BELL RINGERDiscuss the following questions with a partner and write down your answers:

1. Why do you think its important for scientists to be curious?

2. What might you want to invent, and why?

Chapter 1 Lesson 2THINKING LIKE A SCIENTIST

Main Idea

What attitudes help you think scientifically?

Key Vocabulary:

Skepticism: Having an attitude of doubt

Ethics: The rules that enable people to know right from wrong.

Personal Bias: Comes from a person’s likes and dislikes

Cultural Bias: Stems from the culture in which a person grows up.

Experimental Bias: Is a mistake in the design of an experiment that makes a particular result more likely.

Objective: Means that you make a decision and draw a conclusion based on available evidence.

Subjective: Means that personal feelings have entered into a decision or a conclusion.

Deductive Reasoning: Explaining things by starting with a general idea and then applying the idea to a specific observation

Inductive Reasoning: Uses specific observations to make generalizations

What attitudes help you think scientifically?

An attitude is a state of mind, and your action say a lot about your attitude.

WELL…. Scientists possess certain important attitudes,

including curiosity, honesty, creativity, open-mindedness, skepticism, good ethics, and awareness of bias.

Attitudes of Scientists

Curiosity: It drives scientists. Scientists want to learn more about the topics they study.

Honesty: Good scientists always report their observations and results truthfully.

Creativity: Scientists may experience problems with studying different things. Sometimes you may need to be creative to find a solution. Creativity means coming up with inventive ways to solve problems or produce new things.

LESS DISCUSS

Think of some things you are curious about and share with your neighbor.

Open-Mindedness and Skepticism

Scientists need to be open-minded; or capable of accepting new and different ideas.

Open-mindedness should ALWAYS be balanced with Skepticism.

*REMEMBER; Skepticism: Having an attitude of doubt.

EthicsBecause scientists work with the natural world, they must be careful not to damage it.

Scientists need a strong sense of ethics.

Ethics: refers to the rules that enable people to know right from wrong.

Scientists must consider all of the effects their research may have on people and the environment.

They make decisions only after considering the risks and benefits of living things or the environment.

EXAMPLE: Scientists test medicine they have developed before the medicine is sold to the public. They inform volunteers of the new medicine’s risks before allowing them to take part in the test.

Awareness of BiasWhat scientists expect to find can influence, or bias, what they observe and how they interpret observations.

Example: A scientist may misinterpret the behavior of an animal because of the she already knows about animals.

THERE ARE DIFFERENT TYPES OF BIAS:

Personal bias: comes from a persons likes or dislikes

Example: If you like the taste of cereal, you may think everyone else should too.

Cultural bias: Stems from the culture in which a person grows up.

Example: A culture that looks at snakes as bad, may overlook how well snakes control pests.

Experimental bias: Is a mistake in the design of an experiment that makes a particular result more likely.

Example: Say you want to determine the boiling point of pure water, if you use water that has salt in it, your experiment is now bias.

Lets Discuss as a class:You do not need to write this down.

What are some things that you think can bias a scientists observations?

What is scientific reasoning?

Scientific reasoning requires a logical way of thinking based on gathering and evaluating evidence.

There are TWO types of scientific reasoning:

1: Deductive: Explaining things by starting with a general idea and then applying the idea to a specific observation.

Example: You could use deductive reasoning to help you conclude why there are earthquakes in California. (you would start with the general idea, the theory, and then would apply this

idea to a specific observation, which leads you to a conclusion, called a deduction)

2: Inductive: Uses specific observations to make generalizations

This could be considered the opposite of deductive: for EXAMPLE: You see that ants appear to follow other ants along specific paths, the ants follow the path to food and water, then they return to their nests. These observations are specific, based on your specific observations, you conclude that these ants communicate so they follow the same path. Scientists collect

data, and then reach a conclusion based on that data.

Scientific Reasoning Continued…

*Because scientific reasoning relies on gathering and evaluating evidence, it is objective reasoning.

Objective means that you make decisions and draw conclusions based on available evidence.

EXAMPLE: Scientists use to think chimps only ate plants, however a scientist observed chimps eating meat. Based on this evidence, it is concluded that chimps eat meat and plants.

Subjective reasoning means that a personal feelings have entered into a decision or conclusion.

Personal opinions, values, and tastes are subjective because they are based on your feelings.

For example: You may see clear water in a stream, and take a drink of it because you are thirsty and you think the clear water is clean. You have not objectively tested the water so you do not know if the water has microorganisms that you cannot see and it can be unsafe to drink.

Objective or Subjective?Tell me if the statements below are objective or subjective statements.We will discuss this as a class.

Jane Goodwall saw a chimp chewing on wet leaves. She reasoned that chimps sometimes used leaves to drink water.

I like to run. I must be the fastest person in the class.

Emily is 1.7 m tall. No one else is taller than 1.6 m, so Emily is the tallest person in the class.

Faulty Reasoning

Scientists must be careful not to use faulty reasoning, because it can lead to faulty conclusions.

If you draw a conclusion based on too little data, your reasoning might lead you to the wrong general idea.

Chapter 1 Lesson 2 Checkpoint

Answer the following questions independently and quietly

#1: _______________ reasoning uses a general idea to make a specific observation.

#2: What is a cause of faulty reasoning? #3: Scientific Reasoning includes what?