http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,1881487,00.html
"[We will look at] whether we should be training
biology teachers, so that they can become specialist
teachers in chemistry and physics."
Pentcho Valev
--- "Malcolm H. Levitt" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Dear Crisis Forum,
> It's interesting to speculate on why some science
> departments are
> under threat - there is probably a combination of
> factors, of which
> the main one may be the imposition of a market-like
> financial model
> on internal university finances, which tends to
> penalize expensive
> experimental subjects. My experience of science
> departments is that
> the faculty are more than willing to modernize
> courses and make them
> more varied, and that both science education and
> science research are
> very lively, imaginative and healthy in the UK -
> despite some
> problems with financing and student numbers.
>
> Maybe it is inappropriate to pick out individuals
> in this
> discussion, but the participant Pentcho Valev has
> been deluging the
> mailboxes with fairy tales about a unsurmountable
> paradoxes in the
> theories underlying modern physics, such as
> relativity theory and
> thermodynamics, and linking a supposed coverup by
> the academic
> establishment to the economic difficulties of some
> science
> departments.
>
> I just want to mention that I had a correspondence
> with Valev a few
> months ago in which I asked him to explain in detail
> what these
> paradoxes are. The discussion was quite productive
> and Valev was very
> helpful in providing suitable physics texts on
> relativity, etc.
> However the "paradoxes" that Valev publicizes are
> often false
> paradoxes which are set as exercises for students in
> order to help
> them test and develop their understanding! I had a
> close look at one
> of Valev's relativity "paradoxes" and it does of
> course disappear
> providing that one applies relativity theory
> correctly. One of the
> "paradoxes" even has a worked solution in the
> relevant textbook,
> which has not prevented Valev from still claiming
> that this paradox
> threatens the entire framework of modern science!
>
> I point this matter out simply to make the forum
> members more wary of
> claims that there is a supposed crisis in science as
> a sound subject.
> There are certainly many crises in the world, but we
> will need the
> help of science to resolve them, and calling science
> into question
> goes nowhere. It's what we do with science that is
> worthy of
> discussion.
>
> yours
> malcolm
> --
>
*****************************************************
> Malcolm Levitt
> School of Chemistry
> Room 27:2025
> University of Southampton
> Southampton SO17 1BJ
> England.
> tel. +44 23 8059 6753
> fax: +44 23 8059 3781
> mobile: +44 77 6652 2964
> email: [log in to unmask]
> website: http://www.mhl.soton.ac.uk
>
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