6 ms·

Because it's just not very important at that point. If you covered all the exceptions and special cases in biology, Bio 101 would never end. It'd be kind of lik

Because it's just not very important at that point. If you covered all the exceptions and special cases in biology, Bio 101 would never end. It'd be kind of like teaching string theory at the same time as F=M*A.

anigbrowl 11y ago
I strongly disagree. You don't have to go into detail about them, but knowing the fact of their existence is fundamental. If you think there are only 4 bases and then later find out that there are others, the first reaction t that is to feel short-changed about your previous education and stupid about all the new stuff you have to absorb. If you are told there's 4 bases that seem to deliver 99.9% of the action and another 20 or so which hardly get a look in, then you have a basic overview of the field. It'd be kind of like teaching string theory at the same time as F=MA.* So what? 'All matter is made up of very tiny things called atoms. There are 118 different types of atoms that that we know about, which have many interesting and surprising characteristics. Many atoms can be combined with each other to form molecules. All atoms seem to be made out of different combinations of subatomic particles, which are the very smallest things we have managed to measure, but which we only partially understand. Some scientists think subatomic particles are made out of even tinier structures called strings, but nobody has managed to prove that one way or the other.' You don't have to give a big long-winded explanation, but there's nothing wrong with sketching out in very general terms where the frontiers of our scientific knowledge lie. Likewise you don't have to teach small children comparative linguistics, but it's a good thing to make them aware early on that there are many different languages that originate in different countries. Not talking about the existence of things when trying to introduce a field really stifles curiosity, by obscuring the fact that that there are many interesting avenues of inquiry that have yet to be explored.
- ars 11y ago
  > If you are told there's 4 bases that seem to deliver 99.9% of the action and another 20 or so which hardly get a look in How many blood types are there? Most people will say 4 (or 3, or 2 depending on how you define it). But there are actually far more of them, but the rest are rare or less important.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    What point are you trying to make here? It costs very little effort to mention the existence of many more types, even while acknowledging that most of the time you're going to run across the most common four types. On the other hand, suggesting that only 4 types exist is wrong. Anyone who is interested in biology is likely to waste a certain amount of time constructing theories based on a completely false premise, which is discouraging. That may sound trivial, but go look at festering debates involving a lot of pseudoscience, eg on the environment or evolution. People trot out arguments based on false premises as a matter of course, and I think that a you-don't-need-to-know approach to teaching science is part of the problem, because you end up with a lot of people who don't know what they don't know.
    - ars 11y ago
      My point is just that there are huge number of biological corner cases that are skipped. It was just another example. > and I think that a you-don't-need-to-know approach to teaching science is part of the problem I agree actually, yet it's really hard to do for biology since it's not so much a science with axioms as archeology where you just look and see what there is. So there's no way to actually say one way or another "this is all the types". Maybe no animal like that has been found. Or maybe it could be done with another type, but no such animals exist - so do you say there is another type or not?
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        So maybe it's time to teach, at some point in the class, that all those classifications in biology and other sciences are more or less arbitrary? That they're just approximations created for practical reasons, often adapted on the fly to fit a problem? Understanding this single concept would kill a lot of pseudo-scientific debates and prevent people from developing wrong ways of thinking, up to such ridiculous cases as modeling animals with Object-Oriented Programming you get in Software Engineering classes.
- ibash 11y ago
  I strongly agree with you -- if you're learning on your own you often need to know that something exists (and usually need to know the term for it) to be able to lookup / research.
- dalke 11y ago
  You do realize that your summary is equally wrong, yes? There are indeed 118 recognized elements, but there are many more "types of atoms", only some of which are due to differences in proton count. There are also isotopes; tritium is a form type of hydrogen that is radioactive, and several times heavier than normal (1H) hydrogen. Then there are charged atoms, including more esoteric forms where an inner shell electrons are removed instead of an outer. And there are excited nuclei, like the metastable isotope technetium-99m. While chemically very similar to 99Tc, it emits gamma rays that make it a useful medical radiotracer. That is, atoms differ not only because of the 'different combinations of subatomic particles', but also because of the specific energy states involved. FWIW, there are the exotic atoms, like positronium (an electron-positron atom) and muonic atoms (where one of the electrons is replaced by a muon). These are still different combinations of subatomic particles. Also, "smallest things we have managed to measure" becomes a meaningless phrase. Under current physics, an electron has no radius. It's a point particle, and no one is talking about strings which are smaller than a point. Instead, string theory proposes that the zero-dimensional point should be replaced by a one-dimensional string, or higher-dimensional branes. These should count as being larger objects than the current model for how electrons work. We have oodles and boodles of frontiers to our scientific knowledge. No class can touch on every case. We have to give approximations and limited cases, as otherwise the result will be overwhelming. For example, in geography class we ask students to identify the US on a map. We usually mean the 48 continental states plus Hawaii and Alaska. But the US also includes Puerto Rico, Guam, and other territories, including Kingman Reef and Bajo Nuevo Bank. Teachers have to figure out if it's more important for students to know that only the US considers Bajo Nuevo Bank to be part of the US[1], or if the students should instead learn more details about DNA, or string theory. ([1] While it could be an interesting segue into the International Court of Justice, Guano Act, the War of the Pacific, phosphate strip mining of Nauru, the Haber-Bosch process, and gas warfare in WWI, these are students who can't yet identify the lower 48 on the world map!)
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    Yes, you should totally apply the standards for a textbook to an example of sketching scientific concepts that I composed in the space of 3 minutes. There's no middle ground between mentioning the most basic things and throwing in everything including the kitchen sink. I am a very bad person and I feel bad about it.
- Balgair 11y ago
  However, biology is chock full of exception cases. The 'Central Dogma' of DNA -> RNA -> Proteins is still largely true for most cases. However, we discover all the time exceptions to this rule. Same here for the different 'tags' you can give DNA bases. Yes, you can teach the undergrads this, but then you'd have to teach them all the edge cases and other tiny things we don't even really know exist but one study from 1987 in the GDR said that..... You get the idea. You only have so much time in the class and you have to hit all the big points of the field in an intro class like this hypothetical one. DNA tagging is not important if you are going to have to take time away from the different amino acids and what the importance of serine is for folding, or some other part of it. Saying that you can just explain away the other edge cases, a part of science that is still highly variable is just throwing away the pedagogy and hard earned years of teaching the instructor already possesses. Also, just getting those core concepts into the heads of most undergrads is tough enough already. Half of them don't come to class as is on a Friday afternoon, let alone the other classes they take and the lives they have to live. Depending on the class, many of them may not even be at all interested in the material as the class is just a GE or something. And don't get me started on pre-med majors.... At the end of the course, you want them to be able to just think that they can read an article like the OP and say to themselves: 'Yeah, ok, thats not what I learned in school, lets click on it.'
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    Saying that you can just explain away the other edge cases I am not saying that. I'm just suggesting that it would be a good thing to allude to the fact of their existence in order to provide a glimpse of the wider context in which the basic concepts are introduced.
    - ghshephard 11y ago
      Perhaps in an advanced biology course. But, given that you have limited time in class, and DNA is just one tiny, tiny component of a Bio 101 course, just getting across the concept of DNA, RNA, CGTA, Inheritance, and the implications to cell division is a victory. Trying to teach, "Hey, there are four bases, but no, not really, you can also have methylated cytosines, What is methylation you ask...." And then 25% of the class doesn't even grok the four bases concept because you got side tracked on a detail that is not relevant to baseline understanding. Admittedly, you can be too simple. When I took grade 11/12 chemistry in 1986/1987 in British Columbia, Canada - they did not teach chirality, and I didn't hear about it until watching an episode of Breaking Bad. So I see how one can feel cheated out of some pretty core concepts...
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > If you think there are only 4 bases and then later find out that there are others, the first reaction t that is to feel short-changed about your previous education That's exactly how I felt when reading that headline and it's why I posted my comment. > You don't have to give a big long-winded explanation, but there's nothing wrong with sketching out in very general terms where the frontiers of our scientific knowledge lie. Likewise you don't have to teach small children comparative linguistics, but it's a good thing to make them aware early on that there are many different languages that originate in different countries. Not talking about the existence of things when trying to introduce a field really stifles curiosity, by obscuring the fact that that there are many interesting avenues of inquiry that have yet to be explored. I strongly agree. Discovering exceptions to the rigid belief structures I was being taught in school (and honeslty, even at university) was one of the things that made me stop believing in formal education (and realizing some of the teachers have no fucking clue what they're talking about). Teaching is not about forcing kids to memorize a bunch of facts; it's about creating mental models. You can say that kids just need to get the basic structure of the field, but a good structure has attachment points to which one can add something in the future.
louthy 11y ago
> It'd be kind of like teaching string theory at the same time as F=M*A. Would it be such a bad thing? I remember reading Richard Feynman's QED and thinking to myself: "I wish science lessons at school had started with this".

anigbrowl 11y ago

I strongly disagree. You don't have to go into detail about them, but knowing the fact of their existence is fundamental. If you think there are only 4 bases and then later find out that there are others, the first reaction t that is to feel short-changed about your previous education and stupid about all the new stuff you have to absorb. If you are told there's 4 bases that seem to deliver 99.9% of the action and another 20 or so which hardly get a look in, then you have a basic overview of the field. It'd be kind of like teaching string theory at the same time as F=MA.* So what? 'All matter is made up of very tiny things called atoms. There are 118 different types of atoms that that we know about, which have many interesting and surprising characteristics. Many atoms can be combined with each other to form molecules. All atoms seem to be made out of different combinations of subatomic particles, which are the very smallest things we have managed to measure, but which we only partially understand. Some scientists think subatomic particles are made out of even tinier structures called strings, but nobody has managed to prove that one way or the other.' You don't have to give a big long-winded explanation, but there's nothing wrong with sketching out in very general terms where the frontiers of our scientific knowledge lie. Likewise you don't have to teach small children comparative linguistics, but it's a good thing to make them aware early on that there are many different languages that originate in different countries. Not talking about the existence of things when trying to introduce a field really stifles curiosity, by obscuring the fact that that there are many interesting avenues of inquiry that have yet to be explored.

ars 11y ago
> If you are told there's 4 bases that seem to deliver 99.9% of the action and another 20 or so which hardly get a look in How many blood types are there? Most people will say 4 (or 3, or 2 depending on how you define it). But there are actually far more of them, but the rest are rare or less important.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  What point are you trying to make here? It costs very little effort to mention the existence of many more types, even while acknowledging that most of the time you're going to run across the most common four types. On the other hand, suggesting that only 4 types exist is wrong. Anyone who is interested in biology is likely to waste a certain amount of time constructing theories based on a completely false premise, which is discouraging. That may sound trivial, but go look at festering debates involving a lot of pseudoscience, eg on the environment or evolution. People trot out arguments based on false premises as a matter of course, and I think that a you-don't-need-to-know approach to teaching science is part of the problem, because you end up with a lot of people who don't know what they don't know.
  - ars 11y ago
    My point is just that there are huge number of biological corner cases that are skipped. It was just another example. > and I think that a you-don't-need-to-know approach to teaching science is part of the problem I agree actually, yet it's really hard to do for biology since it's not so much a science with axioms as archeology where you just look and see what there is. So there's no way to actually say one way or another "this is all the types". Maybe no animal like that has been found. Or maybe it could be done with another type, but no such animals exist - so do you say there is another type or not?
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      So maybe it's time to teach, at some point in the class, that all those classifications in biology and other sciences are more or less arbitrary? That they're just approximations created for practical reasons, often adapted on the fly to fit a problem? Understanding this single concept would kill a lot of pseudo-scientific debates and prevent people from developing wrong ways of thinking, up to such ridiculous cases as modeling animals with Object-Oriented Programming you get in Software Engineering classes.
ibash 11y ago
I strongly agree with you -- if you're learning on your own you often need to know that something exists (and usually need to know the term for it) to be able to lookup / research.
dalke 11y ago
You do realize that your summary is equally wrong, yes? There are indeed 118 recognized elements, but there are many more "types of atoms", only some of which are due to differences in proton count. There are also isotopes; tritium is a form type of hydrogen that is radioactive, and several times heavier than normal (1H) hydrogen. Then there are charged atoms, including more esoteric forms where an inner shell electrons are removed instead of an outer. And there are excited nuclei, like the metastable isotope technetium-99m. While chemically very similar to 99Tc, it emits gamma rays that make it a useful medical radiotracer. That is, atoms differ not only because of the 'different combinations of subatomic particles', but also because of the specific energy states involved. FWIW, there are the exotic atoms, like positronium (an electron-positron atom) and muonic atoms (where one of the electrons is replaced by a muon). These are still different combinations of subatomic particles. Also, "smallest things we have managed to measure" becomes a meaningless phrase. Under current physics, an electron has no radius. It's a point particle, and no one is talking about strings which are smaller than a point. Instead, string theory proposes that the zero-dimensional point should be replaced by a one-dimensional string, or higher-dimensional branes. These should count as being larger objects than the current model for how electrons work. We have oodles and boodles of frontiers to our scientific knowledge. No class can touch on every case. We have to give approximations and limited cases, as otherwise the result will be overwhelming. For example, in geography class we ask students to identify the US on a map. We usually mean the 48 continental states plus Hawaii and Alaska. But the US also includes Puerto Rico, Guam, and other territories, including Kingman Reef and Bajo Nuevo Bank. Teachers have to figure out if it's more important for students to know that only the US considers Bajo Nuevo Bank to be part of the US[1], or if the students should instead learn more details about DNA, or string theory. ([1] While it could be an interesting segue into the International Court of Justice, Guano Act, the War of the Pacific, phosphate strip mining of Nauru, the Haber-Bosch process, and gas warfare in WWI, these are students who can't yet identify the lower 48 on the world map!)
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Yes, you should totally apply the standards for a textbook to an example of sketching scientific concepts that I composed in the space of 3 minutes. There's no middle ground between mentioning the most basic things and throwing in everything including the kitchen sink. I am a very bad person and I feel bad about it.
Balgair 11y ago
However, biology is chock full of exception cases. The 'Central Dogma' of DNA -> RNA -> Proteins is still largely true for most cases. However, we discover all the time exceptions to this rule. Same here for the different 'tags' you can give DNA bases. Yes, you can teach the undergrads this, but then you'd have to teach them all the edge cases and other tiny things we don't even really know exist but one study from 1987 in the GDR said that..... You get the idea. You only have so much time in the class and you have to hit all the big points of the field in an intro class like this hypothetical one. DNA tagging is not important if you are going to have to take time away from the different amino acids and what the importance of serine is for folding, or some other part of it. Saying that you can just explain away the other edge cases, a part of science that is still highly variable is just throwing away the pedagogy and hard earned years of teaching the instructor already possesses. Also, just getting those core concepts into the heads of most undergrads is tough enough already. Half of them don't come to class as is on a Friday afternoon, let alone the other classes they take and the lives they have to live. Depending on the class, many of them may not even be at all interested in the material as the class is just a GE or something. And don't get me started on pre-med majors.... At the end of the course, you want them to be able to just think that they can read an article like the OP and say to themselves: 'Yeah, ok, thats not what I learned in school, lets click on it.'
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Saying that you can just explain away the other edge cases I am not saying that. I'm just suggesting that it would be a good thing to allude to the fact of their existence in order to provide a glimpse of the wider context in which the basic concepts are introduced.
  - ghshephard 11y ago
    Perhaps in an advanced biology course. But, given that you have limited time in class, and DNA is just one tiny, tiny component of a Bio 101 course, just getting across the concept of DNA, RNA, CGTA, Inheritance, and the implications to cell division is a victory. Trying to teach, "Hey, there are four bases, but no, not really, you can also have methylated cytosines, What is methylation you ask...." And then 25% of the class doesn't even grok the four bases concept because you got side tracked on a detail that is not relevant to baseline understanding. Admittedly, you can be too simple. When I took grade 11/12 chemistry in 1986/1987 in British Columbia, Canada - they did not teach chirality, and I didn't hear about it until watching an episode of Breaking Bad. So I see how one can feel cheated out of some pretty core concepts...
TeMPOraL 11y ago
> If you think there are only 4 bases and then later find out that there are others, the first reaction t that is to feel short-changed about your previous education That's exactly how I felt when reading that headline and it's why I posted my comment. > You don't have to give a big long-winded explanation, but there's nothing wrong with sketching out in very general terms where the frontiers of our scientific knowledge lie. Likewise you don't have to teach small children comparative linguistics, but it's a good thing to make them aware early on that there are many different languages that originate in different countries. Not talking about the existence of things when trying to introduce a field really stifles curiosity, by obscuring the fact that that there are many interesting avenues of inquiry that have yet to be explored. I strongly agree. Discovering exceptions to the rigid belief structures I was being taught in school (and honeslty, even at university) was one of the things that made me stop believing in formal education (and realizing some of the teachers have no fucking clue what they're talking about). Teaching is not about forcing kids to memorize a bunch of facts; it's about creating mental models. You can say that kids just need to get the basic structure of the field, but a good structure has attachment points to which one can add something in the future.

louthy 11y ago

> It'd be kind of like teaching string theory at the same time as F=M*A. Would it be such a bad thing? I remember reading Richard Feynman's QED and thinking to myself: "I wish science lessons at school had started with this".