I know this has to be the biggest BS story I've ever heard.

[bness2]

It has been my experience that people who have a serious fear of spiders always see them as larger than they are. I have had people describe to me the 8 inch wolf spiders they have seen in their house and other such amazingly large critters. When they finally calm down enough to look one of my spiders "in the eye," they finally realize how small they are, and how much bigger they are than any wolf spider they've seen. If you can just get them to look at a T contained in its home, some of their hysteria seems to leave. Still, I do have a few students whose skin crawls anyway.

I think these horrible stories come about because of the state of mind of the person when they meet a spider. To them what they remember is what really happened, and I'm not sure how they can be talked out of it. I love it when I tell people that most of the most dangerous spiders are small.

Bryan

 

[bness2]

Originally posted by skinheaddave
A friend of mine is a PhD candidate who has the misfortune of being a Teachers Assistant for ZOO*1500. This is the course that you take if you are not a biology major (in fact, biology majors can't even take it for credit). One of the assignments he has had to mark is a review of a popular science article. The point is to try to get students to realize that popular articles contain essentialy no scientificaly backed facts. What he gets are a lot of papers talking about the potential political bias of the scientists, etc. etc. Nobody seems to realize that the political bias of the scientist can't shine through if not a single real fact from his research has been presented.

Dave,

I hear you on this one, but I have to argue a little. It depends on which magazine they read and who wrote the article. As a biologist myself I do write articles for popular consumption on occasion, and I would argue that mine do contain some scientifically supported facts. On the other hand, some of these "science" articles are written by journalists who sometimes have a minimal grasp, at best, of real science. I think we can all agree that the general population, and that includes journalists and politicians, have a long way to go and judging by the non-science majors I teach we have a long way to go. Many of them see no value in really understanding science. Scary!

Bryan

 

[VI6SIX]

Originally posted by bness2
It has been my experience that people who have a serious fear of spiders always see them as larger than they are.

Bryan

probaly doesn't help that most of them haven't used a ruler much less a tape measure since grade school

 

[skinheaddave]

Originally posted by bness2
I hear you on this one, but I have to argue a little. It depends on which magazine they read and who wrote the article

I agree. I think his comments were directed towards those written by journalists. If you look at a popular article and compare it to the scientific article upon which it was based, you most often find that the speculation presented at the very end of the scientific article gets reported as fact and that that is the only info translated from one to the other.

Cheers,
Dave