I was wondering what peoples experiences were with ATM theories in astronomy, physics, or any of the other fields that have alternate theories that go against the dominant paradigm. It seems from my own experiences, and from talking to people, that perfectly plausible theories which have some level of evidence to back them up, are not even presented in class to students. Even if a professor was to bring it up and then dismantle it and show why it isn't what people are claiming, would be a great way to expose people to what else other people are working on and/or hypothesizing in the field? Most alternate theories aren't completely dismantled, they just boil down to "we need more evidence for that theory to be brought back to the table". If no one is taught to look outside the dominant paradigm, is this not a failing of the "educational" system?

Let me stop you right there for a second and state that based on the content of your Post #1--- and no other data whatever--- I will assume for the sake of discussion that you have taken undergraduate level astronomy courses. In a (U. S. of) American university. If I guessed wrong, please see the first sticky in my sig (at time of posting)! And then politely explain, perhaps by PM, what I got wrong.

OK, with these assumptions understood, let's continue...

One thing you rapidly learn the first time you teach an undergraduate course is how damnably tight the schedule is. You need to teach a bunch of specific topics because they are in the syllabus. And those topics are in the syllabus because topics in other courses for which the one you are teaching is listed as a prerequisite cannot be understood without prior exposure to the topics in your syllabus. If nothing and I mean nothing goes wrong (unexpectedly poor scores on one exam, one bad day on the part of the teacher, a critical mass of unexpectedly ill-prepared students) you might, if you are very lucky, have a few lectures to teach something beyond the syllabus. That's when things are most fun for the teacher! (Maybe not for the class.)

Yes.

But I fear you may be confusing scientific non-controversies with genuine scientific controversies. For example, teaching evolution in high schools is politically controversial, but the core tenets of evolutionary biology are among the best established items in the canon of science; evolution itself is absolutely not scientifically controversial.

So I would restate what you proposed like this:

• it would be extremely valuable for society if students were exposed to some genuine scientific controversies of the moment,
• if would be extremely valuable for society if students (present or future voters) were also exposed to some pseudoscience and learned some of the "telltales" distinguishing between pseudoscience and the real thing,
• it would be extremely valuable for society if students were taught to recognize signs of wikishilling, media manipulation, and other dirty tricks employed by pseudoscientists and many others with an agenda and a monomaniacal obsession with promoting that agenda to the exclusion of all other considerations.

Returning to the issue of time pressure:

I am fortunate in having been given the chance to participate in serious discussions of a major curricular reform (thanks to Doug Lind). You should have heard me (when I was a lowly graduate student and thus permitted a few indiscretions!) argue to The Powers that, far from listening to the state legislature, which was demanding that we turn out college graduates in less time, we should be extending the four-year baccalaureate to five-year baccalaureate precisely in order to dot the eyes and cross the tees. Since The Powers not inappropriately took a wider view my arguments didn't win any concessions.

All other things being equal, yes. But as The Powers know, all other things are most definitely not equal.

IMO, scholarship plays a surprisingly small role in determining policies in American post-secondary education, at all levels (from individual classes up through individual institutions to the state and national levels). To a great extent, the students and their parents are seen (with some justice) as consumers, to whose demands colleges and universities must respond attentively.

These are very complicated issues: almost the only thing everyone (teachers, students, administrators) seem to agree upon--- at least, in private--- is that the average student is getting much less than he/she could and should. Since teachers and administrators want to perform their educational mission well, this is frustrating. I hardly need explain why students often find "the system" frustrating, often for good reasons.

Maybe I don't understand what you mean by "alternate theories".

If it were really true that undergraduate astronomy students were coming away with the impression that, say, there is no valid scientific controversy over whether or not Dark Matter really exists, and if so, precisely what the heck it might be, that is a terribly misleading impression which I would want to see corrected. (I don't see much evidence that this is happening though; OTH I notice that popular TV programs like a recent episode of NOVA Science Now seem to do a fine job of explaining this particular current scientific controversy!)

If undergraduate astronomy students are coming away with the impression that there is really no valid scientific controversy over the core tenets of evolution or the HBBT, then good, because those impressions would be accurate (given the current state of scientific knowledge).

HTH

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Chris Hillman

Read these PF posts. Avoid Wikipedia--- except for these versions. Read this and this suggested sticky. When asked for advice, I always say: never take advice!

Can you name a few of these "plausible" theories that are not being presented?
Time is limited and time is money, especially with the obscene price of college tuition these days. There just is not time to present every little dead-end "plausible" theory lacking in evidence. Time must be spent on what is known to generally work.

Besides, BAUTForum's ATM forum is just the place for dismantling "plausible" but lacking theories!

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

Such as?

There was a book I read as a kid, about the activities of the Secret Service. It focused mainly on their role as agents of the Treasury Department, and had a lot to say about counterfeiting. According to this book, the Secret Service's recommended method for teaching bank tellers to recognize counterfeit money is to expose them constantly and exclusively to real money, in large quantities and in great detail. The theory being that by becoming thoroughly habituated to good money, they will be instantly aware of any bad money they encounter, without ever having to study the various specific methods or telltales of counterfeiting.

I think toothdust has a point though its hard to draw the line on what ATM theories should be "considered".

But i do think that phycists or any other scientists are humans after all. They suffer from the same prediliction to bias as anyone else.

An example of this i think is "determinism". Why do so many phycists still insist the universe is determinstic when qm theory, if complete, indicates otherwise? I think the reason is because it suits the purposes of science for there to be a deterministic universe. It's preferrable to them that we all believe that one day science will be able to predict everything about the universe. Science does not like having to admit: "we dont know and we cannot predict 100%".

Science needs to believe (whether its true or not) that there is a real objective universe out there with logical and predictable outcomes. I'm not criticising this bias as I understand its necessary in the FAPP vein.

I too find the question of OP too vague, and I'd like to third the request for examples. What is "some evidence"? Perfectly plausible to whom? Paradigm?

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

Example: (I don't want this to turn into a huge debate thread, please.)

The BBT theory and the Quasi Steady State Theory.

Now, I am not claiming to understand either of these theories in detail enough to come to a definite conclusion. I know, though, that there are a lot of problems with the big bang. I also know that there is a small, yet reputable (many people on here still support SST) niche of people who strongly support the SST. There is A LOT of information and evidence that could be used to support either theory, it just depends IMO on which perspective you are looking from.

Another example would be an exploded planet hypothesis. Keeping in mind my original point, instead of outright denying that it happened, it could be taught in the classroom as "...now here is an interesting one. Some people think that instead of the asteroid belt being an unformed planet, it is instead an exploded planet, and here is why people think this..." Its not that the theory is factually and outright wrong, its just that we don't see enough evidence to support it at this time.

So, the point I want to make is that I think the educational system has turned into a system of indoctrination, instead of education based on critical thinking. Just look at Chris Hillman's post about how there isn't even time to branch out on other subjects. Its just cover the material and repeat on the test.

If you shower kids with every known theory with half a toe based in reality - you'll be there for 20 years, and do zero education and 100% confusion.

Teach the best current understanding in any one area is all that can be expected given the time limits

I did Physics up to the age of 18. In that entire time, the bing bang probably got about 20 minutes of lesson time. Dilute it with (and I use this phrase without trying to be offensive) fringe theories that simply don't stand up to investigation - and you end up achieving nothing. That's not indoctrination - that's just teaching the 'top' stuff because there isn't time to cover everything. Teach scientific process, teach critical thinking, teach the leading theories, and then let them get on with it. Anything more than that will dilute the subject matter to a degree whereby it no longer hangs together coherantly.

Yeah - if someone's doing a course in astro-phsyics, then kick in all the fringe alternate hypothesis stuff that's out there. But in schools? It would be, imho, massively unconstructive.

(emphasis added)

I don't know what level of education you have, particularly in physics, astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology; nor do I know at which educational institutions you studied.

However, I would be very interested in asking questions about any clearly stated proposal you'd like to make (and defend) concerning an absence of (or too little) critical thinking in post-grad courses in physics (etc) at major universities anywhere in the world ... and the only reason I'd be reluctant to extend this to any (major) university course in physics beyond first year (undergrad/bachelor's) is a lack of sufficient familiarity in enough countries ...

In short, and at the risk of being too blunt, any astrophysics post-grad student who couldn't turn in a term paper utterly demolishing any current SST (if such a paper were set) should not be granted a degree. Ditto for 'exploding planet hypothesis' (except it may not be an astrophysics undergrad ...).

May I ask where you get these, ahem, frankly derogatory ideas from?

Are you assuming that students fully understand the dominant paradigm first? Because if they don't then that is indeed a 'failing' of the educational system. I think this needs to be addressed first.

There's a reason why the dominant paradigm is *dominant*. Once a student can understand that, he or she is able to understand why much of what is outside of the dominant paradigm is *outside* the dominant paradigm.

Humans are naturally inquisitive and contrarian. I'm pretty sure they don't need to be taught to look outside the dominant paradigm. But different humans choose to explore different options.

You seem to be implying that you yourself were "failed" in this regard by the educational system, yet here you are, happily looking outside the dominant paradigm.

You also seem to be concerned that there some bright new Einstein or Newton will never reveal to us the Next Stage of Physics, because his undergraduate astronomy teacher never bothered to tell him the world is full of alternative theories. But I doubt this is the case; anybody capable of discovering a New Physics would do so regardless of what they heard (or didn't hear) in a Second-Year Astronomy lecture.

I think Chris put it very well in post #2... I think most astronomy students would know about the SST and the BBT, and thus it might not be needed to be discussed in the classroom, also I'm not sure if your speaking from personal experience, but I know that when ever I've been in a "college level" astronomy class the professor's are careful to say that the "BBT is the best we have... but isn't completel, etc"

__________________
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
It is imperative in science to doubt.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
Common sense is not so common
~~~ Voltaire ~~~

I can't quite figure out how to do multiple quotes yet. Someone can enlighten me please?

I haven't had much institutional education on astronomy and physics. General physics, astro 101, Life in the universe class. But, I do a lot of reading on the subjects, and have a good friend who is working on his post grad in physics, who rightly puts me in my place often, which I like.

I agree that humans are naturally explorers of their surroundings. Look at where it has gotten us.

I am not worried that people aren't going to be exposed to alternate theories. You can't get away from them on the internet. I do admit that most of the time excitement gets you before you sit down and say ok what are there claims, evidence, accpetance, etc etc.

Neried-"Ditto for 'exploding planet hypothesis'". I know the current accepted theory on this, i wasn't saying lets teach it as fact, but teach that "it's a possibility". I do not think that teaching that planets 'could' explode is wrong. Just because we haven't observed it doesn't mean it could never happen. I keep reading that one of the main reasons the theory isn't accepted is that no one can agree on a mechanism. I think that is quite a limiting thought on the possibility of it.

Also, I do not think that general education should be astrife with alternate astronomy theories. Did I imply this? Anyways, this whole topic stemmed from my frustration with the way that the institutional system is as a whole. It can be a wonderful thing if the person is smart enough to sift through the BS and get down to what they really came there for, and at the same time it can be a huge creative/critical thinking block in almost any topic out there IMO. I'm sure most of you would somewhat agree with me on this. If I need to expand more on this topic, I would be more than willing to let anyone know why I think the (at least in the US) "educational" system is an utter failure as it is set up.

Multiple like this:

Or like this:

?

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Just #2

Use these two start and end codes to start and end a quote by someone if you want to use their name above the text of their quote, with their name in the same box as their quote:


[quote=Joe Smith]

Hi, I’m Joe Smith.

[/quote]



The end result should look like this:



Use these two start and end codes if you don’t want to use their name above the text of their quote:

[quote]

So, as I was saying...... blah, blah, blah......

[/quote]



The end result should look like this:

I really hope I'm misunderstanding this (I do that, sometimes), but what you seem to be saying here is, kids should be instructed about things that might be possible, but we cannot think of any possible way it could happen, while there is another, different, mainstream, theory that explains the observation very well. How would that help students?

In this particular case, any student aspiring to be an astrophysicist, who cannot conceive of the 'broken planet' idea by himself, is IMHO in the wrong study. Nereid already pointed out that being unable to dismiss that idea should disqualify them from finishing that education (although I have to confess I'm not qualified to assess the value of that remark, except on the quality of Nereids other posts).

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

I think it's a combination of misunderstanding and my own wording. I never mentioned kids. I am talking about university level courses here. I think this thread got off topic anyways. I was just curious to see what peoples experiences were with ATM ideas in the educational system.

I had a really bad astronomy instructor whom I think should not have been teaching that subject. She had not even heard of many alternate theories, and the ones she did was that she "heard it was wrong", end of story. I criticized her for blindly accepting something without having done any reading on it herself, to which she was quite offended, even though knowing both sides of a story seems to be one of the basic tenets of making an informed opinion on anything. Obviously this is not the case with every professor out there.

Just our of curiosity which university did you have that astronomy professor?
Also while you don't seem to be guilty of doing so, make sure that you don't jump to conclusion based upon nothing, but "personal experience". As with every profession there are "bad" professors, but I wouldn't say that's the norm.

__________________
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
It is imperative in science to doubt.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
Common sense is not so common
~~~ Voltaire ~~~

I think ATM theories should only be introduced in astronomy instruction as a tool to help teach about the process of science. But of course what constitutes ATM could be considered subjective. For example, MOND is being seriously evaluated in the research literature and IMO discussions of MOND should not be moved to the ATM section of BAUT. And MOND should be discussed in relevant astronomy courses - even though most astronomers prefer CDM models.

An ATM topic less well researched than MOND could be introduced simply to illustrate how astronomers distinguish ideas that have large amounts of supporting evidence vs. those that have very limited amounts of supporting evidence. Or to introduce theories that have larger scope vs. those that have a more limited scope.

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"The scientist who asks the right question reconnoiters a new patch of the unknown, and may, with luck, bring it within the constricted but expanding boundaries of the known."

~Timothy Ferris (The Red Limit) 1982

Should we be teaching the physiology of Elves in Biology?

It seems analogous imho.

I think it's pretty obvious that toothdust doesn't think that we "Should we be teaching the physiology of Elves in Biology?" So why the question? It comes across (at least to me) as rude...

__________________
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
It is imperative in science to doubt.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
Common sense is not so common
~~~ Voltaire ~~~

But why?

Suppose you are the person in charge of the astronomy curriculum at {insert name of educational institution here}. Suppose you have fully bought in to td's ATM idea. Now you have been asked to come up with a shortlist of acceptable ATM ideas to include.

How do you go about drawing up a long list? What criteria do you use to whittle it down to a short list? And how do you formulate your form letter, to be sent to all those who are proponents of ATM ideas which were not on either the long or short list*?

* IIRC, physics departments of major universities get sent, unsolicited, (ahem) profoundly paradigm-shattering ideas/papers/whatever about once a week. While not all of them have direct application to astronomy and astrophysics, even if only 10% did, right there you have ~100 'ATM' ideas that have been 'submitted' to 'the appropriate authorities' over the past couple of decades (and that's just one university!)

Ok... I'm a little confused, what are you asking "why" about?

__________________
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
It is imperative in science to doubt.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
Common sense is not so common
~~~ Voltaire ~~~

Why does it "come[] across (at least to me) as rude"?

I'm not even going to try to guess djellison's reasons for asking about "teaching the physiology of Elves in Biology", however I read it as an entirely reasonable question, based upon extrapolating the toothdust proposal:

In post #8 td introduced two examples, the Quasi Steady State Theory and "an exploded planet hypothesis". The former has many papers published on it, in relevant peer-reviewed journals, with many authors (in total); AFAIK the latter is the work of just one person and has no papers published*. Yet td presented them as if they were comparable, in terms of suitability for use in a classroom. Given such a choice, extrapolating a bit, and adding a bit of humour, why not "teach[] the physiology of Elves in Biology"?

At one more level of detail: if something like td's proposal were to be accepted, who gets to decide which ATM ideas to present? What criteria should be used? Can you write down criteria that would give QSSC (cosmology) and "an exploded planet hypothesis" a big tick but disallow "the physiology of Elves"? Don't you, yourself, personally, need to go study both the latter two, in detail, before you could fairly conclude one is potentially acceptable and the other not?

* there are other, even less charitable, comparisons that could be made about the two.

Not rude. It's a genuine question. He's proposing the teaching of theories for which there is no observational evidence in Astronomy classes. Why not the same for other subjects then? Creationism in Biology perhaps, but let's avoid a religious debate - how about something else which has no evidence...dragon anatomy? Anything you like - it's the principle of teaching the unproven that I object to, and am demonstrating with these examples.

Doug

Ok, while I don't agree with toothdust on this matter, it seemed to me that your comment was a way of saying "if you believe that, then why not this?". I originally took it as you exaggerating what toothdust said, but on second thought it appears that you may have been trying to point out a fallacy in his argument, so is that the correct "interpretation" of what you were saying?

__________________
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
It is imperative in science to doubt.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
Common sense is not so common
~~~ Voltaire ~~~

Not 'if you believe that, then why not this?'

but

'if you believe that should be taught, then why not this?'

Ok, I think I understand what your point was now... at first it sounded as if you were being "antagonistic"... my apologies for misreading your intent

__________________
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
It is imperative in science to doubt.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
Common sense is not so common
~~~ Voltaire ~~~