The Count's "No Count" Analysis of Kentucky's Science Standards

Over at Vital Remnants, Count Martin Cothran spent 687 words not refuting (in fact supporting) my claim that his word count methodology was not definitive. I suggested that a simple word count method was not the best way to understand the Next Generation Science Standards. 

He changed my assertion, and argued against that.

 

Count Cothran claimed that, “If you do a simple word search through the Kentucky Core Academic Standards document, the problem becomes apparent.” Then, he counted… 

Then he concluded from his “analysis,” 

If we had only Kentucky's science standards to go by, we would have to conclude that climate and weather issues are more important than gravity, photosynthesis, electricity, genetics, radiation and quantum mechanics.

Examined properly, the standards are sufficient for conclusions to be drawn, but not if one is only going to count word occurrences. Simply counting words does not render the standards “apparent” in any meaningful sense.   

As Alex Grigg pointed out, it is not particularly enlightening to know how many times a word occurs if one is ignorant of how the word is used.

Sure, weather and climate by themselves are mentioned a lot more times…but that's because they are relevant to a lot of different areas.  Just because the standards said the word weather a few times doesn't mean they all referred to climate change.  For example, this first occurrence has nothing to do with climate change, but would be counted under his shoddy methodology…

Count Cothran is surprised that I could have been so wrong about what he was really trying to do with his analysis.

I wasn’t trying to find out “what’s going on” with the science standards. I was trying to get an idea of the relative emphasis on certain scientific subjects. “What’s going on” could mean any number of things. I wasn’t trying to do any number of things, I was trying to do one thing.

The one thing he did was count, and according to Grigg, he looked at the wrong document.

 

Here is the document in question, unless he is looking at something else: http://63960de18916c597c345-8e.... 

But that did not prevent The Count from drawing his conclusions.

It is hard to avoid the impression that Kentucky's science standards, rather than being an educational document, are trying to be some kind of global-warming manifesto.

A manifesto?! Really? He got all that from counting words?

At Vital Remnants, Singring took to my defense telling Cothran:

Your press release had a *headline* which claimed that the new science standards were a 'global warming manifesto'.

But here you suddenly pretend that all you were doing is trying to find out the 'relative emphasis on certain scientific subjects'. So either you have a severe problem with retaining short-term memories or you just like to play a bit fast and loose with the facts while you accuse others of doing just that.

Compounding the academic felony, The Count extrapolated speculations on what the authors of Next Generation Science Standards were thinking!

Cothran’s word count argument proves only that things are a certain way. It tells us little about why they are so. The Count’s method, while arguably helpful on a surface level - if and only if one is not mislead by the data - is insufficient. The most useful analyses tell us something about why something is so.

The Count’s confusion lies here:

Day seems to be arguing that the amount of text in a text document devoted to a particular topic is not a measure of how much the text of that document emphasizes that topic.

Close, but no cigar. I argued that the word count method is not definitive, and suggest that alone, it is insufficient. It is a measure. But alone, it is not a strong enough measure to support the conclusions Cothran draws.

Then, get this, Cothran spins into a defense of quantitative analysis, and suggests that I, being so progressive and all, oppose such “objective methodologies” because, well, that’s what we do in EKU’s Teacher Preparation Program. 

Total BS.

How does Day figure out how many miles he's got on is car? Does he check his odometer--or his horoscope?  

I am pleased to announce that I do rely on my odometer. Among the things I do not check is the horoscope, or the thermometer. The wrong quantitative method will produce results that are in error.

But testing another theory I heard somewhere, I peeked at the Bible for mileage help. Unfortunately, it only told me that I wasn’t driving the same car as God. …whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my Fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again unto this place… Jeremiah 32:37. But apparently I’m not supposed to emulate God, but rather pursue my enemies with [my] Tempest, and terrify them with [my] storm… Psalm 83:15. Apparently somebody saw that all of the Apostles were in one Accord…. Acts 5:12. Not very scientific. But I digress.

Certain topics seem to bring Martin’s pen to paper: gambling, homosexuality, religion, gay marriage, Planned Parenthood, domestic partner benefits, diversity, sex, KERA (where he was correct about the ungraded primary program), Rick Pitino’s sex…and I guess, science standards. And he sometimes tries to get liberal university faculty defunded if they support gender and women's studies, or as his boss admitted to H-L, because all of those folks are committed to non-heterosexual issues.

Ever since he was a conservative columnist for the liberal school newspaper at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Cothran has prepped himself for controversy.

"I probably elicited more hate mail than all the other writers combined," he told the Herald-Leader, satisfied. "That was a lot of fun. It sort of introduced me to the world of controversy, and here I am."

Perhaps one can be excused for concluding that Cothran is, at times, more interested in persuading than accurately presenting facts that might support the other side. Former Kentucky Board of Education Chair Joe Kelly used to complain that Cothran's Op-Eds were deliberately "divisive and often take things out of context to the point that they aren't accurate."

Later in The Count's piece, Martin turns to my comment that he has written in defense of the Dover Decision, and forces me to confess – I have not read most of his writings. That’s why I hedged my comments and said, 

“If I understand him correctly, he sees Intelligent Design as distinct from old school creationism, a concept soundly rejected by the court in Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District."

I had to allow for the possibility that I did not fully understand his position. Martin is a prolific writer who has penned lots of stuff I haven’t read. If he says he opposes Intelligent Design, then I’ll take him at his word, even if the pro-evolution folks at Panda’s Thumb aren’t so sure. 

Does he oppose creationism? I'm not sure he said.

Cothran wonders if I have read the Dover case (yes, a while back) and have the reasoning ability to understand it (perhaps not, but I certainly understood that on a preponderance of the evidence, a conservative Republican judge rejected the argument that ID and creationism were distinct, and that the Dover schools could no longer require the teaching of ID as a religion-based alternative to evolutionary theory). Where I come from you've actually got to take account of what the court decides. 

Cothran straightens me out thusly,

I am an Aristotelian-Thomist, and as such have some serious issues with…any theory that is mechanistic in nature, which ID arguably is.

I’m glad we cleared that up. 

Hummm. I wonder why Cothran spends so much time writing on a topic he does not believe in, and why he provides so much aid and comfort to his…enemies? No. Actually he has “personal friends at the Discovery Institute and they asked to rerun some of [his] blog pieces, which is just fine with [him]." Very slippery, Martin. No blood on your hands. 

Way back when he was a state senator (1995), KBE Chair David Karem spoke to the Herald-Leader about Cothran and concluded,

"He has given aid and comfort to those who blindly oppose anything…So he wittingly or unwittingly allows himself to be a spokesman for blind opposition."

Well I’m not sure all of the opposition is blind, but Karem had it about right. If one provides aid and comfort, they are also making it possible to sustain an effort. It provides a defense of that effort. Cothran has written in defense of ID, whether he agrees with it or not, here and here.

But what would Aristotle say about this Aristotelian-Thomist’s methodology? And how could a lowly educator at a teacher college ever be brought into Cothran’s enlightenent? Well, the truth is, I don’t know what Artisotle’d say. But Cothran probably does, if we could only get him to admit it.

Maybe he‘d say something like this:

Some demonstrations prove only that the things are a certain way, rather than why they are so. The latter are the most perfect. (Aristotle: Organon in Posterior Analytics)