Is the Earth Crying Wolf? Exploring Knowledge Source and Certainty in High School Students’ Analysis of Global Warming News

The marked contrast between the scientific consensus on global warming and public beliefs indicates a need to research how high schoolers, as future citizens, engage with and make meaning from news articles on such topics. In the case of socioscientific issues (SSIs) such as global warming, students’ acquisition of knowledge from the news is mediated by their epistemic understandings of the nature of science (NOS) and use of informal reasoning in evaluating claims, evidence, and sources. This exploratory qualitative study examined twelve U.S. high school students’ understandings, opinions, and epistemic beliefs concerning global warming knowledge. Researchers examined microgenetic changes as students discussed global warming during semi-structured interviews and a close reading of global warming news texts. Although results showed that most students could articulate a working concept of global warming, in follow-up questions, a subset offered personal opinions that differed from or contradicted their previously stated understandings. Meanwhile, students who offered opinions consistent with the scientific consensus often argued that the dangers of global warming were exaggerated by politicians and scientists who wished to profit from the issue. This study suggests a need for more explicit focus on NOS and scientific news literacy in curricula, as well as further research into the interplay between epistemic beliefs and the informal reasoning students use to negotiate diverse sources of SSI knowledge—from the classroom to the news media and public life.

A Variant of Material Connexive Logic

The relationship between formal (standard) logic and informal (common-sense, everyday) reasoning has always been a hot topic. In this paper, we propose another possible way to bring it up inspired by connexive logic. Our approach is based on the following presupposition: whatever method of formalizing informal reasoning you choose, there will always be some classically acceptable deductive principles that will have to be abandoned, and some desired schemes of argument that clearly are not classically valid. That way, we start with a new version of connexive logic which validates Boethius' (and thus, Aristotle's) Theses and quashes their converse from right to left. We provide a sound and complete axiomatization of this logic. We also study the implication-negation fragment of this logic supplied with Boolean negation as a second negation.

Reasoning on Controversial Science Issues in Science Education and Science Communication

The ability to make evidence-based decisions, and hence to reason on questions concerning scientific and societal aspects, is a crucial goal in science education and science communication. However, science denial poses a constant challenge for society and education. Controversial science issues (CSI) encompass scientific knowledge rejected by the public as well as socioscientific issues, i.e., societal issues grounded in science that are frequently applied to science education. Generating evidence-based justifications for claims is central in scientific and informal reasoning. This study aims to describe attitudes and their justifications within the argumentations of a random online sample (N = 398) when reasoning informally on selected CSI. Following a deductive-inductive approach and qualitative content analysis of written open-ended answers, we identified five types of justifications based on a fine-grained category system. The results suggest a topic-specificity of justifications referring to specific scientific data, while justifications appealing to authorities tend to be common across topics. Subjective, and therefore normative, justifications were slightly related to conspiracy ideation and a general rejection of the scientific consensus. The category system could be applied to other CSI topics to help clarify the relation between scientific and informal reasoning in science education and communication.

A Model Proposal to Address Relationships Between Epistemic Practices and Socioscientific Issues in Science Education

In this paper, we present a model that relates epistemic practices and socio-scientific issues (SSI) in science education. In order to develop it, we establish interweavings between norms, practices, epistemic objectives, epistemic cognition, informal reasoning, epistemic practices and justified positioning. We suggest that epistemic cognition is the link between reasoning and epistemic practices. We present three epistemic goals that should guide work with epistemic practices when solving a SSI: recognising and using multiple lines of reasoning when solving the SSI, construction and evaluation of holistic arguments aiming to understand the multiple dimensions of the SSI and the development of sceptical investigations to resolve the SSI. The stated objectives contribute to the critical assessment and resolution of the SSI. We believe that for the construction of social norms in teaching environments with SSI, it should be considered that these questions do not require a “single” answer and, therefore, a space for reflection, awareness and justification of the different perspectives on the question must be allowed. The relationships established in this article contribute to research that aims to develop and analyse epistemic practices “in situ” in teaching contexts with SSI. In addition, they have the potential to provide support to teachers who wish to favour the occurrence of epistemic practices in a SSI approach.

Do informal reasoning fallacies really shape decisions? Experimental evidence

Informal reasoning fallacies belong to a persuasive tactic, leading to a conclusion that is not supported by premises but reached through emotions and/or misleading and incomplete information. Previous research focused on the ability to recognize informal reasoning fallacies. However, the recognition itself does not necessarily mean immunity to their influence on decisions made. An experiment was designed to study the relationship between the presence of informal reasoning fallacies and a consequent decision. Having conducted paired comparisons of distributions, we have found some support for the hypothesis that informal reasoning fallacies affect decision-making more substantially than non-fallacious reasoning—strong support in the case of a slippery slope, weak in that of appeal to fear, anecdotal evidence argument defying evaluation. Numeracy and cognitive reflection seem to be associated with higher resistance to the slippery slope, but do not diminish appeal to fear.