「Tips for Scientific Thinking: Let's Start with "What If"Book Review
By Teiya Makino, Ken Sugawara, Kazuko Tuchihara, and Hiroshi Murakami
Minerva Shobo, December 10, 2021, 248 pages, 2,400 yen (excluding tax)
Many members of the Zoological Society likely teach introductory courses on scientific thinking. A few years ago, I also began teaching university-wide courses on biology and its foundational concept, scientific thinking. It was only after I started teaching that I realized students struggle with scientific thinking. They are particularly unreliable when it comes to matters related to everyday life. Driven by the desire to correct students' thought processes of "it just felt right" before sending them out into society, and while wondering what kind of classes would be best to teach, I came across this book. The authors are Mr. Makino (specializing in biological system informatics), Mr. Sugahara (autonomous decentralized systems), Mr. Tuchihara (bioinformatics), and Mr. Murakami (X-ray astronomy), all affiliated with the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Tohoku Gakuin University at the time of publication, and this book was created for liberal arts education courses.
In a class for first-year students, I start by saying, "Let's think about scientific and logical thinking," and then pose the following question: "If there is a result showing that almost all neurosis patients (99.9%) who bathed in a hot spring were cured, would it be correct to say that taking hot spring baths is effective in curing neurosis?" This is a slight modification of the question found in this book.
In this question, the control group is not mentioned. If 99.9% of the neurosis patients who did not take hot spring baths were also cured, it could not be said that taking hot springs is effective. In the 2024 classes, 35% of the students answered "it can be said to be effective," and 65% answered "it cannot be said to be effective." However, even among the students who answered "it cannot be said to be effective," only 16% clearly answered "because there is no control group"—that is, about 6% of the total. Some students were distracted by insufficient operational definitions, such as "it is unclear what specifically taking hot springs refers to" or "it is not known what level of recovery is meant" (which are certainly important in scientific thinking). Others answered by supplementing with other knowledge, such as "neurosis is a hard disease to cure in the first place, so for it to be cured is a wonderful effect" (perhaps the scenario involving neurosis was a poor choice). Therefore, it cannot be denied that my way of questioning led to the low correct-answer rate. However, in the post-class questionnaire, many comments stated, "I should have known the importance of a control group, but I couldn't think of it this time. It was an eye-opener." I strongly feel the importance of first-year education regarding scientific thinking.
This book begins with an introduction, proceeds through a three-part structure of "learning," "refining," and "applying," and concludes with a final chapter. The introduction explains the basic concepts of scientific thinking, their necessity, and the reasons for learning scientific thinking methods. "Learning" explains the fundamentals of scientific thinking, describing how to formulate hypotheses, verification methods, and the importance of reasoning. "Refining" explains how to sharpen one's sense of words, numbers, graphs, and relationships. "Applying" explains practical methods for making decisions using hypotheses. The final chapter describes the mindset for enjoying the practice of scientific thinking, emphasizing the importance of having grounds for one's opinions and viewing things from multiple perspectives. In this way, this book is extremely useful for instructors when planning the flow of their classes. Furthermore, because the writing is gentle and easy to understand, students can also read through it independently.
Modern students obtain a great deal of information using the internet. However, information via the internet is highly personalized. Due to the "filter bubble," which analyzes users' search histories and displays information tailored to their ideologies and behavioral traits, the information actually received by each individual student varies greatly. Under such circumstances, it is important to critically and scientifically judge the acquired information "on one's own," while remaining aware that one is inside a filter bubble. In order to navigate complex modern society more successfully, it is necessary to correctly consider what the problems are and how to solve them. I would like to recommend this book to students who will navigate the society of the future and to their educators.
Shinsuke Goto (Graduate School of Science, Osaka Metropolitan University)
Recommendation for Scientific Thinking: Let's Start with "What If" - Book Review (PDF file)
