Welcome! Hi! My name is Andréa, I use she/her pronouns, and I’m genuinely excited to be with you for this semester.
This course will be a model for what is possible when care and love for students is centered instead of the directives from a non-living (usually harmful) academic entity. This Writing for Engineering course will explore topics within the field of engineering that center Black, Disabled, and queer voices. We will challenge the concept of neutrality in science, read from a graphic textbook, and practice writing through blog responses. If you’re enrolled, you get an A. Grades are surveillance systems set up to police students with no proof of positively impacting learning outcomes (article attached if you want to challenge other professors’ policies).
We are listed as an online course, so we will be meeting asynchronously for the rest of the semester. This means that each week I will post a module, and the hope is that you’re able to engage with the module (comment, send me a message, read the section I offer) within a week’s time.
On the homepage of the course site, I try to explain how this course will run, so poke around and most questions about what will be asked of you this semester, should be revealed. If you have other questions, please send me a Slack DM, I respond there the fastest.
A little more about me: I’m Autistic, a professor and a PhD student at the Graduate Center, have two little little kids, and work a full time job in the coffee industry to pay the bills. I’m an abolitionist and I’m very excited to see how you all rebuild this world into something beautiful.
For this first week, tell me about yourself. Who are you? How did you end up at CCNY? Do you need me to help you start an uprising in any of your other classes? It can even be a 30 second video if you want, I’d love to see you face. You can send this to me as a DM on Slack.
Lastly, please read these first three sections (links: one, two, three) of Science Under the Scope. It’s a graphic text, so it should take about 15 mins to read. And answer this question in the comments section of this post: when were you taught that science was objective? and after reading these first sections, what do you think?
I was taught that science was objective since I was pretty young, I’d assume. I can’t really recall a specific point in time, but it’s something I think every science class teaches at the start of it, along with the scientific method and such. After reading these first few sections, I am a bit interested and would need to read a bit more of what the author means by the dangers of objectivity. I guess it would be clearer to say that I don’t yet see the point she is making because I need an idea of some examples where it poses a danger, and I don’t doubt that there is cases where it can be “dangerous”, I just want to know what the extent is and how it impacts society.
The first time I realized science was objective was either while watching Star Trek or conducting experiments in school. I learned that you should aim to gather the most impartial data possible by conducting all of the measuring and processes to ensure that whatever it observes or measures looks the same to everyone who observes or measures it, on the basis that if everyone sees the same thing, it must be true. Finally, we strive to make science as objective as possible. When we acknowledge that humans are flawed and capable of making mistakes, we begin to make requirements that one’s experiences and experiments be repeated so that it is no longer simply one’s experience.
Sophie Wang’s graphic texts, in my opinion, were a unique manner of conveying a full, in-depth way of science being objective. I also appreciated how she included her upbringing and how her perspective on science changed as she moved into a broader perspective, college. I enjoyed how she explained how science is unbiased and how, no matter how hard we try to make it objective, our opinions are still a part of us and will seep through the cracks inevitably.
I feel like I’ve always known that science was objective because of the methods used to finalize an experiment. Science should always be unbiased and should never adhere to someones subjective conclusions. Biology is a field where this issue is arising, not analytically, but physically nonetheless. I’ve written a paper on how the affects of cancel culture may affect the views on human biology. Sophie Wangs illustrations were easy to follow and very informative as well as fun to read making it more knowledgable for me. Thinking of objectivity as a bodyguard that keeps emotions out of science was such a great way to put it. Something new she did teach me was how science can go hand in hand with politics and it roots from its methodology. Science also comes from Colonialism/Imperialism because its legacy is built upon it. We may have our own opinions and thats fine but it should not hinder the science. Thats what Hypotheses are for.
I was also taught at a young age that science is objective and as I grew up, I understood that it was necessary in order to make sense of how and why things are the way that they are in our natural world outside of human biases. Our values/ morals/ biases is what we are fighting science with and everyone has their own constantly changing biases based off of their upbringing, teachings, experiences, and beliefs, (including myself) which causes our views of the world to shift regardless to the science.
I was taught that science was objective when I was super young, probably around the second grade. My elementary school held yearly science experiment projects for prizes like candy or book fair money so my interest was caught immediately as I participated in them. The projects and the scientific method taught me that we should conduct our experiments carefully and make sure to eliminate any outside factors/variables that would affect the results in a negative way. I also had to ensure that my results were presented the way they were recorded, without any bias or change.
The style of Sophie Wang was very intriguing and I enjoyed reading those comics far more compared to having to read articles with just paragraphs repeatedly. I also found interest in what she had to say and agreed with it as well.
I was taught that science was objective throughout elementary, middle, and high school. Teachers constantly reinforce that students need to be as objective and accurate as possible because what real science professionals do is entirely objective. And this tricked me until I went to college when I took an archaeology class that taught me just how much bias is prevalent in science. Fossils excavated by one archaeologist may provide a different conclusion than another because everyone deducts info differently. Similarly, scientists deduct things in labs differently, too. That is why it is important not to treat deducted information as the objective truth. Reading these sections reminded me of this enlightenment, and I wholeheartedly agree.
The first time I realized that science was subjective was sometime in elementary school. I remember we had to do a science fair where we would present experiments we did in front of the whole school. The teacher was stressing the importance of running multiple tests in order to make the data as accurate as possible. The more trials there are the more accurate the results will be.
After reading the graphic texts I agree with the fact that it is very important to make sure that science is objective. If the results of an experiment are filled with the bias of the person that ran the experiment, the experiment loses validity. I liked how the author told us how they first learned that science was objective and the experiences they went through.
It seems like ever since I became sensible to the world and to the things around me, science has always been a word equivalent to objectivity to me. Because I was taught the idea that any scientific claims, method, results and even the scientists themselves should not be biased. That is, they should be complete fair and shouldn’t be influenced by any particular perspective, personal interests and judgements. Because with personal bias, science will not be able to come to draw fair conclusion. After reading those sections, I started to challenge my original thought, is science really 100% objective? When the scientist are doing their researches, they can not be completely neutral, they are doing it more or less with their own personal interest and bias. That’s the human nature because we cannot separate ourselves from society, perspective and humanity as Sophie mentioned in the cartoon. Therefore, it can’t be objective. We build science to better fulfill our needs.
While I don’t recall any of my past teachers ever explicitly stating that science is entirely objective, all of my past science classes have focused on reinforcing the scientific method. The teachers would teach us a new topic every few days, have us come up with hypotheses, conduct repeatable experiments to prove or disprove our hypotheses, analyze our findings, and then repeat that cycle. Because all of my teachers required our analyses and conclusions to be supported by the data we collected, whether they meant to or not, I think they’ve drilled the idea that science is objective into our heads. I think sometime in high school I learned and accepted that science is inherently political and not as objective as we think it may be. I haven’t thought too deeply about it though, so after reading these first three sections, I’m ready to learn more about how science affects society (and vice versa) more than we think.
The first time I was taught that science was objective was the first time I ever learned about science all the way back in elementary school. And ever since then it’s always just calculations and numbers. I have always seen science like math where there are many ways to get to an answer but there is really only one correct answer and there is no feelings that get involved into the process of getting to the answers. There are procedures that people must follow in science to get to a certain scientific outcome. Unlike Sophie Wang, I don’t see how science can be anything but objective. Since only the first three sections were assigned I assume Sophie Wang would go more in depth in the future readings where she would elaborate more on how science is not really objective, but as of now I still stand my my point that science is objective. I’m also curious on what she has to say in the future as well.
I think the first time I was taught that science was objective was probably when one of the first times I remember going to the pediatrician as a child, the doctor analyzed my blood and urine results to talk about how my health was based on complementary in the results and the numbers that my medical exam showed, that made me think and I probably would have asked the doctor about the science behind it and the doctor would have answered something that I probably did not understand at the time but then, thanks to what they teach at school, I learned that this analyzes everything related to science must be analyzed meticulously, in a few words objectively, leaving emotions and/or bias aside, I must say that I found this graphic text very, very interesting, I had never seen it To think beforehand about what collateral damage could be objective, I have always been taught that objectivity is always good in any aspect to reach a resolution ion appropriate to the problems, and this text was like seeing the other side of the coin of objectivity for me, I really liked how the text described objectivity as the security guard that kept our biases and emotions out, I I would think that this is good but the text made me see that in this way I would leave aside everything that makes us human.
Although I don’t remember any specific events that taught me that science is objective, I know that I was taught about the idea at a young age. Whenever a scientific experiment was done, it was always stressed how important it is to follow the scientific method. Aswell all students were taught that many trials were always necessary in order to receive the most accurate results and that any outside factors may affect the end product. I believe that the graphic text written by Sophie Wang was able to clearly portray the connection between objectivity and science. I do agree with the text stating how “we will always exist in context”. Although we may try to avoid it, perspective and biases will always play a part in science.
The first time I learn that science was objective was in my first science class in third grade. I was simply told, absolutely, that science could be messed with, because there were ways to rid of the bias. I Understood for myself That there was always going to be variation and growth in science as we learned more about the world. I never considered that accepted or tested ideas could be biased in their own right. It is difficult for myself to remove my personal opinions and expectations from my work so I see how it could be for others. I just assumed that eventually I would grow out of it. I remember I would talk with my religious friends who would tell me how uncertain science was and so they turned to religion for answers. I was always blindly faithful to science as much as they were to religion, and although I do not consider them on the same level of certainty, this made me rethink my ultimate faith in science, in at least its objectivity. For example, I assume someone like Richard Dawkins, who writes books about how God isn’t real and why, would have his own personal bias about religion anyway. His books do sound snarky, no matter how correct his thought/real experiments might be. It makes me think how other scientists could think about their work. Look at what happened with people stealing Darwin’s survival of the fittest and turning it into justification for racism.
The first time I learn that science was objective was in my first science class in third grade. I was simply told, absolutely, that science could be messed with, because there were ways to rid of the bias. I Understood for myself That there was always going to be variation and growth in science as we learned more about the world. I never considered that accepted or tested ideas could be biased in their own right. It is difficult for myself to remove my personal opinions and expectations from my work so I see how it could be for others. I just assumed that eventually I would grow out of it. I remember I would talk with my religious friends who would tell me how uncertain science was and so they turned to religion for answers. I was always blindly faithful to science as much as they were to religion, and although I do not consider them on the same level of certainty, this made me rethink my ultimate faith in science, in at least its objectivity. For example, I assume someone like Richard Dawkins, who writes books about how God isn’t real and why, would have his own personal bias about religion anyway. His books do sound snarky, no matter how correct his thought/real experiments might be. It makes me think how other scientists could think about their work. Look at what happened with people stealing Darwin’s survival of the fittest and turning it into justification for racism.
While I was never taught science was objective, it was always implied to me. During middle school, I remember learning about the scientific methods and there were so much steps which left no room for biases. After reading these articles, I am quite curious why science being objective can have problems. This topic seems very interesting and I’m eager to continue reading.
I was taught that science was objective ever since elementary school, it was thought in every science class. It’s one of the first things you learn I guess, the scientific method which involves no emotions just proving facts. After reading all three comics I just want to say how much I really enjoyed looking through the comics a lot more than regular articles.
I think i was taught science was objective at a pretty young age when conducting experiments we needed evidences and we took measures to make sure it was subjective. After reading these sections i have one question how can something that objective be influenced by where we grow up, what we eat etc. If 1+1 nothing changes that no matter who you are. Thats why i would like the author to give example how something that is objective be influence by our past(where we grow up, what we eat etc).
I was taught that science was objective since when I started elementary school we did experiments and needed to use the scientific method to answer our hypothesis. Science is all about opinions and finding out whether your thoughts were correct or not as an outcome. I believe that science is objective because without experiments there would be unorganized and there wouldn’t even be accurate results.
I was taught that science was objective since when I started elementary school we did experiments and needed to use the scientific method to answer our hypothesis. In my opinion, science is all about point of view, brainstorming, keeping an open mind, and finding out whether your hypothesis was correct or not as an outcome. I believe that science is objective because without experiments there would be unorganized and there wouldn’t even be accurate results.