Hacker News Reader

Comment by toss1941 | Hacker News Reader

toss1941·

I remember my teachers in high school making such a big deal about the scientific method on how important it was, how experiments must be reproducible to be useful, but today you barely hear it mentioned one way or another.

View on HN

Wait, you're telling me that schools teach comforting lies about society that don't match how the real world actually works?

It's no more a "comforting lie" than your driving instructor telling you to check your blind spot. Not everyone does it, and bad things happen as a result, but all the more important to teach it.

I'm actually surprised to hear of high school teaching good scientific practice. I don't remember ever being taught that. Widely may it spread.

Hold on -- there's a category confusion here: "check your blindspots" isn't a comforting lie; it's a command. Converting it to "checking your blindspots will avoid collisions with careless drivers" would make it no longer a lie.

I was pointing out the category confusion. Science teachers don't purport to tell you what scientists actually do (history or sociology teachers might, I suppose, but they don't usually "make such a big deal" out of the scientific method). They purport to teach science.

As you say - it's not a comforting lie, it's a command.

The "comforting lie" I was referring to was "this is how scientists actually do it and why you can trust the results".

Erm, yes. We established that. And I assert that this is not what science teachers teach.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com