Pseudoscience Project: Instructions for Teachers

Day 1: A video or audio (Randi?) about psuedoscience.
Day 2: Introduction to different types of psuedoscience. Do not go into any for or against arguments at this point.
Possibilities:
-Atlantis and Lemuria
-channeling subtopics: The Entity Carlos (Australia 1986), Seth Speaks,
-shroud of Turin
-astrology
-Crystals
-telepathy
-pyradimology
-UFO's broken into subtopics: Rosewall, Alien abductions, Richard Shaver and alien languages, how to fake UFO photos,
-Creation "science" broken into subtopics: origin of man, Noah's ark, age of the Earth,
-homeopathy ("memory" of water molecules)
-Bermuda triangle
-seances
-spoon bending
-telepathy
-dousing
-clairvoyance, subtopics: -fortune telling, I Ching, tea leaves, chicken guts, -Nostradamus,
-"Earth rays"
-Elf-Aquitane scandal (petroleum reserves in the air)
-psychic surgery
-ghosts and poltergeists
-witchery
-levitation
-Lysenkoism (inheritance of phenotype)
-Qi ("energy field of the Universe")
-impotance "cures" subtopics: Asian rhino horns
-flat Earth
-hollow Earth
-earthquake prophecies
-monitoring plants emotional lives with lie detectors
-ape-men (i.e. Sasquatch)
-perpetual motion machines
-alchemy (conversion of base metals to gold)
-canals on Mars
-racial sciences subtopics:- phrenology,
-Shroud of Turin
-magical properties of ginseng
-magical properties of mandrake
-auras
-crop circles
-the "pyramids" of Mars
-the "face" of Mars at Cydonia
-reincarnation subtopics: Bridey Murphey case
-Great Pyramid dimensions (Charles Piazzi Smyth)
-magical cures (appendicitis by cold water enemas, gonorrhea by green light, etc...)

Give the students some time to think about about it and give them hints about how and where to look in the library and the Internet.

Day ~5: Hand out the Student Instruction sheet and explain the task. Students will be put into teams of three according to topic. This will be done on a first come/first served basis after school. A team of three will come up after school and request a particular topic. After a few days of this, the rest will be done by a sign up sheet passed around class.

Day ~8-25: Students will be able to collaborate on making a poster. The poster should include:
- a general description of the psuedoscience
- any real science done to examine the claims
- where it fits on the "Is it Science?" continuim

We will also at this time discuss the topic of what makes science science.
This will not only include a discussion of the scientific method, but also a discussion of Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit":

Baloney Detection Kit in Question Form"
1. Is there independent confirmation of the "facts"?
2. Is debate on the evidence encouraged?
3. Is it an argument from authority?
4. Does the method of examination allow for "multiple working hypotheses"?
5. Are the proponents of a particular hypothesis overly attached to it (eg. ego issues).
6. Is the explanation quantified?
7. Does every link in the chain of the argument make sense?
8. Does it conform to Occam's Razor?
9. Can the hypothesis be falsified?
10. Does it rely on carefully designed and controlled experimentation?
11. Does it rely on an ad hominem argument?
12. Does it rely on argument from adverse consequences?
13. Does it appeal to ignorance, i.e. whatever has not been proved false must be true or visa versa?
14. Does it rely on special pleading?
15. Does it beg the question (i.e. assume the answer).
16. Does it rely on observational selection?
17. Does it rely on statistics of small numbers?
18. Does it distort statistics?
19. Is it a non seqitor?
20. Is a case of post hox, ergo propter hoc?
21. Does it confuse correlation with causation?

The specific case will be examined in light of the "Baloney Detection Kit".

We will also spend some time examining how a typical scientific project is conducted, from the original working hypothesis, to the experimentation, to the exact method of publishing results in a journal.

Day 20-34: We will spend about two weeks for 10 minute presentations to the class. At this time, we will try and utilize as a class the "Baloney Detection Kit".