Diary of a Science Ineffectual 2

Dear Diary,

When I was a girl, it was rumoured that some girls’ schools offered Botany rather than Biology at ‘O’ Level because the curriculum for the latter involved aspects of human biology, including reproduction. My school was less dedicated to the cause of turning out Science Ineffectuals so we were allowed to study biology but not Grapes of Wrath: Hamlet, Othello and King Lear with their assorted deaths and mutilations were fine but the brief scene in which Rose of Sharon breastfeeds the ailing stranger after the death of her baby was Going Too Far even for a literary classic.

Even those who didn’t take ‘O’ Level Biology endured three years of biology classes in which we sieved soil, heated it in a soil oven, calculated the percentage of humous and water, germinated seeds, grew plants and learned about tropisms. Possibly entertaining the fond thought that they were training a new generation of girls for the Land Army, teachers drilled us in the nutritional value of plants and how they are digested by various livestock. We learned enough about basal metabolic rates that even a twelve-year old could fathom that a pig would need to snack on more than an acorn to get it through the day.

You’d have needed to Rip Van Winkle your way through an extraordinary number of lessons to end up with as little knowledge of plants, photosynthesis and the nutritional density of seeds as Gillian McKeith (as Ben Goldacre lays out in some detail in Bad Science but you can get a flavour of it in his Guardian feature: Ms Gillian McKeith Banned from Calling Herself a Doctor).

However, the story of photosynthesis was held up as an illustration of how science advances when you put together pieces of information from people who have made important observations, or interesting suggestions, even if they offer an explanation that is wrong (with the benefit of hindsight and other advances).

Some biology teachers tell their pupils about the philosophers and scientists that have contributed to the present understanding of photosynthesis.^(a) Van Helmont grew trees in barrels and wrongly concluded that the weight of plants came from water but nonetheless, he disproved the seventeenth century belief that plants were a combination of fire and earth. Priestley did not know about oxygen but observed the effect that gases from plants produce on burning candles in closed containers. Ingenhousz went beyond Priestley to show that the air was changed only when the plants were kept in sunlight. de Saussure contributed his findings that carbon dioxide and water were needed for the same effect.

It can be inspirational to hear that scientific knowledge and progress depends upon careful, documented experiments and observations and the contributions of many scientists throughout history, none of whom had a complete picture, but all of whom added to what was known before.

These days, it must be a struggle not to excite students about genetics or the inner life of the cell and what it reveals about molecular biology, or even the ‘genetic fingerprinting’ of your expensive fish dinner.

Sometimes, it feels like a betrayal of the idea of education not to know more about these topics and I am disinclined to wear my ignorance of such as a badge of honour-but as Angela Brazil would no doubt admonish me-we all have to make sacrifices. So, we’re very fortunate that humanities graduates not only manage to control the media but also influence the training of science teachers, the drafting of the science curriculum, and the underfunding of resources in such a way as to make science education deathly dull.

Ignorantia ignorantiae gratia.

Notes

(a) There are some annoying typos in this account but it is a good basic overview.

Tags: Bad Science, Ben Goldacre, Dear Diary, Gillian McKeith, Ignorantia ignorantiae gratia