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One thing I always despise about science textbooks Is that they always state theories as facts rather than current theory. Biology textbook should’ve say “As o

One thing I always despise about science textbooks Is that they always state theories as facts rather than current theory. Biology textbook should’ve say “As of today we think that photosynthesis started at so and so date.” This would do more for science than anything else.

deleted 3y ago
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nerdponx 3y ago
This is a big issue with the "science says ..." attitude that some people have, particularly people who believe themselves to be clever but have no experience actually doing anything resembling science. I'm not just talking about the "trust the science" mantra that arose during Covid in response to politically-motivated conspiracy theories. That's one instance of a more general phenomenon. We of course don't really know anything that happened billions of years ago. We have some good ideas about it, and data consistent with those ideas, and a lack of data inconsistent with those ideas. That's all we have, and that's all we will ever have. The ideas and data might improve over time (as well as things like computational techniques for using the data), but until we can actually travel back in time we can't ever know anything beyond that.
kstrauser 3y ago
It would be better to teach readers that when scientists say a thing is so, it’s always prefaced with “to our current understanding…” That saves an enormous load of weasel words, while also helping people understand what science actually is. Edit: Your comment rubbed me the wrong way, and I think I know why. It presumes people are too dumb to learn how to read things, but they’re not. Fantasy novels don’t preface every sentence like “in this fictional universe, Frodo handed the ring to Samwise. And then, for pretend, let’s say they ate some breakfast.” Readers would loathe that. Yes, we know this is all made-up. It’s a fictional work. It’s implicit in the name. Well, science works are no different. “Science” implies “current understanding”. That’s fundamental to it. If we discover a better theory of something tomorrow, we’ll adopt future textbooks to describe that as our new model of that thing. You don’t need to weasel every sentence with “today, we think that…” because it’s implicit in the fact that it’s science writing, just like “it didn’t really happen” is implicit in fiction, and “as far as we know…” is implicit in a newspaper. Rather than “fix” those genres, we should educate people on how to read them.
- golergka 3y ago
  > It presumes people are too dumb to learn how to read things, but they’re not. Have you talked to average people, out of the HN bubble? They are often too dumb to read at all, period.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Miss me with that, dawg. We’re talking about people smart enough to be reading science content in the first place. Also, my dad was a mortician, and later an insurance salesman, and he’s perhaps the smartest person I’ve ever met. I promise you HN conversations are hardly the pinnacle of intelligent human discourse.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    People are objectively not “often” unable to read. Literacy is extremely high, almost universal, in modern developed nations
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  But then when scientist say "there is 99% chance that asteroid will hit", the other characters says "so there is some wiggle room, lets call it 60% and move on". Some people need to understand science is never exact. Like you are saying, they should understand it isn't exact. Then others are like, since it isn't exact, then it isn't real. I've heard arguments that since Climate Models have some range of error, then it isn't real, "see, there is some uncertainty". Climate change isn't real, because the models have some error. So for these people you need to be more forcefully confident in the predictions since they can't handle the nuance in discussing error ranges.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Alright, I see what you’re saying there, and agree with the premise. I think the right way to fix it is to tell people what science means, rather than re-write all science publications.
    - 3y ago
golergka 3y ago
Especially for history textbooks. Some of the facts we have tons of evidence for, but others might be known just from a single inscription on a stone somewhere, but both are presented in the same way.
trompetenaccoun 3y ago
I agree with your sentiment but the article is badly written and misleading. It's not really controversial that there was photosynthesis at the time, it's regarded as widely accepted fact among experts. Also even before the GOE, there was likely anoxygenic photosynthesis, which still exists today in some very primitive organisms. I'm not sure if there's fossil evidence for those going all the way back but to be honest some of that science is questionable to begin with. We're talking about extremely small particles they claim to identify as fossilized bacteria. There are stromatolite colonies that still exist today, in Australia for example. When students are taught about the history of earth, they're taught such cyanobacteria were among the first if not THE first to produce oxygen en masse through photosynthesis. This was never based on fossil finds but on other evidence. So the paper isn't anything groundbreaking, it's another piece in the puzzle if we accept their images show fossilized thylakoids.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nerdponx 3y ago

This is a big issue with the "science says ..." attitude that some people have, particularly people who believe themselves to be clever but have no experience actually doing anything resembling science. I'm not just talking about the "trust the science" mantra that arose during Covid in response to politically-motivated conspiracy theories. That's one instance of a more general phenomenon. We of course don't really know anything that happened billions of years ago. We have some good ideas about it, and data consistent with those ideas, and a lack of data inconsistent with those ideas. That's all we have, and that's all we will ever have. The ideas and data might improve over time (as well as things like computational techniques for using the data), but until we can actually travel back in time we can't ever know anything beyond that.

kstrauser 3y ago

It would be better to teach readers that when scientists say a thing is so, it’s always prefaced with “to our current understanding…” That saves an enormous load of weasel words, while also helping people understand what science actually is. Edit: Your comment rubbed me the wrong way, and I think I know why. It presumes people are too dumb to learn how to read things, but they’re not. Fantasy novels don’t preface every sentence like “in this fictional universe, Frodo handed the ring to Samwise. And then, for pretend, let’s say they ate some breakfast.” Readers would loathe that. Yes, we know this is all made-up. It’s a fictional work. It’s implicit in the name. Well, science works are no different. “Science” implies “current understanding”. That’s fundamental to it. If we discover a better theory of something tomorrow, we’ll adopt future textbooks to describe that as our new model of that thing. You don’t need to weasel every sentence with “today, we think that…” because it’s implicit in the fact that it’s science writing, just like “it didn’t really happen” is implicit in fiction, and “as far as we know…” is implicit in a newspaper. Rather than “fix” those genres, we should educate people on how to read them.

golergka 3y ago
> It presumes people are too dumb to learn how to read things, but they’re not. Have you talked to average people, out of the HN bubble? They are often too dumb to read at all, period.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Miss me with that, dawg. We’re talking about people smart enough to be reading science content in the first place. Also, my dad was a mortician, and later an insurance salesman, and he’s perhaps the smartest person I’ve ever met. I promise you HN conversations are hardly the pinnacle of intelligent human discourse.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  People are objectively not “often” unable to read. Literacy is extremely high, almost universal, in modern developed nations
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
But then when scientist say "there is 99% chance that asteroid will hit", the other characters says "so there is some wiggle room, lets call it 60% and move on". Some people need to understand science is never exact. Like you are saying, they should understand it isn't exact. Then others are like, since it isn't exact, then it isn't real. I've heard arguments that since Climate Models have some range of error, then it isn't real, "see, there is some uncertainty". Climate change isn't real, because the models have some error. So for these people you need to be more forcefully confident in the predictions since they can't handle the nuance in discussing error ranges.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Alright, I see what you’re saying there, and agree with the premise. I think the right way to fix it is to tell people what science means, rather than re-write all science publications.
  - 3y ago

golergka 3y ago

Especially for history textbooks. Some of the facts we have tons of evidence for, but others might be known just from a single inscription on a stone somewhere, but both are presented in the same way.

trompetenaccoun 3y ago

I agree with your sentiment but the article is badly written and misleading. It's not really controversial that there was photosynthesis at the time, it's regarded as widely accepted fact among experts. Also even before the GOE, there was likely anoxygenic photosynthesis, which still exists today in some very primitive organisms. I'm not sure if there's fossil evidence for those going all the way back but to be honest some of that science is questionable to begin with. We're talking about extremely small particles they claim to identify as fossilized bacteria. There are stromatolite colonies that still exist today, in Australia for example. When students are taught about the history of earth, they're taught such cyanobacteria were among the first if not THE first to produce oxygen en masse through photosynthesis. This was never based on fossil finds but on other evidence. So the paper isn't anything groundbreaking, it's another piece in the puzzle if we accept their images show fossilized thylakoids.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]