How to distinguish between science and pseudoscience?”Awareness” program for young children
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We are surrounded by conflicting information and exposed to grab our attention. Now, how do you differentiate between what is scientifically supported and what is not? We provide you with important keys that will help little ones complete this complex task.
Is this a scam? Could this news be true?Is a False news? We all want to know if what we read, watch, and hear has a scientific basis. How to distinguish between yes and no? In this regard, the Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training has launched an initiative «realize», Distinguishing Science from Pseudoscience.
Knowing yourself Here’s a teaching tip for teaching young children the difference between science and pseudoscience. In principle, it was developed in the context of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and lays a good foundation for cultivating children’s scientific values.
Scientists have discovered something. They are discoverers because they discover new worlds, amazing creatures, and surprising events that require explanation.
– Alonso Pena –
“Be aware”
This initiative is at least four goals:
- Know Origins, history, and advances related to vaccines.
- promote Values that encourage citizens to actively criticize pseudoscience.
- hold on tight The importance of science, its advancements and impact on today’s society.
- foment Development of critical thinking and the ability to evaluate and work with available information.
Science as we understand it today is a relatively recent development in terms of evolution. Like other wonders, it originated during the Renaissance. Furthermore, it was born from the hand of human vision. Doing science involves understanding the laws that govern the universe around us, including its matter, its living and inert existence, its elements, and how all of this can be harnessed to improve our lives, such as flight.
Science begets technology. Many of the most important inventions have their roots in basic science, which is devoted to understanding for the sake of understanding.
– Alonso Pena –
Science or pseudoscience?
We need more scientists to develop the various disciplines that serve us, because only they can deal with the major problems of various natures facing humanity. Especially in mental health, there’s addiction, dementia or anxiety and depression..
The difference between science and pseudoscience is that the former follows the scientific method. Now it’s worth asking: what does this method consist of? Well, in the scientific method, for something to be assumed to be true, it must be proven with data. Scientists are skeptics. If something is presented without data to support it, we will doubt what is taken for granted and true. We need evidence.
Science is a hands-off attitude towards emotions and feelings. You can investigate the origins of these emotions and the science will emerge, and there’s no need to analyze the tension you feel inside when your girl or boy kisses you.
– Alonso Pena –
scientific methods
People who do scientific research develop a critical sense of data because we tend to avoid admitting that something is true without first seeing the study, its findings, and its conclusions. The fact that this information came from important people and therefore we assume it to be true is a mistake known as “Argument with Verekundiam”, “Argument from authority” or “Magister Dixit ». For example:
“We need oxygen to survive because my teacher said so.” The fact that we need oxygen to survive is true, but not because our teachers said so, but because our bodies were designed to do so Operation: They require gas exchange to survive.
In this sense, it is worth remembering what are the various stages of the scientific method, which is a tool for the development of science. It enables researchers to get closer to what they want to study, preventing the beliefs and expectations they may have from influencing what they study.
Notice
Observation involves finding objects of interest to study. It’s interesting because we want to understand it, and to do that we have to have rigorous and detailed descriptions of what we observe. This way we can collect information that we will study later. For example, we may observe a person who is sad, has lost weight, is unwilling to get out of bed, and has a lack of interest in what is happening to him or her.
ask
Stating the problem means that, based on the data from the previous stage, we will formulate the problem we want to solve.. “Why is this person unable to establish habits?”, “Why does he no longer do activities that were previously pleasurable?” or why are you sad?
make assumptions
To hypothesize about something means to formulate a proposition that answers the question posed. Far from trying to treat our answers as correct, hypotheses simply lay them out on the table as possible explanations for later analysis. For example: “She is unable to establish a routine because she is depressed,” “She has stopped engaging in pleasurable activities because she has lost incidental behavioral reinforcement,” or “She is sad because her brain chemistry has changed.”
to experience
If the previous steps have gone well, this is a critical stage. The purpose of an experiment is to prove a hypothesis true or false. It involves studying the phenomenon, making comparisons, and seeing if the results conform to certain mathematical assumptions. In our example, the results of applying a questionnaire to a sample of depressed and non-depressed patients can be compared.
analyze
The data we got from the previous stage is the “raw data”. The data itself is often meaningless. In this sense, In order to understand them, they must be given value and foundation. Preparing charts, tables or calculations can be helpful in this regard.
get conclusion
Once we have all the information organized and clear, we can draw conclusions. Are our hypotheses based on the results right or wrong? because? What can we investigate based on our conclusions? Apart from, At this stage, we can develop a theory that explains the phenomenon under study.
As we have observed, Pseudoscience lacks scientific method How many tables, scientific data, and calculations have you seen that explain that the Earth is undoubtedly flat? realize Pseudoscience cannot help us at all: it misleads us, confuses us, and promotes depression and despair. Science is the study of life. join the army!
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