Science is one of the best ways we have of understanding what’s going on around us. In Crash Course Scientific Thinking we’ll explore the foundational principles that underlie scientific thought.
Ever fallen for fake news on social media because it felt real? Or found yourself afraid to go in the ocean after watching too many videos about sharks? In this episode of Crash Course Scientific Thinking, we explore how cognitive bias shapes the way we think about the world, and how scientific thinking can help us overcome it.
We’re all gonna die someday. But can statistics help us know when? In this episode of Crash Course Scientific Thinking, we’ll learn how to interpret the statistics we see in our daily lives. And we’ll explore why we need stats to make informed judgments, be more precise about what we don’t know, and get closer to what we can know.
Sometimes experiments radically change our understanding of the world. But there’s much more to them than singular scientists. In this episode of Crash Course Scientific Thinking, we’ll learn why Louis Pasteur wasn’t a lone genius, and why it’s very difficult to design a study that gets us closer to the truth.
In 2010, a NASA-backed study boldly announced that we’d found alien life right here on Earth. So where are all these aliens? In this episode of Crash Course Scientific Thinking, we search for the truth and learn how science is an ongoing quest for knowledge that double-checks itself through peer review.
Are you consuming a credit card’s worth of misinformation every week? In this episode of Crash Course Scientific Thinking, we’ll learn how to check facts and evaluate sources, so we can figure out what science coverage to believe, and what to ignore.
We know smoking causes cancer. But the journey to that knowledge is way wilder than you think. In our last episode of Crash Course Scientific Thinking, we’ll explore what happens when scientific research clashes with public opinion, individual values, and corporate interests.