Science is ought to raise doubts in the minds of many people. All students who study science have misconceptions about concepts even if they are scientifically proven. John Coley, an associate professor at Northeastern University claims that some students themselves agree to certain misconceptions irrespective of being biology majors or not.
In case of the ones who have a degree, they are capable of giving a concrete reason behind not agreeing to a particular theory. Their education gives them the ability to think and question things that they disagree with. It increases their capacity of reasoning as we go against a concrete fact laid by a scientist. This only works when we put our knowledge into work.
Another field on which there exist many misconceptions is the evolution of ecology to cell biology. There were a few unrelated misconceptions that were observed by Coley and his team. They could divide them into three types on the basis of their nature. To test them, they asked the majors to observe and note their agreements on these misconceptions. The result said that the difference between how frequently biology majors and non-biology majors agreed with misconceptions was small. The majors, as said before, were systematic and specific in their reasons.
It was observed that these misconceptions are all results of intuitive ways of thinking. Though this thinking is built in our cognitive systems, they are not proper for the reasoning of scientific theories. Therefore, it is important for students to learn how to organise the knowledge they learn.
We should not let our minds automatically connect the cause- effect phenomenon for misconception even if it does not exist. This will take place only when students are trained in the process of cognition and its working. Simply memorising the material will be of no help.
Akshara Palshetkar