Science is for everyone, kids included
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0:01 - 0:04Beau Lotto: So, this game is very simple.
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0:04 - 0:08All you have to do is read what you see. Right?
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0:08 - 0:11So, I'm going to count to you, so we don't all do it together.
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0:11 - 0:13Okay, one, two, three.Audience: Can you read this?
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0:13 - 0:18BL: Amazing. What about this one? One, two, three.Audience: You are not reading this.
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0:18 - 0:23BL: All right. One, two, three. (Laughter)
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0:23 - 0:28If you were Portuguese, right? How about this one? One, two, three.
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0:28 - 0:30Audience: What are you reading?
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0:30 - 0:33BL: What are you reading? There are no words there.
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0:33 - 0:36I said, read what you're seeing. Right?
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0:36 - 0:40It literally says, "Wat ar ou rea in?" (Laughter) Right?
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0:40 - 0:44That's what you should have said. Right? Why is this?
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0:44 - 0:47It's because perception is grounded in our experience.
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0:47 - 0:50Right? The brain takes meaningless information
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0:50 - 0:53and makes meaning out of it, which means we never see
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0:53 - 0:55what's there, we never see information,
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0:55 - 0:58we only ever see what was useful to see in the past.
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0:58 - 1:01All right? Which means, when it comes to perception,
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1:01 - 1:08we're all like this frog.
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1:08 - 1:09(Laughter)
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1:09 - 1:12Right? It's getting information. It's generating behavior
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1:12 - 1:17that's useful. (Laughter)
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1:17 - 1:24(Laughter)
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1:24 - 1:30(Video) Man: Ow! Ow! (Laughter) (Applause)
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1:30 - 1:33BL: And sometimes, when things don't go our way,
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1:33 - 1:35we get a little bit annoyed, right?
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1:35 - 1:37But we're talking about perception here, right?
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1:37 - 1:42And perception underpins everything we think, we know,
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1:42 - 1:45we believe, our hopes, our dreams, the clothes we wear,
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1:45 - 1:48falling in love, everything begins with perception.
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1:48 - 1:51Now if perception is grounded in our history, it means
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1:51 - 1:55we're only ever responding according to what we've done before.
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1:55 - 1:58But actually, it's a tremendous problem,
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1:58 - 2:02because how can we ever see differently?
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2:02 - 2:06Now, I want to tell you a story about seeing differently,
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2:06 - 2:10and all new perceptions begin in the same way.
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2:10 - 2:12They begin with a question.
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2:12 - 2:15The problem with questions is they create uncertainty.
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2:15 - 2:18Now, uncertainty is a very bad thing. It's evolutionarily
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2:18 - 2:22a bad thing. If you're not sure that's a predator, it's too late.
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2:22 - 2:23Okay? (Laughter)
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2:23 - 2:26Even seasickness is a consequence of uncertainty.
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2:26 - 2:29Right? If you go down below on a boat, your inner ears
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2:29 - 2:31are you telling you you're moving. Your eyes, because
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2:31 - 2:33it's moving in register with the boat, say I'm standing still.
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2:33 - 2:38Your brain cannot deal with the uncertainty of that information, and it gets ill.
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2:38 - 2:42The question "why?" is one of the most dangerous things you can do,
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2:42 - 2:45because it takes you into uncertainty.
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2:45 - 2:47And yet, the irony is, the only way we can ever
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2:47 - 2:51do anything new is to step into that space.
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2:51 - 2:54So how can we ever do anything new? Well fortunately,
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2:54 - 2:58evolution has given us an answer, right?
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2:58 - 3:01And it enables us to address even the most difficult
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3:01 - 3:06of questions. The best questions are the ones that create the most uncertainty.
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3:06 - 3:10They're the ones that question the things we think to be true already. Right?
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3:10 - 3:12It's easy to ask questions about how did life begin,
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3:12 - 3:15or what extends beyond the universe, but to question what you think to be true already
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3:15 - 3:18is really stepping into that space.
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3:18 - 3:23So what is evolution's answer to the problem of uncertainty?
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3:23 - 3:25It's play.
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3:25 - 3:29Now play is not simply a process. Experts in play will tell you
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3:29 - 3:32that actually it's a way of being.
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3:32 - 3:35Play is one of the only human endeavors where uncertainty
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3:35 - 3:39is actually celebrated. Uncertainty is what makes play fun.
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3:39 - 3:43Right? It's adaptable to change. Right? It opens possibility,
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3:43 - 3:47and it's cooperative. It's actually how we do our social bonding,
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3:47 - 3:49and it's intrinsically motivated. What that means
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3:49 - 3:54is that we play to play. Play is its own reward.
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3:54 - 3:58Now if you look at these five ways of being,
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3:58 - 4:00these are the exact same ways of being you need
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4:00 - 4:02in order to be a good scientist.
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4:02 - 4:05Science is not defined by the method section of a paper.
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4:05 - 4:08It's actually a way of being, which is here, and this is true
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4:08 - 4:11for anything that is creative.
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4:11 - 4:15So if you add rules to play, you have a game.
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4:15 - 4:18That's actually what an experiment is.
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4:18 - 4:20So armed with these two ideas,
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4:20 - 4:24that science is a way of being and experiments are play,
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4:24 - 4:28we asked, can anyone become a scientist?
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4:28 - 4:31And who better to ask than 25 eight- to 10-year-old children?
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4:31 - 4:35Because they're experts in play. So I took my bee arena
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4:35 - 4:38down to a small school in Devon, and the aim of this
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4:38 - 4:43was to not just get the kids to see science differently,
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4:43 - 4:47but, through the process of science, to see themselves differently. Right?
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4:47 - 4:51The first step was to ask a question.
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4:51 - 4:54Now, I should say that we didn't get funding for this study
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4:54 - 4:57because the scientists said small children couldn't make
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4:57 - 5:01a useful contribution to science, and the teachers said kids couldn't do it.
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5:01 - 5:05So we did it anyway. Right? Of course.
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5:05 - 5:08So, here are some of the questions. I put them in small print
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5:08 - 5:12so you wouldn't bother reading it. Point is that five of the questions that the kids came up with
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5:12 - 5:17were actually the basis of science publication the last five to 15 years. Right?
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5:17 - 5:19So they were asking questions that were significant
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5:19 - 5:22to expert scientists.
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5:22 - 5:26Now here, I want to share the stage with someone quite special. Right?
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5:26 - 5:28She was one of the young people who was involved in this study,
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5:28 - 5:31and she's now one of the youngest published scientists
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5:31 - 5:35in the world. Right? She will now, once she comes onto stage,
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5:35 - 5:38will be the youngest person to ever speak at TED. Right?
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5:38 - 5:41Now, science and asking questions is about courage.
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5:41 - 5:44Now she is the personification of courage, because she's
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5:44 - 5:46going to stand up here and talk to you all.
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5:46 - 5:51So Amy, would you please come up? (Applause)
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5:51 - 5:58(Applause)
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5:58 - 6:01So Amy's going to help me tell the story of what we call
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6:01 - 6:03the Blackawton Bees Project, and first she's going to tell you
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6:03 - 6:06the question that they came up with. So go ahead, Amy.
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6:06 - 6:08Amy O'Toole: Thank you, Beau. We thought
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6:08 - 6:11that it was easy to see the link between humans and apes
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6:11 - 6:14in the way that we think, because we look alike.
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6:14 - 6:17But we wondered if there's a possible link
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6:17 - 6:21with other animals. It'd be amazing if humans and bees
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6:21 - 6:25thought similar, since they seem so different from us.
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6:25 - 6:29So we asked if humans and bees might solve
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6:29 - 6:31complex problems in the same way.
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6:31 - 6:34Really, we wanted to know if bees can also adapt
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6:34 - 6:38themselves to new situations using previously learned rules
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6:38 - 6:42and conditions. So what if bees can think like us?
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6:42 - 6:45Well, it'd be amazing, since we're talking about an insect
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6:45 - 6:47with only one million brain cells.
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6:47 - 6:49But it actually makes a lot of sense they should,
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6:49 - 6:53because bees, like us, can recognize a good flower
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6:53 - 6:56regardless of the time of day, the light, the weather,
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6:56 - 7:02or from any angle they approach it from. (Applause)
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7:02 - 7:06BL: So the next step was to design an experiment,
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7:06 - 7:09which is a game. So the kids went off and they designed
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7:09 - 7:12this experiment, and so -- well, game -- and so,
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7:12 - 7:14Amy, can you tell us what the game was,
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7:14 - 7:16and the puzzle that you set the bees?
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7:16 - 7:19AO: The puzzle we came up with was an if-then rule.
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7:19 - 7:23We asked the bees to learn not just to go to a certain color,
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7:23 - 7:25but to a certain color flower only
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7:25 - 7:27when it's in a certain pattern.
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7:27 - 7:30They were only rewarded if they went to the yellow flowers
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7:30 - 7:33if the yellow flowers were surrounded by the blue,
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7:33 - 7:37or if the blue flowers were surrounded by the yellow.
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7:37 - 7:39Now there's a number of different rules the bees can learn
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7:39 - 7:43to solve this puzzle. The interesting question is, which?
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7:43 - 7:45What was really exciting about this project was we,
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7:45 - 7:48and Beau, had no idea whether it would work.
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7:48 - 7:50It was completely new, and no one had done it before,
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7:50 - 7:54including adults. (Laughter)
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7:54 - 7:57BL: Including the teachers, and that was really hard for the teachers.
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7:57 - 8:00It's easy for a scientist to go in and not have a clue what he's doing,
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8:00 - 8:03because that's what we do in the lab, but for a teacher
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8:03 - 8:04not to know what's going to happen at the end of the day --
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8:04 - 8:07so much of the credit goes to Dave Strudwick, who was
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8:07 - 8:09the collaborator on this project. Okay?
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8:09 - 8:12So I'm not going to go through the whole details of the study
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8:12 - 8:15because actually you can read about it, but the next step
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8:15 - 8:18is observation. So here are some of the students
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8:18 - 8:21doing the observations. They're recording the data
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8:21 - 8:26of where the bees fly.
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8:26 - 8:28(Video) Dave Strudwick: So what we're going to do —Student: 5C.
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8:28 - 8:32Dave Strudwick: Is she still going up here?Student: Yeah.
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8:32 - 8:36Dave Strudwick: So you keep track of each.Student: Henry, can you help me here?
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8:36 - 8:39BL: "Can you help me, Henry?" What good scientist says that, right?
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8:39 - 8:43Student: There's two up there.
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8:43 - 8:46And three in here.
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8:46 - 8:48BL: Right? So we've got our observations. We've got our data.
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8:48 - 8:52They do the simple mathematics, averaging, etc., etc.
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8:52 - 8:54And now we want to share. That's the next step.
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8:54 - 8:56So we're going to write this up and try to submit this
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8:56 - 8:59for publication. Right? So we have to write it up.
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8:59 - 9:03So we go, of course, to the pub. All right? (Laughter)
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9:03 - 9:05The one on the left is mine, okay? (Laughter)
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9:05 - 9:07Now, I tell them, a paper has four different sections:
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9:07 - 9:10an introduction, a methods, a results, a discussion.
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9:10 - 9:13The introduction says, what's the question and why?
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9:13 - 9:16Methods, what did you do? Results, what was the observation?
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9:16 - 9:18And the discussion is, who cares? Right?
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9:18 - 9:21That's a science paper, basically. (Laughter)
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9:21 - 9:25So the kids give me the words, right? I put it into a narrative,
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9:25 - 9:28which means that this paper is written in kidspeak.
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9:28 - 9:31It's not written by me. It's written by Amy
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9:31 - 9:34and the other students in the class. As a consequence,
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9:34 - 9:40this science paper begins, "Once upon a time ... " (Laughter)
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9:40 - 9:46The results section, it says: "Training phase, the puzzle ... duh duh duuuuuhhh." Right? (Laughter)
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9:46 - 9:48And the methods, it says, "Then we put the bees
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9:48 - 9:51into the fridge (and made bee pie)," smiley face. Right? (Laughter)
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9:51 - 9:55This is a science paper. We're going to try to get it published.
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9:55 - 9:58So here's the title page. We have a number of authors there.
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9:58 - 10:01All the ones in bold are eight to 10 years old.
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10:01 - 10:03The first author is Blackawton Primary School, because
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10:03 - 10:06if it were ever referenced, it would be "Blackawton et al,"
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10:06 - 10:09and not one individual. So we submit it to a public access journal,
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10:09 - 10:12and it says this. It said many things, but it said this.
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10:12 - 10:16"I'm afraid the paper fails our initial quality control checks in several different ways." (Laughter)
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10:16 - 10:19In other words, it starts off "once upon a time,"
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10:19 - 10:21the figures are in crayon, etc. (Laughter)
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10:21 - 10:26So we said, we'll get it reviewed. So I sent it to Dale Purves,
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10:26 - 10:29who is at the National Academy of Science, one of the leading neuroscientists in the world,
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10:29 - 10:33and he says, "This is the most original science paper I have ever read" — (Laughter) —
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10:33 - 10:35"and it certainly deserves wide exposure."
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10:35 - 10:39Larry Maloney, expert in vision, says, "The paper is magnificent.
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10:39 - 10:42The work would be publishable if done by adults."
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10:42 - 10:44So what did we do? We send it back to the editor.
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10:44 - 10:46They say no.
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10:46 - 10:48So we asked Larry and Natalie Hempel to write
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10:48 - 10:52a commentary situating the findings for scientists, right,
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10:52 - 10:57putting in the references, and we submit it to Biology Letters.
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10:57 - 11:00And there, it was reviewed by five independent referees,
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11:00 - 11:04and it was published. Okay? (Applause)
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11:04 - 11:10(Applause)
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11:10 - 11:13It took four months to do the science,
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11:13 - 11:16two years to get it published. (Laughter)
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11:16 - 11:21Typical science, actually, right? So this makes Amy and
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11:21 - 11:24her friends the youngest published scientists in the world.
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11:24 - 11:26What was the feedback like?
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11:26 - 11:29Well, it was published two days before Christmas,
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11:29 - 11:33downloaded 30,000 times in the first day, right?
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11:33 - 11:37It was the Editors' Choice in Science, which is a top science magazine.
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11:37 - 11:39It's forever freely accessible by Biology Letters.
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11:39 - 11:43It's the only paper that will ever be freely accessible by this journal.
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11:43 - 11:46Last year, it was the second-most downloaded paper
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11:46 - 11:50by Biology Letters, and the feedback from not just scientists
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11:50 - 11:52and teachers but the public as well.
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11:52 - 11:54And I'll just read one.
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11:54 - 11:57"I have read 'Blackawton Bees' recently. I don't have
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11:57 - 11:59words to explain exactly how I am feeling right now.
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11:59 - 12:01What you guys have done is real, true and amazing.
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12:01 - 12:04Curiosity, interest, innocence and zeal are the most basic
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12:04 - 12:06and most important things to do science.
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12:06 - 12:09Who else can have these qualities more than children?
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12:09 - 12:12Please congratulate your children's team from my side."
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12:12 - 12:16So I'd like to conclude with a physical metaphor.
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12:16 - 12:19Can I do it on you? (Laughter)
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12:19 - 12:22Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, come on. Yeah yeah. Okay.
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12:22 - 12:27Now, science is about taking risks, so this is an incredible risk, right? (Laughter)
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12:27 - 12:33For me, not for him. Right? Because we've only done this once before. (Laughter)
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12:33 - 12:34And you like technology, right?
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12:34 - 12:37Shimon Schocken: Right, but I like myself.
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12:37 - 12:40BL: This is the epitome of technology. Right. Okay.
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12:40 - 12:43Now ... (Laughter)
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12:43 - 12:46Okay. (Laughter)
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12:46 - 12:50Now, we're going to do a little demonstration, right?
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12:50 - 12:54You have to close your eyes, and you have to point
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12:54 - 12:57where you hear me clapping. All right?
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12:57 - 13:02(Clapping)
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13:02 - 13:05(Clapping)
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13:05 - 13:08Okay, how about if everyone over there shouts. One, two, three?
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13:08 - 13:11Audience: (Shouts)
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13:11 - 13:15(Laughter)
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13:15 - 13:18(Shouts) (Laughter)
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13:18 - 13:22Brilliant. Now, open your eyes. We'll do it one more time.
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13:22 - 13:25Everyone over there shout. (Shouts)
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13:25 - 13:31Where's the sound coming from? (Laughter) (Applause)
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13:31 - 13:35Thank you very much. (Applause)
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13:35 - 13:39What's the point? The point is what science does for us.
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13:39 - 13:41Right? We normally walk through life responding,
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13:41 - 13:43but if we ever want to do anything different, we have to
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13:43 - 13:46step into uncertainty. When he opened his eyes,
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13:46 - 13:48he was able to see the world in a new way.
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13:48 - 13:51That's what science offers us. It offers the possibility
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13:51 - 13:56to step on uncertainty through the process of play, right?
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13:56 - 13:59Now, true science education I think should be about
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13:59 - 14:02giving people a voice and enabling to express that voice,
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14:02 - 14:06so I've asked Amy to be the last voice in this short story.
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14:06 - 14:09So, Amy?
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14:09 - 14:12AO: This project was really exciting for me,
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14:12 - 14:15because it brought the process of discovery to life,
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14:15 - 14:18and it showed me that anyone, and I mean anyone,
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14:18 - 14:20has the potential to discover something new,
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14:20 - 14:24and that a small question can lead into a big discovery.
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14:24 - 14:27Changing the way a person thinks about something
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14:27 - 14:31can be easy or hard. It all depends on the way the person
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14:31 - 14:32feels about change.
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14:32 - 14:35But changing the way I thought about science was
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14:35 - 14:37surprisingly easy. Once we played the games
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14:37 - 14:39and then started to think about the puzzle,
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14:39 - 14:43I then realized that science isn't just a boring subject,
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14:43 - 14:46and that anyone can discover something new.
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14:46 - 14:50You just need an opportunity. My opportunity came
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14:50 - 14:52in the form of Beau, and the Blackawton Bee Project.
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14:52 - 14:57Thank you.BL: Thank you very much. (Applause)
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14:57 - 15:04(Applause)
- Title:
- Science is for everyone, kids included
- Speaker:
- Beau Lotto + Amy O'Toole
- Description:
-
What do science and play have in common? Neuroscientist Beau Lotto thinks all people (kids included) should participate in science and, through the process of discovery, change perceptions. He's seconded by 12-year-old Amy O'Toole, who, along with 25 of her classmates, published the first peer-reviewed article by schoolchildren, about the Blackawton bees project. It starts: "Once upon a time ... "
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 15:25
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Science is for everyone, kids included | ||
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Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Science is for everyone, kids included | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Science is for everyone, kids included | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Science is for everyone, kids included | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Science is for everyone, kids included | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Science is for everyone, kids included | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for Science is for everyone, kids included |