(Don't) Respect my Authority | Jon Butterworth | Life & Physics

A venue, a role, an award, can lend authority. But it's only a loan.Next month there will be a TEDxCERN event. We'll also be linking to it with an event at UCL, and one of my colleagues is speaking about Planck data.Such events aren't without their critics. There are many excellent TED and TEDx talks out there, well delivered, well produced and applauded by well-heeled audiences. However, this in itself lends authority to the occasional fraudster or fruit-loop who may slip through. But... well, surely the point is to think, not to accept a thought because of the platform on which it has been presented. It's reasonable to expect those who control access to such platforms to exercise some editorial judgement. But it is unreasonable to expect them to be perfect, and it is always unwise to disengage your own critical faculties. For example: if you turn up to do an experiment in an undergraduate laboratory, you might expect the script that comes with the experiment to be accurate. It has a certain authority. However, when you do a real research experiment, to find out something no-one knew before, there is no script. So what do students learn from following scripts? Well, you can learn techniques. How to operate equipment, how to read off results, how to structure an experiment. But if in the process you also learn to blindly follow recipes, that is a big, unwelcome side-effect. One way around this is to plant surprises in the the scripts. They become unreliable guides, and you ha...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Blogposts UCL (University College London) guardian.co.uk Science and scepticism TED Physics MMR Source Type: news