Doing Science

Click here for a clear, easy to understand explanation of the steps of the Scientific Method as they relate to research, problem solving, decision making, and critical thinking skills.

This flash video explains the scientific method, using clips from Monty Python’s Holy Grail movie↓:
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This flash video explains how we acquire scientific knowledge and how ideas go from a hunch in a laboratory to accepted theories taught in school↓:
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This flash video takes a look at the pitfalls of arguing against science from incomprehension or emotion ↓:
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My Digital Dropbox for Documents:
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About This Site

This blog includes posts on wide-ranging topics of interest to me and/or my students, especially human rights, biology, education, and their history. The content, views, and opinions in this blog are mine and in no way reflect those of my employer(s).
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Top Posts
- What is the smallest seed in the world?
- April 19, 1895 (a Friday)
- May 25, 1769
- July 22, 1910 (a Friday)
- A Nation At Risk: This Time For Real
- June 11, 1963 (a Tuesday)
- December 30, 1818 (a Wednesday)
- The Top 25 Fallacies and Flaws of Creationism
- Human Anatomy & Physiology
- April 24, 1863 (a Friday)
Word of the Day
- ventose: Dictionary.com Word of the Day 27 May 2012
  ventose: given to empty talk; windy.
Diogenes of Sinope
Διογένης ὁ Σινωπεύς
(c. 412- c. 323 BCE),
Greek philosopher
My Favorite Quotations

[Diogenes of Sinope] lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went about, "I am looking for a [virtuous] man."
-- Teaching of Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412 – c. 323 BCE), Greek philosopher, from Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

Christianity... is the most avowedly materialist of all the great religions… Its own most central saying is: "The Word was made flesh," where the last term was, no doubt, chosen because of its specially materialistic associations. By the very nature of its central doctrine Christianity is committed to a belief in the ultimate significance of the historical process, and in the reality of matter and its place in the divine process.
-- William Temple (1881-1944), Archbishop of Canterbury, from Nature, Man and God (1934), p. 317

The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear [at an early stage] of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learnt especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this. The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no Church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as Atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955), from The World as I See It (1934), p. 21.

Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
-- Siddhārtha Gautama [The Buddha] (c. 563–483 BCE), from the Kalama Sutta

There is only one good, that is, knowledge, and only one evil, that is, ignorance.
-- Socrates (469–399 BCE), from Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.
-- Frederick Douglass (1818 - 1895), in a speech delivered at Canandaigua, New York on 4 August 1857, quoted in Two Speeches by Frederick Douglass (1857), p. 22

Remember, success is a journey, not a destination. Have faith in your ability. You will do just fine.
-- Bruce Lee (1940-1973), from Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living (2002) by Bruce Lee and John Little, p. 126.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-- George Santayana (1863-1952), from The Life of Reason, Vol I (1905-1906), Charles Scribner & Sons, p. 284

There is nothing which can better deserve [our] patronage, than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of publick happiness.
-- George Washington, in his address to Congress on 8 January 1790

Establish & improve the law for educating the common people...The tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests & nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to George Wythe dated 13 August 1786

Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially for the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.
-- John Adams, from Thoughts on Government, April, 1776

It is ironic that the United States should have been founded by intellectuals; for throughout most of our political history, the intellectual has been for the most part either an outsider, a servant, or a scapegoat.
-- Richard Hofstadter, from Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, pp. 145-146

Shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, dated 10 August 1787

If ever there can be a cause worthy to be upheld by all toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of Education.
-- Horace Mann (1796 - 1859), from Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), p. 7.

The all-important fact in the situation is this; any time the college professors of America get ready to take control of their own destinies, and of the intellectual life of their institutions, they can do it. There is not a college or university in the United States today which could resist the demands of its faculty a hundred percent organized and meaning business.
-- Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968), from The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education (1923), p. 458

I hope we shall... crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to George Logan dated 12 November 1816

Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness.
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), from Pascal's Pensees (1669)

It is, no doubt, a very laudable effort, in modern teaching, to render as much as possible of what the young are required to learn, easy and interesting to them. But when this principle is pushed to the length of not requiring them to learn anything but what has been made easy and interesting, one of the chief objects of education is sacrificed. I rejoice in the decline of the old brutal and tyrannical system of teaching, which however did succeed in enforcing habits of application; but the new, as it seems to me, is training up a race of men who will be incapable of anything which is disagreeable to them....A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can.
-- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), from the Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (1924), p. 37

How comes it that a cripple does not offend us, but that a fool does? Because a cripple recognizes that we walk straight, whereas a fool declares that it is we who are silly; if it were not so, we should feel pity and not anger.
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), from Pascal's Pensees (1669)

The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science.
-- Carl Sagan, from the Cosmos television series

The young specialist in English Lit ... lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. ... My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
-- Isaac Asimov, The Relativity of Wrong, Kensington Books, New York, 1996, p 226.

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.
-- Jacques Monod (1910-1979), from "On the molecular theory of evolution". In Problems of Scientific Revolution (ed. R. Harre). Oxford: Clarendon Press (1975) p. 12.

Can we reconcile the idea that copying errors are an essential prerequisite for evolution to occur, with the statement that natural selection favours high copying-fidelity?
-- Richard Dawkins, from The Selfish Gene (2006) Oxford Univ. Press, p. 17

Let me try to make crystal clear what is established beyond reasonable doubt, and what needs further study, about evolution. Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or to plain bigotry. By contrast, the mechanisms that bring evolution about certainly need study and clarification. There are no alternatives to evolution as history that can withstand critical examination. Yet we are constantly learning new and important facts about evolutionary mechanisms.
-- Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975), from "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution", The American Biology Teacher Vol.35, No. 3 (March 1973), pp. 125-129

... there are many reasons why you might not understand [an explanation of a scientific theory] ... Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you something, you just can't believe it. You can't accept it. You don't like it. A little screen comes down and you don't listen anymore. I'm going to describe to you how Nature is - and if you don't like it, that's going to get in the way of your understanding it. It's a problem that [scientists] have learned to deal with: They've learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don't like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense. [A scientific theory] describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is - absurd.
--Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), from QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Feynman 1985), pp. 9-10

Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behavior, the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex.
-- Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell R. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia, Pa: W.B. Saunders: 1948: 610-666.
Quote of the Day
- Napoleon Bonaparte
  "A throne is only a bench covered with velvet."
My Favorite Websites

A Walk through Time Imagine taking a one-mile walk where every step transports you a million years in time!

Alfred Russel Wallace Website, The
This website is intended to be an island of accurate information in the sea of misinformation about Wallace.

Anatomy Atlases A digital library of anatomy information.

AntiEvolution.org A website that provides concise and accurate information for those who wish to critically examine the anti-evolution movement.

Brain from Top to Bottom, The
This excellent website discusses the evolutionary layers of the human brain.

Brainmuseum.org A website devoted to the comparative anatomy of mammalian brains, including humans.

Charles Darwin's Beagle Diary The narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle between the years 1826 and 1836.

Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, The Only this site contains Darwin's complete publications, 20,000 private papers, the largest Darwin bibliography, manuscript catalog and hundreds of supplementary works: specimens, biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works, and much more.

Creation and Intelligent Design Watch

Darwin Correspondence Project, The
On this site you can read the full texts of more than 5000 of Darwin's letters, and find information on 10,000 more.

Decline in American Education This website critiques the use of Student Evaluation of Teachers (SET) data in colleges and universities.

Educational Games Play educational games about discoveries in medicine or physiology, courtesy of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Oslo, Norway.

eSkeletons Project, The A website devoted to the comparative anatomy of human and primate skeletons.

EvoS The evolutionary studies program at Binghamton University (SUNY).

Foundation for Critical Thinking, The
A website to promote essential change in education and society through the cultivation of fair-minded critical thinking - thinking predisposed toward intellectual empathy, humility, perseverance, integrity, and responsibility.

Geologic Time and the Fossil Record
How to tell time.

Grade Inflation at American Colleges and Universities Is it the effect of a vendor/consumer teaching philosophy in American higher education?

Gravity: A Theory in Crisis (?)
A satirical look at how evangelists might refute gravity with a new "Intelligent Falling" Theory.

Human Evolution: Interpreting Evidence Explores how scientists understand our evolutionary history by considering the facts and interpretations of the human fossil record.

Huxley File, The The letters and publications by, and historic commentary on, Thomas Henry Huxley, also known as "Darwin's bulldog".

James Randi Educational Foundation, The An educational resource on the paranormal, pseudoscientific, and the supernatural.

NCBI - Bookshelf A growing collection of biomedical books, free and full text.

National Center for Science Education, The Answers the question, "What, exactly, IS creationism?"

NEA Policy Statement on the Use of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education

Open Jurist Making the laws of the land accessible to the people of the land.

Selected Papers on Evolution

Skeptic's Dictionary, The: Evaluating Personal Experience From the website devoted to debunking claims of the supernatural, paranormal, and pseudoscientific comes an article pointing out the difference between data provided by anecdote and data from randomized, double-blind, controlled experiments.

Skeptoid Answers the question, "What is a Skeptic?"

Strange Science: The Rocky Road to Modern Paleontology and Biology
An award-winning website about the history of science, including evolutionary biology.

TalkOrigins Archive, The Exploring the creation/evolution controversy.

Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies, A
A collection of named fallacies, such as "ad hominem", and of fallacious arguments, that is, examples of reasoning that may commit one or more of the named fallacies, or are bad in some way yet to be classified.

Tree of Life Web Project Biologists from around the world provide information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their evolutionary history, and characteristics.

Understanding Evolution Your one-stop source for information on evolution.

Understanding Science How science really works.

Virtual Fossil Museum, The
An educational resource dedicated to fossils; high-quality pictures of fossils are presented that are organized by fossil sites and systematics.
Blogroll
- ALEC Exposed
- Austringer, The
- Beagle Project Blog, The
- Blog around the Clock, A
- Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
- Chinese Human Rights Defenders
- Cult News from Rick Ross
- Discovering Biology in a Digital World
- Dispatches from the Culture Wars
- Dispersal of Darwin, The
- Dui Hua Human Rights Journal
- Education Notes
- Evolution Blog
- Fill the Square
- Free Tibetan Heroes
- Freedom House
- Holysmoke.org
- Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China
- How the University Works
- In the Public Interest
- Inside Higher Ed
- John Hawks Anthropology Weblog
- Junct Rebellion
- Laelaps
- Loom, The
- Mario’s Entangled Bank
- Military-Industrial Complex, The
- Millard Fillmore's Bathtub
- National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)
- Neurotopia
- Not Exactly Rocket Science
- Panda’s Thumb, The
- Pharyngula
- Playing Chess with Pigeons
- Race to Nowhere – the movie
- Rationally Speaking
- Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières)
- Research Blogging
- Rheefirst!
- Sandwalk: Strolling with a Skeptical Biochemist
- Schools Matter
- Sensuous Curmudgeon, The
- Sex, Genes, and Evolution
- Students for a Free Tibet
- Susan Ohanian Speaks Out
- The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (Fair Test)
- This Week in Evolution
- Tibet Justice Center
- Translations from Ran Yunfei's Writings
- Why Evolution Is True
- Yong Zhao
- 中國維權律師關注組 China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group
My Professional Memberships
“I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field.”
-- Albert Einstein, charter member AFT Local 552 Princeton University, comments in 1938 on why he joined the union. In addition, he had also joined the American Association of University Professors in 1935.
My Publications

Understanding Human Anatomy through Evolution, 2nd ed. (pbk)
by Bruce D. Olsen

Understanding Biology through Evolution, 4th ed. (pbk)
by Bruce D. Olsen

Understanding Biology through Evolution, 4th ed. (e-Book)
by Bruce D. Olsen
Calendar
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