Natural Sciences Knowledge Questions - scope, methods and tools, perspective and ethics
Natural Sciences overview from the ToK guide, first exams 2022
Top Scientific Breakthroughs and emerging trends for 2023.
Adam Frank. Science's Journey from Data to Truth, 11 Dec 2017. NPR Cosmos and Culture.
Tania Lombrozo. Does Science Require Faith? 23 Sept 2013. NPR Cosmos and Culture.
Fong, Benjamin. "Psilocybin Legislation is helping psychedelic drugs make a comeback" The Conversation. 2 Aug 2024.
Brown, Julia. "Editing fetal genomes is on the Horizon." The Conversation. 16 August 2024.
The Greatest Scientific Discoveries of all Time
Biology is a Spectrum. Dan Samorodnitsky. Massive Science. 20 Nov. 2021.
Trump News Conference 2020 - light, injection, minute 26, minute 34, minute 49
"A Tranformative Treatment." Use of CRISPR. The Atlantic Daily. Online. 28 November 2023.
A Tiny Particle's Wobble Could Upend the Known Laws of Physics, NYTimes, 9 April 2021.
Paradigm Shifts, Scientific Revolution and How you See the world. Renaissance Man Journal, Feb 2022.
The MRR vaccine and autism: sensation, refutation, retraction and fraud
Disney's Welcome to Earth with Will Smith
The Strange and Secret Ways that Animals Perceive the World - 6 June 2022. Elizabeth Kolbert
Things we Believed Before the Scientific Method. Stuff You Should Know podcast. 7 Nov 2023. 49 minutes.
David Epstein Knows Something About Almost Everything. Freakonomics.
Rebuilding Trust after a Pandemic that put Science Under Scrutiny. Colorado Matters, 17 October 2022. 10 min listen.
10 People Who Helped Shape Science in 2020. Nature.com. 14 Dec 2020.
Copernicus by Paul Tran
Padlet - exploration of key ideas
Karl Popper - science and pseudo-science (crash course philosophy)
Science Friday Podcast - 15 Jan 2022. The Debate over how the Universe began.
Thomas Kuhn's cycle - paradigms and criticisms
Scientific Explanations - a good scientific explanation uses observations and measurements to explain something we see in the natural world. It should allow us to make testable predictions that we can check using future experiments. They should match the evidence and be logical. Example: 'Why is the sky blue?' It's all about light scattering. We receive white light from the sun, and that light fills the earth's atmosphere. Most of the light that passes overhead keeps going and doesn't reach our eyes at all. But some of it is scattered by the air molecules and bounces into our eyes. Blue light scatters more than any other color, so the sky appears blue to us. (Woods, David. Study.com)
The Science of Everything podcast
2 minute audio on a cure for Hiccups, Morning Edition, 24 Feb 2023.
Archaeological Discoveries are happening faster than ever before. The Conversation.com, 23 December 2019. (paradigm shifts in humanity's past)
"Two Totally Opposite Ways to Save the Planet". Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics. 22 August 2018. Online. accessed 1 October 2018.
Paris Agreement, UN,
News Flash: Science has always been political, American Scientist, 2017
The 7 Biggest problems facing science, according to 270 scientists, Vox, 2016
Why do science issues seem to divide us along party lines? The Conversation, 2016
Politics, science and the suppression of research, Psychological Science Agenda, 2013 - APA
Five Cases of Political Threats Against Scientific Integrity, Brennan Center for Justice, 2019
Scientific Controversies as Proxy Politics, Issues in Science and Technology Winter 2017
For Renaissance Italians, combating black plague was as much about politics as it was science, Stanford News, 2020.
Fivethirtyeight article on everyone knows money influences politics except for scientists - assumptions and justification
A fact is an indisputable observation of a natural or social phenomenon. We can see it directly and show it to others.
A hypothesis is an idea that we can test with further observations. We set out to gather evidence to see if our hypothesis is supported.
A theory is a carefully constructed possible explanation for what we observe, drawing together many facts and hypotheses. Theories become stronger as they explain more facts. If a theory explains facts conclusively, it becomes accepted as the most likely explanation for the observed facts. ( Angielczyk, Kenneth. 16 Feb 2016. Field Museum.org. accessed 16 Sept 2021. https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/what-do-we-mean-facts)