paleonet Using article on Dini to teach scientific method

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As I'm writing my next exam, I realize that I never responded to Jere's request that I let him know how my attempt at using the quote from the article on Professor Dini in my last exam. Let me start by explaining a little about this institution: IPFW is (almost) an open admission school. If they have a high school diploma, they can enroll. These are not the most well-prepared students. Many of the 300 students in the class had taken no science since junior high school (grade 8 or 9 of 12 in the USA, depending on the state).

In Geology 100 lecture, I explained that historical sciences like geology  uses a different definition of experiment than do sciences like chemistry or physics. In chemistry and physics, an experiment is a contrived situation. Still, it is not the experiment that is used for analyzing an hypothesis, but the results of the experiment. I mentioned that when the scientific method was invented, in the 1600's, the word "experiment" had a different meaning. At that time, it was roughly synonymous with "experience." (As an example, I refer to writings of the early Quakers, who referred to theirs as an "experimental" religion. They didn't worship using test tubes and beakers!)

I tell them that "repeatability" in the historical sciences refers to repeated observations from the natural world. It doesn't mean that we repeatedly make mountains, but that we observe the same things in different mountains. It doesn't mean that we repeatedly make stars, but that we can observe the same things in different stars. "Prediction" in historical sciences doesn't mean that we have to make a new mountain, but that we have to look for our expected results in the mountains that are already here. This is, I feel, rather simple and straightforward stuff.

In the exam, I asked them to critique a passage from the Townhall.com article (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/maggiegallagher/mg20030206.shtml). The question I wrote was:

>In a recent editorial, an author made the following statement:
>>  The authority of science, which is impressive, is based on its ability to build a consensus among
>>  the educated through a process of repeated (and repeatable) experiments* But any scientific
>>  theory of the origins of the species is necessarily not based on repeated and repeatable experiments
> The author then implies that such theories are not scientific. What error did the author make, and what is its correction?

I was hoping that the students would seize upon the use of the phrase "repeatability." About 20% did. The my disappointment, more answered that there must be some repeated and repeatable experiments, or it wouldn't be believed by science.

So I'd have to say that their answers to the question showed that I failed to teach them the meaning of "experiment" and "repeatability" as used in historical sciences. I'm not giving up, though!

Yours,

Raymond F. Gildner
Department of Geosciences
Indiana University-Purdue University Ft. Wayne
gildnerr@ipfw.edu