My experience in the Science & Global Change program opened my eyes to the prevalence of pseudoscience and logical fallacies and encouraged me to evaluate everything in life from the perspective of skepticism, parsimony, and consilience. As a result, I can more easily spot flawed reasoning outside the classroom and in my everyday life.
One example of encountering failures of the critical thinking skills in my college experiences was in a recent conversation with someone who claimed that preventing climate-related disasters can "never be proven" because prevention is invisible, and when disasters occur, he claimed "you can't prove they were caused by climate change." These claims reflect several critical-thinking failures. This line of reasoning falls victim to a few logical fallacies. Most prevalent are the argument from ignorance fallacy and the false dichotomy fallacy (with the cause either fully due to climate change or not caused by climate change at all). Additionally, these claims were made to explain the individual's preexisting political beliefs rather than being considered separate from their implications on his anti-climate regulations economic views.
These fallacies were clear due to my SGC-trained eye for dissecting arguments and nonscientific biases. Had I not been in SGC, perhaps I would have accepted his claims as valid and logical without realizing the inherent bias.
A news story that caught my attention outside the colloquium was a Science article titled, Airplane Contrails May Not Be Climate Villain Once Feared. It was based on a recent scientific paper assessing how contrails interact with existing cirrus clouds. The article summarized the paper's results that most contrails form inside existing cirrus and either add little additional warming or even produce a slight cooling effect in some cases. Because of SGC, I knew how to apply skepticism to the article and determine what was accurate to the original article and what might have been embellished.
After assessing the differences between the paper and the news coverage of it, I realized the extent of simplification of news articles compared to their sources. For instance, the original paper covered a vast amount of takeaways and operated on a falsifiable hypothesis using the scientific method that included testing ice supersaturation inside cloud layers, and deeply discussed how contrails were to be distinguished from background cirrus. The news article doesn't address any of this context and comparatively provides only a short, surface-level summary.
Additionally, the original paper didn't include explicit error estimates or uncertainty quantification of any sort, so there are certain limitations for interpreting the strength of its claims, which the news article omits when discussing the results due to the cursory intention of the article. This flattening of uncertainty stood out to me due to the consequences of misrepresenting nature that is not in line with the tenets of science.
SGC's lessons in media's misrepresentation of science and scientists gave me the tools I needed to critically analyze this article from the perspective of objectivity, whereas without SGC's influence, I likely would have inherently taken what was written at face value out of the assumption that a reputable publication wouldn't try to mislead or misrepresent something objective like scientific results.
Through the Scholars program, I made many friends whom I foresee maintaining beyond college. Notably, SGC introduced me to my current roommate, Zachary, with whom I've shared a good few academic discussions, and who influenced me to join an on-campus a cappella group. It complements my STEM learning by crossing the creation of art with the concepts of music theory; I am constantly mentally stimulated because my time is split between school and a cappella.
Additionally, I met Alan through SGC, and we both major in CMNS; we currently share multiple classes. This LLP allowed me to get to know him before we had class together, so I had more of a sense of community in DiffEq and Intro to Proofs this semester and a preexisting friend to rely on for help with studying for exams, writing Matlab code, and understanding general concepts in the class. Additionally, we already knew we worked well together on SGC projects, so when our proofs class held group work assignments, we were more confident and efficient at completing them, partially due to our prior familiarity with each other through SGC.
I feel I contributed meaningfully to SGC by consistently being engaged in class lectures and discussions, participating actively in group colloquium assignments, and strongly supporting the group projects I was part of with clear communication and completing these assignments promptly to the best of my abilities. I often took the lead on research, organizing information, and making sure my group's final products all felt finished and maintained a coherent structure.
Being in SGC brought me into contact with ideas and people that deeply challenged some of my initial assumptions. The most significant challenge came from the lecture that discussed the unintended effects of scientific innovation. I initially subconsciously believed that technology either contributed positively or negatively to the world and didn't really consider the nuance of bad results coming from good intentions or tools that can be used for both good and bad. This concept especially rocked me because of my core hope that I can contribute something actively positive to society in my lifetime, and the thought that even with the intention of doing something good, anything new placed into the world is going to have unintended consequences. My belief has matured to accepting that there are going to be consequences I don't consider, but when bringing something into the world, I am committed to considering as many consequences of my actions as possible before taking that action, with the intention of mitigating big risks where I can.
I'm definitely going to continue using the mentality of a scientist when learning something new throughout my life. The amount of bias and pseudoscience that slipped past my cognition before joining SGC is immense; I can't imagine going through life without scrutinizing my knowledge sources and tearing apart logical fallacies in arguments when I recognize them. Additionally, the lessons in effectively communicating scientific knowledge in SGC will be invaluable in any endeavor where I need to spread information accurately and purposefully, regardless of context. The slideshow best practices, for instance, are forever ingrained in my memory, and I foresee improving all of my information communication because of the effectiveness of SGC at showing me the best ways to do all of these things.
Lastly, the necessity for me to act as a custodian of science among pseudoscientists stands out to me as a burden and privilege I will surely carry along with me throughout life beyond college. I have gained a lot through SGC, and I think I'll look back at this experience fondly and with gratitude for the opportunity to take part in this program.