Arguments and Occam’s Broom - What should we name the highest mountain in North America?

On September 1st Donald Trump tweeted:

"President Obama wants to change the name of Mt. McKinley to Denali after more than 100 years. Great insult to Ohio. I will change back!"

That statement is almost hilariously silly. Why? Look at the Wikipedia page on the Denali - Mount McKinley naming dispute.

First, that mountain originally was named Denali.  Second, Alaskans long have considered the name change from Denali to McKinley an insult. They have been trying to change it back for forty years - since 1975. Third, consider why it was renamed in memory of President McKinley. An NBC News article on August 31st pointed out that:

“Kimberly Kenney, curator of the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum in Canton, Ohio, acknowledged that the circumstances made it difficult to argue for keeping the mountain's prior name. 

‘McKinley didn't see it, didn't travel there, didn't do anything for the people of Alaska — it wasn't a state yet,’ Kenney said.”

On pages 40 and 41 of his 2013 book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking philosopher Daniel C. Dennett described Occam’s Broom:

“...the process in which inconvenient facts are whisked under the rug by intellectually dishonest champions of one theory or another.”

It’s not easy to find what you’re NOT being told, but it’s not impossible. That takes some more looking around. Articles with multiple viewpoints like those at Wikipedia are one starting point. Another is to systematically look for the other viewpoints - Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, science and religion, etc.   

What should those upset Ohioans do next? I saw one suggestion in a comment that they consider renaming the highest point in Ohio after McKinley. Apparently the 1,550 foot Campbell Hill already was federally owned, so their congressmen could easily request a change. 

Naming a mountain really isn’t the most important thing about it. In the chapter on The Making of A Scientist in his book What Do You Care What Other People Think? physicist Richard Feynman recalled what his father told him when he was a child:

“....One kid says to me, ‘See that bird? What kind of bird is that?’

I said, ‘I haven’t the slightest idea what kind of bird it is.”

He says, ‘It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn’t teach you anything.’

But it was the opposite. He had already taught me: ‘See that bird?’ he says. ‘It’s a Spencer’s Warbler.’ (I knew he didn’t know the real name). ‘Well, in Italian, it’s a Chutto Lapittida. In Portuguese, it’s a Bom da Peida. In Chinese, it’s a Chung-long-tah, and in Japanese, it’s a Katano Tekeda. You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatsoever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing - that’s what counts. (I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something).”

The argument image came from a 1909 cartoon found at the Library of Congress.

Using pop-up debate to teach adolescents not to be scared of speaking up in class

In the March 2015 issue of AMLE Magazine (from the Association for Middle Level Education) there was an article by Dave Stuart, Jr (who teaches history and English to ninth graders in Michigan) titled 5 Strategies for promoting college and career readiness. His first strategy was to Go Big on Argument. How can this be done? Dave says:

“First, form the day’s lesson around a debatable question. For example, rather than setting an objective that states ‘The students will demonstrate an understanding of the differences between Mayan and Aztec cultures,’ ask, ‘Which civilization would have been better to live in, the Mayan or the Aztec?’

The lesson can still look much the same as you would have taught it with the prior objective, except that now the exit ticket for the lesson can require students to answer the debatable question. The only way they can do this is by making a debatable claim and supporting it with evidence and reasoning. They’ll argue every day if you try this - and if your students are like mine, they will learn to love it.
Second, bring the power of argument into the classroom through simple, robust pop-up debates. The pop-up debate strategy is simple:

*  Every student speaks at least once, at most __ times (the maximum depends on your time constraints and the breadth of the debatable question you’ve posed).

*  To speak, students simply stand (‘pop’) up and talk. The first person to speak has the floor. When more than one student does this simultaneously, I coach them on how to practice self-control and social intelligence, yielding the floor politely.

*  In every debate, teach and assess one or two speaking skills. Sentence templates are an ideal scaffold for this.

Pop-up debate has become a favorite class activity in my room over the past few years, but keep in mind that it takes some skill to use the strategy well. You’re probably doing it right when kids start begging you for a debate.”

Pop up debate is a kinder, gentler activity than traditional debate that requires walking to the front of the classroom. How scary is that? In June 2012 I blogged about What social situations scare American adolescents, and what are their top 20 fears? A large careful, survey called the NCS-A found that the most common fear (35.8%) was Performing before an Audience, one version of which is a traditional debate. The second most common (24.9%) was Speaking in Class.

Dave described pop-up debate in more detail in a recent pair of articles on his web site. On August 14th there there was Starting strong with the transformative & simple Think-Pair-Share strategy. Dave described debate preparation by students first thinking about the topic alone, then discussing it with a student partner (pair), and finally going on to share with the whole class. On August 17th there was Beyond the Fear of Public Speaking: Making the First Pop-Op Debate a Success for All Students. Last year there also was a nine-minute YouTube video on Problems with Pop-Up Debates. 

I read it in the newspaper, so it must be true

One common way of winning points in an argument is to research your topic, and then to quote from an authoritative source. Last year Peter Rickards, a podiatrist in Twin Falls, Idaho tried this. He wrote a Reader’s View (a long letter, basically a guest editorial) that was published in the September 25, 2007 issue of the Idaho Statesman. That Boise newspaper has the largest circulation in the state of Idaho. His Reader's View was titled “Gillespie's blowing smoke about nuke plant”.

He disagreed with the proponent of a nuclear plant who had been saying that it would not emit anything harmful. Dr. Rickards quoted the physician and anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott as saying that: "Tritium, another biologically significant gas, is also routinely emitted from nuclear reactors. Tritium is composed of three atoms of hydrogen, which combine with oxygen, forming radioactive water, which is absorbed through the skin, lungs and digestive system.”

Dr. Rickards got that quotation from an article that Caldicott had written in another newspaper, The Australian, back on April 13, 2005. Her statement about tritium is chemical nonsense. Actually it is a single atom, not a cluster of three. About a week after The Australian published it she was corrected by some of their readers. In her reply she agreed that actually: "Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen composed of two neutrons and one proton". You can find the UPI version of the revised article here.

That original Caldicott article confused the notations used by physicists with those used by chemists. A molecule of hydrogen gas is composed of two atoms, not three. The chemical formula for that molecule is written as a capital H followed by a subscript of 2.

The physicists notation for the isotope of hydrogen called tritium has the capital H preceded by a superscript of 3. There also is deuterium, another isotope of hydrogen composed of one neutron and one proton and denoted by a capital H preceded by a superscipt of 2. A regular hydrogen atom has one proton and is denoted by a capital H preceded by a superscript of 1. Perhaps Dr. Caldicott slept through that day of her physics or chemistry classes.

Less than an hour after Rickards’ letter was published several caustic comments were posted on one of the Statesman’s blogs pointing out the error. They came from over in eastern Idaho, which most people think of primarily as where potatoes come from. However, eastern Idaho also is home of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). INL is one of the world centers of nuclear technology and originally was called the National Reactor Test Station. Some folks out there not only know about isotopes, they also produce them in the Advanced Test Reactor.

Rickards backpedaled and replied on the blog that:
“To Bubblehead- Gillespie claims nuke plants are ‘emission free,’ and that is simply not true, as born out by the EPA fact sheet. On your point that tritium is not 3 Hydrogen atoms, as Dr Caldicott phrases it, I believe you are semantically correct, it is better to say ‘Tritium, or H-3, is actually one hydrogen atom -- one that contains one proton and two neutrons’."

As far as I know the Statesman has never printed a correction. Also, quotes of the original, uncorrected article by Caldicott still are out on the web here and there.

So, a newspaper article may be a source of ignorance rather than a source of knowledge.

Caldicott's 2006 book Nuclear Power is Not the Answer correctly refers to tritium as being an isotope of hydrogen, but then (on page 56) denotes it by a capital H followed by a subscript of 3. She also describes tritiated water by H3O, where a chemist would of course correctly call it H2O.