In case some of you didn't see the Charlie Rose show on science last week, here it is. The panelists are: Paul Nurse, Lisa Randall, Harold Varmus, Shirley Ann Jackson, and Bruce Alberts. I had a chance to congratulate both Bruce Alberts and Harold Varmus today for their excellent comments. Harold Varmus says he's been on the show several times but I don't see the show very often. Could someone please let me know the next time Charlie Rose covers a science topic?
These guys make a lot of sense. They point out that science education is a mess and that includes science education in the colleges and universities. I particularly like this comment by Harold Varmus.
I do think there's a problem in making science appear frightening and linked to a laboratory activity. As comments you've already heard suggest, science really is a process. A process by which you have ideas, you test them out, you look at evidence, you measure things, and you draw conclusions. And that's a process that applies to almost any phase of life.Science is a process. It's a way of knowing. That's what we should be teaching.
Too many people think that science is all about doing laboratory exercises but that's actually a very poor way of teaching what science is all about. Just about anyone can be trained in the methodology of a given discipline—like biochemistry—but it takes a lot more work to teach students how to think like a scientist.
My department is currently considering a proposal to dumb down our introductory courses and reduce the numbers of lecture hours in our 3rd year courses. This would be accompanied by an expansion in the number of hours spent doing laboratory exercises. The idea is to prepare students for a career in research as though the way to become a good researcher is to learn how to pipette and not how to acquire fundamental knowledge and learn how to use it to think like a scientist.
10 comments :
Thanks Larry,
Being UK based, I rarely watch Charlie Rose.
Thanks a bunch though for the link to this particular show. Very interesting indeed.
You can see the entire Charlie Rose science series - 13 episodes SVP - here.
http://www.pfizer.com/think/cr_sciencelanding.jsp
Pfizer is the sponsor.
Back in my undergraduate days, I had one lower level chemistry lab, one upper level chemistry lab, and one upper level biology lab. That was it for labs. All the rest of the coursework was lectures by the professor and sections taught by the TAs. Didn't seem to limit my ability to understand what was happening on the bench. In fact, the lab tech in the first lab I worked in was amazed at how competent I was without having taken the biochemical techniques lab. But then, I am a nerd. :-)
I agree with the comment about science as process or mindset. You have to learn the facts to be able to make informed judgements, but just learning a bunch of facts doesn't make you a scientist.
The idea is to prepare students for a career in research as though the way to become a good researcher is to learn how to pipette and not how to acquire fundamental knowledge and learn how to use it to think like a scientist.
So you get the message: "We don't pay you to think! You're just test tube wielding grunts!"
Best not get paid at all, then you can tell them where to put their policies! (but I suppose you do anyway)
This was probably the only episode to recommend in the series. The others were pharma sales-driven and filled with politicized misinformation -- i.e. modern lifestyles as causing x,y,z.
Larry
Thanks for sticking to your views of not "dumbing down science". As a non-scientist, but fan of science, I appreciate not being talked down to and for being "expected" to think about the data. What I do need is continuing education in HOW TO THINK.
By the way, I took your advice and went to the Darwin exhibit at the ROM. Great show.
While I am not privy to the discussions in the biochemistry department, I find it curious that you would put forward the idea that lab courses are limited to teaching the methodology and technology of science, instead of teaching students to think about how to think scientifically. Actually, I find that a significant amount of effort and thinking is stimulated in students by lab courses. I do not believe that you believe lab courses to be of little utility. Rather, you think that the amount significance attached to lab courses should be related to the amount of fundamental science knowledge taught (or re-taught mainly) in lab courses. I do not necessarily disagree on this. However, thinking about science should not be divorced from knowing how to perform column chromatography, for instance, as they can reinforce each other. Also, I'm curious as to how you would justify how knowing about fundamental science translates directly to thinking about science. The lab course method is fairly obvious, as even Bruce Alberts (in the video) had a convoluted story about five year olds planting seeds and hence learning scientific logic. On the other hand, I'm not sure how the material produced by some professors, with the expectation of rote-memorisation, translates into thinking like a scientist.
Having talked to you before, the problem that you have with science education and what was discussed in the video seems to be with scientific literacy and perceived significance among the general population. This has a weak connection to your concern that the biochemistry department is gutting the undergraduate program.
I will somewhat echo dunbar's comment. In many ways, I think lab courses could be better than lectures for teaching students how to think like scientists.
Looking back at my undergrad days, ~ 30 years ago, I don't think either lecture or lab taught me to really understand the process of science. To be honest, I don't think I really began to learn that until I was a grad student, under the mentorship of my advisor and one of his post-docs. Being in the lab and actually trying to apply that process in real time was a big factor.
I think undergrad labs could do the same, if presented properly. If they're treated as exercises in learning a technique, they'll fail. But if they're presented as novel experiments on unknown questions, and students are shown how to think about the experimental approach, what hypothesis they're trying to test, what controls are needed, what they can actually conclude from the results, etc., I think it would be much more powerful than a lecture.
Getzal says,
I think undergrad labs could do the same, if presented properly. If they're treated as exercises in learning a technique, they'll fail. But if they're presented as novel experiments on unknown questions, and students are shown how to think about the experimental approach, what hypothesis they're trying to test, what controls are needed, what they can actually conclude from the results, etc., I think it would be much more powerful than a lecture.
Yes, I agree that such labs could be valuable learning experiences. But the real question is when are students ready for that experience? In order to make meaningful hypotheses, a student has to have a firm grasp of basic concepts and what is already known in the discipline.
In my experience, it takes a lot of lectures and learning before undergraduates can profit from investigations into the unknown. My experience is like yours, that doesn't really begin to happen until graduate school.
That's not to say that undergraduate lab courses are useless. Of course they're not useless if they are done properly. Doing them properly is the hard part.
Many of my colleagues think that lab exercises can be a big help understanding basic concepts in biochemistry. There are some clear examples of this synergy between lectures and labs, such as studying enzyme kinetics.
However, there are many more important concepts that just can't be illustrated in a laboratory setting. The importance of understanding real and standard Gibbs free energy change, for example. Understanding how enzyme pathways evolve is another concept that's hard to illustrate in a 4hr lab exercise.
The episode with James Watson and E.O. Wilson is quite good as well.
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