BAD SCIENCE

From Penn State University: http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/BadScience.html

Preamble
This page is maintained by Alistair B. Fraser in an attempt to sensitize teachers and students to examples of the bad science often taught in schools, universities, and offered in popular articles and even textbooks.

This site accepts no requests for reciprocal links, even if those requests come in the form of a supposed award. Editorial decisions will not b einfluenced by requests for such quid pro quo arrangements.

However, it will gladly link to other sites which explore the same pedagogical isues of bad science.

Here, I explain what I mean by bad science and provide pointers to specialized pages on bad science within various disciplines. In particular this page points to Bad Meteorology , a page also maintained by Alistair B. Fraser.

When I created this page, in January, 1995, I naïvely expected that other frustrated teachers would rush to build sites devoted to, say, Bad Archeology and Bad Biology. It has not happened. Apparently, most teachers believe everything they teach. Sigh, one is reminded of Lily Tomlin when she said , “No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.”

The Bad Science and Bad Meteorology pages have been cited by over 3000 other web pages, and in books, magazines, and on TV.

What is Bad Science?
(at least within the context of this page)
Bad Science abounds and comes in many guises. This page sets out to attack only one brand: well understood phenomena which are persistently presented incorrectly by teachers and writers, presumably because they either do not know any better or because they don't really care enough to get it correct. By publicizing examples of bad science, I hope to sensitize students, teachers and writers to the horrors of such glib explanations or representations.

OTHER PLACES TO FIND OUT ABOUT BAD SCIENCE

RECURRING SCIENCE MISCONCEPTIONS IN K-6 TEXTBOOKS William J. Beaty

"Biology books missing big picture, survey says" (July 5, 2000) CNN-FYI.com