Blueshift - September, 2013

How We Learn, Part 4 of our interview with Dr. Phil Plait

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Maggie Masetti: Welcome to Blueshift, brought to you from NASA's Goddard 
Space Flight Center.  I'm Maggie Masetti.

This is the last part of our interview with Phil Plait, the so-called 
"Bad Astronomer." Last time we talked about the value of actually 
looking up at the sky. Looking up can make you feel small, but it can 
also help you to realize that you are part of a larger picture.  There 
is also the feeling that you may be familiar with some of what's in the 
night sky, but there is also so much out there left to discover and to 
try to understand.

Phil: It's an interesting dichotomy and I'm pretty familiar with the 
sky. I've been an amateur astronomer my whole life. I go out and I see 
all those stars and I think, "Wow, I can name a lot of them." But there 
are ten up there that I can see for every one I can name, if not a 
hundred. And so it makes you feel like, "wow!" Just to be a small tiny 
part of this but then the flipside of that is you can look at Betelgeuse 
and say, "well that's this type of supergiant and we know it's this and 
we know that it's going to blow up and we know this and that and the 
other thing." And it's like we know so much about what's going on out 
there and every day we know a little bit more and sometimes a lot more. 
And it's this beautiful contrast of being tiny and small and so much and 
being overwhelmed but also being an integral part of it and 
understanding it and seeing it for what it is and these two things are 
hand in glove and I love that.

Sara: Well and it's just very much about knowledge and about understand 
our place...

Phil: Understanding is the word that I would use.

Sara: Have you ever debunked one of your own misconceptions?

Phil: Yeah, sure! Everybody walks around with things in their head that 
are wrong and I've even had contradictory ideas in my head. Everybody 
does. Where I've thought one thing and thought something totally 
contrary to that at the same time. But those two ideas never came up at 
the same time. And when they do you go, "Oh... one of these must be 
wrong." And that happens. It happens in astronomy but it happens more 
often with me in fields I'm not as familiar with like biology or 
something like that. Geology especially, I love geology. And again I'm 
not sure I could come up with a specific example off the top of my head 
but certainly because I've written about it. I've written on my blog 
saying, "I always thought this and it turns out I've been wrong this 
whole time." And I could have known that and that's fantastic because 
when that happens it's a little embarrassing but far outweighing any 
personal potential embarrassment is the idea, "Ooo! I know something 
better now!" And that's kind of the ultimate goal of science. We may not 
ever know everything but we can always get closer and knowing more is 
the point.

(Sara: That's a perfect sound-bite. You're good at this, Phil. Phil: I 
just make most of this stuff up Sara: Okay good.)

Phil: It takes strength to do it the first time. It gets easier. And 
it's not always easier every single time because sometimes these 
mistakes are little and you go, "Oh! That was wrong." And sometimes it's 
like, "My entire life has been wrong - I'm living a lie!" And that's 
really hard to admit do but it doesn't take as much strength as you'd 
think. And, in fact, once you do it you'll look back and go, "Oh, I'm 
really glad I did that." And it's not like you're going to look forward 
to being wrong in the future, but you stop looking at it as an 
impediment and you start looking at it as a way to help you climb over 
that next hurdle and learning more.

Sara: Well and I think that's what good educators learn and it's what 
people who are in a position like yours have to learn or basically 
you're just arrogant about it. If you can't ever be wrong there's 
something fundamentally wrong with you.

Phil: To me that's the sin. Making a mistake - an honest mistake - is 
one thing but then holding it to your chest and not letting go of it, 
that's the mistake. That's the much bigger mistake. And if you don't 
make mistakes, if you don't make errors, and then look at them and 
figure out where you went wrong and learn from it how are you ever going 
to improve? That's how we learn, by making mistakes, one way we learn.

Sara: What about the fact that people have trouble understanding that 
science can be wrong and that's alright? And rather see it as science is 
not reliable and science is not trustworthy because sometimes scientists 
are wrong?

Phil: The media and in politics - and I know we can't touch on politics 
too much since NASA is, in fact, a government agency - but there's a lot 
of times where there's a distrust of science is fed by people who maybe 
want to make science look bad. I run across this all the time and my 
take on it is that this is how we learn. Yes, you know what, science 
maybe once... if you want to make the case that science once thought the 
Earth was flat... which is bologna, science never thought that. Science 
doesn't think anything. But the Earth was flat and da da da and all 
these kind of things... and I say, "but you know, we learned from that." 
And even with hoaxes, Piltdown Man and that sort of thing... Do you 
think it was the believers in that thing who fixed it? No, it was the 
people who looked at it scientifically and said, "hey, this is wrong." 
That's how we learn and so it's not that science making mistakes is a 
weakness, in fact, that is science's greatest strength. In a hurricane 
the tree that can't bend snaps. The one that can bend is the one that 
survives. And science can bend. There are still people out there that 
think that the Earth is flat - they're still wrong! But when you look a 
the scientific evidence there's a lot of reasons to show, to understand, 
that the Earth is actually a sphere. And then if you really apply 
science you learn that it's not actually a sphere, it's an oblate 
spheroid and then it's got all these other terms to it and that. And the 
more you learn the cooler it is! So if you want to accuse science of 
being sort of a "flat-Earth" kind of thinking that is completely wrong. 
And it is the fact that we know that the Earth isn't flat that is the 
reason that science is so strong.

Maggie: Thanks for listening!  We hope you enjoyed this multi-part 
interview with Phil.  I personally find him to be a very dynamic and 
passionate speaker, and I think those things make him a great 
spokesperson for the value of science.  We hope we've managed to pass a 
little of his enthusiasm on to you!  Be sure to check out our blog at 
universe.nasa.gov/Blueshift - that's where you can find more information 
about this podcast, as well as our previous podcasts and blogs.  You can 
also find us on Twitter and Facebook as NASABlueshift (all one word).  
Tell us what you'd like to hear about there, or through our website 
feedback form!

I'm Maggie Masetti, bringing the Universe closer to you with Blueshift.

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