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Module 1: Asynchronous Welcome!

Welcome! Hi! My name is Andréa, I use she/her pronouns, and I’m genuinely excited to be with you for this semester.

This course will be a model for what is possible when care and love for students is centered instead of the directives from a non-living (usually harmful) academic entity. This Writing for the Sciences course will explore topics within the field of engineering that center Black, Disabled, and queer voices. We will challenge the concept of neutrality in science, read from a graphic textbook, and practice writing through blog responses. If you’re enrolled, you get an A. Grades are surveillance systems set up to police students with no proof of positively impacting learning outcomes (article attached if you want to challenge other professors’ policies).

We are listed as an online course, so we will be meeting asynchronously for the rest of the semester. This means that each week I will post a module, and the hope is that you’re able to engage with the module (comment, send me a message, read the section I offer) within a week’s time.

On the homepage of the course site, I try to explain how this course will run, so poke around and most questions about what will be asked of you this semester, should be revealed. If you have other questions, please send me a Slack DM, I respond there the fastest.

A little more about me: I’m Autistic, a professor and a PhD student at the Graduate Center, have two little little kids, and work a full time job in the coffee industry to pay the bills. I’m an abolitionist and I’m very excited to see how you all rebuild this world into something beautiful.

For this first week, tell me about yourself. Who are you? How did you end up at CCNY? Do you need me to help you start an uprising in any of your other classes? It can even be a 30 second video if you want, I’d love to see you face. You can send this to me as a DM on Slack.

Lastly, please read these first three sections (links: one, two, three) of Science Under the Scope. It’s a graphic text, so it should take about 15 mins to read. And answer this question in the comments section of this post: when were you taught that science was objective? and after reading these first sections, what do you think?


20 Comments

  1. I am now just learning that science is objective. I just learned this now while in college. I think having objectivity in science and just in life is a good thing. The reason why is because by not having our individual biases come in the middle of our work. We are able to look at it and have others look at it in a bigger point of view instead of just narrowing it down. By having objectivity, it helps keeps the conversation going and stay on track to the truth.

  2. I never learned that science was objective. I just learned that it was now in college. I think it’s good that there is objectivity in science. I believe that it is good because Objectivity helps us from not letting our individual biases from entering our work. Objectivity helps move the conversation along and also help to bring out the truth. It basically helps protect from putting in our own opinion.

  3. The idea that science was objective first came to my understanding in elementary school. Throughout my academic years, I started to gain a deeper knowledge on the concept of science being categorized as objective and within this I was able to grasp the idea that in science getting closer to the truth is just as important as proving a hypotheses. When one conducts an experiment, our goal should be to find an answer to what we want to test out not to just get the answers that one aspires to get. In these answers we would notice how one variable affects the other through various trials where each variable might be manipulated. After reading these first sections, I found it really interesting how there might be some dangers to the objectivity of science. To my understanding and prior knowledge, I thought that using personal experiences/perspectives might not be ideal in science because of the bias we might implement into the practice. Being bias can cause damage to research and alternate existing research as well. This damage can further on lead to incorrect conclusions that can’t be proven in the long run (not even if many repeated trials are implemented). To conclude, science can propose theories that is either supported or refuted by data along with the facts presented.

  4. I was taught that science was objective right when I started learning about it in elementary school. I was mostly taught to believe that science is just facts and how to pull facts out of certain pieces of information. However, I do not believe that science can be fully objective and these readings reminded me of certain points that I usually do not think about. The most obvious, and potentially easy, point to me is that social sciences exist and those categories are more subjective. I also think that science is not objective because if it were, then I think that there would be no ethical rules in place for conducting experiments. For example, having informed consent for participants and ethical animal testing. There is also some subjectivity in place for why certain people and researchers conduct an experiment or want to learn more about something. An example is finding more research to cure a certain disease.

  5. I was first introduced to science as objective in elementary school. I was taught that science is set in stone and has many universal rules that ever change. It was through constant hypothesis’, experiments, and errors that these rules were founded thus they can never be changed. When conducting experiments one should be mindful of human errors because they can alter the outcome if the experiment and if it was altered, then the experiment should be redone to eliminate any errors. This ideology has both its ups and down. Science sometimes needs to objective and remain unbiased so that the results are the same worldwide. However, sometimes it needs to be subjective. I recently finished reading a book about a neurosurgeon and he would constantly say that he would view his patients as things that need fixing and what makes them human was the clothes they wore. In situations like this having an objective view is not always the wisest perspective. Moreover, after reading this I learned that scientists aim to keep their research objective through random sampling, double blind trials, and multiple trials. This helps eliminate any biases and emotions that can hinder their research.

  6. I learned science is objective when I first started high school back in freshman year when working with plants during a lab. The objective mainly revolved around where plants are optimally placed to grow the best. Upon reading the three sections science is very objective in how certain objectives can be carried out. Whether that can be from the different trials, or how their interpretation is it’s all very up to the interpretation of an individual.

  7. I learned that science was objective during elementary school. Throughout basic experiments during elementary science classes, we learned of the concept of objectivity through approaching concepts with logic and providing hypothesis’ using facts instead of our prior knowledge which could be biased. When obtaining the results of the experiment, we may have gotten the result that we didn’t want, however we couldn’t let objectivity cloud the facts of this experiment.

  8. The found out that science was objective in high school. when I first found out I was like no way that’s true then I was like I want to know more about it. and I think objectivity is important in science because scientific studies seek to get as close to the truth as possible, not just prove a hypothesis. Experiments should be designed to be objective and not to get the answers that a scientists wants. the reading was interesting to me. Also helped me understand more about it.

  9. I learned that science was objective in my freshman year of high school when I took biology. I learned that science must be objective in order for us to know the truth about reality and how the world really works. Science should be a universal collection of ideas that transcends the biases and prejudices of scientists and skeptics. We should use science to improve our lives and the world. Furthermore, this is the only way to ensure the objectivity of science.

  10. I learned that science was objective when I was in middle school. I think that objectivity in science is important because it’s connected to many political and social ideas. An example is climate change, which has been proven again and again that it exits and it’s happening, but a lot of people are still choosing to turn a blind eye. Science is something that affects the lives of many people, so it’s important to have concrete evidence and data rather than point of views that are based on personal interpretation.

  11. I was taught that science was objective in elementary school but I never thought about it’s role on science. After reading sections of the graphic text I realized that human biases have an influence on research. I also realized that trail and error, random sampling and blind folding reduce biases in research.

  12. I learned that science was objective when I was in middle school. I knew that many experiments were done multiple times to avoid human errors and mistakes. The bias of humans affects almost everything we do which is why this procedure is done to ensure that we get an objective outcome instead of one that we desire. You can see that science is objective through all of the procedures that are implemented in any experiment. For example, random sampling and trial sets.

  13. I always assumed that science was objective. When I did my first real lab in high school and went through many procedures and experiments I had to learn about the facts behind the experiment. Scientists go through numerous research to come up with these scientific facts. They don’t come up with these facts based on what they think, or their background. They come up with these facts by studying them and so on.

  14. When I was in elementary school, I learned that science was objective. The majority of my education was based on the belief that science is just factual information. Science, however, cannot be completely objective, and these readings reminded me of certain points I usually do not consider. I think it’s obvious and easy to acknowledge that social science exists and those categories are subject to more subjective assessment. Science, if it were objective, would have no ethical standards because experiments would not be ethical if it were objective. Participants should have informed consent, and animal testing should be ethical. Researchers and people conduct experiments for a variety of reasons, including their own subjectivity. For example, use their body, to create tool for missing parts.

  15. The fact that science was objective was when I was in school. But I never really understood what that meant in the way that it was explained in the comics. To me, I guess objectivity just meant that science was fair because of how the experiments were conducted randomly. Also, random sampling, hypothesis, and repetitive experiments all of that didn’t feel like they had anything to do with anyone, just trying to actually figure out the truth of why things are the way it is. Now reading what I did, I feel like I haven’t really been looking for or thinking critically. It’s good to know this, especially since I am majoring in science.

  16. I learned that science was objective when I was in middle school, and that is when I was exposed to the topic of scientific research. This is where we form a hypothesis, develop a procedure, and test the hypothesis more than once to get accurate results. After reading the sections, I liked the idea that societies affect science, which I never thought about. I also learned that Science could be used to improve people’s way of life.

  17. I learned that science was objective when I was in middle school, and that is when I was exposed to the topic of scientific research. This is where we form a hypothesis, develop a procedure, and test the hypothesis more than once to get accurate results. After reading the sections, I liked the idea that societies affect science, which I never thought about. I also learned that Science could be used to improve people’s way of life.

  18. From the very beginning in elementary school, I was taught that science was objective. The reason is that I was taught that science is science, it is how it is and that is correct because those people (scientists) know what they are doing and who are we to question them. Whatever a scientist says or does is set in stone no one, especially us who know nothing about it should question them. Yes, when we are young we have an active imagination and we try to question everything, but those teachers tell us that is how it is and we learn that way we can not question their method. That is the way most of us are brought up until we get older and are able to think for ourselves. On a different note, one of the reasons provided to me to explain that science is objective was the methods of conducting research. For instance, it remains objective because there is something called random sampling, double-blind trials, repeated trials, surveys, different control groups, people from different ethnicities, etc. It all makes sense to me how science is objective. What would be problematic to me is trying to make sense of science not being objective.

  19. I rememeber being confused about objectivity in middle school when it was brought up. We had also just learned the parts of the microscope and one of them was the objective lense. At that time, I assumed that science was pure fact and was surprised and impressed when I learned about measures taken to be objective like double blind experiments to try to acheive unbiased finding.. I think that i generally thought research was being conducted in an observational way, like in the naturalist programs on PBS I watched, the scientists were always sneaking around or observing from afar in order to not disturb nature from taking its course. After reading The Objectivity of My Affection by Michelle Wang it is clearer to me that, over time, not only has my understanding of objectivity broadened to weed out non objective sources when doing research but i also see now that objectivity is an ideal which we should strive to attain, and should always be closely examined. For example, how can an energy company be trusted to conduct objective research regarding their role in climate change?

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Course Info

Professor: Andréa Stella (she/her)

Email: astella@ccny.cuny.edu

Zoom: 4208050203

Slack:engl21003fall22.slack.com/