Hooray!

Through Kristina B, I have discovered the blog "Rate Your Students." What a great idea! Professors can email in comments about their students, or just generally express concerns to other professors out there in cyberspace, and get feedback from others who share our pain. It's nice to know we're not alone.

So, while grading my students' exams yesterday, I ran across a choice sentence that could easily fit on "Rate Your Students." I asked my students to tell me what falsifiability means, and why it is so crucial to the scientific enterprise.* In response to the second half of the question, I got this response:

Sociology is always changing. The more things change, the more we learn, and even make educical guess on the next round of evolution.

I think this quote speaks for itself. I really had nothing to comment but a resounding "No."


*Keep in mind, that the day my students learned about falsifiability and the "four pillars of science," was the day my fiance came to give a guest lecture. Let's just say, he's really into science (as some of you are all too aware), and so did an excellent job explaining falsifiability to the class. Therefore, I have little patience for answers like the one above. The lecture was so good, that one of my students went up to him and shook his hand at the end of the lecture!