OLDaily

Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”: A Toolkit That Can Help You Scientifically Separate Sense from Nonsense
Josh Jones, Open Culture, 2018/03/06

I link to this “Baloney Detection Kit” to contrast the accounts of critical thinking that depend a lot on source and authority. Sagan (like most scientists) isn't having it. "Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts." And we all know not to trust the experts. More: Carl Sagan, Pale Bue Dot. Also: The Frontier is Everywhere. Sagan was always my hero.

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What are the expectations of disabled learners when participating in a MOOC?
Paul Feldman, JISC, 2018/03/06

I think this is a good question to ask but I'm really not sure it was asked properly in this report. We read, for example, that " disabled learners appear to be more interested in these subject areas: Society, History and Arts and Nature and Environment." Does that have anything to do with their self-identification as disabled learners? Or is it just a reflection of a small number of survey participants (which is not disclosed)? Do we really know that "disabled learners are particularly interested in taking up MOOCs to determine if they can study at a higher educational level and to link to voluntary work?" I'm saying we don't. Image: MIT (I typed in the title and did an image search and this came up. Google works in mysterious ways.)

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