Scientific Thinking

Ethics is NOT:
* Your feelings
* Your religion
* Obeying the law
* Following cultural norms
* Science (can't prove or test ethics because it exists on a different level).

To reach ethical decisions you must:
* Recognize the ethical issue
* Get the relevant facts
* Evaluate alternative actions
* Make your decision and test it
* Reflect on the outcome of your actions

Approaches to ethics:
1) Utilitarian = greatest good for the greatest number of people.
2) Rights = Respect the moral and human rights for everyone. (but we don't have the right to do whatever we want, there are still some constrains)
3) Fairness/justice = Treat equals equally and unequals unequally.
4) Common good = community good is personal good or sacrifice personal desires and wishes for the sake of the community.
5) Virtue = Developing one's moral character (makes your feel that you're a more moral person because you've done what you've done).

Cause should proceed the effect. This supposed cause should be capable of proceeding the effect and there should be no other causes evident that might be more likely to produce the effect.

* It is important to remember that correlation is not causation.
Ex: Students in private schools get higher GPA than students in public schools.
-Conclusion: students in private schools get higher GPA so you should enroll them in private schools so that they could get into AUC.
- The correlation here is quiet clear, but is there a causation? or does enrollment in a private school and higher GPA both reflect some other underline self factor which is not immediately self evident?
- We can perhaps explain this correlation by saying that students in private schools come from wealthy families, have a higher standard of living, the family is involved in more educational activities, extra tutoring for children, and all this translates into higher GPA. It might not be that the private school cause the higher GPA.

Important examples that demonstrate cause and effect:
*Newton's cradle
*Ernet Rutherford and Radon gas

What is Science?
- How things work; environmental, physical, psychological study of general laws.
- How universe is formed.
- Systematic/ logical
- Process of finding out certain kinds of knowledge and these processes are applied to different parts of the universe around us to yield what is called different sciences; biology, physics, chemistry, geology, etc...
- All decisions are tentative and open to change.
- Science checklist

Is science a good thing?
- Basic knowledge/ Promote fairness.
- Understand universe/ New medical treatment.
- Weapons/ scams/ can be misused.
- Logical skills' decisions.

Importance of Scientific Thinking:
- Promotes curiosity and questioning.
- Helps us learn more about our interconnected world.
- Climate change illustrates interconnected science.
- Promotes higher level thinking skills.
- Aims to build our skills in thinking and reasoning about issues so that we can make decisions that aren't only based on choice.

All scientists have in common:
- Knowledge/ theory
- Curiosity
- Research (method)
- Think with purpose

Science is NOT a process that:
- answers all questions
- can ignore rules
- seeks the truth or is satisfied with facts
- attempts to prove things (because it is possible to prove a hypothesis to be false)
- could produce any kind of explanation (it has to fit the science checklist)
- provides certainties or absolute facts
- is totally objective
- is always properly used (you can use it to mislead people)
- in which the product (understanding) is based on faith or belief
- one solution is as good as another, or is simply a matter of opinion
- depends on just theories that are only "tentative ideas" or "hunches" (ideas have to be extensively tested or observed)

For example:
- Autism is a disorder that appears by age three and is characterized by impairment of the ability to form normal social relationships, inability to communicate with others, and stereotyped behavior patters.
- Until this very moment science cant understand what causes it and can't determine whether vaccines are the real cause or not.
- So, science is a tool or to be more precise, it's a process, involving a specific set of actions and contexts - a specific ground.
* This proves that science isn't a tool that can answer all questions.

- Testing things is an intuitive process. We use the science checklist to make sure that what we are RELIABLE.
- Science literate = knowing enough about science to be able to judge if the story you are being told is being told in a fair and accurate way.
- Non scientific thinkers hinders progress.
- For every claim you should be looking for a natural explanation for why this is happening.

. Empirical

something that can be accessed and known to the human senses.

. Quantitative/ Precise

can be expressed in numbers and can be used to make statements.

. Repeatable

If i develop a hypothesis and do an experiment to test the hypothesis, then any other scientist in the world should be able to do the same experiment and get the same result.

. Testable

Either by experiments of observations.

. Falsifiable (at least potentially)

There has to be a possibility for a right/wrong answer. However, it does not mean that everything in science has to be false, it means that every statement in science has the potential of being disproven.

. Without bias

We need to try to prevent our biases from entering into our science.

*An experimental procedure where both the research participants and those collecting the data are ignorant (blind) to the expected outcome of the experiment.
* We write down the procedure of the experiment from beginning to end.
* In a double-blind test, people don't know if they are in the experimental group or the control group. (If someone for example has a T-shirt that says "I'm in the control group, that means we probably don't have a double-blind testing and that's going to raise some problems as we try to establish cause and effect between the independent variable and the dependent variable.)

Confirmation bias = People have the tendency to seek, interpret, and remember information that confirms their preconception. A confirmation bias happens when people give more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis. Therefore, we must have double blind refereeing (communication with the scientific community to make sure that you are unbiased).

* We want to say that the independent variable caused the dependent variable to happen:
→ One cause producing any observable effect.
→ If we have multiple causes that might produce the effect, we have to control them and keep them from interfering in the experiment.

We use empirical evidence which have survived and which tell us something about the climates that existed at those time periods.

A proxy is a preserved physical characteristic of the past that stand in place of direct empirical evidence. (It is not a direct measurement, however it gives an indication to what things might have been).

Factors that potentially cause climate changes in the past:
1) Sun's output of energy
2) Changes in earth's orbit
3) Changing arrangements of land masses
4) Changing composition of the atmosphere

Typical Climate Proxies:
1) Leaf stomata (little, tiny opening in the leaf through which CO2 is observed and water vapor is given of).
2) Leaf margins'edges
3) Tree rings (when the rings grow close together, it indicates poor growing conditions for that kind of tree so this tells us something about what the climate must have been like)
4) Pollen (disposed in bugs or lakes)
5) Corals
6) Lake and ocean sediments
7) Isotopes and oxygen

Climate Models:
- A set of mathematical equations describing individual systems that contribute to the climate and how these systems interact.
- We test climate models by running the models with past data to see if they predict the present accurately
* Example: Caribou migration

- Requires a question or a problem to try to resolve. A hypothesis is then formed which eventually has to be tested; the testing is the key central element in scientific activity.
- We predict that certain observations will occur and we try to find out whether those predictions actually occur.
- Reaching a conclusion doesn't mean that you're done because the conclusion will certainly raise new questions in your mind or the minds of other scientists, and they will return to the problem to try to find answers to their questions and so on...

*Scientific Idea + Expectations + Observations = Scientific Argument
* Expected = Actual → Lends support (confirmation)
* Expected ≠ Actual → Helps refute (falsification)

Role of Experiment:
1) It allows the observation of new facts
2) It determines whether a working hypothesis fits the world of observable facts. (test our hypothesis)

Confirmation is weaker than falsification:
- Falsification, in principle, means that if your observations do not match our expectations, you should take the hypothesis and either revise it, make a new one, or completely throw it away. (In any case we no longer have any use for the hypothesis in it's original form). → It's been shown not to work which is much more stronger than confirmation.

Science requires risky predictions:
This means that the predictions should be logically possible for something else to happen.

The logic of experiments:
- We start with a hypothesis
- We make some predictions
- We make observations/tests
- We compare the observations with the predictions
- If they are not consistent, the predictions are falsified and we need to modify the hypothesis
- If the predictions come true, then we have confirmation

Theory is a statement that explains what's happening in the natural world (hypothesis can be in the form of a theory because science is all about creating theories and explanations.

If I want to test a hypothesis:
- On the basis of the hypothesis, I predict if I change something in my experimental situation, that change will cause something else to happen (some kind of observable change) → I have a cause and effect → The cause is the independent variable and the effect/result is the dependent variable.

Experimental Variables:
* 1) Independent Variable
* 2) Dependent Variable
* 3) Control Group

1) Change is directly under the control of the experimenter.
* I got to change something/ that change should cause another change to happen if my hypothesis is correct.

2) Change I'm trying to cause depends on what I've done/ depends on the independent variable/ will not happen unless the independent variable cause it to happen.
* The observation we hoped to create based on the prediction we made.

Example:
- Hypothesis: eating chocolate covered peanuts causes students to learn better.
* I will define it in this context to mean: better able to memorize a list of random telephone numbers and then be tested on those numbers.
- I will divide students into two groups: one group will take chocolate covered peanuts and the other will take a placebo.
Prediction: Test group with chocolate covered peanuts will perform better.
Independent Variable: Give test group chocolate covered peanuts/ Give others a placebo.
Dependent Variable: Compare test scores (I don't determine them).
* Give the exam twice and see the difference.
* Comparison usually requires us of two groups (Intervention group/ Control group).
* Necessity for controls

Logical fallacies are logical mistakes or errors. Some example may be mentioned here:

* Ad hominem = You should not attack the person's character but the argument itself.
* Part to whole = when you argue because the part has certain characteristics; therefore, the whole must also have those characteristics.
* Post hoc ergo propter hoc = You should no assume that because A occurred before B, then A caused B to occur, having the cause and effect mixed up.
* Hasty generalizations = you should not use a small number to represent the whole.
* Non-sequitor = You should no assume that "this" follows "that" even when there is no logical connection.
* Begging the question = You should not argue your position by assuming one of it's premises is true.
*Bandwagon fallacy = You should not claim that because a premise is popular; therefore, it must be true.
* Circular reasoning = When you prove something as a case by assuming that it is already the cast to start with.

If a scientist is capable of avoiding these fallacies then he is a skeptical scientist who:
* Holds observations above theory
* Doesn't break the rules of logic and reason
* Answers questions
* Is helpful and polite
* Can explain what would falsify their theory
* Adjust their theory to fit the facts

On the other hand, an unskeptical scientist would:
* Use circular reasoning
* Use argument from ignorance
* Use adhomienem attacks
* Hide or lose their data
* Adjust the data to fit the theory
* Won't debate or answer questions
* Bullies and threatens