modules are the product of the past 5-6 years of commitment to bring educational resources to the classroom. And the ESP module is almost the same as the “Test Your ESP Potential” booklet Randi published with CSICOP back in 1982.

I expect you will find better ideas on this forum or other skeptic websites.
 
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Thanks for the reply. I was just thinking about this again this morning, and here you are posting about it.

What the internet needs is a list of topics and brief abstracts of experiments that can be performed by high school kids so that when a high school kid types into google "What can I do for a science experiment", the list is in the results.

Here's an example (which I've been recently thinking about):

Hypothesis: Positive and negative thoughts can affect the rate at which an apple rots.

Without going into any details, the cool part would be that the student could poll his class before the experiment (I'd guess a quarter to half of the kids would say the hypothesis is true) and after the experiment to show his class that the point of science is to see if the things people want to believe are actually real.

I especially like this one because people don't usually have an emotional investment in the topic of mental energy's effect on apples, so dogma won't be as much of a barrier to learning about critical thinking in this case.

Anyway, the point is that we need a repository on the internet of experiment topics like this that can show what science is for while revealing how pseudoscience can be wrong.
 
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