Young Scientists "Skeptical" award?

BrendanBurgess

The Young Scientists Exhibition is on at the moment. There are many special awards which I have listed below. It might be a good idea for the Irish Skeptics Society to sponsor an award for the project which:

"promotes the active questioning of claims in a variety of areas, which is noticeably absent at present."

Members of the Society would have to donate a few bob to get the award off the ground and someone would have to organise it and judge the projects. But it could be good exposure for the Society to an audience which will become influential.

Brendan




Institute of Physics

This award is to be presented to the best project with substantial physics content


Eli Lily

An award will be presented for the project with the most substantial chemical content.



Met Eireann

This award is to be presented to the best project with Irish weather or climate as its central theme


Dublin Institute of Technology

This award is to be presented to the project which best demonstrates an appreciation of entrepreneurship or the potential of developing an enterprise


Patents Office

This award is to be presented to a project which incorporates the most innovation use of technology, potential industrial applicability and with the potential for commercial exploitation


Enviromental Protection Agency

This award is to be presented to the projects that best demonstrates environmental protection or awareness


Intel Enviromental Award

This award is to be presented to an innovative Biological & Ecological Science project that best demonstrates care for the environment


Safefood

This award is to be presented to the best research project on food safety


National Safety Council

This award is to be presented to the project which has significantly contributed to promoting road safety awareness and reducing road death and injury.


TG4

This award is to be presented to the best media based project. www.tg4.ie


National Children’s Office

This award will be presented to a project showing ways of improving participation of children and young people in their schools and communities. www.nco.ie


The Marine Institute

The award will be presented to the project which best demonstrates the potential and real benefits of science to society within the marine sector


Foras Na Gaeilge

Nominate the best project through the medium of Irish


Royal College of Surgeons Ireland

The special award will be given for the best Biomedical Science or health-related project.www.rcsi.ie

davros

Great idea!

sliabh

It sounds like a good idea all right. I'd be willing to open my wallet for it once it's decided exactly what it is to be awarded for and who does the assessing.

Myksyk

This is an excellent idea. Do you have any information on the typical size of the prizes offered?

BrendanBurgess

I spent around 2 hours today reviewing the social and scientific projects at the Young Scientists Exhibition.

Some ways for the Irish Skeptics Society to get involved

There are stands from groups such as “Irish Universities Promoting Science” and The British Association for the Advancement of Science. A Sceptics stand would fit in very well. It is a huge and busy exhibition, so volunteers would have to come forward from outside the usual committee who do everything.

There could be an award for challenging extraordinary claims. Unfortunately there were plenty of extraordinary claims in the projects and no projects challenging such claims.

There could be some process for promoting critical thinking to the students and their teachers. I don’t know what criteria the judges use – presumably critical thinking must be one of them.

A more difficult issue would be the critical assessment of projects. Questioning their method and conclusions. This would be appropriate for a normal scientific or undergraduate project, but would probably not be appropriate for school students.

Someone could give a talk on Critical Thinking.

Someone like Paul O’Donoghue could offer his services as a judge. There are 29 judges for the Social and Behavioural Sciences including Dr. Ray Fuller and Professor Aidan Moran.

The best project

The only project which would come any way close to the mission of the Irish Skeptics Society was Project 497 – Making sense of bad science: common misconceptions held by students in Ireland. It tested students’ knowledge of science and speculated on why so many had a poor knowledge of science.

Scepticism seems to be alive and well among the students surveyed for the projects

Project 439 – Is Religion a Thing of the past?
83% don’t believe in their religion. One of the reasons given for this is that “Religion used to answer the great unanswered questions. Now science answers most of these questions”.

Project 581 Can Holistic Healing benefit the exam year student?
80% hadn’t heard of holistic healing. 61% were not open to the idea.

Project 556 Does aromatherapy help us sleep?
Only 7% uses aromatherapy to help them sleep after the benefits were shown to them.

Another project – my notes are unclear which one.
Only 26% believed that psychics can read minds. Only 35% knew what sort of personality that they were supposed to have according to their star sign. I thought it would be much higher.

There were plenty of projects which looked as if they could have benefited from critical thinking
The project on Holistic Healing mentioned above.
Project 524 on Handwriting and personality
Project 554 The effect of specific colours on our mind
Project 555 Colours and emotions
Project 448 Leaving Certificate Subject Choice and Brain Hemispheric Dominance.

Project 588 Luck – can you make it?
This seemed to suggest that those who believed in superstitions such as being lucky if they find a coin and keep it, could become luckier. Unfortunately, there were people around the stand and I didn’t get a chance to study it in any detail, but it seemed that when superstitious people toss coins they do better than average. I might be doing this project a disservice, but that seemed to be the claim.

RevBlueJeans

Many years ago when it was the Aer Lingus Young Scientists my company (an engineering company) wanted to give a prize for the best project which related to our particular branch of technology. The organisers and sponsors would not entertain the idea as they wanted to exclusively maintain their corporate sponsorship. Their argument seemed reasonable and we did not persue the matter any further. I think you might find that the situation is much the same now.

RevBJ

ISAW

RevBlueJeans wrote:

Many years ago when it was the Aer Lingus Young Scientists my company (an engineering company) wanted to give a prize for the best project which related to our particular branch of technology. The organisers and sponsors would not entertain the idea as they wanted to exclusively maintain their corporate sponsorship. Their argument seemed reasonable and we did not persue the matter any further. I think you might find that the situation is much the same now.

RevBJ

I looked into this for another professional organisation for scientists and it is still being considered (by them not by the YSE).

IMHO you need to get at 1. Pillars of the judging committee (the whole committee is HUGE) 2. the RDS science committee 3. the sponsors. 4. the organisers (same person who did the Aer Lingus and went out on her own and now has been the first non state organiser to do the EU YSE. )

I have contacts with all four. I dont think the sponsors are a problem. the current one might toss it anyway, but I dont see that for the near future i.e. years.

The cost is about the same as the Randi lecture cost. But I would suggest that rather than just a prize some activites be added such as a critical thinking quiz and exercises or a quiz about whether people believe in the paranormal.

ISAW

I note an Irish Group won first prise at the International Young Scientists last week