ECOL250

Have you ever wondered if science is relevant to your everyday life beyond technology development? Are you reading claims about scientific findings on social media or in the news and wondered how accurate they are? Then this course is for you. Science is not a topic like biology or physics, but a way of answering questions. Science allows us to see the true nature of the world beyond our biases and prejudices; this is based on a philosophical approach but also on the social practice of science today. In this class we will focus on your questions about science and how you can find rigorous and objective answers to your everyday problems, either in the scientific literature or by doing your own hypothesis-testing. We will touch on topics such as the scientific method, what predictions are good for, statistics and what it is good for, peer review and what distinguishes scientific articles from others, and the specific topics that YOU want answers to, whether it is scientific information about pets, study strategies, video games, diet and exercise, getting better sleep, or other topics. A key topic will be to recognize uncertainty and how you can find out how much we do or do not know, and how confident you can be in different sources of information.

GE - T2-NATS (Tier 2 Natural Sciences)

Spring (odd years only)