The following can be used to as a prompt for a lesson leading a group of students through the hurricane think The lesson can act as an analogy to how new knowledge is introduced, examined, criticised and developed during the scientific process. Students can: Read the initial article Reason about its plausibility Examine the evidence and methodology used Raise questions and considering the criticisms of others Read the response of the original authors to initial criticisms

How do you know?

Read the original news article Decide: What problems they met in trying to test their hypothesis? What two approaches did they use to gain evidence to support their conclusion?

Where’s Katrina? After 1979 hurricanes had alternate male female names

How can this data be used?

Results of experiments

Q:What does ‘statistically significant’ mean?

Look at the comments written for the report given in The Guardian. Consider what arguments each writer has used to support or reject the researcher’s findings. Do not necessarily discount the more ‘humorous’ comments, and the points these are trying to make. What do these comment writers focus on, and what drives them to write these comments? Research what does ‘statistically significant’ mean?

0.05 The magic number 1 in 20 Why this?

The “Area of Knowledge” that this article would be considered under is the Human Sciences … What is the difference between Human and Natural Science?.. … what problems do the human sciences have that the natural sciences do not?

Methodology in the natural sciences Experiment Repeatable experiment Peer review

experimental method use of questionnaires, polls direct observation of human behaviour use of models use of reason to construct plausible theory consistent with other accepted knowledge in the field some assumptions of human rationality (economics), or law-like behaviour (psychology) use of statistical methods—on what basis to choose things like significance levels of tests? Methodology in the Human Sciences

If we accept the articles conclusion as true, what do we do if we want to reduce deaths and damage from hurricanes?

Read the reply written by the authors to all the criticism that occurred

The scientific process In this lesson you have gone through the process of: Reading the initial article Reasoning about its plausibility Examining the evidence and methodology used Raising questions and considering the criticisms of others Reading the response of the original authors to initial criticisms

The scientific process In this lesson you have gone through the process of: Reading the initial article Reasoning about its plausibility Examining the evidence and methodology used Raising questions and considering the criticisms of others Reading the response of the original authors to initial criticisms From this experience, you can gain an appreciation of how knowledge claims are made, examined and developed in science. What would be the next step in deciding whether the authors of the article have developed new knowledge to be shared?

How do we ‘know’? The methodologies used to gain knowledge are different in different areas of knowledge

Theory of Knowledge presentations: A real life situation (RLS) A question about knowledge raised by the RLS Analysis of the knowledge question applied back to RLS Go back to theoryofknowledge.me and see REFLECT