Much of what we study in science revolves around making claims, supported by evidence and reasoning. Students typically think these skills reside in school and nowhere else. But in the glut of information – particularly sales information – assailing our sons and daughters, they need these skills to separate the wheat from the chaff.
For instance, one car insurance company makes the claim that you, the customer, will benefit from the shrinking deductible. We can presume the evidence is clear: Either the deductible you must pay for repairs goes down when time passes with no accidents, or it does not do so. The reasoning is where this falls down. You, the customer, will not benefit because a deductible only matters AFTER an accident. What happens when you do not have car accidents does not matter in this case.
For another instance, a mobile phone service justifies the claim that it can charge you, the customer, less because some other phone service built the signal towers. By similar reasoning, the renter of an apartment makes out better than the landlord does because the renter did not have to build or buy the building.
Faulty reasoning and inadequate evidence abound – in advertising, in reports of parts (and authors pick and choose the parts) of scientific studies, in political debates.
We need citizens who can tell the difference between purely sales and purely salient.
For instance, one car insurance company makes the claim that you, the customer, will benefit from the shrinking deductible. We can presume the evidence is clear: Either the deductible you must pay for repairs goes down when time passes with no accidents, or it does not do so. The reasoning is where this falls down. You, the customer, will not benefit because a deductible only matters AFTER an accident. What happens when you do not have car accidents does not matter in this case.
For another instance, a mobile phone service justifies the claim that it can charge you, the customer, less because some other phone service built the signal towers. By similar reasoning, the renter of an apartment makes out better than the landlord does because the renter did not have to build or buy the building.
Faulty reasoning and inadequate evidence abound – in advertising, in reports of parts (and authors pick and choose the parts) of scientific studies, in political debates.
We need citizens who can tell the difference between purely sales and purely salient.