I don't think we should speculate which method is 'most' effective. We should look at the problem analytically. It's clear all three have some value in this case.
I agree that these ones that are presented are not necessecarily exclusive. I think the ones that were left out were 'in-your-face' methods, debunking (as opposed to investigation) and so on.
Science education needs to look more at providing the skills for scientific reasoning and process. It is important to teach the basic knowledge in some science fields. It has been my observation, however, we are not doing enough to teach the scientific process to kids as it applies to everyday life.
I'm not entirely convinced that science education is as big a piece of the puzzle as is often proposed. I think we need to change the way science is taught, though. I would like to emphasize the 'wonder' elements, and that science is a profession of asking questions, rather than just doing calculations.
Magic is entertaining and attracts an audience. That is especially important for addressing adults who are no longer a captive audience in school. It also gives people the knowledge by demonstration they can be fooled. And it exposes some very specific practices such as astrology, talking to the dead, mind reading and so on which rely on some of the tricks used in magic to promote their scams.
I think this is true. However, the problem is that on an individual basis, if we want, say, highschool teachers to encourage skepticism, my concern is that we will end up with a bunch of cheesy amateur magicians. ie: as bad as I am.
The 'detective investigation' of any scam out there is important. Most of us don't have time to investigate every fraud out there so it is critical that someone does it for us. And the work they do is most welcome.
We have to be mindful that there's two actual functions here: investigation, which is a support role for the frontline - giving us more and more accurate information - versus debunking/exposing, which is a highly visible activity and operates on the frontline by being in the public eye. I'm of two minds about debunking/exposing.
Rather than speculate, we should be looking at the existing research regarding our methods of trying to increase critical thinking; we should be promoting research in effectively communicating, not just research in what we communicate; and we should be assessing how effective our current methods of communicating are, not just assuming we are doing all that is possible or needed.
I had this in mind when I wrote the post about allowing the IDers in a debate to control the question. One mistake I have observed the evolution debaters make was to think the facts and the an education on the scientific process just need to be explained. After all, ID cannot hold up to close scientific scrutiny. But the ID debaters have the Discovery Institute think tank and the Wedge Strategy behind them. Since they can't win the scientific debate, they didn't debate science. They debated fairness. They debated including alternative or competing theories in science education. Who can argue against that when we agree?
What the problem here was, in my observation, the science side never successfully changed the debate back to the lack of scientific evidence supporting ID. That doesn't mean the science side didn't present the argument ID isn't science, why it isn't, and the lack of evidence for it. What it means is they didn't often present their arguments as effectively as the IDers presented their shifting the question.
So was it because the audience didn't have the critical thinking skills to understand the science argument? Was it because the ID debaters were more skilled manipulators? Or was it because the science debaters focused on an esoteric argument about gods being outside of the realm of the scientific process, an argument over the heads of most of the non-scientific audience?
It was all of the above. The biggest error here was in assuming all one needs in a debate is to impart evidence supported knowledge. Education and persuasion science was not used by biologists or whoever was debating the evolution side. Education and persuasion science would take a scientific approach not just to evolution vs ID, but to analyzing the success of communicating the science. Education and persuasion science would analyze what was and was not successful communicating the science side to the target audience (the IDers and/or the undecideds). Because believe me, the ID side was most definitely looking at the education and persuasion science of their efforts to convince people of their beliefs. And so are many in the anti-science promoters elsewhere.
Right. What I'd like to learn from you about this is what you mean in your bolded paragraph above. Two questions:
1) is there any evidence that critical thinking education translates into real-world skepticism?
2) what do we know about the efficacy of teaching critical thinking?
re: question #2. What we do know, is that as people become more educated, they are more likely to believe in the paranormal. They also score higher on critical thinking indexes.
So a third contingent question follows: if there is no relationship between critical thinking skills and real-world skepticism, what
do we know about encouraging the latter?
This is why I established a different thread about looking for what we mean by 'more skepticism' and going forward to find or create data upon which we can build a strategy.
I should point out that this is basically a discussion about good old-fashioned Rhetoric.
