Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English.
I’m Sam. And I’m Rob.
Once in a while along comes a scientist who captures the
public imagination and communicates
their passion for science in an exciting and understandable way.
In this programme, we’ll be meeting one of America’s best-known
popular scientists. Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. He’s a man with a
gift for communicating and inspiring people with his television shows and
books on cosmology – the study of the origin and nature of the universe.
In his day job he runs the Hayden Planetarium in New York’s American
Museum of Natural History, but Neil’s real mission is to encourage
scientific thinking among the American public.
We’ll be hearing from the famous astronomer, and learning
some new vocabulary, soon. But first I have a question
for you, Sam. Science is ever-changing with new discoveries updating our
understanding all the time. For centuries, the Earth was
thought to be the centre of the Universe - but who was the
first astronomer to have the correct idea that,
in fact, the Earth and the planets revolve around the
Sun? Was it a) Nicolaus Copernicus
b) Isaac Newton c) Galileo Galilei
Hmm, I’ll say it was c) Galileo.
OK, Sam. I’ll reveal the correct answer later in the programme.
Recent events like
the Covid pandemic and climate crisis have put scientists under
pressure from critics motivated by political views. Neil deGrasse
Tyson thinks facts are not dependent on politics,
but should be established with the scientific method, a
process of finding the truth through testing and experimentation.
Here’s Neil explaining more about the
scientific method to BBC World Service programme, HardTalk.
If you have a brilliant idea and you test it and it unearths so
much of what has been known before, we’re gonna double-check that
– the rest of us – we’ll say, ‘But did he do it? Did he cross
his t’s and dot his i’s? Did he … Let me check the power
that’s driving his experiment, you know, the wall current,
let me check how that was conceived and done’.
And if no-one can duplicate your results, it’s not a result.
Before scientists can confirm the truth of an experiment,
their findings must be doubled-checked - making certain
something is correct by carefully examining it again. This
process is called ‘peer review’ - other scientists double-checking
the experiment to make sure everything was done correctly.
One way they do this is to duplicate, or repeat, the
experiment to see if they get the same result.
In other words, Neil wants scientists to have crossed
the t’s and dotted the i’s, a phrase which means paying
attention to the small details of whatever you are doing.
A scientific approach requires an open mind and critical thinking,
but Neil believes the most important thing is to know the difference
between fact and opinion. People have opinions about all kinds
of things but that doesn’t make what they believe a fact.
Yet fact and opinion are becoming harder to separate. As protests by
anti-vaccine groups and climate change deniers have shown, many Americans,
even presidents, seem suspicious of scientific fact. It’s a worrying trend
that Neil thinks is a result of the US education system,
as he told BBC World Service programme, HardTalk.
It has to do with how science
is taught in schools. It’s currently taught as a body of information,
a satchel of facts that are imparted upon you and then you regurgitate
that for an exam. That’s an aspect of science, but it’s not the most
important part of science. The most important part of science
is knowing how to question things and knowing when
an answer has emerged that represents an objective truth about this world.
Neil says that science is taught by encouraging students to regurgitate
facts - to repeat information without properly understanding it.
Knowledge is important,
but what’s also needed is a questioning attitude than can
recognise objective truth - a truth about the natural world
which is not influenced by human bias, opinions or emotion.
Without that, anyone is free to call whatever
they like a ‘fact’, which only leads to chaos.
Right. No matter how hard I believe that the Moon
is made of cheese, or the Sun goes round around the Earth,
believing it doesn’t make it true.
That sounds like something Neil deGrasse Tyson would
agree with – and maybe Galileo too!
Yes. In my question I asked who first came up with the
idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
And I said it was Renaissance astronomer, Galileo.
Which was the wrong answer, I’m afraid. Galileo knew the
Earth revolved around the Sun, but the first person
with the idea was Polish astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus,
in 1543 – unfortunately, centuries before the invention of television
could spread the news of this objective truth – a provable
truth which is uninfluenced by human bias or opinion.
OK, let’s recap the rest of the vocabulary from our chat
about American scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson and his
love of cosmology - the study of the Universe.
To double-check something means to make certain it’s correct by
carefully re-examining it. One way scientists do this is to
duplicate, or repeat exactly, an experiment.
The idiom ‘cross the t’s and dot the i’s’ means to pay close
attention to the details of what you are doing.
And finally, if you regurgitate facts, you just repeat them without
properly understanding them – something a true scientist
would never do!
Once again, our six minutes are up. Goodbye for now!
Bye!