Elements of Reason & Intellectual Standards
http://www.criticalthinking.org/ctmodel/logic-model1.htm
Here's an article that gives specific examples about scientists being funded by big corporations. Does it undermine the science? Does it make the scientist's work suspect? What about when industry funds scientists to be spokespersons?
Food Industry Enlisted Academics in G.M.O. Lobbying War, Emails Show
By ERIC LIPTON
Both sides in a fight over genetically modified crops have relied on scientists to lend their authority, while providing financial support in return.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/us/food-industry-enlisted-academics-in-gmo-lobbying-war-emails-show.html?referrer=What questions do you have about critical thinking or how it relates to our philosophy of science course?
FYI: TMC's Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP)
http://www.thomasmore.edu/3d/components.cfm
In response to the critical thinking exercise we did in class. I think it is a great tool we can use to help us evaluate articles and other literature. Although at first the concept didn't make sense to me but now that we have applied to two articles it easier to understand the content of the article and organize the information within the article.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Lauren! Once we practiced and started becoming more aware of the critical thinking model, understanding the articles was a lot easier! Knowing the critical thinking model will help me with my other classes I am taking as well, especially art history!
DeleteI agree that critical thinking can be a great tool to help us determine the real meaning behind articles and even the literature that we are presently reading in class. I have used the critical thinking wheel in some of my previous courses and it has improved my reading comprehension skills immensely.
DeleteI had trouble understanding the concept of critical thinking when we first started talking about it and didn't know much about it either. it became a little more clear to me when we did two of the exercises in class and now i understand how helpful the concept can be. It is a great tool which helps us get the information we need out of a reading and also it helps us with understanding an article as well.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Mr. Pauly. The concept of critical thinking at first without much prior knowledge can be difficult to understand fully. With the work and exercises we have accomplished in class, it has helped myself greatly with gathering the key information in readings. Critical thinking when breaking down readings allows one to access pieces of info that we could not see before.
DeleteThe concept of critical thinking is a great tool to use in this class, along with other philosophy classes because it causes you to think more in depth about what we are reading and assessing. It addresses questions that you might not originally think of while reading, and then when you finish them all you typically understand the reading much better. I say that it is especially helpful in philosophy classes for me because sometimes when you first read the reading it doesn't make much sense but then after going back through to answer the questions that critical thinking addresses, you are then able to understand it, at least a little better. When we first started the article activities I found the concepts of critical thinking to be confusing, but after discussing it in class I have a better understanding.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the article about funding behind scientific research, I believe that donations made by corporations to scientific studies is a nice advantage for underprivileged scientists but it should only be offered to projects unrelated to the business of the donor corporation. I believe that this would make the results of scientific research more useful because in some cases when the corporation's profit is dependent on the results of a study, the corporation may be tempted to pressure the experimenter to falsify data to conserve their profits rather than report the true findings. This kind of influence may place pressure on the scientists and could also deter future scientists from performing studies for fear that their results will only be reported as the company funding their project sees fit. This is the same situation that was presented in the episode of Cosmos that we viewed in class. The petroleum companies funding the research behind the lead in petroleum threatened to cut off funds for Patterson's work when he discovered that lead was a dangerous neurotoxin causing lower IQ's in people that were exposed to it. Patterson reported his discoveries despite the threats of the petroleum companies and was pitted against other scientists that were bribed to disregard that Patterson's research was reliable. All of this conflict could have been avoided if the petroleum company was not authorized to fund the research. If research like this is kept hidden from the public, much more than the profits of companies will be lost.
ReplyDeleteBetter late response then never! I am going to respond to the critical thinking question. I have had to do the wheel for multiple other classes and have never really been a huge advocate for it. However, I believe it does help out a lot when trying to see the bigger picture. By applying the concepts on the Paul-Elder Model you can start to think on a deeper level about what you are reading. It is a great model to use in a philosophy class. The key of a philosophy class IMO (in my opinion) is to ask why and continue to probe why things happen. This model effectively helps you do that.
ReplyDeleteI have had to use the critical thinking well in my psychology class and it really helped me grasp the concepts of the different social psychology views. I personally think using the critical thinking wheel will help a lot because the content of this class is pretty upper level and requires deep thought about most concepts and this allows someone to truly break a concept down into pieces.
ReplyDeleteThe first time that I had heard the phrase "Critical thinking" is when I had to take a summer course my freshman year at the University of Toledo which was titled "Critical Thinking." At first I did not know what to expect from this class, are we going to be going through scenarios as a class and think of the best ways we could get throughout the problems or was it going to be a bunch of word problems. ANd it was a mix of both. My professor really challenged us on what we thought was really the right thing to do and to pay attention to every detail in our individual case studies and in our group case studies. I think that this class really helped me because it made me put things in my personal life into perspective, what should I do, why should I do and how will I do it. And critical thinking is a skill that is much needed in my major, business, because if you miss one little detail, it could cause your business or the business that you work for to suffer. In this class my critical thinking skills have been pushed to the limits due to my scarce knowledge in science. Which is a good thing because we should always be striving to gain knowledge. So critically thinking in this class does help me understand some the concepts easier because it allows me to break down everything and figure out what is going on.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete