Copyright & Citing Sources: Chasing Citations

I read “Many students enter the university believing in pseudoscience and leave the university with those beliefs unchanged”

What!  How can that be? 

Since this information is attributed to (Impey, Buxner, Antonellis, Johnson, & King, 2011), I want to read their paper to find out why they came to this conclusion.

 Immediately I wonder:

• Is it a valid conclusion? 
• How many people were tested?
• How were they tested?
• Is it one of those studies that is too limited to apply to a more general population?

So I chase the citation...

Notes: [With my comments]

Methodology

• The survey instrument has been stable for over 20 years and has been administered in the same fashion throughout that span.  [Impressive]
• 500 completed questionnaires per year across the 20 years of the project so far, with fairly uniform time coverage.
• [Not bad, at least it isn’t one 30 person class done once.  Each year is like a replication and check of responses.]

What kinds of pseudo-science do they believe it?

Results

UA students got an average of 7.2 (SD = 1.5) items correct out of the 9 items shared on the NSF survey (80%)

and an average of 11.2 (SD = 2.3) correct overall out of 15 (75%; the astrology and the inflation questions were left out).

[SD means standard deviation + or – the score. 

SO range 7.2 (SD = 1.5) is 6.7 to 8.7 of 9 questions answered correctly

And  11.2 (SD = 2.3) range is 8.9 to 13.5 of 15 questions answered correctly]

”Belief in pseudoscience runs high.

• About 40% believe that the positions of the planets affect everyday life, and the - In this case, it is possible that they are aware of astrology’s roots in observational astronomy, which means the astrology item must be interpreted with caution.
  • Education majors—the cohort of future teachers—perform worse than the average on almost all the individual questions and in terms of overall scientific literacy.
• same percentage [40%] think some people have psychic powers.
• About one in six [16.67%] believe that aliens visited ancient civilizations,
• one in four [25%] think that faith healing is a legitimate alternative to conventional medicine,
• a quarter [25%] think that some numbers are lucky for some people (Figure 4).
• One striking aspect of the analysis is a null result: None of these beliefs is strongly correlated with level of science literacy.”
• One in three [33%] think that antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria,
• one in four [25%] think that lasers work by focusing sounds waves,
• one in five [20%] think that atoms are smaller than electrons,
• and one in five  [20%] either do not believe or are unaware that humans evolved from earlier species of animals
• and [20%]  that the Earth goes around the Sun in a year.
• Only one in five  [20%] undergraduates say that astrology is “not at all” scientific,
  • although that fraction increases from 17% to 34% as they move through the university
• half [50%] of all science majors say that astrology is either “sort of” or “very” scientific (see Figure 5). [See Cognitive Biases that screw up your decisions]

Notes: [With my comments]

METHODOLOGY  -[Significant population used]

questionnaire was administered to 1,870 Chinese college students sampled college students to determine their scientific literacy levels

Table 5. Students’ scientific literacy score against variables of region and major  [Very wide range! About 65% to 85% answered correctly by my approximation. ]

[Interesting quote: ]

"In terms of scientific attitude, the level was generally considerably lower than those of the other constructs, with less than 40% of the students disagreeing that astrology is scientific, while a similarly weighted result was found among US students"  (Impey, 2013; Impey et al., 2017 [Oh good, something newer]).

[So, I go chase the citation. But the 2017 paper is not by Impey and the Impey paper is not 2017!]

Impey, C. (2013). Science literacy of undergraduates in the United States. In A. Heck (Ed.), Organizations, People and Strategies in Astronomy (pp. 353-364). Heidelberg: Springer.

Impey, C., Buxner, S., Antonellis, J., Johnson, E., & King, C. (2011). A twenty-year survey of science literacy among college undergraduates. Journal of College Science Teaching, 40(4), 31-37. Retrieved from https://www.depauw.edu/files/resources/impey2011.pdf

Wenninger, A., Weingart, P., & Wormer, H. (2017). Social media and digital science communication: Analysis and recommendations for dealing with risks and opportunities in a democracy. Retrieved from https://www.acatech.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/WOM2_EN_web_final.pdf [Talks about level of media use increasing, not % believing in pseudo-science...  Therefore the citation should have read 2011 not 2017.  How disappointing.]

Notes: [With my comments]

[Dissertation literature review plus small case study]

Methodology: [My interest is in literature review]

"In conclusion, the prior research discussed in this chapter points out that science literacy is a complex construct that is often difficult to define and is defined differently among researchers." [If different measures are used, it is hard to compare results]