It boggles the mind to see this quote by Feynman when the entire premise of the article is that this is already how we teach science and it leads to a whole host of problems.
I read the article and disagree with its conclusions about science education. I think science education isn’t actually taught the way the article says it is. At least that’s not how I was taught it in good public schools until college, at which point it was taught the way Feynman says. If it actually was taught that way at earlier points, I think we’d be in a better place.
We teach a bizarro world version of feynman’s quote, where it’s more like the way we teach the formulas in math. It’s the right formula that they’re teaching, but the way it’s taught is encouraging its use as a black box.
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I read the article. It seems to be an argument that the problems with trust in science come from teaching a kind of logical empiricism, itself a straw man, and not what you’d come away with from listening to Feynman.
There is nothing in the article that supports this claim about the cause of the ‘problem’ or even a really usable understanding of what the problem is, other than that cigarette companies have been able to make people doubt things they shouldn’t have doubted, and that climate deniers and other kinds of ‘deniers’ are doing the same building on the work of the PR firms used by the cigarette companies.
The best I can read as what the problem is, is that we think that teaching people differently could make them immune to propaganda, and so the problem is that we aren’t teaching them differently. I think this is highly questionable.
It argues that we should instead teach science based on a feminist critique.
As far as I’m concerned the article is complete bullshit. It sets up a straw man, and then argues to a completely unsupported conclusion. It’s terrible.
Having said that here’s what it touches on that is useful:
Teaching scientific method alone as ‘science’ is outdated. Science is part of public discourse and so it is important for students to understand how science works as social, sociological, and political processes, as much as it is an epistemological method.
From this point of view, I respect the various ideas that they are advancing as valid for study. However ‘valid to study’ is very different from attempting to claim that science education should be based on this ideology, and is an obvious political land-grab which must be rejected.
The article makes a bunch of naked assertions as if they are simply facts about reality, when in fact they are very much the subject of social science itself.
Consider these statements:
> Believing based on trust is a pervasive human practice, not confined to scientific inquiry.
Seems true enough, right?
> It starts in infancy, when children learn language, everyday facts, and even religious beliefs from their caregivers.
Does it? This is definitely not settled science. Obviously children learn from caregivers, but what they trust is a deeper question, and a subject of study. Also, then sources are far wider than ‘care givers’.
This seems like an attempt to anchor the conversation in a blank slate kind of conception of the emergence of belief. This is discredited in social science, but is popular in the humanities.
> Trust is only as reliable as the source of the knowledge; when that source is unreliable, we sometimes regard beliefs based on trust as the product of indoctrination.
‘Sometimes’ being the operative word.
> Trust can be eroded when there is evidence of the unreliability of the source.
Yes, but research has shown that it can be strengthened when there is evidence of the unreliability of the source, too. It depends on other factors, such as who is providing the evidence. Again this statement is simply not objective or reflective of current social science.
> Reflective knowledge should therefore include some account of the reliability of the source of knowledge.
If you delete all of the preceding elements, and just say:
Reflective knowledge should include some account of the reliability of the source of knowledge.
We are left with a reasonable proposal.
Weirdly, one which is already common amongst science students, who don’t ignore the reliability of the results on which they base their work.
What part of what Feynman said do you disagree with?