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Jun. 5th, 2013 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7xposted from Tumblr.
@neiltyson is doing a series of Tweets on Things you might say if you never took Physics. I've only seen a couple; the first was something asinine to the effect of thinking perhaps you'd be better off in a car accident without your seatbelt. I sort of huffed and rolled my eyes at that, but today's was "I'm overweight even though I don't overeat."
OK what? I was willing to let it slide before because generally he's all about the importance of science, and I like science and am generally sympathetic to the cause of more education being better. But "overweight" is based on BMI which is completely bullshit science, and "overeat" is meaningless (by whose standards??), and the whole statement is completely perpendicular to science at all. (Plenty of people who don't overeat are overweight; basically every athlete ever is overweight according to BMI tables. Personally, I just gained 30 pounds from antidepressants without changing my diet or activity level. I'm writing this on a damn smartphone so I don't have links, but Google "diets don't work" or look up Shapely Prose or, I don't know, Health at Every Size, or fucking pay attention for a second, and you'll find the same things I did.)
But all of this is tangential to the issue at heart, for me: I never took physics. I love science; most of my closest friends are scientists or engineers. I grew up conducting impromptu physics experiments with my dad. I placed out of freshman science and got to take Biology early.
But I have a math learning disability. I have dyscalculia. I scored so poorly in my algebra classes that when I tried to sign up for physics my school did not allow me to do so. My science education formally ended at chemistry (which I was OK at, but the math was incredibly hard). I have never been able to overcome my disability enough to master functions, although I excel at trigonometry.
So no, I never took physics. I understand how the world works, have a decent grasp of the scientific method, and know fine well what a seatbelt does for you in a traffic accident. I also have a decent grasp of the complexity of the human metabolism.
But I don't really understand what @neiltyson is getting at. And I kind of want to curl into a little ball. I'm a learning-disabled athlete, and a person I admire greatly, one of the world's foremost proponents of science education, has just dismissed me as a fat lazy ignoramus.
Thanks, Neil.
@neiltyson is doing a series of Tweets on Things you might say if you never took Physics. I've only seen a couple; the first was something asinine to the effect of thinking perhaps you'd be better off in a car accident without your seatbelt. I sort of huffed and rolled my eyes at that, but today's was "I'm overweight even though I don't overeat."
OK what? I was willing to let it slide before because generally he's all about the importance of science, and I like science and am generally sympathetic to the cause of more education being better. But "overweight" is based on BMI which is completely bullshit science, and "overeat" is meaningless (by whose standards??), and the whole statement is completely perpendicular to science at all. (Plenty of people who don't overeat are overweight; basically every athlete ever is overweight according to BMI tables. Personally, I just gained 30 pounds from antidepressants without changing my diet or activity level. I'm writing this on a damn smartphone so I don't have links, but Google "diets don't work" or look up Shapely Prose or, I don't know, Health at Every Size, or fucking pay attention for a second, and you'll find the same things I did.)
But all of this is tangential to the issue at heart, for me: I never took physics. I love science; most of my closest friends are scientists or engineers. I grew up conducting impromptu physics experiments with my dad. I placed out of freshman science and got to take Biology early.
But I have a math learning disability. I have dyscalculia. I scored so poorly in my algebra classes that when I tried to sign up for physics my school did not allow me to do so. My science education formally ended at chemistry (which I was OK at, but the math was incredibly hard). I have never been able to overcome my disability enough to master functions, although I excel at trigonometry.
So no, I never took physics. I understand how the world works, have a decent grasp of the scientific method, and know fine well what a seatbelt does for you in a traffic accident. I also have a decent grasp of the complexity of the human metabolism.
But I don't really understand what @neiltyson is getting at. And I kind of want to curl into a little ball. I'm a learning-disabled athlete, and a person I admire greatly, one of the world's foremost proponents of science education, has just dismissed me as a fat lazy ignoramus.
Thanks, Neil.
