Tuysuz and colleagues seem to have found chemistry and physics teachers have a different attitude to the importance of integrating concepts from across the subjects.
Conceptual integration?
Conceptual integration is very important in science. That is, science doesn't consist of a large set of unrelated facts, but rather the ability to subsume a great many phenomena under a limited number of ideas is valued. James Clerk Maxwell is widely remembered for showing that electricity, magnetism and radiation such as light (that is, what we now call electromagnetic radiation) were intimately related, and today theoretical physicists seek a 'Grand Unified Theory' that would account of all the forces in nature. Equally, the apparent incompatibility of the two major scientific ideas of the early twentieth century – general relativity and quantum mechanics – is widely recognised as suggesting a fundamental problem in our current best understanding of the world.
So, conceptual integration can be seen as a scientific value: something scientists expect to find in nature 1 and something they seek through their research.
Learners may not appreciate this. When I was teaching physics and chemistry I was quite surprised to see how little some students who studied both subjects would notice, or indeed expect, ideas taught in one course to link to those in another (e.g., Taber, 1998).
A demarcation criterion?
I have even, only partially tongue-in-cheek, suggested that a criterion for identifying an authentic science education would be that it emphasises the connections within science, both within and across disciplines (Taber, 2006). 2
Sadly, there has been limited attention to this theme within science education, and very little research. I was therefore pleased to find a references to a Turkish study on the topic. 3
A study with teachers-in-preparation
Tuysuz, Bektas, Geban, Ozturk and Yalvac (2016) undertook an interview study with students preparing for school science teaching. One of their findings was:
"Generally speaking, while the pre-service chemistry teachers think that physics concepts should be used in the chemistry lessons, the pre-service physics teachers believe that these two subjects' concepts generally are not related to each other."
Tuysuz, Bektas, Geban, Ozturk & Yalvac, 2016
Reading this in isolation might seem to suggest that those preparing for chemistry teaching (and therefore, likely, chemistry teachers) saw more value in emphasising conceptual integration in teaching than those preparing for physics teaching (and therefore, likely, physics teachers).
Why might physics teachers give less value to conceptual integration?
It is easy to try to think of possible reasons for this:
Conjecture 1: chemistry teachers are aware of how chemistry draws upon physical concepts, and so are more minded to emphasise links between the subjects than physics teachers. 4
Conjecture 2: physicists, and so physics teachers, are more arrogant about their discipline than other scientists (cf. "All science is either physics or stamp collecting" – as Ernest Rutherford supposedly claimed!)
Conjecture 3: chemists are more likely to have also studied other science disciplines at a high level (and so are well placed to appreciate conceptual integration across sciences), whereas physics specialists are more likely to have mainly focussed on mathematics as a subsidiary subject rather than other sciences.
I imagine other possibilities will have occurred to readers, but before spending too much time on explaining Tuysuz and colleagues' findings, it is worth considering how they came to this conclusion.
Not an experiment
Tuysuz and colleagues do not claim to have undertaken an experimental study, but rather claim their work is phenomenology. It did not use a large, randomly selected (and, so, likely to be representative) sample of populations of pre-service science teachers (as would be needed for an experiment), but rather used a convenience sample of six students who were accessible and willing to help: three pre-service physics teachers and three pre-service chemistry teachers.
It is not unusual for educational studies to be based on very small samples, as this allows for in-depth work. If you want to know what a person really thinks about a topic, you need to establish rapport and trust with them, and encourage them to talk in some detail – not just offer a rating to some item on a questionnaire. Small samples are perfectly proper in such studies.
What is questionable, is whether it is really meaningful to tease out differences between two identified groups (e.g., pre-service chemistry teachers; pre-service physics teachers) based on such samples. We cannot generalise without representative samples, so, when Tuysuz, Bektas, Geban, Ozturk and Yalvac write "Generally speaking…", their study does not really support such generalisation. The authors are only reporting what they found in their particular sample, and so the reader needs to contextualise their claim in terms of further details of the study, i.e., the reader needs to read the claim as
"Generally speaking, while the three pre-service chemistry teachers who volunteered to talk to us from this one teacher preparation programme think that physics concepts should be used in the chemistry lessons, the three pre- service physics teachers who volunteered to talk to us from this one programme believe that these two subjects' concepts generally are not related to each other."
Put in those terms, this is a very localised and limited kind of 'generally'.
This does not undermine the potential value of the study. That any future school science teachers might think that "these two subjects' concepts generally are not related to each other" is a worrying finding.
A confounded design
Another reason why it is important not to read Tuysuz's study as suggesting a general difference between teacher candidates in physics and chemistry, is because of a major confound in the study design. If the research had been intended as an experiment, where the investigators have to control variables so that there is only one differences between the different conditions, this would have been a critical flaw in the design.
The pre-service physics teachers and the pre-service chemistry teachers were taking parallel, but distinct, courses during the study. The authors report that the teaching approaches were different in the two subject areas. In particular, the paper reports that in the case of the pre-service chemistry teachers conceptual integration was explicitly discussed. The chemists – but not the physicists – were taught that conceptual integration was important. When interviewed, the chemists (who had been taught about conceptual integration) suggested conceptual integration was more important than the physicists (who had not been taught about conceptual integration) did!
This might have been because of their different subject specialisms;
It might have been because of the differences in the practice teaching courses taken by the two groups, such as perhaps the specific engagement of the chemists (but not the physicists) with ideas about conceptual integration during their course;
It might have been due to an interaction between these two factors (that is, perhaps neither difference by itself would have led to this finding);
And it might have simply reflected the ideas and past experiences of the particular three students in the chemists group, and the particular three students in the physicists group.
Tuysuz and colleagues found that, 'generally speaking', three students (who were chemistry specialists and had been taught about conceptual integration) had a different attitude to the importance of conceptual integration in teaching science to three other students (who were physics specialists and had not been taught about conceptual integration)
The researchers might have just as readily reported that:
"Generally speaking, while the pre-service science teachers who had discussed conceptual integration in their course think that physics concepts should be used in the chemistry lessons, the pre-service science teachers who had not been taught about this believe that these two subjects' concepts generally are not related to each other."
Of course, such a conclusion would be equally misleading as both factors (subject specialism and presence/absence of explicit teaching input) vary simultaneously between the two groups of students, so it is inappropriate to suggest a general difference due to either factor in isolation.
Tuysuz, M., Bektas, O., Geban, O., Ozturk, G., & Yalvac, B. (2016). Pre-Service Physics and Chemistry Teachers' Conceptual Integration of Physics and Chemistry Concepts. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 12(6), 1549-1568. https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2016.1244a
Notes
1 Although science is meant to be based on objective observations of the natural world, scientists approach their work with certain fundamental assumptions about nature. These might include beliefs that
an objectiveaccount of nature is in principle possible (that different observers can observe the same things), and
that there is at some level a consistent nature to the universe (there are fixed laws which continue to apply over time)
assumptions that are needed for science to be meaningful. As these things are assumed prior to undertaking any scientific observations they can be considered metaphysical commitments (Taber, 2013).
Another metaphysical commitment generally shared by scientists as a common worldview is that the complex and diverse phenomena we experience can be explained by a limited number of underlying principles and laws. From this perspective, progress in science leads to increased integration between topics.
2 The term 'demarcation criterion' is often used in relation to deciding what should be considered a science (e.g., usually, astronomy is considered a science, and so is biochemistry; but not astrology or psychoanalysis). A famous example of a demarcation criterion, due to Karl Popper, is that a scientific conjecture is one which is in principle capable of being refuted.
Astronomers can use their theories and data to predict the date of the next solar eclipse, for example. If the eclipse did not occur when predicted, that would be considered a falsification.
By contrast, if a psychotherapist suggested a person had personality issues due to repressed, unresolved, feelings about their parents, then this cannot be refuted. (The client may claim having positive and untroubled relationships with the parents, but the therapist does not consider this a refutation as the feelings have been repressed, so they are not consciously available to the client. The problem can only be detected indirectly by signs which the therapist knows how to interpret.).
3 I became aware of the study discussed here when reading the work in progress of Louise Vong, who has been doing some research in this important topic.
4 Physics concepts are widely applied in chemistry, but not vice versa. So, this is suggesting that chemistry teachers have more need to refer to physics in teaching their subject than the converse.
However, we could also have looked to explain the opposite finding (had it been reported that pre-service physics teachers paid more attention to conceptual integration than pre-service chemistry teachers) by suggesting physics teachers have more reason to refer to chemistry topics when discussing examples of applications of concepts being taught, than chemistry teachers have to refer to physics topics.
Imagine you have a painful and debilitating illness. Your specialist tells you there is no conventional treatment known to help. However, there is a new – experimental – procedure: a surgery that may offer relief. But it has not yet been fully tested. If you are prepared to sign up for a study to evaluate this new procedure, then you can undergo surgery.
You are put under and wheeled into the operating theatre. Whilst you experience – rather, do not experience – the deep, sleepless rest of anaesthesia, the surgeon saws through your breastbone, prises open your ribcage with a retractor (hopefully avoiding breaking any ribs), reaches in, and gently lifts up your heart.
The surgeon, pauses, perhaps counts to five, then carefully replaces your heart between the lungs. The ribcage is closed, and you are sown-up without any actual medical intervention. You had been randomly assigned to the control group.
How can we test whether surgical interventions are really effective without blind controls?
Is it right to carry out sham operations on sick people just for the sake of research?
Where is the balance of interests?
(Image from Pixabay)
Research ethics
A key aspect of planning, executing and reviewing research is ethical scrutiny. Planning, obviously, needs to take into account ethical considerations and guidelines. But even the best laid plans 'of mice and men' (or, of, say, people investigating mice) may not allow for all eventualities (after all, if we knew what was going to happen for sure in a study, it would not be research – and it would be unethical to spend precious public resources on the study), so the ethical imperative does not stop once we have got approval and permissions. And even then, we may find that we cannot fully mitigate for unexpected eventualities – which is something to be reported and discussed to help inform future research.
When preparing students setting out on research, instruction about research ethics is vital. It is possible to teach about rules, and policies, and guidelines and procedures – but real research contexts are often complex, and ethical thinking cannot be algorithmic or a matter of adopting slogans and following heuristics. In my teaching I would include discussion of past cases of research studies that raised ethical questions for students to discuss and consider.
Indeed, ethical decision-making may not always be straight-forward – as it often means balancing different considerations, and at a point where any hoped-for potential benefits of the research must remain uncertain.
Pretending to operate on ill patients
I recently came across an example of a medical study which I thought raised some serious questions, and which I might well have included in my teaching of research ethics as a case for discussion, had I known about before I retired.
The research apparently involved surgeons opening up a patient's ribcage (not a trivial procedure), and lifting out the person's heart in order to carry out a surgical intervention…or not,
"In the late 1950s and early 60s two different surgical teams, one in Kansas City and one in Seattle, did double-blind trials of a ligation procedure – the closing of a duct or tube using a clip – for very ill patients suffering from severe angina, a condition in which pain radiates from the chest to the outer extremities as a result of poor blood supply to the heart. The surgeons were not told until they arrived in the operating theatre which patients were to receive a real ligation and which were not. All the patients, whether or not they were getting the procedure, had their chest cracked open and their heart lifted out. But only half the patients actually had their arteries rerouted so that their blood could more efficiently bathe its pump …"
Slater, 2018
The quote is taken from a book by Lauren Slater which sets out a history of drug use in psychiatry. Slater is a psychotherapist who has written a number of books about aspects of mental health conditions and treatments.
Fair testing
In order to make a fair experiment, the double-blind procedure sought to treat the treatment and control group the same in all respects, apart from the actual procedure of ligation of selected blood vessels that comprised the mooted intervention. The patients did not know (at least, in one of the studies) they might not have the real operation. Their physicians were not told who was getting the treatment. Even the surgeons only found out who was in each group when the patient arrived in theatre.
It was necessary for those in the control group to think they were having an intervention, and to undergo the sham surgery, so that they formed a fair comparison with those who got the ligation.
It was necessary to have double-blind study (neither the patients themselves, nor the physicians looking after them, were told which patients were, and which were not, getting the treatment), because there is a great deal of research which shows that people's beliefs and expectations make substantial differences to outcomes. This is a real problem in educational research when researchers want to test classroom practices such as new teaching schemes or resources or innovative pedagogies (Taber, 2019).The teacher almost certainly knows whether she is teaching the experimental or control group, and usually the students have a pretty good idea. (If every previous lesson has been based on teacher presentations and note-taking, and suddenly they are doing group discussion work and making videos, they are likely to notice.)
It was important to undertake a study, because there was not clear objective evidence to show whether the new procedure actually improved patient outcomes (or possibly even made matters worst). Doctors reported seeing treated patients do better – but could only guess how they might have done without surgery. Without proper studies, many thousands or people might ultimately undergo an ineffective surgery, with all the associated risks and costs, without getting any benefit.
Simply comparing treated patients with matched untreated patients would not do the job, as there can be a strong placebo effect of believing one is getting a treatment. (It is likely that at least some alternative therapies largely work because a practitioner with good social skills spends time engaging with the patient and their concerns, and the client expects a positive outcome.)
If any positive effects of heart surgery were due to the placebo effect, then perhaps a highly coloured sugar pill prescribed with confidence by a physician could have the same effect without operating theatres, surgical teams, hospital stays… (For that matter, a faith healer who pretended to operate without actually breaking the skin, and revealed a piece of material {perhaps concealed in a pocket or sleeve} presented as an extracted mass of diseased tissue or a foreign body, would be just as effective if the patient believed in the procedure.)
So, I understood the logic here.
Do no harm
All the same – this seemed an extreme intervention. Even today, anaesthesia is not very well understood in detail: it involves giving a patient drugs that could kill them in carefully controlled sub-lethal doses – when how much would actually be lethal (and what would be insufficient to fully sedate) varies from person to person. There are always risks involved.
"All the patients, whether or not they were getting the procedure had their chest cracked open and their heart lifted out."
(Image by Starllyte from Pixabay)
Open heart surgery exposes someone to infection risks. Cracking open the chest is a big deal. It can take two months for the disrupted tissues to heal. Did the research really require opening up the chest and lifting the heart for the control group?
Could this really ever have been considered ethical?
I might have been much more cynical had I not known of other, hm, questionable medical studies. I recall hearing a BBC radio documentary in the 1990s about American physicians who deliberately gave patients radioactive materials without their knowledge, just to to explore the effects. Perhaps most infamously there was the Tuskegee Syphilis study where United States medical authorities followed the development of disease over decades without revealing the full nature of the study, or trying to treat any of those infected. Compared with these violations, the angina surgery research seemed tame.
But do not believe everything you read…
According to the notes at the back of Slater's book, her reference was another secondary source (Moerman, 2002) – that is someone writing about what the research reports said, not those actual 'primary' accounts in the research journals.
So, I looked on-line for the original accounts. I found a 1959 study, by a team from the University of Washington School of Medicine. They explained that:
"Considerable relief of symptoms has been reported for patient with angina pectoris subjected to bilateral ligation of the internal mammary arteries. The physiologic basis for the relief of angina afforded by this rather simple operation is not clear."
Cobb, Thomas, Dillard, Merendino & Bruce, 1959
It was not clear why clamping these blood vessels in the chest should make a substantial difference to blood flow to the heart muscles – despite various studies which had subjected a range of dogs (who were not complaining of the symptoms of angina, and did not need any surgery) to surgical interventions followed by invasive procedures in order to measure any modifications in blood flow (Blair, Roth & Zintel, 1960).
Would you like your aorta clamped, and the blood drained from the left side of your heart, for the sake of a research study?
That raises another ethical issue – the extent of pain and suffering and morbidity it is fair to inflect on non-human animals (which are never perfect models for human anatomy and physiology) to progress human medicine. Some studies explored the details of blood circulation in dogs. Would you like your aorta clamped, and the blood drained from the left side of your heart, for the sake of a research study? Moreover, in order to test the effectiveness of the ligation procedure, in some studies healthy dogs had to have the blood supply to the heart muscles disrupted to given them similar compromised heart function as the human angina sufferers. 1
But, hang on a moment. I think I passed over something rather important in that last quote: "this rather simple operation"?
"Considerable relief of symptoms has been reported for patient with angina pectoris subjected to bilateral ligation of the internal mammary arteries. The physiologic basis for the relief of angina afforded by this rather simple operation is not clear."
Cobb and colleagues' account of the procedure contradicted one of my assumptions,
At the time of operation, which was performed under local anesthesia [anaesthesia], the surgeon was handed a randomly selected envelope, which contained a card instructing him whether or not to ligate the internal mammary arteries after they had been isolated.
Cobb et al, 1959
It seems my inference that the procedure was carried out under general anaesthetic was wrong. Never assume! Surgery under local anaesthetic is not a trivial enterprise, but carries much less risk than general anaesthetic.
Yet, surely, even back then, no surgeon was going to open up the chest and handle the heart under a local anaesthetic? Cobb and colleagues wrote:
"The surgical procedures commonly used in the therapy of coronary-artery disease have previously been "major" operations utilizing thoracotomy and accompanied by some morbidity and a definite mortality. … With the advent of internal-mammary-artery ligation and its alleged benefit, a unique opportunity for applying the principles of a double-blind evaluation to a surgical procedure has been afforded
Cobb, Thomas, Dillard, Merendino & Bruce, 1959
So, the researchers were arguing that, previously, surgical interventions for this condition were major operations that did involve opening up the chest (thorax) – thoracotomy – where sham surgery would not have been ethical; but the new procedure they were testing – "this rather simple operation" was different.
Effects of internal-mammary-artery ligation on 17 patients with angina pectoris were evaluated by a double-blind technic. Eight patients had their internal mammary arteries ligated; 9 had skin incisions only.
Cobb et al, 1959
They describe "a 'placebo' procedure consisting of parasternal skin incisions"– that is some cuts were made into the skin next to the breast bone. Skin incisions are somewhat short of open heart surgery.
The description given by the Kansas team (from the Departments of Medicine and Surgery, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City) also differs from Slater's third-hand account in this important way:
"The patients were operated on under local anesthesia. The surgeon, by random sampling, selected those in whom bilateral internal mammary artery and vein ligation (second interspace) was to be carried out and those in whom a sham procedure was to be performed. The sham procedure consisted of a similar skin incision with exposure of the internal mammary vessels, but without ligation."
Dimond, Kittle & Crocket, 1960
This description of the surgery seemed quite different from that offered by Slater.
These teams seemed to be reporting a procedure that could be carried out without exposing the lungs or the heart and opening their protective covers ("in this technique…the pericardium and pleura are not entered or disturbed", Glover, et al, 1957), and which could be superficially forged by making a few cuts into the skin.
"The performance of bilateral division of the internal mammary arteries as compared to other surgical procedures for cardiac disease is safe, simple and innocuous in capable hands."
Glover, Kitchell, Kyle, Davila & Trout, 1958
The surgery involved making cuts into the skin of the chest to access, and close off, arteries taking blood to (more superficial) chest areas in the hope it would allow more to flow to the heart muscles; the sham surgery, the placebo, involved making similar incisions, but without proceeding to change the pattern of arterial blood flow.
The sham surgery did not require general anaesthesia and involved relatively superficial wounds – and offered a research technique that did not need to cause suffering to, and the sacrifice of, perfectly healthy dogs. So, that's all ethical then?
The first hand research reports at least give a different impression of the balance of costs and potential benefits to stakeholders than I had originally drawn from Lauren Slater's account.
Getting consent for sham surgery
A key requirement for ethical research with human participants is being offered voluntary informed consent. Unlike dogs, humans can assent to research procedures, and it is generally considered that research should not be undertaken without such consent.
Of course, there is nuance and complication. The kind of research where investigators drop large denomination notes to test the honesty of passers by – where the 'participants' are in a public place and will not be identified or identifiable – is not usually seen as needing such consent (which would clearly undermine any possibility of getting authentic results). But is it acceptable to observe people using public toilets without their knowledge and consent (as was described in one published study I used as a teaching example)?
The extent to which a lay person can fully understand the logic and procedures explained to them when seeking consent can vary. The extent to which most participants would need, or even want to, know full details of the study can vary. When children of various ages are are involved, the extent to which consent can be given on their behalf by a parent or teachers raises interesting questions.
"I'm looking for volunteers to have aprocedure designed to make it look like you've had surgery"
Image by mohamed_hassan from Pixabay
There is much nuance and many complications – and this is an area researchers needs to give very careful consideration.
How many ill patients would volunteer for sham surgery to help someone else's research?
Would that answer change, if the procedure being tested would later be offered to them?
What about volunteering for a study where you have a 50-50 chance of getting the real surgery or the placebo treatment?
In Cobb's study, the participants had all volunteered – but we might wonder if the extent of the information they were given amounted to what was required for informed consent,
The subjects were informed of the fact that this procedure had not been proved to be of value, and yet many were aware of the enthusiastic report published in the Reader's Digest. The patients were told only that they were participating in an evaluation of this operation; they were not informed of the double-blind nature of the study.
Cobb et al, 1959
So, it seems the patients thought they were having an operation that had been mooted to help angina sufferers – and indeed some of them were, but others just got taken into surgery to get a few wounds that suggested something more substantive had been done.
Was that ethical? (I doubt it would be allowed anywhere today?)
The outcome of these studies was that although the patients getting the ligation surgery did appear to get relief from their angina – so did those just getting the skin incisions. The placebo seemed just as good as the re-plumbing.
In hindsight, does this make the studies more worthwhile and seem more ethical? This research has probably prevented a great many people having an operation to have some of their vascular system blocked when that does not seem to make any difference to angina. Does that advance in medical knowledge justify the deceit involved in leading people to think they would get an experimental surgical treatment when they might just get an experimental control treatment?
Ethical principles and guidelines can helps us judge the merits of study
Coda – what did the middle man have to say?
I wondered how a relatively minor sham procedure under local anaesthetic became characterised as "the patients, whether or not they were getting the procedure had their chest cracked open and their heart lifted out" – a description which gave a vivid impression of a major intervention.
The heart is pretty well integrated into the body – how easy is it to life an intact, fully connected, working heart out of position?
Image by HANSUAN FABREGAS from Pixabay
I wondered to what extent it would even be possible to lift the heart out from the chest whilst it remained connected with the major vessels passing the blood it was pumping, and the nerves supplying it, and the vessels supplying blood to its own muscles (the ones that were considered compromised enough to make the treatment being tested worth considering). Some sources I found on-line referred to the heart being 'lifted' during open-heart procedures to give the surgeon access to specific sites: but that did not mean taking the heart out of the body. Having the heart 'lifted out' seemed more akin to Aztec sacrificial rites than medical treatment.
Although all surgery involves some risk, the actual procedure being investigated seemed of relatively routine nature. I actually attended a 'minor' operation which involved cutting into the chest when my late wife was prepared for kidney dialysis. Usually a site for venal access is prepared in the arm well in advance, but it was decided my wife needed to be put on dialysis urgently. A temporary hole was cut into her neck to allow the surgeon to connect a tube (a central venous catheter) to a vein, and another hole into her chest so that the catheter would exit in her chest, where the tap could be kept sterile, bandaged to the chest. This was clearly not considered a high risk operation (which is not to say I think I could have coped with having this done to me!) as I was asked by the doctors to stay in the room with my wife during the procedure, and I did not need to 'scrub' or 'gown up'.
Bilateral internal mammary artery ligation seemed a procedure on that kind of level, accessing blood vessels through incisions made in the skin. However, if Lauren Slater had read up some of the earlier procedures that did require opening the chest, or if she had read the papers describing how the dogs were investigated to trace blood flow through connected vessels, measure changes in flow, and prepare them for induced heart conditions, I could appreciate the potential for confusion. Yet she did not cite the primary research, but rather Daniel Moerman, an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at University of Michigan-Dearborn, who has written a book about placebo treatments in medicine.
Moerman does write about the bilateral internal mammary artery ligation, and the two sham surgery studies I found in my search. Moerman describes the operation:
"It was quite simple, and since the arteries were not deep in the body, could be performed under local anaesthetic."
Moerman, 2002
He also refers to the subjective reports on one of the patients assigned to the placebo condition in one of the studies, who claimed to feel much better immediately after the procedure:
"This patient's arteries were not ligated…But he did have two scars on his chest…"
Moerman, 2002
But nobody cracked open his chest, and no one handled his heart.
There are still ethical issues here, but understanding the true (almost superficial) nature of the sham surgery clearly changes the balance of concerns. If there is a moral to this article, it is perhaps the importance of being fully informed before reaching judgement about the ethics of a research study.
Work cited:
Blair, C. R., Roth, R. F., & Zintel, H. A. (1960). Measurement of coronary artery blood-flow following experimental ligation of the internal mammary artery. Annals of Surgery, 152(2), 325.
Cobb, L. A., Thomas, G. I., Dillard, D. H., Merendino, K. A., & Bruce, R. A. (1959). An evaluation of internal-mammary-artery ligation by a double-blind technic. New England Journal of Medicine, 260(22), 1115-1118.
Dimond, E. G., Kittle, C. F., & Crockett, J. E. (1960). Comparison of internal mammary artery ligation and sham operation for angina pectoris. The American Journal of Cardiology, 5(4), 483-486.
Glover, R. P., Davila, J. C., Kyle, R. H., Beard, J. C., Trout, R. G., & Kitchell, J. R. (1957). Ligation of the internal mammary arteries as a means of increasing blood supply to the myocardium. Journal of Thoracic Surgery, 34(5), 661-678. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0096-5588(20)30315-9
Glover, R. P., Kitchell, J. R., Kyle, R. H., Davila, J. C., & Trout, R. G. (1958). Experiences with Myocardial Revascularization By Division of the Internal Mammary Arteries. Diseases of the Chest, 33(6), 637-657. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1378/chest.33.6.637
Moerman, D. E. (2002). Meaning, Medicine, and the "Placebo Effect". Cambridge University Press Cambridge.
Slater, Lauren (2018) The Drugs that Changed our Minds. The history of psychiatry in ten treatments. London. Simon & Schuster
1 To find out if the ligation procedure protected a dog required stressing the blood supply to the heart itself,
"An attempt has been made to evaluate the degree of protection preliminary ligation of the internal mammary artery may afford the experimental animal when subjected to the production of sudden, acute myocardial infarction by ligation of the anterior descending coronary artery at its origin. …
It was hoped that survival in the control group would approximate 30 per cent so that infarct size could be compared with that of the "protected" group of animals. The "protected" group of dogs were treated in the same manner but in these the internal mammary arteries were ligated immediately before, at 24 hours, and at 48 hours before ligation of the anterior descending coronary.
In 14 control dogs, the anterior descending coronary artery with the aforementioned branch to the anterolateral aspect of the left ventricle was ligated. Nine of these animals went into ventricular fibrillation and died within 5 to 20 minutes. Attempts to resuscitate them by defibrillation and massage were to no avail. Four others died within 24 hours. One dog lived 2 weeks and died in pulmonary edema."
Pulmonary oedema involves fluid build up in the lungs that restricts gaseous exchange and prevents effective breathing. The dog that survived longest (if it was kept conscious) will have experienced death as if by slow suffocation or drowning.
…if you believe that "knowledge is constructed in the minds of students"?
Keith S. Taber
While the students in the experimental treatment undertook open-ended enquiry, the learners in the control condition undertook practical work to demonstrate what they had already been told was the case – a rhetorical exercise that reflected the research study they were participating in
A team of researchers chose to compare a teaching approach they believed met the requirements for good science instruction, and which they knew had already been demonstrated effective pedagogy in other studies, with teaching they believed was not suitable for bringing about conceptual change. (Ironically, they chose a research design more akin to the laboratory activities in the substandard control condition, than to the open-ended enquiry that was part of the pedagogy they considered effective!)
An imaginary conversation 1 with a team of science education researchers.
When we critically read a research paper, we interrogate the design of the study, and the argument for new knowledge claims that are being made. Authors of research papers need to anticipate the kinds of questions readers (editors, reviewers, and the wider readership on publication) will be asking as they try to decide if they find the study convincing.
Here I engage in 'an asynchronous conversation' with the authors of a research paper I was interrogating:
What was your study about?
"This study investigated the effect of the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach on grade 9 students' understanding of chemical change and mixture concepts [in] a Turkish public high school."
Kingir, Geban & Gunel, 2013
I understand this research was set up as a quasi-experiment – what were the conditions being compared?
"Students in the treatment group were instructed by the SWH approach, while those in the comparison group were instructed with traditionally designed chemistry instruction."
Kingir, Geban & Gunel, 2013
Constructivism
Can you tell me about the theoretical perspective informing this study?
"Constructivism is increasingly influential in guiding student learning around the world. However, as knowledge is constructed in the minds of students, some of their commonsense ideas are personal, stable, and not congruent with the scientifically accepted conceptions… Students' misconceptions [a.k.a. alternative conceptions] and learning difficulties constitute a major barrier for their learning in various chemistry topics"
'Traditional' teaching versus 'constructivist' teaching
So, what does this suggest about so-called traditional teaching?
"Since prior learning is an active agent for student learning, science educators have been focused on changing these misconceptions with scientifically acceptable ideas. In traditional science teaching, it is difficult for the learners to change their misconceptions…According to the conceptual change approach, learning is the interaction between prior knowledge and new information. The process of learning depends on the degree of the integration of prior knowledge with the new information.2"
Kingir, Geban & Gunel, 2013
And does the Science Writing Heuristic Approach contrast to that?
"The Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach can be used to promote students' acquisition of scientific concepts. The SWH approach is grounded on the constructivist philosophy because it encourages students to use guided inquiry laboratory activities and collaborative group work to actively negotiate and construct knowledge. The SWH approach successfully integrates inquiry activities, collaborative group work, meaning making via argumentation, and writing-to-learn strategies…
The negotiation activities are the central part of the SWH because learning occurs through the negotiation of ideas. Students negotiate meaning from experimental data and observations through collaboration within and between groups. Moreover, the student template involves the structure of argumentation known as question, claim, and evidence. …Reflective writing scaffolds the integration of new ideas with prior learning. Students focus on how their ideas changed through negotiation and reflective writing, which helps them confront their misconceptions and construct scientifically accepted conceptions"
Kingir, Geban & Gunel, 2013
What is already known about SWH pedagogy?
It seems like the SWH approach should be effective at supporting student learning. So, has this not already been tested?
"There are many international studies investigating the effectiveness of the SWH approach over the traditional approach … [one team] found that student-written reports had evidence of their science learning, metacognitive thinking, and self-reflection. Students presented reasons and arguments in the meaning-making process, and students' self-reflections illustrated the presence of conceptual change about the science concepts.
[another team] asserted that using the SWH laboratory report format in lieu of a traditional laboratory report format was effective on acquisition of scientific conceptions, elimination of misconceptions, and learning difficulties in chemical equilibrium.
[Another team] found that SWH activities led to greater understanding of grade 6 science concepts when compared to traditional activities. The studies conducted at the postsecondary level showed similar results as studies conducted at the elementary level…
[In two studies] it was demonstrated that the SWH approach can be effective on students' acquisition of chemistry concepts. SWH facilitates conceptual change through a set of argument-based inquiry activities. Students negotiate meaning and construct knowledge, reflect on their own understandings through writing, and share and compare their personal meanings with others in a social context"
Kingir, Geban & Gunel, 2013
What was the point of another experimental test of SWH?
So, it seems that from a theoretical point of view, so-called traditional teaching is likely to be ineffective in bringing about conceptual learning in science, whilst a constructivist approach based on the Science Writing Heuristic is likely to support such learning. Moreover, you are aware of a range of existing studies which suggest that in practice the Science Writing Heuristic is indeed an effective basis for science teaching.
So, what was the point of your study?
"The present study aimed to investigate the effect of the SWH approach compared to traditional chemistry instruction on grade 9 students' understanding of chemical change and mixture concepts."
Kingir, Geban & Gunel, 2013
Okay, I would certainly accept that just because a teaching approach has been found effective with one age group, or in one topic, or in one cultural context, we cannot assume those findings can be generalised and will necessarily apply in other teaching contexts (Taber, 2019).
So, what happened in the two classes taught in the experimental condition?
"The teacher asked students to form their own small groups (n=5) and introduced to them the SWH approach …they were asked to suggest a beginning question…, write a claim, and support that claim with evidence…
they shared their questions, claims, and evidence in order to construct a group question, claim, and evidence. …each group, in turn, explained their written arguments to the entire class. … the rest of the class asked them questions or refuted something they claimed or argued. …the teacher summarized [and then] engaged students in a discussion about questions, claims, and evidence in order to make students aware of the meaning of those words. The appropriateness of students' evidence for their claims, and the relations among questions, claims, and evidence were also discussed in the classroom…
The teacher then engaged students in a discussion about …chemical change. First, the teacher attempted to elicit students' prior understanding about chemical change through questioning…The teacher asked students to write down what they wanted to learn about chemical change, to share those items within their group, and to prepare an investigation question with a possible test and procedure for the next class. While students constructed their own questions and planned their testing procedure, the teacher circulated through the groups and facilitated students' thinking through questioning…
Each group presented their questions to the class. The teacher and the rest of the class evaluated the quality of the question in relation to the big idea …The groups' procedures were discussed and revised prior to the actual laboratory investigation…each group tested their own questions experimentally…The teacher asked each student to write a claim about what they thought happened, and support that claim with the evidence. The teacher circulated through the classroom, served as a resource person, and asked …questions
…students negotiated their individual claims and evidence within their groups, and constructed group claims and evidence… each group…presented … to the rest of the class."
Kingir, Geban & Gunel, 2013
What happened in the control condition?
Okay, I can see that the experimental groups experienced the kind of learning activities that both educational theory and previous research suggests are likely to engage them and develop their thinking.
So, what did you set up to compare with the Science Writing Heuristic Approach as a fair test of its effectiveness as a pedagogy?
"In the comparison group, the teacher mainly used lecture and discussion[3] methods while teaching chemical change and mixture concepts. The chemistry textbook was the primary source of knowledge in this group. Students were required to read the related topic from the textbook prior to each lesson….The teacher announced the goals of the lesson in advance, wrote the key concepts on the board, and explained each concept by giving examples. During the transmission of knowledge, the teacher and frequently used the board to write chemical formula[e] and equations and draw some figures. In order to ensure that all of the students understood the concepts in the same way, the teacher asked questions…[that] contributed to the creation of a discussion[3] between teacher and students. Then, the teacher summarized the concepts under consideration and prompted students to take notes. Toward the end of the class session, the teacher wrote some algorithmic problems [sic 4] on the board and asked students to solve those problems individually….the teacher asked a student to come to the board and solve a problem…
The …nature of their laboratory activities was traditional … to verify what students learned in the classroom. Prior to the laboratory session, students were asked to read the procedures of the laboratory experiment in their textbook. At the laboratory, the teacher explained the purpose and procedures of the experiment, and then requested the students to follow the step-by-step instructions for the experiment. Working in groups (n=5), all the students conducted the same experiment in their textbook under the direct control of the teacher. …
The students were asked to record their observations and data. They were not required to reason about the data in a deeper manner. In addition, the teacher asked each group to respond to the questions about the experiment included in their textbook. When students failed to answer those questions, the teacher answered them directly without giving any hint to the students. At the end of the laboratory activity, students were asked to write a laboratory report in traditional format, including purpose, procedure, observations and data, results, and discussion. The teacher asked questions and helped students during the activity to facilitate their connection of laboratory activity with what they learned in the classroom.
Kingir, Geban & Gunel, 2013
The teacher variable
Often in small scale research studies in education, a different teacher teaches each group and so the 'teacher variable' confounds the experiment (Taber, 2019). Here, however, you avoid that problem 5, as you had a sample of four classes, and two different teachers were involved, each teaching one class in each condition?
"In order to facilitate the proper instruction of the SWH approach in the treatment group, the teachers were given training sessions about its implementation prior to the study. The teachers were familiar with the traditional instruction. One of the teachers was teaching chemistry for 20 years, while the other was teaching chemistry for 22 years at a high school. The researcher also asked the teachers to teach the comparison group students in the same way they taught before and not to do things specified for the treatment group."
Kingir, Geban & Gunel, 2013
Was this research ethical?
As this is an imaginary conversation, not all of the questions I might like to ask are actually addressed in the paper. In particular, I would love to know how the authors would justify that their study was ethical, considering that the control condition they set up deliberately excluded features of pedagogy that they themselves claim are necessary to support effective science learning:
"In traditional science teaching, it is difficult for the learners to change their misconceptions"
The authors beleive that "learning occurs through the negotiation of ideas", and their experimental condition provides plenty of opportunity for that. The control condition is designed to avoid the explicit elicitation of learners' idea, dialogic talk, or peer interactions when reading, listening, writing notes or undertaking exercises. If the authors' beliefs are correct (and they are broadly consistent with a wide consensus across the global science education research community), then the teaching in the comparison condition is not suitable for facilitating conceptual learning.
Even if we think it is conceivable that highly experienced teachers, working in a national context where constructivist teaching has long been official education policy, had somehow previously managed to only teach in an ineffective way: was it ethical to ask these teachers to teach one of their classes poorly even after providing them with professional development enabling them to adopt a more engaging approach better aligned with our understanding of how science can be effectively taught?
"Students' misconceptions and learning difficulties constitute a major barrier for their learning in various chemistry topics"
"knowledge is constructed in the minds of students"
"The process of learning depends on the degree of the integration of prior knowledge with the new information"
"learning occurs through the negotiation of ideas"
"The SWH approach successfully integrates inquiry activities, collaborative group work, meaning making" – A range of previous studies have shown that SWH effectively supports student learning
– why did they not test the SWH approach against existing good practice, rather than implement a control pedagogy they knew should not be effective, so setting up two classes of learners (who do not seem to have been asked to consent to being part of the research) to fail?
Why not set up a genuinely informative test of the SWH pedagogy, rather than setting up conditions for manufacturing a forgone conclusion?
When it has already been widely established that a pedagogy is more effective than standard practice, there is little point further testing it against what is believed to be ineffective instruction.
How can it be ethical to ask teachers to teach in a way that is expected to be ineffective?
transmission of knowledge
follow the step-by-step instructions
not required to reason in a deeper manner
individual working
A rhetorical experiment?
Is this not just a 'rhetorical' experiment engineered to produce a desired outcome (a demonstration), rather than an open-ended enquiry (a genuine experiment)?
A rhetorical experiment is not designed to produce substantially new knowledge: but rather to create the conditions for a 'positive' result (Figure 8 from Taber, 2019).
Any study of a teaching innovation requires the commitment of resources and some disruption of teaching. Therefore any research study which has inherent design faults that will prevent it producing informative outcomes can be seen as a misuse of resources, and an unproductive disruption of school activities, and so, if only in that sense, unethical.
As the research was undertaken with "four intact classes" is it possible to apply any statistical tests that can offer meaningful results, when there are only two units of analysis in each condition? [That is, I think not.]
The researchers claim to have 117 degrees of freedom when applying statistical tests to draw conclusions. They seem to assume that each of the 122 children can be considered to be a separate unit of analysis. But is it reasonable to assume that c.30 children taught together in the same intact class by the same teacher (and working in groups for at least part of the time) are independently experiencing the (experimental or control) treatment?
Surely, the students within a class influence each other's learning (especially during group-work), so the outcomes of statistical tests that rely on treating each learner as an independent unit of analysis are invalid (Taber, 2019). This is especially so in the experimental treatment where dialogue (and "the negotiation of ideas") through group-work, discussion, and argumentation were core parts of the instruction.
Ausubel, D. P. (1968). Educational Psychology: A cognitive view. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Kingir, S., Geban, O., & Gunel, M. (2013). Using the Science Writing Heuristic Approach to Enhance Student Understanding in Chemical Change and Mixture. Research in Science Education, 43(4), 1645-1663. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-012-9326-x
1 I have used direct quotes from the published report in Research in Science Education (but I have omitted citations to other papers), with some emphasis added. Please refer to the full report of the study for further details. I have attempted to extract relevant points from the paper to develop an argument here. I have not deliberately distorted the published account by selection and/or omission, but clearly am only reproducing small extracts. I would recommend readers might access the original study in order to make up their own minds.
2 The next statement is "If individuals know little about the subject matter, new information is easily embedded in their cognitive structure (assimilation)." This is counter to the common thinking that learning about an unfamiliar topic is more difficult, and learning is made meaningful when it can be related to prior knowledge (Ausubel, 1968).
3 The term 'discussion' might suggest an open-ended exchange of ideas and views. This would be a dialogic technique typical of constructivist approaches. From the wider context its seems likely something more teacher-directed and closed than this was meant here – but this is an interpretation which goes beyond the description available in the original text.
4 Researchers into problem-solving consider that a problem has to require a learner to do more that simply recall and apply previously learned knowledge and techniques – so an 'algorithmic problem' might be considered an oxymoron. However, it is common for teachers to refer to algorithmic exercises as 'problems' even though they do not require going beyond application of existing learning.
5 This design does avoid the criticism that one of the teacher may have just been more effective at teaching the topic to this age group, as both teachers teach in both conditions.
This does not entirely remove potential confounds as teachers interact differently with different classes, and with only four teacher-class combinations it could well be that there is better rapport in the two classes in one or other condition. It is very hard to see how this can be addressed (except by having a large enough sample of classes to allow inferential statistics to be used rigorously – which is not feasible in small scale studies).
A potentially more serious issue is 'expectancy' effects. There is much research in education and other social contexts to show that people's beliefs and expectations influence outcomes of studies – and this can make a substantial difference. If the two teachers were unconvinced by the newfangled and progressive approach being tested, then this could undermine their ability to effectively teach that way.
On the other hand, although it is implied that these teachers normally teach in the 'traditional' way, actually constructivist approaches are recommended in Turkey, and are officially sanctioned, and widely taught in teacher education and development courses. If the teachers accepted the arguments for believing the SWH was likely to be more effective at bringing about conceptual learning than the methods they were asked to adopt in the comparison classes, that would further undermine that treatment as a fair control condition.
Again, there is very little researchers can do about this issue as they cannot ensure that teachers participating in research studies are equally confident in the effectivenes of different treatments (and why should they be – the researchers are obviously expecting a substantive difference*), and this is a major problem in studies into teaching innovations (Taber, 2019).
* This is clear from their paper. Is it likely that they would have communicated this to the teachers? "The teachers were given training sessions about [SWH's] implementation prior to the study." Presumably, even if somehow these experienced teachers had previously managed to completely avoid or ignore years of government policy and guidance intending to persuade them of the value of constructivist approaches, the researchers could not have offered effective "training sessions" without explaining the rationales of the overall approach, and for the specific features of the SWH that they wanted teachers to adopt.
Derek was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. When I interviewed Derek soon after the start of his secondary schooling, he told me he liked science, and was currently studying 'burning'.
So, I asked him what that was:
What is burning?
[pause, c.2s]
When [pause, c.2s] a fuel, oxygen and heat gets – in, erm, I'm not quite sure how to explain, but it's like – you get the triangle of fire, and then, burning is just when you've got fire and you're burning something with it.
Okay, so you'd recognise it if you saw it, would you?
Yeah.
Yeah, but maybe it's not that easy to explain?
Yeah.
The notion that 'burning is just when you've got fire and you're burning something with it' – might be considered tautological:
burning is when you are burning something
Scientists look to explain natural phenomena with theories, principles, models, and so forth. But for most people, phenomena that they have been familiar with since very young (such as a dropped object falling) do not seem to need explanation – as they are seen as just natural events (Watts & Taber, 1996).
Derek knew about the fire triangle, but his response reminded me of another triangle that is often referred to by science educators.
Johnstone's triangle
For many years Prof. Alex Johnstone (1930-2017) worked at the Centre for Science Education that he founded at the University of Glasgow; where he undertook, supervised, and collaborated on, a good many projects in science education – especially, but not only, relating to the teaching and learning of chemistry and physics in higher education.
However, one of Johnstone's most influential publications must be the short article he published in the School Science Review (Johnstone, 1982) – the secondary science journal of the Association for Science Education. In this short piece he argued that in each of biology, chemistry, and physics, learning difficulties in part derived from how the subject was taught at several 'levels' at once, asking young learners to think simultaneously on different planes as it were. In each of these science subjects, this could be represented by a triangle. In many lessons students would be asked to think about, and inter-relate, considerations from the viewpoints of several vertices.
Johnston's chemistry triangle distinguished between three levels:
the macroscopic (the scale at which people observe and handle materials);
the submicroscopic (molecular) scale at which many chemical explanations are developed;
the symbolic level – where abstract symbols are used to represent the chemistry
"Those of us who are academic chemists can view our subject on at least three levels.
There is the level at which which we can see and handle materials, and describe their properties in terms of density, flammability, colour and so on. We are also interested in the possibility of conversion of one material into another with consequent changes in properties.
A second level is the representational one in which we try to represent chemical substances by formulae and their changes by equations. This is part of the sophisticated language of the subject.
The third level is atomic and molecular, a level at which we attempt to explain why chemical substances behave the way they do. We invoke atoms, molecules, ions, structures, isomers, polymers etc to give us a mental picture by which to direct our thinking and rationalize the descriptive level mentioned above.
These levels could be called (a) descriptive and functional, (b) representational, (c) explanatory. Trained chemists jump freely from level to level in a series of mental gymnastics. It is eventually very hard to separate these levels."
Johnstone, 1982 (added emphasis)
Over the years there have been many attempts to apply, elaborate, and refine Johnston's triangle, and it has been an idea that has proved very productive in thinking about learning difficulties in the subject.
"Chemistry seeks to provide qualitative and quantitative explanations for the observed behaviour of elements and their compounds. Doing so involves making use of three types of representation: the macro (the empirical properties of substances); the sub-micro (the natures of the entities giving rise to those properties); and the symbolic (the number of entities involved in any changes that take place). Although understanding this triplet relationship is a key aspect of chemical education, there is considerable evidence that students find great difficulty in achieving mastery of the ideas involved…" (Publisher's description)
One well-respected, edited, scholarly book ('Multiple Representations in Chemical Education' – Gilbert & Treagust, 2009) consisted of contributions exploring implications of the idea. Indeed, now, there is even a book entitled 'The Johnstone Triangle' (Reid, 2021) with the telling subtitle: 'the key to understanding chemistry'!
Derek was just being introduced to burning as a science topic, and for him it was still just a familiar phenomenon rather than a theoretical construct. We have all seen fires, and can recognise when something is burning – but how many people really know what fire is?1 Burning and fire are everyday concepts – fire is an impressive phenomenon to a young child: one that is salient enough to be noticed. The child's brain then recognises different instances of fire as being similar and it abstracts a spontaneous concept – that there is a category of events in the world that appear like this.
Of course, the brain of the young child does this without using language (it forms a category of events in the sense that it readily recognises new instances – it does not yet have access to have technical notions of 'category', 'concept', 'abstraction' of course.) And the child does not instinctively know this is called 'fire' or 'el incendio' or 'l' incendie' or whatever, until someone who is a more mature member of the child's natural language community shares this label.2
School science will involve learning that there is a formal scientific concept3 called 'combustion' that is basically the chemist's name for burning. However, 'combustion' is a technical term, so combustion will be defined in terms of other concepts. So, whereas in everyday life we recognise what counts as a fire or burning using the brain's inherent pattern-recognition mechanism (a spontaneous conception), in chemistry we have a technical definition (a scientific concept defined in relation to to other scientific concepts, and so 'theoretical').
That is, in everyday life, if you told someone you saw something on fire, it is unlikely anyone (leaving aside science teachers) would ask you which criteria you used to know this: you did not deliberate on the matter, you simply saw, and instantly recognised, a fire. When you refer to a fire, the other person recognises what you mean because they have learnt 'fire' to be the label for their own spontaneously formed conception that allows their perceptual-cognitive system to instantly recognise a fire.
But, for a chemist, combustion is oneclass of chemical reaction (so the learner can only understand combustion in chemical terms if they have an appreciation of what a chemical reaction is), which only makes sense to someone who has reasonable idea what a scientist means by a substance, as chemical reactions are changes resulting in different substances. Here we have shifted from everyday notions to the theoretical descriptions of science.
In school chemistry, everyday phenomena (e.g., burning) are reconsolidated in terms of technical concepts and language (e.g., combustion). (From Taber, 2013)
The invisible nanoscopic world
But chemists are seldom satisfied with macroscopic accounts – even when posed in technical language. Rather, students will be taught to explain the observable macroscopic phenomena in terms of invisible entities which have unfamiliar properties. Imagined entities such as molecules4, nanoscopic systems which are best understood as fuzzy balls of fields – that have no actual surface, and are mostly tenuous 'clouds' of charge. (Molecules are sometimes modelled as if billiard balls, or sets of balls connected by sticks, but this is just an attempt to represent entities quite unlike the familiar referents available to learners in ways they can make sense of.)
That is, combustion will be explained as a rearrangement of electrons and atomic cores that changes one set of molecules (of the reactants in the reaction) into another (the products). This process will involve energy changes, due to differences in stability of different sets of molecules, and will progress through the breaking and making of chemical bonds.
If the learner is able to form a mental image of (i.e., imagine) chemical reactions at the nanoscopic level, and see how this can be used to explain an actual observable phenomenon (such as a fire), they then also have to learn how chemists often represent these ideas in what is in effect a specialist language – involving chemical formulae, and reaction equations, and the like.
So, when Derek was using a Bunsen burner to set fire to pasta and (not quite set fire to) raisins as he reported to me, he was using a chemical reaction that might be summarised by the chemist or science teacher as:
CH4 + 2O2 ➞ CO2 + 2H2O
Johnstone suggested that the symbolic representation was the third level, alongside the macroscopic and submicroscopic. He was absolutely right that it added to the 'learning demand'. However, there is another complication in that many of these key representations (the formulae and equations) are ambiguous as they can represent either the macroscopic level of substances weighed out in grammes (2O2 would represent 64 g of the substance oxygen, although as it is a gas it would normally be measured by volume) or the individual imagined entities of the molecular world (where 2O2 would mean two molecules of oxygen).
Useful ambiguity
This is useful ambiguity for the chemist – but an added complication for the learner who has to follow the teacher's transitions where one moment a symbol reflects a test tube of stuff, and the next some molecule. Because of its role in bridging between the two very different scales at which we explain chemistry I prefer to see these symbols as being along one side of the triangle (whilst separating out the everyday phenomenological level from the technical, theoretical descriptions used by science). However, whatever version of Johnstone's triangle is applied, it has become something of an iconic image in chemistry education.
The chemist's triplet: a variation on Johnstone's triangle (from Taber, 2013)
Another iconic triangle
Derek had not yet been introduced to all this, and he was still operating with burning as a phenomenon:
And why is this important, do you think? Why do you think we study burning?
[pause, c.2s]
I'm not sure.
No one's told you that?
No.
Is it fun, is it a fun topic?
Yeah.
What Derek did seem to have learned well was the fire triangle.
But you have this 'triangle of fire'. So does that mean that fire is always a triangular shape?
No.
So, what's a triangle of fire?
You need three things to make a fire, which is oxygen, heat and fuel.
Okay, so what if I had erm some fuel and some heat, but I didn't have any oxygen, but maybe I've got lots of fuel?
No – wouldn't have fire.
I can't have extra fuel instead?
No.
No?
You need the three things.
What if I've got lots and lots of fuel, and lots and lots of oxygen, but it's very, very cold?
No.
No, that won't work either. So I always have to have the three things?
Yeah.
Derek stuck to his claim – you always needed all three. This is a useful heuristic (useful if ever one is faced with a fire as it tells you can act by just removing one of the three essentials) even if (like most heuristics) it will sometimes fail, e.g.
some materials will continue burning in the absence of an external supply of oxygen as they have an internal source;
chlorine will support combustion in place of oxygen (but that's seldom a practical issue in everyday situations) ;
substances have an auto-ignition temperature (where they can spontaneously ignite), and for a few substances this is around or below room temperature;
These exceptions do not undermine the general utility of the' 'triangle'.
Some useful learning had gone on here – and potentially not just about fire, because the idea that one factor may be limiting on a process is a generally useful principle (e.g., plants grown in a soil depleted in potassium will not thrive, no matter how much sunlight, water, nitrate and phosphate is present).
But the fire triangle, even if it is not supported by a deep understanding of chemical principles, is worth teaching because of its practical value. It seems to offer a heuristic that people accept and recall. And rather like Johnston's triangle, it seems to have become rather iconic. At least, I assume that is why when COVID-19 infection rates were high, the fire triangle was used as a familiar analogy to persuade people to avoid the 'oxygen' of social mixing…
Watts, M. and Taber, K. S. (1996) An explanatory gestalt of essence: students' conceptions of the 'natural' in physical phenomena, International Journal of Science Education, 18 (8), pp.939-954.
Notes
1 It has been mooted that fire should be understood as an example the 'fourth' phase of matter, plasma – that is an ionised gas.5 But actually fire is more complicated than this as it contains a mixture of reactant and product molecules and the molecular fragments that form intermediate and/or transition states. Some chemical reactions, when studied at the molecular level, largely follow a single reaction path. But combustion tends to be much more complex with multiple pathways involving many different ions and molecular fragments.
So, fire is a multiphase mixture, more akin to a solution, aerosol, or suspension, than to a gas or plasma.
2 The child does not know this is called fire, and when she is told this she may not realise that such names are social conventions – according to Jean Piaget's research young children may assume that things in the world have (that is, have always had) a name that people have had to learn.
This childish idea reflects superstitious notions about names that are part of some magical systems of knowledge – 'the law of names': the idea that if you know a person or thing's real name this gives you over over them/it.
3 A very influential theory due to Lev Vygotsky takes the distinction between spontaneous concepts formed automatically, and formal taught concepts that are shared through social interaction (such as teaching). These latter kinds of concepts are usually translated from Vygotsky's Russian as 'scientific' though this is meant in the broad sense of any formal field of study. A key point emphasised by Vygotsky was that, assuming the learners could relate a taught concept to existing spontaneous concepts (that is, 'meaningful learning' occurred), they would actually come to operate with a concept which was a hybrid developed from the interaction of the intuitive understanding and the learned technically defined notion – a melded conception.
4 By referring to molecules and ions and electrons as imagined entities, I am not suggesting they are only imaginary. Most (if not all) scientists today see them as real things (even if strictly our evidence is indirect, and they arguably remain theoretical constructs). But a teacher cannot directly show the class a molecule or an electron, even if some types of imaging equipment do now produce representations of individual atoms. For the learners (and I would suggest even the teacher) these are only ever imagined entities. Yet, we expect students to do a good deal of thinking about, and with, these imagined entities.
5If we are expanding the three states of matter, then there is an argument for making plasma the 5th phase:
I often enjoy reading popular accounts of science topics, but sometimes one comes across statements that are vague or dubious or confusing – or simply wrong. Some of this reflects a basic challenge that authors of popular science share with science teachers and other science communicators: scientific ideas are often complex, subtle and abstract. Doing them justice requires detailed text and technical terminology. Understanding them often depends upon already having a good grasp of underpinning concepts. That is fine in a formal report for other scientists, but is not of any value to a non-specialist audience.
So, the author has to simplify, and perhaps round off some of the irregular detail; and to find ways to engage readers by using language and examples that will make sense to them. That is, finding ways to 'make the unfamiliar familiar'.
I am sure that often the passages in popular science books that I as a scientist1 get grumpy about are well motivated, and, whilst strictly inaccurate, reflect a compromise between getting the science perfect and making it accessible and engaging for the wider readership. Sometimes, however, one does get the impression that the author has not fully grasped the science they are writing about.
"Lucy Jane Santos is the Executive Secretary of the British Society for the History of Science…"
Public engagement with radium
I very much enjoyed reading a book, 'Half lives', by the historian of science Lucy Jane Santos, about how in the decades after its discovery by Pierre and Marie Curie, radium was the subject of wide public interest and engagement. One of the intriguing observations about this newly discovered element was that it appeared to glow in the dark. We now know that actually the glow comes from nitrogen in the air, as radium is radioactive and emissions by radium 'excite' (into a higher energy state) nitrogen molecules, which then emit visible light as they return ('relax') to their 'ground' state. This production of light without heating (a phenomenon generally called luminescence), when it is due to exposure to radioactivity, is known as radioluminescence.
Today, many people are very wary of radioactivity – with good reason of course – but Santos describes how at one time radium was used (or at least claimed as an ingredient) in all kinds of patent medicines and spa treatments and cosmetics (and even golf balls). This was a fascinating (and sometimes shocking) story.
What substance(s) can you find in quinine?
I did find a few things to quibble over – although across a whole book it was, only, a few. However, one statement that immediately stood out as dodgy science was the claim that quinine contained phospor:
"Quinine contains phosphor, a substance that luminesces when exposed to certain wavelengths of light…"
Santos, 2020
This may seem an unremarkable statement to a lay person, but to a scientist this is nonsensical. Quinine is a chemical compound (of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen), that is – a single substance. A single substance cannot contain another substance – any more than say, a single year can contain other years. An impure sample of a substance will contain other substances (it is in effect a mixture of substances), but quinine itself is, by definition, just quinine.
Molecular structure of the chemical compound quinine (C20H24N2O2) – a pure sample of quinine would contain only (a great many copies of) this molecule.
Note – no phosphorus, and no rare earth metal atoms.
The term 'phosphor' refers to a luminescent material – one that will glow after it has been exposed to radiation (often this will be ultraviolet) or otherwise excited. The term is usually applied to solid materials, such as those used to produce an image in television and monitor screens.
The term derives by reference to the element phosphorus which is a luminescent substance that was accordingly itself given a name meaning 'light-bearing'. The term phosphorescent was used to describe substances that continue to glow for a time after irradiation with electromagnet radiation ceases. But it is now known that phosphorus itself is not phosphorescent, but rather its glow is due to chemiluminescence – there is a chemical reaction between the element and oxygen in the air which leads to light being emitted.
The widely used term phosphor, then, reflects an outdated, historical, description of a property of phosphorus; and does not mean that phosphors contain, or are compounds of, phosphorus. There is clearly some scope for confusion of terms here. 2
term
meaning
luminescence
the emission of light by a cold object (in contrast to incandescence)
– chemiluminescence
a form of luminescence due to a chemical reaction
– – bioluminescence
a form of chemiluminescence that occurs in living organisms
– electroluminescence
a form of luminescence produced by passing electrical current through some materials
– photoluminescence
a form of luminescence due to irradiation by electromagnetic radiation, such as ultraviolet
– – fluorescence
a type of photoluminescence that only occurs whilst the object is being excited (e.g., by exposure to ultraviolet)
– – phosphorescence
a type of photoluminescence that continues for some time after the object has been being excited (e.g., by exposure to ultraviolet)
– radioluminescence
a form of luminescence due to a material being exposed to ionising radiation (e.g., 𝛂 radiation)
– sonoluminescence
a form of luminescence due to a material being exposed to sound
phosphor
a material that exhibits luminescence
phosphorus
a chemical element that exhibits chemiluminescence (when exposed to air)
There is a range of terms relating to luminescence. Here are some of those terms.
Some central ideas about luminescence (represented on a concept map)
A traditional medicine
Quinine, a substance extracted from the bark of several species of Cinchona, has long been used for medicinal purposes (e.g., by the Quechua people of the Americas 3), as it is a mild antipyretic and analgesic. It is an example of a class of compounds produced by plants known as an alkaloids. Plant alkaloids are bitter, and it is thought their presence deters animals from eating the plant. We might say that Quechua pain medication is a bitter pill to swallow.
Modern science has often adopted and developed technologies that had long been part of the 'traditional ecological knowledge' of indigenous groups – such as making extracts from Cinchona bark to use as medicines.
Sadly, the original discovers and owners of such technologies have not always been properly recognised when such technologies have been acquired, transferred elsewhere, and reported. 3
(Image by GOKALP ISCAN from Pixabay)
Quinine is an ingredient of tonic water (and bitter lemon drink) added because of its bitter taste.
(Why deliberately make a drink bitter? Quinine has anti-malarial properties which made it a useful substance to add to drinks in parts of the world where malaria is endemic. People liked the effect!)
Quinine glows when exposed to ultraviolet light. It is luminescent. To be more specific, quinine is photoluminescent. (This is responsible for the notion that someone offered a gin and tonic at a disco should test it under the 'blacklights' to make sure they have not been given pure gin to drink. Although, I am slightly sceptical about whether the kind of people that drink 'G&T's go to the kind of dances that have ultraviolet lighting.)
"I do apologise, I think I might have just splashed a tiny droplet of my tonic water on you"
(Image by Victoria_Watercolor from Pixabay)
It is reasonable to describe quinine as a phosphor in the wider sense of the term – but it does not contain another phosphor substance, any more than, say, iron contains a metallic substance or sulphur contains a yellow substance or sucrose contains a sweet substance or copper a conducting substance. So, a more accurate formulation would have been
"Quinine [is a] phosphor, a substance that luminesces when exposed to certain wavelengths of light…"
or, perhaps better still, simply
"Quinine [is] a substance that luminesces when exposed to certain wavelengths of light…"
Ask the oracle
I was intrigued at why Lucy Jane Santos might have been confused about this, until I did a quick internet search. Then I found a range of sites that claimed that quinine contains phosphors – indeed, often, rare earths are specified.
The rare earths (another unfortunate historic choice of name, as it transpired that they are neither especially rare nor 'earths', i.e., oxides) are a group of metallic elements. They are not as well known as, say, iron, copper, zinc, aluminium or gold, but they have with a wide range of useful applications.
Scandium, the first of the 'rare earth' metals. Probably not what you want in your tonic water.
If something is repeated enough, does it become true?
Clearly there are not rare earths in quinine. So, the following quotes (from sites accessed on 7th March 2023) proffer misinformation.
"If you want to get a bit more scientific about it…. quinine contains rare earth compounds called phosphors. These are the substances which glow when they are hit with particular wavelengths of the EM spectrum, including UV light. Phosphors absorb UV light and then emit it in their own colour, in this case glowing blue light."
This claim is odd, as the previous paragraph explained more canonically: "why does quinine absorb UV light (the invisible component of sunlight that produces sun tans and sunburns!)? It is due to the structure of the quinine molecule, which enables it to take in energy in the form of invisible UV light and immediately radiate some of that same energy in the form of visible blue light." Other compounds cannot be inside a molecule – so this more canonical explanation is not consistent with quinine containing other "substances" which were "rare earth compounds."
"Quinine contains rare earth compounds called phosphors. These substances glow when they are hit with particular wavelengths of the EM spectrum, including UV light. Phosphors absorb UV light and then emit it in their own color [sic, colour]. Thus, the black light's UV radiation is absorbed by the phosphors in the quinine, and then emitted again in the form of glowing blue light."
The following extract appeared under the subheading "Why is quinine fluorescence?" That reflects a category error as quinine is a substance and fluorescence is a process (and fluorescent the property) – so, presumably this should have read why is quinine fluorescent?
Why Quinine Glows
Quinine contains rare earth compounds called phosphors. … Phosphors absorb UV light and then emit it in their own color [sic, colour]. Thus, the black light's UV radiation is absorbed by the phosphors in the quinine, and then emitted again in the form of glowing blue light.
Tonic water glows and [sic] will fluoresce under UV rays because of quinine in it. Quinine is one of the most important alkaloids found in the cinchona bark, among many others. It has some rare earth compounds known as phosphors that glow when they hit certain wavelengths of the UV light. Phosphors in the quinine absorb the UV light and then reflect it or emit it again in the form of glowing blue light.
Perhaps the most bizarre example was a site, 'emaze' which offered to show me "How to create magic mud…in 17 easy steps"
Step 1 was
"wash your potatoes!!!!"
However, perhaps due to exclamation fatigue(!), this went in a different, if now familiar, direction with step 2:
"Quinine contains rare earth compounds called phosphors. These substances glow when they are hit with particular wavelengths of the EM spectrum, including UV light. Phosphors absorb UV light and then emit it in their own color [sic, colour]. Thus, the black light's UV radiation is absorbed by the phosphors in the quinine, and then emitted again in the form of glowing blue light"
https://app.emaze.com/@AORQCIII#/16
This text was then repeated as each of steps 3-14. (Sadly steps 15-17 seemed to have been missed or lost. Or, perhaps not so sadly if they were just further repeats.) The first screen suggests this presentation was "done by Dr. Meena & Maha" but if Dr. Meena & Maha really exist (if you do, I am sorry, the internet makes me very sceptical) and 'done this', it is not clear if they got bored with their task very quickly, or whether the server managed to corrupt a much more coherent presentation when it was uploaded to the site.
This 'emaze' presentation seems to want to emphasise how quinine contains rare earth compounds…
According to Google, the site 'Course Hero' suggested
"Phosphors, which are found in quinine, are rare earth compounds. These chemicals glow when they are struck with particular wavelengths of the EM spectrum, …"
but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately given that snippet), the rest of the text seemed to be behind a pay-wall. This did not offer a strong incitement to pay for material on the site.
Toys coated with phosphorus?
Another website I came across was for a shop which claimed to be selling glow-in-the-dark objects that were made with phosoporus that needed to be illuminated to initiate a glow: a claim which seems not only scientifically incorrect (as mentioned above, phosphorus is not photoluminescent – it glows when in contact with air as it oxidises), and so unlikely; but, otherwise, dangerous and, surely, illegal.
During my search, I came across a website (grammarist.com) offering to explain the difference between the words phosphorous and phosphorus. It did not discuss rare earths, but informed readers that
"Phosphate: Noun that means an electrically charged particle. Phosphorus: Also a noun that means a mineral found in phosphate." …We've already established that phosphorus is the simple mineral found in the particle phosphate, but phosphor is something else altogether."
So, that's 'no', 'no', 'no', and…I think at least one more 'no'.
Phosphorus is a reactive element, and is not found in nature as a mineral. To a scientist, a mineral is a material found in nature – as a component of rocks. Unfortunately, in discussing diet, the term minerals is often associated with elements, such as, for example, phosphorus, iodine, potassium and iron that are necessary for good health. However, one would not eat the element iron, but rather some compound of it. (Foods naturally contain iron compounds). And trying to eat phosphorus, iodine or potassium (rather than compounds of them) would be very hazardous.
So, whilst a nutritional supplement might well contain some minerals in the composition, strictly they are there as compounds that will provide a source of biologically important elements, and they will be metabolised into other compounds of those elements. (Iron from iron compounds will, for example, be used in synthesising the haem incorporated into red blood cells.) Unfortunately, learners commonly have alternative conceptions ('misconceptions') about the difference between mixtures and compounds and assume a compound maintains the properties of its 'constituent' elements (Taber, 1996).
The grammarist.com entry helpfully warned us that phosphate was "not to be confused with phosphoric acid, a chemical compound found in detergents and fertilizers". I suspect it is only found in detergents and fertilisers when something has gone wrong with the production process (notwithstanding diluted phosphoric acid has been used directly as a fertiliser) 4. It is a corrosive and irritant substance that can cause bronchitis – although tiny amounts are added to some colas. [n.b., cocaine also once featured in some cola, but that is no longer allowed.]
An ion is an electrically charged particle
The phosphate ion is one example of a type of ion.
Phosphates (such as calcium phosphate) are substances that contain phosphate ions.
So, phosphates contain electrically charged particles (phosphate ions), but that does not make phosphate an electrically charged particle, just as
blue does not mean a large marine mammal
bank does not mean a day of celebration where people do not need to go to work
vice does not mean a senior executive officer
motor does not mean a two wheeled vehicle
compact does not mean a flat circular object
final does not mean a simple musical instrument played with the breath
free does not mean a meal taken around noon or soon after, and
meal does not mean a token that provides entry or service
Grammarist invited feedback: I sent it some, so hopefully by the time you read this, the entry will have been changed.
It was on the internet: it must be true
The internet is an immense and powerful tool giving access to the vast resources of the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, the downside of a shared, democratic, free to access, reservoir of human knowledge is that there is no quality control. There is a lot of really good material on the web: but there is also a lot of nonsense on the web.
One example I have referred to before is the statement:
"energy is conserved in chemical reactions so can therefore be neither created nor destroyed"
This has the form of a logical structure
X so therefore Y
which is equivalent to
Y because X:
"energy can be neither created nor destroyed because it is conserved in chemical reactions"
This is just nonsense. There is no logical reason why the conservation of energy in chemical reactions implies a general principle of energy conservation.
We can deduce the specific from the general (days have 24 hours, so Sunday has 24 hours) but not the general from the specific (January has 31 days, so months have 31 days).
Perhaps this is easily missed by people who already know that energy is always conserved.
A parallel structure might be:
"association football teams always consist of eleven players so therefore sports teams always consist of eleven players"
"sports teams always consist of eleven players because association football teams always consist of eleven players"
This is 'obviously' wrong because we know that rugby teams and netball teams and volleyball teams and water polo teams (for example) do not consist of eleven players.
But what about quinine containing rare earth compounds? A notion that is structurally similar to claiming that
France contains South American countries, or
'Great Expectations' contains Jane Austin novels, or
February contains Autumn months, or
Cauliflower contains citrus fruits, or
Beethoven's 5th Symphony contains Haydn concerti
(in other words, something obviously silly to someone who has a basic understanding of the domain – chemistry or geography or literature or the calender or botany/horticulture or music – because it suggest one basic unit contains other units of similar status).
How does this error appear so often? Quite likely, a lot of website now are populated with material collected and collated by machines from other websites. If so, it only takes one human being (or government department) to publish something incorrect, and in time it is likely to start appearing in various places on the web.
There is currently a lot of talk of how artificial intelligence (AI) is getting better at writing essays, and answering questions, and even drafting lectures for busy academics. AI seemingly has great potential where it is provided with high quality feedback. Perhaps, but where the AI is based on finding patterns in publicly available texts, and has no real ability to check sense, then I wonder if the www is only going to become more and more polluted with misinformation and nonsense.
I do not know where Lucy Jane Santos got the idea that there are other substances in the single substance quinine (akin to having other countries in France), but if she did a web-search and relied on what she read, then I am in no position to be critical. I use the web to find things out and check things all the time. I am likely to spot gross errors in fields where I already have a strong background…but outside of that? I do seek to evaluate the likely authority of sources – but that does not mean I could not be taken in by a site which looked professional and authoritative.
The web started with imperfect people (because we all are) posting all kinds of material – with all kinds of motivations. I expect most of it was well-meaning, and usually represented something the poster actually believed; and indeed much of it was valid. However, a 'bot' can search, copy, and paste far quicker than a person, and if the internet is increasingly authored by programs that are indiscriminately copying bits and pieces from elsewhere to collage new copy to attract readers to advertising, then one cannot help wonder if the proportion of web-pages that cannot be trusted will be incrementally coming to dominate the whole network.
I (a fallible, but natural intelligence) hope not, but I am not very optimistic.
Work cited:
Santos, Lucy Jane (2020) Half lives. The unlikely story of radium. Icon.
1 Although my own research has been in science education and not one of the natural sciences, I am pleased that the learned societies (e.g. the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, etc.) and the UK's Science Council, recognise the work of science educators as professional contributions to science.
2 One internet site suggests:
Luminescence is caused by various things like electric current, chemical reactions, nuclear radiation, electromagnetic radiation, etc. But phosphorescence takes place after a sample is irradiated with light.
• Phosphorescence remains for sometime even after the lighting source is removed. But luminescence is not so.
The second paragraph is nonsensical since phosphorescence is a type of luminescence. (It should be, "…fluorescence" that does not.) The first paragraph seems reasonable except that the 'but' seems misplaced. However 'in the light of' the second sentence (which sees phosphorescence and luminescence as contrary) it seems that the (contrasting) 'but' was intended, and whoever wrote this did not realise that light is a form of electromagnetic radiation.
Another, more technical, site suggests,
Luminescence is the emission of light by a substance as a result of a chemical reaction (chemiluminescence) or an enzymatic reaction (bioluminescence).
chemiluminescence (due to a chemical reaction) versus
bioluminescence (due to an enzymatic reaction).
However, the keen-eyed will have spotted that "an enzymatic reaction" is simply a chemical reaction catalysed by an enzyme. So, bioluminescence is a subtype of chemiluminescence, not something distinct.
3 Some sources claim that the medicinal properties of cinchona bark were discovered by Jesuit missionaries that travelled to South America as part of European imperial expansion there.
Nataly Allasi Canales of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen is reported as explaining that actually,
"Quinine was already known to the Quechua, the Cañari and the Chimú indigenous peoples that inhabited modern-day Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador before the arrival of the Spanish…They were the ones that introduced the bark to Spanish Jesuits."
Learning about the history of indigenous technologies can be complicated because:
often they are transmitted by an oral and practice culture (rather than written accounts);
traditional practices may be disrupted (or even suppressed) by colonisation by external invaders; and
European colonisers, naturalists and other travellers, often did not think their indigenous informants 'counted', and rather considered (or at least treated) what they were shown as their own discoveries.
4 This again seems to reflect the common alternative conception that confuses mixtures and compounds (Taber, 1996): phosphoric acid is used in reactions to produce fertilizers and detergents, but having reacted is no longer present. It is a starting material, but not an ingredient of the final product.
Just as we do not eat iron and phosphorus, we do not use washing powders that contain phosphoric acid, even if they have been prepared with it. (Increasingly, phosphates are being replaced in detergents because of their polluting effects on surface water such as rivers and lakes.)
5 This gives the impression to me that the Department of Education sees schooling as little more than a game where students perform and are tested on learning whatever is presented to them, rather than being about learning what is worth knowing. There is surely no value in learning a logically flawed claim. Any student who understands the ideas will appreciate this statement is incorrect, but perhaps the English Government prefers testing for recall of rote learning rather than looking for critical engagement?
This page contains a number of scientifically incorrect statements, but I am most concerned about your misleading characterisation of phosphorus as a 'safe' material.
Scientific errors
Your site claims that
"phosphorus…has the ability to absorb and store surrounding light"
"the ability to absorb and store surrounding light…works similar to the natural process of photosynthesis"
"Phosphorus glow absorbs and stores surrounding light. When it is dark, the stored light is slowly released in the form of a glow"
"Glow in the Dark products contain phosphorus…it needs to be exposed to light before it can work"
"Radium glow produces light on its own through a chemical process."
All of these claims are mistaken.
1. Luminescent materials do not store light. Light cannot be stored, it is a form of electromagnetic radiation. (In LASERS light is contained within a cavity by reflecting it back and forth by mirrors, but phosphorus is not able to do anything like this.) When the radiation is absorbed by a photoluminescent material the radiation ceases to exist. Because the molecules of the absorbing material are excited into a higher energy state, new electromagnetic radiation (light) may later be emitted – but it is not light that has been stored. (The energy transferred to the luminescent material by the radiation may be considered as stored: but not the light).
2. The process of photosynthesis does not involve "the ability to absorb and store surrounding light" – absorb, yes, but the light is not stored – it ceases to exist once absorbed.
3. Materials which absorb energy from radiation, and then release it slowly ('glow') are called phosphorescent. This does not (only) occur 'when it is dark', but from immediately after irradiation. (The process occurs regardless of whether it is dark enough to observe.)
4. Phosphorus is not itself a phosphorescent material. The glow seen around white phosphorus is due to a chemical reaction with oxygen in the air. Not only does this not store any light, but, also, it does not need light to initiate.
5. Radium does NOT produce light through a chemical process. Radium is radioactive. It undergoes radioactive decay (due to a change in the atomic nucleus). This is NOT considered a chemical process.
Now I turn to what I consider a more serous problem with your site.
Potentially dangerous misinformation
The more serious matter concerns your claim that to be selling products containing 'non toxic' phosphorus:
"Glow in the Dark products contain phosphorus (a non toxic substance) which has the ability to absorb and store surrounding light…"
"Phosphorus is non toxic and safe for general use."
"Phosphorus is a natural mineral found in the human body. Phosphorus Glow in the dark products is perfectly safe for everyday use"
"Many get confused and associate all green glow products to be radioactive. This is not true. Phosphorus glow is non toxic and non radioactive."
You may wonder why I think this matters enough to contact you.
It is very misleading to suggest to people reading the site (which could include children who might well be interested in glow-in-the-dark toys) that phosphorus is harmless, and this is completely wrong.
Phosphorus is not found as a natural mineral, as it is much too reactive to be found native (that is, as phosphorus) on earth – although many minerals are compounds of phosphorus (and thus do NOT share its chemical properties), and so sources of the element for use in agriculture etc. The human body does contain compounds of phosphorus, notably in the bones, but again there is no phosphorus (the substance phosphorus) in the human body – if you introduced some it would very quickly react. Sources of phosphorus are important in the diet, but it would be very unwise to try to eat phosphorus itself.
Phosphorus can be obtained in different forms (this is called allotropy where the same element can have different molecular structures – like graphite and diamond both being pure forms – allotropes -of carbon). Some allotropes of phosphorus are not especially dangerous. However, the form which glows is white (or yellow) phosphorus, and this is a very hazardous material.
So, handling phosphorus is dangerous and needs special precautions. (If you really did use phosphorus in your products, I imagine you would know that?) Here is some information from authoritative websites
"Ingestion of elemental white or yellow phosphorus typically causes severe vomiting and diarrhea [diarrhoea], which are both described as "smoking," "luminescent," and having a garlic-like odor. Other signs and symptoms of severe poisoning might include dysrhythmias, coma, hypotension, and death. Contact with skin might cause severe burns within minutes to hours…"
"White phosphorus is extremely toxic to humans, while other forms of phosphorus are much less toxic. Acute (short-term) oral exposure to high levels of white phosphorus in humans is characterised by three stages: the first stage consists of gastrointestinal effects; the second stage is symptom-free and lasts about two days; the third stage consists of a rapid decline in condition with gastrointestinal effects, plus severe effects on the kidneys, liver, cardiovascular system, and central nervous system (CNS). Inhalation exposure has resulted in respiratory tract irritation and coughing in humans. Chronic (long-term) exposure to white phosphorus in humans results in necrosis of the jaw, termed "phossy jaw."
Please feel free to check on this information for yourself.
However, I recommend you change the information on your website. In particular, please stop suggesting that phosphorus is a safe, non-toxic material, when the form of phosphorus which glows is highly toxic. I trust that now this has been brought to your attention, you will appreciate that it would be highly irresponsible for you to continue to advertise your products using misleading information about a hazardous substance.
I came across an interesting journal article that reported a quasi-experimental study where different groups of students studied the same topic for different periods of time. One group was given 3 half-hour lessons, another group 5 half-hour lessons, and the third group 8 half-hour lessons. Then they were tested on the topic they had been studying. The researchers found that the average group performance was substantially different across the different conditions. This was tested statistically, but the results were clear enough to be quite impressive when presented visually (as I have below).
Results from a quasi-experiment: its seems more study time can lead to higher achievement
These results seem pretty clear cut. If this research could be replicated in diverse contexts then the findings could have great significance.
Is your manager trying to cut course hours to save budget?
Does your school want you to teach 'triple science' in a curriculum slot intended for 'double science'?
Does your child say they have done enough homework?
Research evidence suggests that, ceteris paribus, learners achieve more by spending more time studying.
Ceteris paribus?
That is ceteris paribus (no, it is not a newly discovered species of whale): all other things being equal. But of course, in the real world they seldom – if ever – are.
If you wondered about the motivation for a study designed to see whether more teaching led to more learning (hardly what Karl Popper would have classed as a suitable 'bold conjecture' on which to base productive research), then I should confess I am being disingenuous. The information I give above is based on the published research, but offers a rather different take on the study from that offered by the authors themselves.
An 'alternative interpretation' one might say.
How useful are DARTs as learning activities?
I came across this study when looking to see if there was any research on the effectiveness of DARTs in chemistry teaching. DARTs are directed activities related to text – that is text-based exercises designed to require learners to engage with content rather than just copy or read it. They have long been recommended, but I was not sure I had seen any published research on their use in science classrooms.
Shamsulbahri and Zulkiply (2021) undertook a study that "examined the effect of Directed Activity Related to Texts (DARTs) and gender on student achievement in qualitative analysis in chemistry" (p.157). They considered their study to be a quasi-experiment.
An experiment…
Experiment is the favoured methodology in many areas of natural science, and, indeed, the double blind experiment is sometimes seen as the gold standard methodology in medicine – and when possible in the social sciences. This includes education, and certainly in science education the literature reports many, many educational experiments. However, doing experiments well in education is very tricky and many published studies have major methodological problems (Taber, 2019).
As we teach in school science, fair testing requires careful control of variables.
So, if I suggest there are some issues that prevent a reader from being entirely confident in the conclusions that Shamsulbahri and Zulkiply reach in their paper, it should be borne in mind that I think it is almost impossible to do a rigorously 'fair' small-scale experiment in education. By small-scale, I mean the kind of study that involves a few classes of learners as opposed to studies that can enrol a large number of classes and randomly assign them to conditions. Even large scale randomised studies are usually compromised by factors that simply cannot be controlled in educational contexts (Taber, 2019) , and small scale studies are subject to additional, often (I would argue) insurmountable, 'challenges'.
The study is available on the web, open access, and the paper goes into a good deal of detail about the background to, and aspects of, the study. Here, I am focusing on a few points that relate to my wider concerns about the merits of experimental research into teaching, and there is much of potential interest in the paper that I am ignoring as not directly relevant to my specific argument here. In particular, the authors describe the different forms of DART they used in the study. As, inevitably (considering my stance on the intrinsic problems of small-scale experiments in education), the tone of this piece is critical, I would recommend readers to access the full paper and make up your own minds.
Not a predatory journal
I was not familiar with the journal in which this paper was published – the Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction. It describes itself as "a peer reviewed interdisciplinary journal with an international advisory board". It is an open access journal that charges authors for publication. However, the publication fees are modest (US$25 if authors are from countries that are members of The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and US$50 otherwise). This is an order of magnitude less than is typical for some of the open-access journals that I have criticised here as being predatory – those which do not engage in meaningful peer review, and will publish some very low quality material as long as a fee is paid. 25 dollars seems a reasonable charge for the costs involved in publishing work, unlike the hefty fees charged by many of the less scrupulous journals.
Shamsulbahri and Zulkiply seem, then, to have published in a well-motivated journal and their paper has passed peer review. But this peer thinks that, like most small scale experiments into teaching, it is very hard to draw any solid conclusions from this work.
What do the authors conclude?
Shamsulbahri and Zulkiply argue that their study shows the value of DARTs activities in learning. I approach this work with a bias, as I also think DARTs can be very useful. I used different kinds of DARTs extensively in my teaching with 14-16 years olds when I worked in schools.
The authors claim their study,
"provides experimental evidence in support of the claim that the DARTs method has been beneficial as a pedagogical approach as it helps to enhance qualitative analysis learning in chemistry…
The present study however, has shown that the DARTs method facilitated better learning of the qualitative analysis component of chemistry when it was combined with the experimental method. Using the DARTs method only results in better learning of qualitative analysis component in chemistry, as compared with using the Experimental method only."
Shamsulbahri & Zulkiply, 2021
Yet, despite my bias, which leads me to suspect they are right, I do not think we can infer this much from their quasi-experiment.
I am going to separate out three claims in the quote above:
the DARTs method has been beneficial as a pedagogical approach as it helps to enhance qualitative analysis learning in chemistry
the DARTs method facilitated better learning of the qualitative analysis component of chemistry when it was combined with the [laboratory1] method
the DARTs method [by itself] results in better learning of qualitative analysis component in chemistry, as compared with using the [laboratory] method only.
I am going to suggest that there are two weak claims here and one strong claim. The weak claims are reasonably well supported (but only as long as they are read strictly as presented and not assumed to extend beyond the study) but the strong claim is not.
Limitations of the experiment
I suggest there are several major limiations of this research design.
What population is represented in the study?
In a true experiment researchers would nominate the population of interest (say, for example, 14-16 year old school learners in Malaysia), and then randomly select participants from this population who would be randomly assigned to the different conditions being compared. Random selection and assignment cannot ensure that the groupings of participants are equivalent, nor that the samples genuinely represent the population; as by chance it could happen that, say, the most studious students are assigned to one condition and all the lazy students to an other – but that is very unlikely. Random selection and assignment means that there is strong statistical case to think the outcomes of the experiment probably represent (more or less) what would have happened on a larger scale had it been possible to include the whole population in the experiment.
Obviously, researchers in small-scale experiments are very unlikely to be able to access full populations to sample. Shamsulbahri and Zulkiply did not – and it would be unreasonable to criticise them for this. But this does raise the question of whether what happens in their samples will reflect what would happen with other groups of students. Shamsulbahri and Zulkiply acknowledge their sample cannot be considered typical,
"One limitation of the present study would be the sample used; the participants were all from two local fully residential schools, which were schools for students with high academic performance."
Shamsulbahri & Zulkiply, 2021
So, we have to be careful about generalising from what happened in this specific experiment to what we might expect with different groups of learners. In that regard, two of the claims from the paper that I have highlighted (i.e., the weaker claims) do not directly imply these results can be generalised:
the DARTs method has been beneficial as a pedagogical approach…
the DARTs method facilitated better learning of the qualitative analysis component of chemistry when it was combined with the [laboratory] method
These are claims about what was found in the study – not inferences about what would happen in other circumstances.
When it is not possible to randomly assign participants to the different conditions then there is always the possibility that whatever process has been used to assign conditions to groups produces a bias. (An extreme case would be in a school that used setting, that is assigning students to teaching groups according to achievement, if one set was assigned to one condition, and another set to a different condition.)
In quasi-experiments on teaching it is usual to pre-test students and to present analysis to show that at the start of the experiment the groups 'are equivalent'. Of course, it is very unlikely two different classes would prove to be entriely equivalent on a pre-test, so often there is a judgement made of the test results being sufficiently similar across the conditions. In practice, in many published studies, authors settle for the very weak (and inadequate) test of not finding differences so great that would be very unlikely to occur by chance (Taber, 2019)!
Shamsulbahri and Zulkiply did pretest all participants as a screening process to exclude any students who already had good subject knowledge in the topic (qualitative chemical analysis),
"Before the experimental manipulation began, all participants were given a pre-screening test (i.e., the Cation assessment test) with the intention of selecting only the most qualified participants, that is, those who had a low-level of knowledge on the topic….The participants who scored ten or below (out of a total mark of 30) were selected for the actual experimental manipulation. As it turned out, all 120 participants scored 10 and below (i.e., with an average of 3.66 out of 30 marks), which was the requirement that had been set, and thus they were selected for the actual experimental manipulation."
Shamsulbahri & Zulkiply, 2021
But the researchers do not report the mean results for the groups in the three conditions (laboratory1; DARTs; {laboratory+DARTs}) or give any indication of how similar (or not) these were. Nor do these scores seem to have been included as a variable in the analysis of results. The authors seem to be assuming that as no students scored more than one-third marks in the pre-test, then any differences beteen groups at pre-test can be ignored. (This seems to suggest that scoring 30% or 0% can be considered the same level of prior knowledge in terms of the potential influence on further learning and subsequent post-test scores.) That does not seem a sound assumption.
"It is important to note that there was no issue of pre-test treatment interaction in the context of the present study. This has improved the external validity of the study, since all of the participants were given a pre-screening test before they got involved in the actual experimental manipulation, i.e., in one of the three instructional methods. Therefore, any differences observed in the participants' performance in the post-test later were due to the effect of the instructional method used in the experimental manipulation."
Shamsulbahri & Zulkiply, 2021 (emphasis added)
There seems to be a flaw in the logic here, as the authors seem to be equating demonstrating an absence of high scorers at pre-test with there being no differences between groups which might have influenced learning. 2
Units of analysis
In any research study, researchers need to be clear regarding what their 'unit of analysis' should be. In this case the extreme options seem to be:
120 units of analysis: 40 students in each of three conditions
3 units of analysis: one teaching group in each condition
The key question is whether individual learners can be considered as being subject to the treatment conditions independently of others assiged to the same condition.
"During the study phase, student participants from the three groups were instructed by their respective chemistry teachers to learn in pairs…"
Shamsulbahri & Zulkiply, 2021
There is a strong argument that when a group of students attend class together, and are taught together, and interact with each other during class, they strictly should not be considered as learning independently of each other. Anyone who has taught parallel classes that are supposedly equivalent will know that classes take on their own personalities as groups, and the behaviour and learning of individual students is influenced by the particular class ethos.
So, rigorous research into class teaching pedagogy should not treat the individual learners as units of analysis – yet it often does. The reason is obvious – it is only possible to do statistical testing when the sample size is large enough, and in small scale educational experiments the sample size is never going to be large enough unless one…hm…pretends/imagines/considers/judges/assumes/hopes?, that each learner is independently subject to the assigned treatment without being substantially influenced by others in that condition.
So, Shamsulbahri and Zulkiply treated their participants as independent units of analysis and based on this find a statistically significant effect of treatment:
⎟laboratory⎢ vs. ⎟DARTs⎢ vs. ⎟laboratory+DARTs⎢.
That is questionable – but what if, for argument's sake, we accept this assumption that within a class of 40 students the learners can be considered not to influence each other (even their learning partner?) or the classroom more generally sufficiently to make a difference to others in the class?
A confounding variable?
Perhaps a more serious problem with the research design is that there is insufficient control of potentially relevant variables. In order to make a comparison of ⎟laboratory⎢ vs. ⎟DARTs⎢ vs. ⎟laboratory+DARTs⎢ then the only relevant difference between the three treatment conditions should be whether the students learn by laboratory activity, DARTs, or both. There should not be any other differences between the groups in the different treatments that might reasonably be expected to influence the outcomes.
But the description of how groups were set up suggests this was not the case:
"….the researchers conducted a briefing session on the aims and experimental details of the study for the school's [schools'?] chemistry teachers…the researchers demonstrated and then guided the school's chemistry teachers in terms of the appropriate procedures to implement the DARTs instructional method (i.e., using the DARTs handout sheets)…The researcher also explained to the school's chemistry teachers the way to implement the combined method …
Participants were then classified into three groups: control group (experimental method), first treatment group (DARTs method) and second treatment group (Combination of experiment and DARTs method). There was an equal number of participants for each group (i.e., 40 participants) as well as gender distribution (i.e., 20 females and 20 males in each group). The control group consisted of the participants from School A, while both treatment groups consisted of participants from School B"
Shamsulbahri & Zulkiply, 2021
Several different teachers seems to have been involved in teaching the classes, and even if it is not entirely clear how the teaching was divided up, it is clear that the group that only undertook the laboratory activities were from a different school than those in the other two conditions.
If we think one teacher can be replaced by another without changing learning outcomes, and that schools are interchangeable such that we would expect exactly the same outcomes if we swapped a class of students from one school for a class from another school, then these variables are unimportant. If, however, we think the teacher doing the teaching and the school from which learners are sampled could reasonably make a difference to the learning achieved, then these are confounding variables which have not been properly controlled.
In my own experience, I do not think different teachers become equivalent even when their are briefed to teach in the same way, and I do not think we can assume schools are equivalent when providing students to participate in learning. These differences, then, undermine our ability to assign any differences in outcomes as due to the differences in pedagogy (that "any differences observed…were due to the effect of the instructional method used").
Another confounding variable
And then I come back to my starting point. Learners did not just experience different forms of pedagogy but also different amounts of teaching. The difference between 3 lessons and 5 lessons might in itself be a factor (that is, even if the pedagogy employed in those lessons had been the same), as might the difference between 5 lessons and 8 lessons. So, time spent studying must be seen as a likely confounding variable. Indeed, it is not just the amount of time, but also the number of lessons, as the brain processes learning between classes and what is learnt in one lesson can be reinforced when reviewed in the next. (So we could not just assume, for example, that students automatically learn the same amount from, say, two 60 min. classes and four 30 min. classes covering the same material.)
What can we conclude?
As with many experiments in science teaching, we can accept the results of Shamsulbahri and Zulkiply's study, in terms of what they found in the specific study context, but still not be able to draw strong conclusions of wider significance.
Is the DARTs method beneficial as a pedagogical approach?
I expect the answer to this question is yes, but we need to be careful in drawing this conclusion from the experiment. Certainly the two groups which undertook the DARTs activities outperformed the group which did not. Yet that group was drawn from a different school and taught by a different teacher or teachers. That could have explained why there was less learning. (I am not claiming this is so – the point is we have no way of knowing as different variables are conflated.) In any case, the two groups that did undertake the DARTs activity were both given more lessons and spent substantially longer studying the topic they were tested on, than the class that did not. We simply cannot make a fair comparison here with any confidence.
Did the DARTs method facilitate better learning when it was combined with laboratory work?
There is a stronger comparison here. We still do not know if the two groups were taught by the same teacher/teachers (which could make a difference) or indeed whether the two groups started from a very similar level of prior knowledge. But, at least the two groups were from the same school, and both experienced the same DARTs based instruction. Greater learning was achieved when students undertook laboratory work as well as undertaking DARTs activities compared with students who only undertook the DARTs activity.
The 'combined' group still had more teaching than the DARTs group, but that does not matter here in drawing a logical conclusion because the question being explored is of the form 'does additional teaching input provide additional value?' (Taber, 2019). The question here is notwhether one type of pedagogy is better than the other, but simply whether also undertaking practical works adds something over just doing the paper based learning activities.
As the sample of learners was not representative of any specfiic wider population, we cannot assume this result would generalise beyond the participants in the study, although we might reasonably expect this result would be found elsewhere. But that is because we might already assume that learning about a practical activity (qualitative chemical analysis) will be enhanced by adding some laboratory based study!
Does DARTs pedagogy produce more learning about qualitative analysis than laboratory activities?
Shamsulbahri and Zulkiply's third claim was bolder because it was framed as a generalisation: instruction through DARTs produces more learning about qualitative analysis than laboratory-based instruction. That seems quite a stretch from what the study clearly shows us.
What the research does show us with confidence is that a group of 40 students in one school taught by a particular teacher/teaching team with 5 lessons of a specific set of DARTs activities, performed better on a specific assessment instrument than a different group of 40 students in another school taught by a different teacher/teaching team through three lessons of laboratory work following a specific scheme of practical activities.
a group of 40 students
performed better on a specific assessment instrument
than a different group of 40 students
in one school
in another school
taught by a particular teacher/teaching team
taught by a different teacher/teaching team
with 5 lessons
through 3 lessons
of a specific set of DARTs activities,
of laboratory work following a specific scheme of practical activities
Confounded variables
Test instrument bias?
Even if we thought the post-test used by Shamsulbahri and Zulkiply was perfectly valid as an assessment of topic knowledge, we might be concerned by knowing that learning is situated in a context – we better recall in a similar context to that in which we learned.
How can we best assess students' learning about qualitative analysis?
So:
should we be concerned that the form of assessment, a paper-based instrument, is closer in nature to the DARTs learning experience than the laboratory learning experience?
and, if so,
might this suggest a bias in the measurement instrument towards one treatment (i.e., DARTs)
and, if so,
might a laboratory-based assessment have favoured the group that did the laboratory based learning over the DARTs group, and led to different outcomes?
and, if so,
which approach to assessment has more ecological validity in this case: which type of assessment activity is a more authentic way of testing learning about a laboratory-based activity like qualitative chemical analysis?
A representation of my understanding of the experimental design
Can we generalise?
As always with small scale experiments into teaching, we have to judge the extent to which the specifics of the study might prevent us from generalising the findings – to be able to assume they would generally apply elsewhere.3 Here, we are left to ask to what extent we can
ignore any undisclosed difference between the groups in levels of prior learning;
ignore any difference between the schools and their populations;
ignore any differences in teacher(s) (competence, confidence, teaching style, rapport with classes, etc.);
ignore any idiosyncrasies in the DARTs scheme of instruction;
ignore any idiosyncrasies in the scheme of laboratory instruction;
ignore any idiosyncrasies (and potential biases) in the assessment instrument and its marking scheme and their application;
And, if we decide we can put aside any concerns about any of those matters, we can safely assume that (in learning this topic at this level)
5 sessions of learning by DARTs is more effective than 3 sessions of laboratory learning.
Then we only have to decide if that is because
(i) DARTs activities teach more about this topic at this level than laboratory activities, or
(ii) whether some or all of the difference in learning outcomes is simply because 150 minutes of study (broken into five blocks) has more effect than 90 minutes of study (broken into three blocks).
What do you think?
Work cited:
Shamsulbahri, M. M., & Zulkiply, N. (2021). Examining the effect of directed activity related to texts (DARTs) and gender on student achievement in qualitative analysis in chemistry. Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction, 18(1), 157-181. https://doi.org/10.32890/mjli2021.18.1.7
I am referring to the first group as 'laboratory' both because it not clear the students were doing any experiments (that is, testing hypotheses) as the practical activity was learning to undertake standard analytical tests, and, secondly, to avoid confusion (between the educational experiment and the laboratory practicals).
2 I think the reference to "no issue of pre-test treatment interaction" is probably meant to suggest that as all students took the same pre-test it will have had the same effect on all participants. But this not only ignores the potential effect of any differences in prior knowledge reflected in the pre-test scores that might influence subsequent learning, but also the effect of taking the pre-test cannot be assumed to be neutral if for some learners it merely told them they knew nothing about the topic, whilst for others it activated and so reinforced some prior knowledge in the subject. In principle, the interaction between prior knowledge and taking the pretest could have influenced learning at both cognitive and affective levels: that is, both in terms of consolidation of prior learning and cuing for the new learning; and in terms of a learner's confidence in, and attitude towards, learning the topic.
3 Even when we do have a representative sample of a population to test, we can only infer that the outcomes of an experiment reflect what will be most likely for members (schools, learners, classes, teachers…) of the wider population. Individual differences are such that we can never say that what most probably is the case will always be the case.
When an experiment tests a sample drawn at random from a wider population, then the findings of the experiment can be assumed to apply (on average) to the population. (Source: after Taber, 2019).
"A month after his return from Brussels, Poincaré [Henri Poincaré] presented to the French Academy of Sciences the first version of his own detailed proof of the necessity of discontinuity. The full version followed in January 1912, after which date French publication on the quantum, if initially sparse, is nevertheless continuous."
Kuhn, 1978/1887 (emphasis added)
This is from a book on the history of science, and, in particular, one detailing the slow process by which the notion that energy is quantised became established in physics. Quantised, here, means existing as discrete quanta – coming in distinct lumps so to speak – in the way that coinage does, but, say, tap water does not [seem to].
The author, Thomas Kuhn, is most famous for his theory of how science tends to occur within established traditions, so-called paradigms, interrupted by the occasional 'revolutionary' paradigm-shift. At the level of the individual scientist, a paradigm-shift requires the kind of gestalt-switch involved in switching one's perception of an ambiguous image.
An ambiguous figure (Image by ElisaRiva from Pixabay).
"The figure might be seen as two faces (shown in white against a black background). Or the same image (i.e., the same perceptual data) could be seen – that is interpreted – as some kind of goblet or candlestick holder (in black against a white background).
A person can learn to see either version, but not both at the same time. The brain actively organises perception to make sense of the image, and the viewer can force the 'Gestalt-shift' between the two interpretations…."
That is, there is a clear discontinuity in thinking. Understanding the earth in space as one planet among others orbiting a star requires a drastic reorganisation of thinking from seeing the earth as the centre of a universe which all revolves about it. That switch may be the outcome of a lot of deliberation and reflection – but the two paradigms are, Kuhn claimed, incommensurable. That did not mean it was not possible to compare competing paradigms, but rather that each mind-set reflected a particular perspective, and there is no neutral ground that allows a completely objective comparison.
Scientists may only slowly construct a new way of conceptualising a phenomenon or field (Thagard, 1992), but once they have, they can 'see' matters completely differently. Ironically, perhaps, Kuhn suggests that the more historical research reveals the details of how such shifts come about the more the discontinuity can be seen as the outcome of a continuous development in the scientist's thinking,
"…as almost always happens in historical reconstruction, the new narrative is more nearly continuous than its predecessor." p.354
Kuhn, 1984/1987
So, the paradigm-shift is a kind of quantum jump in thinking. But this discontinuity is also the outcome of a gradual, continuous process. If that seems a contradiction, consider what happens if someone blows up a balloon – in both senses of 'blow up'! Inflating the balloon is a continuous process where the balloon slowly gets larger – until it 'pops'.
A balloon can be inflated to differing degrees – and can be stable at many degrees of inflation as the elastic skin stretches, creating an increasing tension that balances the effect of the increasing (excess) gas pressure inside.
However, the same process that continously inflates the balloon through a sequence of myriad possible stable states eventually leads to an internal pressure greater than the skin can tolerate, and there is a sudden catastrophic shift to a new, quite different, state (i.e., a burst balloon)
(Image by RAHIL GUPTA from Pixabay)
Kuhn was a physicist who become involved in teaching about the history of science at Harvard, and transitioned to become a historian of science. He wrote a book about the Copernican revolution (1957) – the shift from seeing the universe as earth-centred to appreciating that the earth was one subsidiary part of a sun-centred system – but his ideas about science in general progressing through such dramatic shifts were widely criticised. 1
One of the criticisms was that his model only reflected a limited number of examples of developments in physics, and could not be generalised as applying to science as a matter of course. Kuhn had not trained as a historian and his book on the Copernican revolution largely derived from his reading of secondary sources he had used in preparing lectures. (Many valuable books are primarily based on synthesising other secondary sources – but original works of academic history are based on detailed engagement with original sources such as the original scientific publications, as well as letters, diary entries, and the like.)
Kuhn's book on the 'quantum discontinuity' was intended to be serious historical scholarship. It is a detailed and evidenced account of how an idea introduced into physics as a kind of mental trick – if not perhaps a desperate stop-gap measure – slowly become accepted as actually reflecting a key aspect of the fundamental nature of the physical world.2
A second quantum revolution
Yet this was not the first quantum revolution in science. It was already widely accepted that matter was quantised – the apparently continuous nature of an iron bar or a drop of water was understood to reflect the emergence at a perceptible scale of properties that were due to the interactions of myriad tiny discrete parts. (We generally say matter is made up of tiny particles, but these are not like tiny ball bearings, but more like fuzzy concentrations of electrical fields – quanticles.)
Something that everyone today learns in school – about matter comprising of molecules and ions, that are themselves made up of protons, neutrons and electrons – was once a seemingly bizarre and wild conjecture. Even into the Twentieth Century some scientists saw the atomic hypothesis (sic) as only a useful explanatory device which did not offer a realistic description of how the world was actually structured.
Indeed, even today, it is widely considered that one of the most challenging aspects of introductory chemistry is appreciating how models of the structure and properties of matter at the nano-scale of quanticles – ions, molecules, electrons – are used to explain the very different structures and properties of matter at the familiar everyday scale (Taber, 2013).
Chemistry is a science which explains familiar phenomena through models of submicroscopic quanticles that behave in unfamiliar ways (Figure from Taber, 2013)
But scientists came to accept the 'atomic hypothesis' because it explained many phenomena, and proved successful in making predictions – leading to conjectures that could be successfully tested.
The continuous and the discrete
The distinction between what is continuous and what is discrete is generally marked in English in that mass nouns are applied to entities that are seen as continuous. So, at the perceptible scale, air and water are examples of things that are continuous. In English, then, the words 'air' and 'water' are mass nouns rather than count nouns used for countable entities (e.g., coins, chairs, plates, schools).
We can say:
I need some air
let's get a little more air
would you like some water?
I have drunk too much water
but not (usually)
I need another air
let's gets many more airs
Would you like any waters?
I have drunk too many waters
(Ironically, in the circumstances, we teach children that air is a mixture of substances comprising discrete molecules, and that water is a substance comprised of a great many molecules that are attracted to each other. So, we can refer to another molecule, or many more molecules, of water!)
One can do much research ('research' is a mass noun), but one cannot do many research. Although one can undertake many studies ('study 'is a count noun), which amounts to much research.
A person can be quite sad, or very sad (or not sad at all), but is not said to have fewer sads or more sads (or to have no sads).
On the other hand, a person may have many books, but not much book. Although we might say the person had much literature (not many literatures).'Book' is a count noun, where 'literature' is a mass noun. Publications (articles, books, chapters, conference papers, posters) are discrete – and both the references cited at the end of an academic work, and the individual scholar's record of publication, take the form of lists.
Of course, language is fluid (so to speak! – like water and air), and can change and become stretched or modified. We now see references to people who have done 'many researches', even if this is not (yet at least) standard use. Whilst, in English, data is plural (some data, many data), and the singular is datum (the datum, a datum) the widespread use of data as a mass noun (much data)3 has led to the respected newspaper The Financial Times giving in to the mob and deciding to use 'data' for 'datum' in future.
"…in the last few weeks something has happened that has shaken our very civilisation and made walls come tumbling down. The Financial Times…has announced that according to their style guide, henceforth 'data' will be a singular noun."
When scientists and physics teachers refer to the quantum theory they tend to mean not the quantisation of matter, but of energy. The idea that energy might be quantised seemed counter-intuitive – even if matter came in lumps, energy was not 'stuff' and was surely continuous in nature. Energy was seen to be more like sadness than coinage.
Yet there were problems. The 'ultraviolet catastrophe' referred to how theory suggested that a 'black-body' radiator (an ideal radiator) should emit a spectrum of radiation that showed ever increasing energy output in moving to higher frequencies. That did not happen. This was not just because real radiators could only be expected to approximate to an ideal model – the discrepancy was extreme. A real hot body gave an emission spectrum with a maximum peak, and then decreasing power output at increasing frequencies (lower wavelengths); whereas theory predicted a continuously rising curve. (See the figure below.) Clearly, if hot bodies had been able to radiate with infinite power they would have cooled instantly then no one could have ever made a decent cup of tea. (Although that may not have ben the most serious concern.)
Classical theory predicted something bizarre: that thermal radiators would emit with infinite power, with the energy output increasing with increasing frequency (i.e., decreasing wavelength – read the graph from right to left) of radiation (as shown by the black curve for a body at 5000K according to classical theory). The spectra of actual radiators (other curves) have maxima, beyond which the output drops at higher frequencies (and so the area under a curve – and the energy radiated – is finite). (Image source: By Darth Kule – Own work, Public Domain, wikimedia)
The theoretically derived spectrum was found to be quite well-matched to empirical results obtained at low enough frequencies, but once into the ultraviolet region the predictions and experimental results diverged considerably, and in a way that become even more extreme as frequency increased. Thus the term ultraviolet catastrophe.
For that matter, the simple model of the atom with orbiting electrons did not fit classical theory which predicted that an oscillating electrical charge should emit radiation (and in doing so shift to a lower energy state). These radiating atoms should (on this theory) collapse as electrons spiralled into their nuclei. Moreover, this should also happen on a very short time-scale. Clearly matter did not behave as theory predicted. There was something of a crisis in physics.
Quantum hypotheses
The idea that when matter interacts with radiation there might be restrictions on the magnitude of energy changes involved was first introduced as a kind of mathematical 'fix' to bring the theory into line with the empirical data (plural!) Only slowly did it become accepted that this was not just some mathematical trick, but part of an authentic description of how the universe actually appears to be: when a body absorbs or emits radiation this happens in discrete quanta.
That is, what was invented as a thinking tool, became seen as having significant physical significance,
"…the changed meaning of the quantity h𝜈 from
a mental subdivision of the energy continuum to
a physically separable atom of energy."
Kuhn, 1984/1987 {emphasis added}
When your desk lamp emits radiation the number of quanta involved is enormous, so it seems a continuous process – just as the shade appears to be a continuous lump of material rather than a vast conglomeration of molecules. Our experience of the effect of turning on a lamp is like observing a beach from such a great distance that the sand looks like a continuous entity – even though we know that if we went on the beach and looked very closely we would see the sand comprised of myriad tiny grains. (Tiny on our scale – still enormous on the scale of individual atoms.)
Seen from a distance, sand on a beach seems a continuous material, but under the right viewing conditions we can see it is particulate – comprised of discrete grains (Image by Marcel from Pixabay)
But in the photoelectric effect, where the absorption of radiation can change the electrical properties of certain materials, it becomes clear that the radiation is not being absorbed as a continuous flow of energy from the radiation field, but as series of discrete events. There is a threshold frequency of light below which the effect does not occur and the radiation has no effect on the electrical properties of the material. No matter how much we turn up the intensity of light, even if we are only just below the threshold frequency, we do not see the photoelectric effect as it relies on the radiation arriving in energy-packets that are individually large enough to have an effect at the atomic level.
Consider two children standing by a garden fence behind which the neighbours are having a wild party. Imagine the brother is just too short to see over the fence, but the sister is slightly taller – above the threshold to see over the fence. The taller child observes the crazy events next door, and the longer she watches, the more she observes. However, the shorter child observes nothing. Even if he stands there for the entire evening, he will not get a glimpse, whereas the taller companion sees something – and so sees more than her brother – even if she gets bored and goes away after just a few minutes.
A visual analogy for the kind of threshold that occurs in the photoelectric effect. There is a minimum frequency of radiation (and so minimum energy quantum) needed to trigger the photoelectric effect – just as there is minimum height needed to see over the fence such that a constantly growing child will fairly rapidly transition from being too short (seeing nothing) to tall enough (seeing all there is to see).
Albert Einstein explained this as the radiation being comprised of particle-like packets of energy – the photons. Again this was, initially, widely seen as a heuristic, a way of moving research forward – and so putting aside, at least for the time being, a conceptual problem. But over time it came to be understood as something fundamental about the nature of radiation. Light, and other electromagnetic radiation, may have wave-like aspects, but a full description has to account for its particle-like nature as well.
A physics pun?
Kuhn's book on 'Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity' is centrally about the way this idea of radiated energy being discontinuous gradually moved
from being a stop-gap heuristic (i.e., treat energy as quantised for the moment) of the kind scientists often use to allow them to make progress despite a conceptual problem they will need to return to at some point
(to put an inconsistency into 'quarantine' to use the metaphor suggested by Imre Lakatos)
to become seen as a fundamental truth about the nature of the universe: energy, in interacting with matter, is quantised.
In this sense, energy is more like coins than sadness– more like studies than research.
And, in physics, studies are generally published in the research literature as 'papers' – reports of research, each described in a discrete and self-contained article.4 The wider literature also includes books and book chapters and conference papers – but these are also all discrete entities, even when they collectively reflect an author's slowly shifting perspective on some topic.
As Kuhn was centrally writing about the transition from radiation understood as something continuous to radiation understood as energy quantised in discrete photons, something discontinuous, he was clearly well aware of this distinction. Indeed, the 'Quantum Discontinuity' of his title was itself a kind of pun, that could refer either
to how the quantisation physics describes reflects a discontinuous process – or
to the paradigm shift in understanding among the physics community in accepting quantisation as a physical description.
There was a discontinuity in both developing scientific thinking about the physics, and in the physical nature of the universe itself.
'French publication' was not continuous
"French publication" on the quantum, whether sparse or dense, would have occurred through a sequence of discrete publications (and, so, as distinct events separated in time by intervals). "French publication" on the quantum – however, we might be able to describe these events: infrequent, occasional, regular, sporadic – was notcontinuous.
Or, perhaps better, French publications on the quantum werenot continuous?
Surely, Kuhn would not have slipped-up in this regard? More likely he was deliberately adopting a loose use of 'continuous' as a kind of pun in contrast to the discrete quanta the publications discussed.
Taking a historical overview from a distance of some decades (like viewing the sand on the beach from a passing boat) the flow of publications about quanta might blur into seeming a continuous stream – perhaps this can be seen as a kind of inverse effect to how Kuhn suggests detailed historical scholarship could reveal the gradual, incremental progression in thinking that led to a revolutionary conceptual rupture.
In the history of science, as in the investigation of matter and energy, whether something appears as a continuum or not very much depends upon the scale at which we view and the grain size at which we sample. And much the same has been found in science education research exploring learners' developing ideas (Taber, 2008).
Coda: data are like energy
Dr Beth Malory, a lecturer in English Linguistics at UCL, commenting on the change in house style at The Financial Times referred to above, suggested that a corpus analysis of the occurrence of the word 'data' in accessible published texts indicates that "for most people, data is a mass noun" – that is, in general use people are much more likely to write "data is" instead of the formally correct "a datum is"/"data are". She made the following intriguing comparison,
"Something like energy or air would be a good analogy for it [data]."
I doubt she had in mind that energy and air, like sand, and indeed like data themselves, are – if you investigate them closely enough – quantised.
Work cited
Kuhn, T. S. (1957) The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Harvard University Press.
Kuhn, T. S. (1978/1887) Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912.With a new afterword. The University of Chicago Press.
Kuhn, T. S. (1984/1887) Afterword: Revisiting Planck, in Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912.With a new afterword. The University of Chicago Press.
Taber, K. S. (2023). Educational Psychology. In B. Akpan, B. Çavaş, & T. Kennedy (Eds.), Contemporary Issues in Science and Technology Education (pp. 193-207). Springer/ICASE.
Thagard, P. (1992). Conceptual Revolutions. Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Notes
1 For scholars in the humanities, being widely criticised is not to be understood as an entirely negative thing. Primarily, it means people have noticed your work, and they think it is significant enough to be challenged: so many scholars would think that being widely criticised is to be welcomed! For that matter, having other scholars publish work criticising your scholarship can be a justification for seeking to publish a response to their criticisms and, so, an opportunity for developing and further disseminating your own ideas.
This might be seen as the academic equivalent of Oscar Wilde's quip that
the only thing worse than being talked about, was not being talked about!
2 Another example of a 'fudge factor come good' might be the 'cosmological constant' that Albert Einstein introduced into his theories to give the equations a form that fitted the assumed nature of the universe. Einstein later considered this his greatest blunder – but other physicists have found ways to interpret the cosmological constant as relating to important, observable features of the universe.
3 I suspect, often, data is actually being used as a collective noun (akin to the committee, the council, the population {nouns which refer to a (singular) group of people}; the swarm, the herd, the flock, the shoal, etc.), where 'the data' refers to the particular 'data set' ('dataset') being discussed.
4 Contributions to the literature are expected to build upon, and cite, existing work in a field – but each research report should set out a coherent and complete, self-contained argument to support its conclusions.
Okay, 'energy storage' – but what else are they good for?
Keith S. Taber
I was struck by an item on the BBC Radio 4 news headlines at 09.00 this morning (27th Feb. 2023):
"The collapsed battery maker Britishvolt which went into administration last month has been bought by an Australian company. The new owners will focus initially on batteries for energy storage rather than electric vehicles."
BBC Radio 4 news item
Now on reflection, this was an ambiguous statement. I heard it as
"The new owners will focus initially on batteries for
energy storage, rather than
electric vehicles."
Which immediately provoked in my mind the question what batteries might be used for in electric vehicles – if not 'energy storage'?
It is possible to charge up an electric car because it includes a battery (Image by Sabine Kroschel from Pixabay)
Conceptions of energy
Now, this whole area is, metaphorically, a bit of a linguistic minefield as when people say batteries they do not usually distinguish between an individual cell and a battery (of cells). Traditional electrochemical cells we are familiar with have a specific and usually modest e.m.f. – 1.5V or 1.2 V for example. The old 6V and 9V batteries that used to be commonly sold for many purposes (before the switch to most appliances having internal batteries) would be batteries of cells connected in series to work together to provide (1.5V + 1.5V + 1.5V + 1.5V = ) 6V (or whatever). Car batteries were traditionally batteries of lead-acid cells connected together. If each cell has an e.m.f. of 2V, then a dozen connected in series (i.e., the battery) offers 24V.
Moreover, energy is a highly abstract idea, such that even physics teachers do not always agree on how to describe it – the model of energy coming in a number of flavours, 'forms', and processes involving transformations in the form of the energy (e.g., a filament lamp converts electrical energy into heat energy) that many of us learnt (and some of us taught) has come to be seen as misleading and unhelpful by some (it not all) educators. Oh, and if you think I made a mistake there and forget that a lamp produces light energy – not at all. In the 'forms of energy' typology, heat is energy transferred due to a difference in temperature – so that covers all the radiation being emitted by the hot filament.
No wonder, that energy is a common topic for student alternative conceptions, as energy permeates (so to speak) all areas of science, but is a highly abstract notion.
Yet, I realised that the statement I had heard was ambiguous and could be parsed differently. It perhaps meant
"The new owners will focus initially on
batteries for energy storage
rather than
electric vehicles."
That is, I was putting my imaginary brackets in the wrong place and perhaps the company had previously intended to build complete electric cars and not just the batteries? If so, the news was not
The new owners will focus initially on batteries (for energy storage rather than electric vehicles).
but rather that
The new owners will focus initially on (batteries for energy storage) rather than (electric vehicles).
If this was the intention, it might have been better to have assumed listeners would know that batteries were used for 'energy storage', and to have simplified the statement to
"The new owners will focus initially on batteries rather than electric vehicles."
Batteries for under-performing sports cars?
That made more sense, as surely the BBC's news journalists do not think electric batteries in cars are used for something other than 'energy storage'. So, I checked on the BBC news website, where I found
"The company intends to start by focusing on batteries for energy storage and hopes to have those products available by the end of 2025.
It then intends to produce batteries for high-performance sports cars."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64754879
So, I did not misinterpret the news item. According to the BBC (and to be fair, they are probably just reporting, albeit uncritically, what they have been told) under its new owners Britishvolt will
first work on batteries that can be used for energy storage, and
then shift attention to batteries for sports cars.
My best guess is that "batteries for energy storage" is shorthand for large scale devices for long term storage (that could, for example, be charged by wind generators when it is windy, and then later fed into the National Grid at times of high power demand). The characteristics of these devices would surely be different in detail from batteries used in electric vehicles.
However, I am pretty sure that "batteries for high-performance sports cars" also need to provide 'energy storage' or else those cars are not going to offer the kind of performance Britishvolt and the car manufacturers they will supply are looking for. After all, besides 'energy storage', what else are batteries actually good for?
Another late night writing copy in the newsroom? (Image by mohamed_hassan from Pixabay)
accounts of our memories are like meticulously made reports in laboratory notebooks of carefully observed results obtained by using poorly calibrated apparatus designed for a different type of experiment. They may faithfully reproduce information, but that information is not entirely reliable.
Is remembering something a sufficent reason to believe it happended?
I came to the realisation that something I had remembered, was not actually something that had happened. I had experienced it as a genuine memory – but on reflection soon afterwards I knew full well it was not the case (indeed, could not have been the case). This could have been rather disconcerting in other circumstances. That is, if this had occurred during what we consider a normal state of consciousness. Even so, it gave me pause for thought.
Memories and false beliefs about memory
Memory is one of these things we all know about, but tends to be generally poorly understood. Nomenclature such as 'remember', 'recall', and 'forget', are part of the mental register – the set of terms that are used in everyday discourse to talk about mental experience and related phenomena (Taber, 2013). Our familiarity with this kind of talk probably encourages most of us to feel we have a pretty good handle on the basis of what memory is; what remembering is; and what it means to forget.
Yet, actually, this is not generally so. Research shows that even when people recall events with clarity and are confident in the accuracy of these recollections, their memories may not be trustworthy. Certainly much of what we remember is basically sound (though I am not sure anyone has a good estimate of just how much!) But details often get changed. And sometimes, more than just details.
We represent experience in memory but this is not usually akin to making a video record (even if some people experience their memories as if watching a recording). Memory (the faculty) seems to have evolved to give us an abstracted, generalised impression of past experience. From an evolutionary perspective, we have inherited the kind of memory that was selected for in the context of how our ancestors lived.
Related experiences are often represented without proper discrimination. So, if you regularly get the train to work, you have a memory of this – but not discrete memories of each separate occasion. At least, not unless you are one of those rare people who have been gifted, or perhaps cursed (Luria, 1987), with an eidetic memory. Arguably, for most purposes, a generalised memory of a much repeated scenario is more useful than a large set of records of similar events distinguished by variations in incidental detail. There is value in remembering how to make a cup of tea or unlock a door: less so in having a record of each time one has made tea or unlocked doors.
Memory as a reconstruction
Research shows that memories are often in part constructed – representations ('in memory') activated in remembering offer a partial account, which is filled-in with feasible details BEFORE the memory is presented to consciousness. The person reporting the memory does not know which elements were actually recalled, and which then added.
This has been shown, for example, by testing people a few days after they have been told an unfamiliar story. Typically, people get some points correct, forget some details, but also change details, or even add material that was never in the original. But the person 'remembering' (actually, reconstructing) the story does not necessarily have any less confidence in the fabricated elements, as they have been integrated into the account pre-consciously: 'out of mind' so to speak. Reports of memories are usually honest – it is just that they are honest reports of imperfect memories. Eye witness testimony is famously unreliable, but not because most people lie.
In this way, accounts of our memories are like meticulously made reports in laboratory notebooks of carefully observed results obtained by using poorly calibrated apparatus designed for a different type of experiment. They may faithfully reproduce information, but that information is not entirely reliable. We cannot trust such results just because someone provides an honest report of what was noted down in the record.
Memories are somewhat like those historical reconstructions based on incomplete accounts filled in by a dramatist to offer a full narrative for the viewer, perhaps with some scenes moved to locations that seem to be more keeping with the overall progression of the storyline (or are just considered more visually compelling). Crick and Watson may not have had those specific conversations as portrayed when walking across the backs, or in The Eagle, but there is a sense in which the story has greater coherence and truth if shown that way. Not a strict, historical, truth, of course – but perhaps it creates a better mythology, or acts as more effective pedagogy, or just offers a better aesthetic?
"Look, according to the script here, they are going to film us having this conversation on the tennis court." (Tim Pigott-Smith as Francis Crick and Jeff Goldblum as Jim Watson in a still from the 1987 Horizon special docudrama, 'Life Story' {a.k.a. 'The Race for the Double Helix'}.)
Memories are not fixed. Each time you activate a memory you change the trace. It is therefore possible to 'plant' memories. The first time you are asked to recall the crime scene you are asked if you saw a knife and report not. But when asked again at a later date, you may now associate a knife with the scene (as you had been invited to think about it in that context previously, the image has got linked to the memory). This can be done deliberately, but criminal investigators have to be very careful of accidentally planting memories.
People sometimes recall events from very early in their lives at an age research suggests is before distinct autobiographical memories can be laid down. Presumably, what is actually being remembered is having previously imagined the scene years before when told about it.
I can picture myself in my pram telling enquiring passers-by my name and address – but that is actually my memory of a report of someone else's memory. I almost believe I recall escaping from my playpen by emptying out the toy box and turning it upside down to act as step. But that could be a fabrication I have been fed. I do know these are memories ofstories about me and not actual memories of the events, but perhaps some of my actual early memories of events were also 'planted' without my being aware of this?
It is all in the mind
After all, what we actually recall is a representation ofour experience, which is effectively mental. We have mental experiences when we are out acting on the environment (e.g., walking in the woods) – but also when watching a film, or listening to a story, or simply daydreaming. And, indeed, we also have mental experiences when we sleep.
Researchers have found children giving convincing and committed accounts of how when they were younger
they had to attend hospital for a minor emergency, or
when they drifted away from caregivers at the shops and got lost
although these were imaginary events which the researchers themselves had previously planted, and which parents confirmed did not reflect any actual event the child had experienced. (Such research raises ethical issues – now we know memories can be suggested by researchers, is it ethical for investigators to continue to carry out such studies? If so, what are the limits on the kinds of memories it is acceptable to try and plant?)
False memory syndrome
A very serious consequence of this phenomenon has been the recognition that accusations against parents and teachers and other caregivers of child abuse can arise from the inadvertent planting of false memories when children are questioned. Careful probing of the children's memories may be needed over sequences of interviews. Unfortunately, that very scenario also provides suitable conditions for leading questions to plant false memories.
Identifying cases of child abuse can be especially challenging as young children may not understand what has happened to them (especially in cases of sexual assaults) and/or may be traumatised. Young children are also less able to distinguish memories of real and imaginary events.
Recalling previous mental states
There is a procedure undertaken in psychology where a youngster is shown a biscuit box, say, and asked to guess its contents. For example:
Cookies.
The child is then shown that the box actually contains something incongruous:
Pebbles!
They are then asked what they had thought was in the box when first shown it, before they saw inside:
Pebbles, of course.
This is normal behaviour. The child gives what for them is a genuine response – but it is false. It is not a lie – it would hardly be convincing if it was. With maturation a child becomes able to distinguish what I think now from what I thought before – but below a certain age this distinction is simply not available.
That particular result is specific to young children, but a degree of memory distortion is normal for the rest of us – indeed the best of us, according to the historian/philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn,
"Not always, but quite usually, scientists will strenuously resist recognising that their discoveries were the product of beliefs and theories incompatible with those to which the discoveries themselves gave rise."
Kuhn, 1984/1887
Kuhn was not suggesting that scientists were seeking to claim a prescience they did not have, but simply that they too are effected by the difficulty of returning to an earlier state of ignorance before they slowly built a more nuanced and deeper understanding of a field. The instrument they used to expand their understanding – their prior understanding – was the very thing that was being modified. That is something teachers need to bear in mind – many of those things that now seem obvious and straightforward to the expert were obscure and complex when met as a novice.
The dilemma of 'recovered' memories of abuse
It is obviously imperative to detect and stop sexual abuse, but it became clear that in some communities there seemed to be an inordinate amount of such child abuse going on, often involving strange rituals more at home in a Hammer Horror film. Children who were perfectly happy at home were being separated from their families on the basis of an investigative methodology which unfortunately created the 'evidence' of abuse (and made it indistinguishable from any real memories of actual abuse).
Some adults in therapy also found they gradually uncovered (or perhaps, actually, gradually constructed) previously undetected memories of childhood abuse, and consequently became estranged from parents that they now labelled abusers. Of course, such 'recovered' memories could be real, but sometimes they were not, and unfortunately recall does not come with metadata tags to tell us how and when what is being recalled was first represented in memory.
How is it possible that adults might live for decades without any conscious awareness that their parents had abused them as children, only for this to come to light when they entered into a psychoanalytic relationship with a therapist? Supposedly, the memories of something so awful, and often inconsistent with an otherwise happy family life, had been repressed.
There are different views on whether false memory syndrome leading to fabricated accusations of abuse is very widespread as has sometimes been claimed (an 'epidemic'), or is just an occasional aberration (Goodman, Gonzalves & Wolpe, 2019; Otgaar, Howe & Patihis, 2022). The challenge is that when there is nothing to corroborate memory with, then all we have is the memory; and memory is fallible and susceptible to distortion.
Memories are like conceptions
The research into student conceptions in science makes it clear that a learners' knowledge of a topic does not exist on a single dimension from ignorance to knowledge – they can have knowledge that is more or less complete, but also alternative conceptions that are more or less canonical. In a similar way, memories can also be more or less complete, but also more or less accurate – indeed, more or less fabricated.
Memory and sleep
We know that sleep is essential to good health and, indeed, that healthy sleep must include dreaming. It is normal to dream every night, although we may only remember dreams if they occur just before waking. Clearly, sleep must be physiologically important as sleeping involves taking the significant risk of losing awareness of our environment when, for example, predators may be around.
Sleeping leaves us vulnerable. Of course, some creatures are less vulnerable than others when they nod off. (Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay)
One of the areas that sleep is considered to support is memory consolidation. That is, without good sleep, our ability to update and maintain our memories suffers. I do not think the details of this are well understood – but the effects of sleep deprivation are well known (such that it can be used as a form of torture).
No one really knows for sure the function of dreams, or whether, perhaps, dreams are just an epiphenomenon, a kind of by-product of the maintenance processes going on in the brain during sleep. There is a very long tradition of trying to read meaning in (or into!) dreams (the story of Daniel in the Bible Old Testament for example) and the interpretation of dreams was a key part of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis. Dreams are such a part of our lives, it often seems they must have significance – but there is no strong scientific support to suggest this is so. Given the nature of most of my dreams, I find this reassuring.
Autobiographical and semantic memory
Our memories represent both autobiographical and semantic material. That is, we recall specific events in our lives as well as abstract material such as Ohm's law, the theory of natural selection, or the molecular structure of benzene.
So, if our sleeping brains are maintaining memory function and this involves activating memory traces, and we experience – or make sense of – some of this as dreaming, then why do my dreams involve me in 'social' situations, but I do not (that I can recall) dream about, say, molecular shapes or circuit configurations? After all, August Kekulé supposedly discovered the structure of benzene when he was drifting into sleep.
Does this reflect my lack of genius – would an Albert Einstein or a Richard Feynman dream in abstract mathematical symbols? I do not, at least, not that I notice. Generally my dreams are very mundane, which is why one of last night's dream's seemed out of place.
A dream party (no teaching involved)
I was at a kind of Hollywood-type party – a party attended by many of those who would be labelled by the general public as 'stars'. To be fair, I did not recognise (or perhaps, better, actually notice) who most of the people there were: rather I just had the impression that these were 'stars'.
I should point out that I do not tend to go to those kinds of parties (obviously, I do not tend to be invited to them), and indeed I am not really one for parties. So, I am not sure why I was dreaming about being at one.
More typically, my dreams involve teaching situations. Yet, I never actually teach anything substantial in these dreams – more often I am
getting myself ready to teach a class,
organising a class to get ready to work, or
on my way to teach a class (which for various reasons never gets started)
as if my dreaming brain has access to autobiographical material, but does not know any chemistry or physics or research methodology or anything I might actually teach. It seems as if I do not have access to my semantic knowledge for use in my dreams. This raises an interesting question.
If dreaming is considered to support the processes of memory consolidation – why do we not dream about the material we are learning?
(And although I am not taking any formal classes – I read books and listen to podcasts which would provide plenty of subject matter.)
Is it just that this processing happens at a more abstract level that we cannot picture directly in dreams?
Why are dreams not more realistic?
What has long intrigued me about dreams is that although I do sometimes dream about my late wife or close family: in general the people in my dreams seem to be made up, like characters in a fiction. I do not dream about students or classes I have taught but rather populate my dreams with fictional people. This seems odd, as when I am awake I can remember many students I have taught and it would seem more economical for my brain to use their images than construct people de novo. 1 Why are my dreams so 'CGI-heavy' (as in 'computer generated imagery') when it is known that requires a lot of processing?
And this is not just people. In my dreams I am in buildings or in streets, etcetera – but when I awake and can recall a dream I realise that the house I was living in, in the dream, is not my house, or any other house I have ever lived in. Or know. (And when there is an exception, the house seems to have been moved! 3)
The classroom in a dream is not one where I taught, even though there are several very familiar classrooms where I taught a great number of lessons over a period of years. The same applies with the teaching institutions more generally – when I move around these buildings in my dreams I use hallways, go to canteens, and the like; pass thought entrance areas. All these things are experienced as familiar to me – in my dreams, the people, rooms and buildings and sometimes even streets and town centres all seem familiar – but only till I wake up. Then it is immediately clear they were constructed – in effect imagined – and not recalled from real life. Perhaps they are sometimes recalled from a previous dream, but not recalled from my actual 'awake' life. They are familiar in sleep – but not known from my waking life.
[There is a theory that we live to dream. Our real lives, the lives that really matter, are the lives we have in sleep when we dream. In order to maintain these meaningful lives we need the support period when we are awake and eat and, so forth. From this perspective, the question of why we dream disappears. Instead we might ask why we need to be conscious when awake: presumably this makes it easier to find sustenance, mates, shelter and the other things that allows us to continue the human lineage, and to regularly settle down for a good night's sleep.]
There are exceptions. Once when younger and at my parents house, I dreamt that I flew out of their house down the road, turning into the adjoining road then right at a junction into another road that led to the local shops, over the roundabout and headed down to town. I will not bore you with the details except to say the flight was exhilarating rather than scary…and was (certainly, subjectively seemed) detailed. I saw the roads and buildings in detail, and, as far as I could tell when I awoke, accurately. This seemed to me more memory than imagination…with one obvious caveat. In the dream I was seeing everything from maybe 10 metres above the ground looking down. I had walked along those roads hundreds of times, but only from a vantage point of less than two metres above ground level.
Maybe there is a good reason we do not dream realistically too often. When I have had dreams where I interact with real people then I have sometimes become confused later. I have had to realise that 'no, that was just a dream'. If one does not realise on waking, perhaps one would never know of the mistake – but that could have consequences. ("You told me to give the house to Marxist anarchists!")
And awaking from a conversation with a loved one, only to then realise that must have been a dream because the person is no longer with us, is difficult: waking up and realising that was not a real experience, and it could not have been, tends to ratchet the grief process back up a few notches. Spending time with the loved one, only to wake and realise – again – she is gone offers a bitter-sweet counterpoint and reprise to the old adage that it is better to have loved and lost…
All the same, it does suggest that if dreaming is largely a constructive process that requires the brain to design and simulate new but realistic-seeming environments and populate them with convincing androids, then that is an awful lot of mental work. Perhaps it calls upon 'memories' at some level, but it seems largely the work of imagination.
Transitioning to sleep
I had slept for about four hours, but then awoke wishing to use the bathroom. That is not unusual, and more often than not I crawl back into bed and straight back to sleep. On this occasion I just lay there waiting to drop off again. I can often tell when I am about to go to sleep as my visual cortex does its version of the iTunes visualiser and I see various shapes and colours gradually appear and then start moving around. Sometimes, not. But I have a strategy to avoid lying awake worrying that I am not asleep. I go on adventures.
So, I take sea voyages, and spend time relaxing on my private tropical island with its bananas, coconuts and pineapples – I have built quite a repertoire of scenarios I slowly develop knowing that usually the story does not get very far before I drift off somewhere else. (That is, I have represented in memory my previous imagined experiences of my repertoire of getting ready for sleep scenarios.)
However, this time my body did not seem to want to go back to sleep, and I seemed to still be lying awake waiting for sleep hours later. This went on so long I could eventually hear the voices of others in the house, now up to start the day; and eventually they were even leaning over me in bed to try and get access to the breakfast things. (That should have been a clue, even if my sleeping self had forgotten there was no one else in the house.)
Then, I was at the party.
I 'remembered' (…in my dream…) that Elton and I go back a long way (Elton publicity shot accessed from Wikimedia, with apologies to Bernie)
My friend, the superstar
I did not really know the people there – I do not mix in these circles.
But then I saw Sir Elton John, and realised there was someone at the party that I did know well. Elton greeted me, and at that moment I recalled how we regularly engaged in repartee on the morning radio show. In that instant, Elton being there and acknowledging me, fitted with a long-standing and familiar part of my life.
Except, of course, this was completely fabricated. I have never met Sir Elton, and the Elton in my dream was for some reason Elton from the 1980s. And I certainly do not appear on any morning radio show, with or without him. Elton (I am pretty sure) does not know I exist, and would not be seeking me out at the kind of parties that I do not in any case go to, and that I would not be invited to (and that I would not really want to go to even if I was invited. Though meeting Elton would be cool.)
So what? This is just a dream – so, it is not real. I do not usually dream of celebrities. (Though Joe Root tuned up in a dream a while back.2)
Why Elton? I have no idea. I do have a lot of his records and rate him highly as a songwriter/singer/pianist. But my dreams would be pretty crowded if all the musicians who moved me made an appearance. 4 Perhaps I just associate Elton with glitzy parties – and I did not spot Freddie was over the far side of the room.
But that was not the point that really struck me. It was rather a phenomenon that I have noticed before about dreams: that one is in a scenario where something needs explaining (here, Elton greeting me as a friend) and there is an immediate in-fill of backstory which is experienced in the dream as authentic recall. Our brains (i.e., we) are able to make up stuff, and present it to us, and convince us that it is what we have previously experienced: here regular jovial exchanges with Elton on a non-existent radio show. In the waking world (where I am well aware that I do not move in those kinds of circles) I immediately saw through this, but in the context of the dream I simply accepted the false memory as being a genuine, recalled, experience.
So, what is to say something similar is not happening regularly in my waking life?
Almost a century ago, the experimental psychologist Frederic Bartlett (1932/1995) concluded from his empirical studies on memory that the three phenomena we consider separately as perceiving, remembering, and imagining, were not so discrete and separate at all.
Perception, imagination, and memory are generally considered separate mental faculties – but are probably not as distinct as we tend to think
What we think we see or hear is strongly framed by (memory of) previous experiences. What we can imagine is resourced by (memory traces of) what we have experienced – what we have seen and heard in the past. What we think we remember is often fragmentary data filled-out with imaginary components that seem (on the basis of our general experience of the world, i.e., a kind of memory) feasible. What we remember may be based on what we have experienced, or what we have previously imagined we have experienced, or even what has been suggested to us in the past as something we have experienced. The memory that seems so genuine and convincing may be filled-in by guesswork, and may indeed be a memory of something other than a real experience.
Probably, we all live with false memories that we never have reason to question and discard. (Perhaps some of them even do a great deal of good work in supporting our self-esteem and self-worth? Or, perhaps, the opposite?)
Based on past experience, at least as I remember it(!), the Elton dream was atypical, as it involved a real person rather than the usual rolling cast of fictional characters. (But see notes 2 and 4) Perhaps that is just as well, as we are less likely to misconstrue recollections of dreams involving imaginary people in imaginary places as being memories from our waking lives. So, I probably will not meet any stars in my dreams tonight. However, just in case, I wonder if Kate Bush is free?
See you in my dreams?
Work cited:
Bartlett, F. C. (1932/1995) Remembering. A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press.
Goodman, G. S., Gonzalves, L., & Wolpe, S. (2019). False memories and true memories of childhood trauma: Balancing the risks. Clinical Psychological Science, 7(1), 29-31.
Kuhn, T. S. (1984/1887) Afterword: Revisiting Planck, in Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912. With a new afterword (pp.349-370). The University of Chicago Press.
Luria, A. R. (1987).The Mind of a Mnemonist: a little book about a vast memory.Harvard University Press.
Otgaar, H., Howe, M. L., & Patihis, L. (2022). What science tells us about false and repressed memories. Memory, 30(1), 16-21.
Schacter, D. L. (Ed.). (1995). Memory Distortion. How minds, brains, and societies reconstruct the past. Harvard University Press.
1 This question vexes me when I also consider that I believe that, in a sense, I do not directly interact any other real people. By that, I mean, that although I seem to be, say, talking to a person in the external world, I only have direct experience of a simulation of them constructed in my brain based on sensory data and past experience. We all (I assume?) have mental conversations with people we know well when they are not present: we think we know what they would say in a situation: how they would react; what they might suggest. When they are [actually, physically] present we are surely engaging the same simulation, just with a modest drip feed of sensory data blending in.
(Does that sound strange? I think it would be more strange that if you have been married for 20 years you would assume that you base your interaction with a spouse primarily on transient and likely incomplete immediate sensory data rather than the detailed mental simulation of them that you have incrementally and iteratively built up over hundred of hours of past experience.)
If I call upon those simulations deliberately when asking myself "what would X think about this?", why not in my dreams? (Perhaps, I suggest above, as realistic dreams that are remembered would too readily be confused with waking experience.)
If my simulation argument seems unconvincing, ask yourself why you feel you are engaging with the same person
when you meet them under different conditions (lighting, background noise);
when you only see a two-dimensional image on a small flat screen; or even
when you only have a low quality reproduction of their voice coming from a tiny speaker?
It is not because the sensory data matches well in these different situations.
2 This is my note of my dream involving cricketer Joe Root
I awoke 3 from a dream where I'd been watching sport – football, and switched to cricket [at this point I seem to be watching television], there was a run out call. English bowler, never seen before, seemed to hesitate as he picked up the ball, but direct hit on wicket – awaiting replays to see if it was a run out.
Joe Root was watching next to me on the grass (this was just after it had been announced he was standing down as test team captain) but seemed fidgety – he was moving about and taking up yoga-like positions. [Note, I am now actually at the cricket match, not watching TV.]
There were two young women, girls really, wearing Summer gear (shorts, top tied up high so bare stomach area). They were exchanging glances, and edging closer to Joe. Eventually he did some kind of flip, and landed on one of the girls who had moved up close behind him.
Giggles.
I joked that this was a litigation issue and he might be sued for millions.
Report of a dream [this is a purely imaginary account and in no way reflects any real (waking!) event involving Joe Root that I am aware of!]
Why Joe Root? Just because he had been mentioned in the news? Perhaps. However Root was involved in two of my own alternative conceptions (we have them in all areas of knowledge, not just science), and in both cases I had sensed there was something I was missing in the particular situation – so, perhaps it might be said I felt some 'cognitive dissonance' until I realised my misunderstandings.
One of these misconceptions concerned advertising for pet insurance* that often featured Root alongside a dog, by a company who sponsored some of the cricket highlights on television. It struck me as odd that this company could afford to air so many adverts employing a leading sportsman when I could not imagine the market for pet insurance was especially lucrative. It eventually dawned on me (many months later) that the company were advertising insurance for people – not pets. Perhaps the dog was meant to represent health (rather than, as I had assumed, a creature likely to soon need veterinary attention). [* Note, my clear memories of regularly seeing advertisements for pet insurance turned out to be unreliable as I had misconstrued the sensory data that became represented in memory.]
The other misconception concerned the regular occurrence of booing of Root on the cricket field. Generally cricket crowds do not boo – although fast bowler Stuart Broad had incurred the wrath of Australian supporters who had taken to booing him. But Root, an English international cricketer, seemed to get booed at English grounds whenever he went out to bat, or when he hit a boundary, even though I was not aware of anything he had done or said likely to offend. And, indeed, from after-match interviews I had seen, I thought he did not seem like a person who would offend a large proportion of spectators. Indeed, he was always polite, and sensible, and modest. Again, it took quite a while before I realised that what I was hearing as "bo:o" was actually the crowd calling out an extended "ro:ot".
3 Actually, this is part of a longer account I noted down because it involved a dream within a dream. The account continues:
I woke up, and went downstairs, and went to the table I use as a desk at the front of the house. Looking out I saw the house opposite [which should have been obscured by my garden hedge] had no door and looked like they were having workers in to put in a new door. Then I realised that the house as a whole (which was much larger than usual, and all red brick [unlike the actual house opposite]) was not finished, and looking around I realised that none of the houses in the street were finished yet. I noticed there was no computer on my desk. I went to look out of the back of the house and saw rolling hills and countryside – it look like the West Country around Bristol. I realised I must still be asleep, and found some paper to write down the dream so I could have a record when I really wake (!). Found a pen but it did not seem to work very well.
So, if I can wake up from one dream within another dream, perhaps I am not actually awake now?
4 I have a note of the guitarist/composer Steve Hackett appearing in one dream that was part of a sequence of scenes I recalled when I awoke,
2. Hackett was in an office with charts/manuscripts for music he intended to play for a concert, and in discussion over whether to bring in a second guitarist to play some parts. A person advising – 'manager'(?) of the venue – was going to play some of the music there in the office.
I am not sure what triggered that, although the previous scene that I recalled was unusual (for me) in that it was an auditory dream5:
listening to the first Genesis album ('From Genesis to Revelation') and noticing atmospheric instrumental passages with subtle electric guitar parts I'd never noticed before
I had not noticed these passages before, because – of course- they are not actually on the album! Steve Hackett did not join Genesis till after that album, but perhaps my sleeping brain was thinking that these were contributions he might have made if he had been in the band then?
5 Again, it seems odd that as much of my waking life is accompanied by music, I seldom dream of music. Indeed the first time I recall this happening I was so struck by the dream that I still recall the occasion over 40 years later. I was about 17 and I had fallen asleep one Sunday afternoon, after a having been up late the night before as someone in the sixth form had had a party. (No, Elton was not there – at least, as far as I recall!) I dreamed what seemed to me at the time a very vivid and detailed rendition of 'Shine on you crazy diamond' by Pink Floyd.
Of course, that is just my recollecti0n of my subjective experience on waking from sleep (that is, the waking memory of the dream) – but the music had (at least) seemed so real and intense and deep that, all these years later, I still remember the effect such a detailed dream had on me when I awoke.
Is it possible that a publisher might be using fictitious academics to attract submissions to its journals?
Keith S. Taber
An obvious discrepancy is that the University of Ottawa is not Ottawa University, USA. One is in Ontario, in Canada – the other is in Kansas, in the United States. Someone who has attended one of these universities would be unlikely to be confused about which one they studied at, and graduated from.
I received an email from a journal managing editor claiming to be a highly qualified scholar (two doctorates)- for whom I can find absolutely no evidence on the web of her having ever published anything, or having any association with any university, research group, or learned society. Suspicious?
Wanted!
Information on the academic research of this woman
(Additional image elements by No-longer-here and OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay)
I received one of those dodgy emails from a publisher that are now part of the normal noise one has to navigate through in the Academy. The email was signed by a Dr Nicoleta Auffahrt, as Managing Editor of the 'Department of Humanities and Social Science' 'at Global Journals'. So far, nothing too suspicious.
She had read it and felt it was worthy of admiration
She had shared 'the finding' with her [unspecified] colleagues
She reported that other [unspecified] scholars of our [sic] research community had also commended 'them' [?]
She suggested that this paper demonstrated my potential to influence and inspire fellow researchers and scholars.
Two classes of academics
Now, perhaps there was a time when I might have taken some of this at face value, being naïve enough to believe that most people are basically honest, and that at least in the world of scholarship people value truth and honesty and would not casually lie.
One might expect such compliments to often hit home with academics: after all, isn't academia made up of two classes of scholars
those who suffer imposter symptom and are waiting to be found out as not belonging;
those who know their work is important and ground-breaking, deserving of being more widely known, and a sufficient cause to bring them attention, prestige, admiration, acolytes, and prizes?
The latter group, at least, would not find anything odd in receiving such unsolicited praise.
However, I've had too many emails of this kind that praise my work but which are clearly not truthful: often they either
The reference to 'our research community' was intriguing, as the letter (appended below) was structured so as to
(i) first praise me as though Dr Auffahrt was so impressed with my work that she needed to tell me; and then,
(ii) by the way, incidentally, as she was writing – she thought she would mention, "also" her role working for a publisher that led her to invite me to submit some work.
So, was it feasible that Dr Auffahrt did consider us part of the same research community? When I checked her email signature I saw she signed herself as Dr. Nicoleta Auffahrt "D.Litt in Teaching Education".
Now I was intrigued. Clearly 'teaching' and 'education' suggest that at least 'Dr' Nicoleta has a background in my general field of teaching and learning which makes a nice change from being invited to contribute on topics such as nanotechnology and various medical specialisms. Yet, this also raised some questions: what exactly is meant by 'teaching education' (cf. e.g., science education) as an academic area – was her work in teaching the subject of education or…?
Moreover, I was surprised that someone with a higher doctorate was acting as a 'managing editor' for a publisher. A D.Litt. was only likely to be awarded to a highly productive and influential scholar, and such a person might well take on editorial roles (as an editor, an associate editor, an editor-in-chief), but probably not as a managing editor.
A managing editor is employed by a publisher to oversee the administration and business side of a journal, unlike an editor who would normally being doing the intellectual work of evaluating the quality of submissions and directing the peer-review process (work which would often be seen as taking a leadership role in a research field) – and then usually only as a subsidiary post undertaken alongside an academic appointment. The prestige of the journal is often in part seen to be reflected in the university affiliations of its editors and associate editors.
There is, of course, no reason why someone who has achieved eminence in their academic field, recognised ultimately by being awarded a higher doctorate such as a D.Litt., might not decide to then make a career change and move into publishing; and, similarly, there is no reason why a publisher should not employ such a person if they were available – but it seemed an unlikely scenario. Unlikely enough for me to dig a little.
So, I did a web-search for Dr Nicoleta Auffahrt. I found her listed on one of the publisher's web-pages as part of an editorial board for social science. Her listing was:
"Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, Master of Arts in Ottawa University, USA"
So, a Ph.D., but no mention of the much rarer and more prestigious D.Litt. degree. Of course, the web-page may be out of date, whereas perhaps Nicoleta had updated her email signature, so that proves nothing.
What was very odd though, was the limited number of web-pages that a search turned up.
Qualifications
M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt
Search term "Dr Nicoleta Auffahrt"/ "Dr. Nicoleta Auffahrt"
1 hit on Google (https://globaljournals.org)
Search terms Dr + "Nicoleta Auffahrt"
4 hits on Google (https://www.facebook.com; https://globaljournals.org; https://globaljournals.us; https://beta.globaljournal)
How can a successful scholar who has two doctorates and is (or, perhaps, was until recently) working in a top US university be virtually invisible on the web?
Apart from three pages for the publisher, Google only provided one other 'hit' – a 'Facebook' page. Dropping the reference to 'Dr' still only found "Nicoleta Auffahrt" on Facebook and Global Journals webpages. That seemed very strange.
I also tried using Google Scholar. Google Scholar is a specialist search engine used by academics to find research reported in journal articles, academic books, conference proceedings, on websites, and so forth. Google Scholar did not suggest a single publication (and Google Scholar is pretty liberal in what it counts as a 'publication'!) that had been authored, co-authored or edited by "Nicoleta Auffahrt".
Typically searching for an academic brings up myriad references to their publications, conference talks, involvement in research groups, links with university departments, and so forth. A search for an experienced and successful academic would be expected to turn up, at least, hundreds, indeed – likely – thousands, of hits.
This is unavoidable if you work in academia – even if for some reason a scholar chooses not to have a specific Google Scholar listing (this does not stop your work being included in the database and returned in a search – it just means you do not get a personal profile page); not to have an Academia listing; not to post on ResearchGate; not to be on Linked-In (which is a common place for those working in publishing to seek to make contacts); and does not upload their dissertations/theses to University repositories…they still cannot prevent their books and papers and conference talks being referred to here and there.
Academic prestige is, after all, largely based on publications, and publications are by definitionpublic documents. Assessment for a higher doctorate such as a D.Litt. is usually largely in terms of a scholar's published work being judged to be highly influential in their discipline or field (something that is usually only possible to judge some years after publications first appear). Moreover, one of the principle ways in which any academic is evaluated is in terms of the influence of their publications, as judged by citations – but Nicoleta Auffahrt's work does not seem to be cited anywhere. At least, Google Scholar had not found any. (No publications, and no citations.1)
So, here the only evidence I had of a person called Nicoleta Auffahrt really existing that was independent of the publisher who had contacted me was…Facebook, and that offered limited pickings.
I responded to the email (text appended below), asking Dr. Nicoleta Auffahrt about her area of work and where she had been awarded the prestigious D.Litt.
The next morning, I found I had a reply – but from someone else at the publishers. I say 'someone' else, as the email account was linked to the name Dr. Stacey J. Newman but the email was signed Dr. Nellie K. Neblett. Stacey, or was it Nellie, had ignored my questions to Nicoleta (but sent me an interesting brochure which revealed how the publisher calculated its own impact factor, but using data from the very catholic listings in Google Scholar – so vastly inflating the value compared with properly audited impact factors).
The response to my email reply to Nicoleta Auffahrt
Then a couple of days later, I had another email (appended below) from 'Dr' Auffahrt "following-up" on her earlier email, but written as if I had not replied to her – and repeating the information that she was going to be in Sydney 'next week' (it should have been 'this week' by then, if her earlier email had been correct) and again wishing my (non-existent) Christmas candles would be glorious. Given that she had asked me to confirm my affiliation with the University of Cambridge in Cambridge Uk, United Kingdom [sic, we in the U.K. tend to capitalise both letters, something one might expect an editor to appreciate – but perhaps she thought 'Cambridge Uk' was a place in the United Kingdom?], and I had done so, I was not entirely sure why she thought it useful for me to know she would be in Sydney, unless this was just 'small talk'.
I replied pointing out that,
"If you have checked your emails and seen my reply, you will have found I was asking about your research, as I wondered how it might link with mine. You have me at a disadvantage(!) as you tell me you have read some of my work, but I've not had a chance to read yours – perhaps you could direct me to some of it?"
My reply to 'Dr' Auffahrt 's second email.
So far, no response to that.
Nicoleta Auffahrt's Facebook presence
The Facebook page had not been updated since Christmas day 2021 (when a video from the University of Pennsylvania about the student-run Medical Emergency Response Team was re-posted.) According to this page: 'Dr' Auffahrt
Works at University of Pennsylvania
Worked at University of Ottawa
Studied at University of Ottawa
Studied at University of Pennsylvania
Went to Emma Hart Willard School
Lives in, and is from, Ottawa, Ontario
(I was unable to verify that there is a Emma Hart Willard School in Canada, and it is unlikely any current school would not have a website that could be picked up in a Google search, but, of course, it may have closed down or changed its name since Nicoleta studied there.)
Her Facebook page 'cover' picture (see below) is an image of 'Canada's University'.
A photograph of the Université d'Ottawa (Canada) – and the profile picture on 'Dr' Nicoleta Auffahrt's Facebook page.
The wrong Ottawa?
An obvious discrepancy is that the University of Ottawa is notOttawa University, USA (where the publisher's site claimed 'Dr' Auffahrt was awarded her M.A. degree). One is in Ontario, in Canada – the other is in Kansas, in the United States. Someone who has attended one of these universities would be unlikely to be confused about which one they studied at, and graduated from.
Some people use a Facebook page extensively to connect with friends and family. Not everyone does. Some people start a Facebook page and either abandon it, or seldom update it. So, limited information on someone's Facebook page is not of itself evidence of any wrongdoing.
Nicoleta's account was linked to two 'friends' – the University of Pennsylvania, and a Canadian ice hockey player Brendan Jacome. (His Facebook page was even less informative than Nicoleta's – but unlike her, he has quite a web presence – Google made over 2000 returns for "Brendan Jacome").
Nocolata's Facebook activity was limited to
posting a picture of 'her baby' (see below) as her profile picture, updating her cover photo, and posting a message that "Real education is only obtained through self- education" – on the same day just before before Christmas 2016;
posting that she had "Started New Job at Global Journals Incorporated" in 2o19;
and updating her profile picture and reposting the University of Pennsylvania video on Christmas day 2021.
Nicoleta's baby?
It looked like the only real clues on the Facebook page were the photographs of Nicoleta and the woman she described as her 'baby' – so, perhaps her daughter?
I tried to find any other photos that matched the image supposed to be of Nicoleta Auffahrt. I failed, so that lead did not help.
However, I soon found an image matching the picture of the other woman.
The two images above are taken from Nicoleta Auffahrt's facebook page and a public profile for one Alessandra Manganelli when she was a Ph.D. student in Brussels (this page has no new content beyond a conference attended in the UK in November 2017). A smaller version of the same photograph appears on another page at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel site.
Unlike 'Dr' Auffahrt, a quick Google for "Alessandra Manganelli" gives over 2500 hits. That is much more in line with what one might expect for an academic.
According to the web, Dr Manganelli, having completed her doctorate at the the Universities of KULeuven and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, moved to a post-doctoral position in Hamburg. It seems she undertook her doctoral studies in Engineering Science with input in Architecture from one institution (KULeuven) and in Sciences from the other (VUB). She works on areas such as Urban Governance, Social Innovation, Urban Agriculture, Local Food Policies, Urban Environmental and Climate Governance. Google Scholar lists a range of publications she has written or co-authored. That is, unlike in the case of 'Dr' Auffahrt, there is a lot of publicly available information about Dr Manganelli's research activities to support her claim to be a genuine scholar.
A Canadian connection?
Although Dr Manganelli seems to have done most of her work in Europe, one might imagine that, if she was indeed Nicoleta Auffahrt's baby, then she was perhaps born and brought up in Canada, before moving to Europe to study? However, not so: it appears Dr Manganelli is from Sienna in Italy.
Intriguingly, however, one of her publications is a book for a major academic publisher: "The Hybrid Governance of Urban Food Movements. Learning from Toronto and Brussels". She also co-authored a paper in the journal 'Critical perspectives on food guidance' on "… FoodShare Toronto´s approach to critical food guidance…". So, there is a Canadian connection.
Dr Manganelli's has her own Facebook page. (Dr Manganelli has 840 friends listed on Facebook, but Nicoleta Auffahrt is not one of them.) Her page suggests she did work at Toronto Metropolitan University from January/February to June 2017 (so, at the time when Nicoleta Auffahrt was supposedly in Ottawa before moving to Pennsylvania) – and Toronto is 'only' about 350 km from Ottawa. (Dr Manganelli's Facebook site tells visitors that she visited Toronto again in November 2022.) But Nicoleta Auffahrt seems to have posted Alessandra Manganelli's picture on her Facebook page just beforeAlessandra Manganelli arrived in Canada.
One would presumably have to have a strong connection with another person to use their photograph as your social media profile picture for five years (Nicoleta Auffahrt used Alessandra Manganelli's image as her profile picture from 22nd December 2016 till 25th December 2021). But, perhaps I was being too literal in my reading of the term 'my baby'.
Perhaps
Nicoleta and Alessandra had met somewhere (a conference, a holiday, on line?) and formed a close friendship which may even have influenced Dr Manganelli's decision to spend some time in Canada (fairly) near Nicoleta Auffahrt; then
excited with anticipation at Alessandra's imminent arrival in the country, Nicoleta had posted a picture of her friend (her 'baby') as her new profile picture.
This seems a little forced to me, but it is not completely impossible. (I had no substantive interest in 'Dr' Auffahrt's personal life {nor Dr Manganelli's} – I just wanted to find out if there was evidence she was a real person who had genuinely earned those academic qualifications.)
Given the amount of information on the web, I am fairly confident Dr Manganelli is a real person.
(I emailed her to tell her I had found her picture on Nicoleta Auffahrt's Facebook page and asked if she had an email contact for Nicoleta Auffahrt. No reply (as yet) but Dr Manganelli is under no obligation to reply to emails from strangers asking her about her friends.)
I am less sure about 'Dr' Nicoleta Auffahrt.
I also emailed the registry at the University of Pennsylvania to say I had been contacted by someone claiming to hold a Ph.D. from the University, where I had suspicions about this, and asked if there was a public listing of Ph.D. holders that could be checked. So, far no response (beyond an automatic reply with a case number pointing out that a response "may take up to 3-5 business days", sent over two weeks ago). Perhaps the University of Pennsylvania does not concern itself with people who are possibly falsely claiming to hold its doctorates.*
Conclusion?
Perhaps, Nicoleta Auffahrt is a real person who does hold the degrees she claims, including a higher doctorate, despite having no scholarly trace on the web (though this seems incredible to the point of being virtually impossible), and does work for 'Global Journals'; and perhaps she did write the email telling me she was visiting Sydney (why tell me that?) and wishing me glorious Christmas candles (why say that weeks after Christmas?)… and then also writing the second email email ignoring my reply and repeating the information about Sydney and candles? I guess this is not impossible, just extremely unlikely. And if this is the case, and if she is so keen to 'develop an academic relationship' with me, then why does she ignore my replies and my request to learn more about her work?
Alternatively, perhaps Nicoleta Auffahrt is a real person with a genuine, if seldom updated, Facebook page, and a close relationship of some kind (which is genuinely none of my business) with Dr Alessandra Manganelli, but her identify has been 'borrowed' by Global Journals. So, perhaps, there is wrongdoing, but Nicoleta Auffahrt is totally innocent of this.
It seems more likely to me that the Facebook page is a sham set up to give some kind of minimal web presence to 'Dr' Auffahrt (a fictitious Managing Editor at Global Journals), and that there is no Nicoleta Auffahrt (and that Dr Manganelli's image was simply arbitrarily sourced from the web somewhere without her knowledge).
Of course, I may be wrong, but there is certainly something dodgy about communications from this publisher, as the supposed managing editor seems to share her email account with Dr. Stacey J. Newman / Dr. Nellie K. Neblett – and checking back through old email I found another invitation (appended below) from the same email addresssupposedly from a Dr. Gisela Steins (there is a real academic with this name who is a psychology professor in Germany and is listed on the editorial board of the Global Journal of Human-Social Science).
Congratulations on your role as Managing Editor, Department of Humanities and Social Science at Global Journals. This sounds a prestigious and challenging position. I hope you enjoy Sydney – I've not been there myself. I was a little confused by your remark about candles, as I had always assumed most Australians celebrated Christmas at the same time as in Western Europe – I am afraid Christmas already seems a memory here.
I wonder what you found of particular interest in the paper – perhaps you would be prepared to share what it is you found especially of value in this work?
In answer to your question, I am now retired from my teaching role. I maintain an affiliation with my Faculty as an Emeritus Officer of the University, and intend to follow my own scholarly interests for as long as I am able.
Perhaps this links to your own research? I hope you would be kind enough, in return, to answer a question for me. I was intrigued to see that you had a higher doctorate, a D. Litt. in Teaching Education, so clearly your background is relevant to my work. I was wondering where you were awarded that? I see from the journal publisher' web-pages that you were awarded your Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and your Master of Arts from Ottawa University, USA, but it does not mention your D.Litt. Is 'Teaching Education' meant to be an abbreviation for teaching and education or was your degree specifically related to teacher education? In my national context a D. Litt. would usually only be awarded after a highly positive evaluation of a portfolio of post-doctoral publications, but I believe in the U.S. some universities offer this as an outcome of a thesis-based programme. I would be interested to know more about your area of work – in particular the body of work for which the D.Litt. was awarded, and how it links to my own scholarship and research.
Best wishes
Keith
What is this obsession with Christmas candles?Praise (supposedly) from a psychology professor who found time to read my 'remarkable' work.
Update: Dr. Nicoleta Auffahrt succeeded by her doppelgänger?
My thanks to Dr. Murat Siviloglu for forwarding to me this extract (above) from an invitation he received from the current Managing Editor of the Global Journal of Human-Social Science. It seems perhaps "Dr Nicoleta Auffahrt" has moved on form her role, and now invitations are being sent out by "Dr Carolyn C. Mitchell". According to the invitation, Mitchell, like Aufffahrt holds the higher doctorate of a D.Litt., again in the odd subject of 'Teaching Education'.
The only references to a "Dr [or Dr.] Carolyn C. Mitchell"that showed on a web-search were on the Journal publisher's sites. I could not find anyone called Carolyn Mitchell who seemed to have a D.Litt., so, like her predecessor, Mitchell seems to have achieved high academic status without any visible trace of research and scholarship. 1
Mitchell is also a 'dead ringer' for Auffahrt, as their profile pictures seem, well, identical.
And the similarities do not stop there. According to the Journal website, "Dr Carolyn C. Mitchell" also holds the degrees of
"Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, Master of Arts in Ottawa University, USA".
It seems that when appointing senior editors, Global Journals certainly 'go for a type' as they say.
1 It may seen obvious that if someone has not published any work, then no one can be citing them. That is fair enough. However, Google Scholar will find citations in work that is accessible on the web to work that is not itself found on the web – for example, references made to books that were published many years ago and have never been digitised, or to conference papers that were distributed at talks in hard copy, but have never been included in web repositories.
* Update. On 17th March I received a reply, from a Student Service Center Counselor, to my enquiry from eight weeks earlier:
Sorry for the delay as the registrar's office is months behind on email requests. We have been tasked with assisting to clear their portal. Below is what we typically send 3rd party requests for information:
Thank you for contacting Student Registration and Financial Services (SRFS). We have received your education verification request for (INSERT STUDENT NAME) from the University of Pennsylvania. Third-Party education verifications are required to go through the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC). Please use this link: https://secure.studentclearinghouse.org/vs/Index to place your request. Penn's school code is…
email from University of Pennsylvania
When I investigated the National Student Clearinghouse website, I found I needed to first register as either a representative of a 'company' or as a student seeking to verify my own record.
Screenshot of part of a webpage of the National Student Clearinghouse
"The mission of the National Student Clearinghouse is to serve the education and workforce communities and all learners with access to trusted data, related services, and insights."
https://www.studentclearinghouse.org/about/
It seems there is no facility for someone approached by a publisher to check the veracity of an editor's claimed qualifications.
Particle intuitions may not match scientific models
Keith S. Taber
Sophia was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. I first talked to her when she was in Y7, soon after she began her secondary school course.
One of the first topics she studied in her science was 'solids, liquids and gases', where she had learnt,
that solids are really hard and they stay together more, and then liquids are close together but they move around, and gases are really free and they just go anywhere
She had studied a little about the topic in her last year of primary school (Y6), but now she was being told
about the particles…the things that make – the actual thing, make them a solid, and make them a gas and make them a liquid
Particle theory, or basic kinetic theory, is one of the most fundamental theories of modern science. In particular, much of what is taught in school chemistry is explained in terms of theories involving how the observed macroscopic properties emerge from the characteristics and interactions of conjectured sub-microscopic particles that themselves often have quite unfamiliar properties. This makes the subject very abstract, challenging, and tricky to teach (Taber, 2013a).
Particle theory is often introduced in terms of the states of matter. Strictly there are more than three states of matter (plasma and Bose-Einstein condensates are important in some areas of science) but the familiar ones, and the most important in everyday phenomena, are solid, liquid and gas.
The scientific account is, in simple terms, that
different substances are made up of different types of particle
the different states of matter of a single substance have the same particles arranged differently
These are very powerful ideas, even if there are many complications. For example,
the terms solid, liquid and gas only strictly apply to pure samples of a single substance, not mixtures (so not, for example, to bronze, or honey, or, milk, or ketchup, or even {if one is being very pedantic} air or sea water. And cats (please note, BBC) are completely inadmissible. )
common salt is an example of a pure substance, that none-the-less is considered to be made up of more than one type of particle
This reflects a common type of challenge in teaching science – the full scientific account is complex and nuanced, and not suitable for presenting in an introductory account; so we need to teach a simplified version that introduced the key ideas, and then only once this is mastered by learners are they ready to develop a more sophisticated understanding.
Yet, there is a danger that students will learn the simplified models as truths supported by the authority of science – and then later have difficulty shifting their thinking on. This is not only counter-productive, but can be frustrating and de-motivating for learners who find hard-earned knowledge is not as sound as they assumed.
One response to this is to teach science form very early in a way that is explicit about how science builds models of the natural world: models that are often simplifications which are useful but need to be refined and developed to become powerful enough to expand the range of contexts and examples where they can be applied. That is, students should learn they are being taught models that are often partial or imperfect, but that is just a reflection of how science works, developing more sophisticated understanding over time (Taber, 2017).
Sophia confirmed that the iron clamp stand near where she was sitting would have particles in it, as would a lump of ice.
Are they the same particles in the ice as the iron?
Yeah, because they are a solid, but they can change.
Ah, how can they change?
Cause if, erm, they melted they would be a liquid so they would have different particles in.
Right, so the iron is a solid,
Uh hm.
So that's got one type of particle?
Yeah.
And ice is also a solid?
Yeah.
So that has the same sort of particles?
Yeah, but they can change.
The ones in the ice?
Mm,
To a learner just meeting particle theory for the first time, it may seem just as feasible that the same type of particle is found in one state as in one substance.
In the scientific model, we explain that different substances contain different types of particles, whereas different states of the same substance contain different arrangements of the same particles: but this may not be intuitively obvious to learners.1 It seemed Sophia was thinking that the same particles would be in different liquids, but a change of state led to different particles. This may seem a more forced model to a teacher, but then the teacher is already very familiar with the scientific account, and also has an understanding of the nature of those particles (molecules, ions, atoms – with internal structure and charges that interact with each other within and between the particles) – which are just vague, recently imagined, entities to the novice.
Sophia seemed to misunderstood or misremembered the model she had been taught, but to a novice learner these 'particles' have no more immediate referent than an elf or an ogre and would be considerably more tenuous than a will-o'-the-wisp.
Sophia seemed to have an alternative conception, that all solids have one type of particle, and all liquids another. If I had stopped probing at that point I might have considered this to be her thinking on the matter. However, when one spends time talking to students it soon becomes clear that often they have ideas that are not fully formed, or that may be hybrids of different models under consideration, and that often as they talk they can talk themselves into a position.
So, if I melted the ice – that changes the particles in the solid?
Well they are still the same particles but they are just changing the way they act…
Oh.
How do they change?
A particle in a liquid [sic, solid] is all crammed together and don't move around, but in a liquid they can move around a little but they are still close and, can, you can pour a liquid, where you can't a solid, because they can move in.
Okay, so if I have got my ice, that's a solid, and there are particles in the ice, and they behave in a certain way, and if the ice melts, the particles behave differently?
Yeah.
Do you know why they behave differently in the liquid?
No. {giggles} So, they can, erm
• • • • • • • • • • • • [A pause of approximately 12 s]
They've more room cause it's all spread out more1, whereas it would be in a clump
The literature on learners conceptions often suggests that students have this or that conception, or (when survey questions are used) that this percentage thinks this, and that percentage thinks that (Taber, 2013b). That this is likely to be a simplification seems obvious is we consider what thinking is – whatever thought may be, is it a dynamic process, something that moves along. Our thinking is, in part, resourced by accessing what we have represented in memory, but it is not something fixed – rather something that shifts, and that often becomes more sophisticated and nuanced as we explore a focus in greater depth.
I think Sophia did seem to have an intuition that there were different types of particles in different states of matter, and that therefore a change of state meant the particles themselves changed in some way. As I probed her, she seemed to shift to a more canonical account where change of state involved a change in the arrangement or organisation of particles rather than their identity.
This may have simply been her gradually bringing to mind what she had been taught – remembering what the teacher had said. It is also possible that the logic of the phenomenon of a solid becoming a liquid impressed on her that they must be the same particles. I suspect there was a little of both.
When interviewing students for research we inevitably change their thinking and understanding to some extent (hopefully, mostly in a beneficial way!) (If only teachers had time to engage each of their students in this way about each new topic they might both better understand their students' thinking, and help reinforce what has been taught.)
Did Sophia 'have a misconception'? 1 What did she 'really think'? That, surely, is to oversimplify.
She presented with an alternative conception, that under gentle questioning she seemed to talk /think herself out of. The extent to which her shift in position reflected further recall (so, correcting her response) or 'thinking through' (so, developing her understanding) cannot be known. Likely there was a little of both. What memory research does suggest is that being asked to engage in and think about this material will have modified and reinforced her memories of the material for the future.
Johnson, P. M. (2012). Introducing Particle Theory. In K. S. Taber (Ed.), Teaching Secondary Chemistry (Second ed., pp. 49-73). Association for Science Education/John Murray.
1 Actually, the particles in a liquid are not substantially spread further apart than in a solid. (Indeed, when ice melts the water molecules move closer together on average.) Understanding melting requires an appreciation of the attractions between particles, and how heating provides more energy for the particles. This idea of increased separation on melting is therefore something of an alternative conception, if one that is sometimes encouraged by the diagrams in school textbooks.
Teaching an introductory particle theory based on the arrangement of particles in different states, without reference to the attractions between particles is problematic as it offers no rational basis for why condensed states exists, and why energy is needed to disrupt them – something highlighted in the work of Philip Johnson (2012).
