BBC: Restoring trust in science-2

Neil says that sciencce is taught by encouraging students regurgitate facts- to repeat information without properly understanding it. 

Knowledge is important, but what's also needed is a questioning attitude than can recognize objective truth- a truth about the natural world which is not influenced by human bias, opinions or emotion. Without that, anyone is free to call whatever they like a 'fact', which only leads to chaos. 

Right. No matter how hard I believe that the Moon is made of cheese, or the Sun goes round around the Earth, believing it doesn't make it true. 

That sounds like something Neil deGrasse Tyson would agree with- and maybe Galilleo too!

Yes, in my question I asked who first came uup with the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun. 

And I said it was Renaissance astronomer, Galileo. 

Which was the wrong answer, I'm afraid. Galileo knew the Earth revolved around the Sun, but the first personn with the idea was Polish astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, in 1543- unfortunately, centuries before the invention of television could spread the news of this objective truth- a provable truth which is uninfluenced by human bias or opinion. 

OK, let's recap the rest of the vocabulary from out chat about American scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson and his love of cosmology- the study of the Universe. 

To double-check somethding means to make certain it's correct by carefully re-examing it. One way scientists do this is to duplicate, or repeat exactly, an experiment. 

The idiom 'cross the t's and dot the i's means to pay close attention to the details of what you are doing. 

And finally, if you regurgitate facts, you just repeat them without properly understanding them- something a true scientist  would never do!

Once again, our  six minutes are up.