Bad Science

Ideas for the first week of class: Teaching the nature of science (and evolution)

August 8, 2011

At the start of the school year, a lot of science classes start by trying to answer — what is science?  What is this endeavor and what makes it special?  One way to do that is by the dull-and-deadening pedantic introduction to the scientific method, emphasizing the formation of hypotheses and testing of those hypotheses [...]

Read the full article →

10 Pervasive Health Myths

July 28, 2011

This is a post that I’ve been meaning to write for a long time — and a guest blogger offered to write it instead so I happily agreed.  I originally was interested in writing this post from an article in the New York Times science section called Health “facts” you thought you knew published THREE [...]

Read the full article →

Is it close-minded to be skeptical?

June 11, 2010

Here is a nicely produced little video about how it’s not the skeptics who are close-minded, but often the people who believe pseudoscientific things who are guilty of being unable to consider new ideas.  The author of this video says he gets a lot of flak from people for not believing in, say, reincarnation, and [...]

Read the full article →

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

April 11, 2010

“Spook” is another one of science writer Mary Roach’s forays into the science of some weird topic (and not even her most recent, I’m just behind in my reading). Wonderfully researched, and with Ms. Roach’s typical biting humor and marvelous turns of phrase, it’s such a joy to read.  I still liked Stiff better (where [...]

Read the full article →

Can you be killed by a bullet falling from the sky?

December 29, 2009

A pertinent question to ask as we approach New Years’ Eve.  The answer is, as is so many things, “it’s complicated.”  According to the Straight Dope, the answer is “it depends.” When an object falls, there are two main forces on it — gravity, and air resistance.  Air resistance depends on how fast something is [...]

Read the full article →

BEST bad physics movie EVER. (Laughingly bad science in “The Core”)

June 6, 2009

I’ve had a set of “bad science movies” on my Netflix queue for a while, and every once in a while I dip into it.  Each time it feels a bit risky, like trying some weird new combination, like cherry dip on my mint chocolate chip ice cream cone.  Sometimes it’s OK.  Sometimes it’s not [...]

Read the full article →

Things to do in a microwave #4: Microwave a CD

January 11, 2009

OK, I wouldn’t let it run quite as long as these bored college students did, but it DOES look REALLY cool (and it’s a great use of those annoying AOL CD’s, or the romantic mixes that your old boyfriend made for you): And another really pretty one (gotta love the Darth Vader-esque breathing in the [...]

Read the full article →

Flirt harder. I’m a physicist

August 17, 2008

So, I’ve got this bumper sticker, which has sort of become my little badge of fame, “Flirt harder. I’m a physicist.” I love it — I’ve had motorists pull up beside me, motion to roll down my window, and yell “What kind of physicist?” I once saw the driver of the car behind me taking [...]

Read the full article →

The Make-Believe World of Real-World Physics (Eric Mazur)

July 26, 2008

[[AAPT Millikan Lecture: Eric Mazur]] Eric Mazur (Harvard) was awarded the Millikan prize this year, and this blog post is a detailed account of the marvelous keynote lecture he gave for the occasion. You can download the entire presentation on his website, and I recommend that you do so, because, well, it was marvelous! The [...]

Read the full article →

Is Pluto further away than the stars?

July 26, 2008

I’ve just posted a new episode of my Science Teaching Tips podcast — Which is Closest? Which is farthest away from the earth, the stars or Pluto? The answer may be obvious to you, but a lot of people get this wrong.  Here’s the task — arrange these in the order from closest to furthest [...]

Read the full article →

Crackpot science

July 12, 2008

There’s a delightful post on crackpot science (in particular crackpot physics) from Twisted Physics this week. For some reason, physics has more than its fair share of crackpots fringe scientists: those misunderstood tormented souls whose genius goes unnoticed by mainstream physicists… The receipt of any missive beginning, “EINSTIEN WAS WRONG AND MY THEORY PROVES IT!!!” [...]

Read the full article →

Give me Sharks or Give me Cigarettes

June 13, 2008

I just had to repost from the Deep Sea News blog, which points out an alarming 300% increase in the number of shark attacks in the last year in a particular town in Mexico: Aren’t statistics wonderful things? That’s why when you read something in the medical news about “50% fewer heart attacks” or some [...]

Read the full article →

Myth 6: Your tongue has a "taste map"

May 15, 2008

This myth appears in a bunch of textbooks, so it’s not surprising that it’s persisted. The myth is that we mostly taste sweetness, bitterness, saltiness, and sourness at different areas of the tongue. While it’s true that we do have different taste sensations on different areas of the tongue, the exact distribution of sensitivity depends [...]

Read the full article →

Myth 5: How do airplanes fly?

April 18, 2008

No, the myth isn’t that airplane fly at all — we know they do, but how do they do it? This is one that really bothered a bunch of us when we were in graduate school in physics. How does an airplane fly? I have a substantial investment in knowing that the physics of these [...]

Read the full article →

Myth 4: No two snowflakes are the same shape

April 12, 2008

Gosh, I’d like to believe this one, it’s just such a “cool” idea. One argument against this idea is that if you take thousands of pictures of snowflakes, it’s still not a very good statistical sample. Kenneth Fuller writes about this, and other modern myths taught as science. He hypothesized that this myth arose from [...]

Read the full article →

Myth 3: Does water swirl counter-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere?

April 6, 2008

The answer: yes and no. When applied to toilets and sinks, this is one of those “too good to be true” science factoids, I’m afraid. But it does apply in some situations. The myth goes that if you flush a toilet in Australia the water swirls down the drain the opposite way than in the [...]

Read the full article →

Private theories

February 14, 2008

I’ve posted a new episode of my Science Teaching Tips podcast: Private theories. TI Director Linda Shore was one of the people originally involved in the Private Universe video (from Annenburg Media), which showed surprisingly persistent misconceptions in students. In the famous opening scene, they interview students as they graduate from Harvard and ask them [...]

Read the full article →

Myth 2: Polar bear fur is fiber optic (NOT!)

September 16, 2007

There’s this myth floating around that polar bear fur is fiber optic. It’s not. It’s not it’s not it’s not. The myth goes like this… polar bears are white, but they have to keep warm in the winter. But white reflects light and heat, so how do they do it? By having fiber optic fur. [...]

Read the full article →

Myth 1: Is glass liquid?

September 7, 2007

Have you been told that glass is a liquid? I remember back in 10th grade and my teacher told me that old windows were thicker at the bottom than at the top, showing that glass flows, veeerrrry slowwwwly. While I was at the Exploratorium, this myth was debunked for me by my mentor Paul Doherty. [...]

Read the full article →

Creation Science Museum

June 1, 2007

Yikes!  A “Creation Science” museum just opened in Petersburg, Kentucky.  You can read the article about it in Salon, which I highly recommend.  It’s really a religious museum, which would be fine, but it posits itself as a science museum.  It claims that modern science isn’t to be trusted, and explains phenomena using the bible.  [...]

Read the full article →