New UChicago course applies scientific reasoning to political decision making

A new course offered this past spring, Sense & Sensibility & Science @UChicago: Scientific Thinking in a Democracy, highlights how scientific reasoning and tools can help both policy novices and policy experts address today’s pressing problems.

“The idea is to get scientific methods out of the science labs and extract the mindsets, concepts, and tools, and then make that accessible to undergrads,” says course coordinator Julia Koschinsky, executive director & senior research associate at the Center for Spatial Data Science. “And not only conceptually; it's not only about understanding these mindsets and concepts, but also gaining hands-on experience.”

The Big Problems course was originally developed and taught at UC Berkeley by Nobel Laureate and astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter, philosopher John Campbell and social psychologist Robert MacCoun. More recently, the class has been taught at Harvard University and UC Irvine—but it’s been tailored for UChicago, where it is coordinated by the Center for Spatial Data Science of the Social Sciences Division and funded by the College’s 25-year-old Big Problems program.

UChicago’s version of the class was customized by UChicago instructors and teaching assistants in collaboration with the UC Berkeley team over the course of a year. Though physics was front and center in the original course design, the UChicago version accentuates behavioral science and adds discussions on scientific empiricism and spatial patterns.

Show don’t tell

Sense & Sensibility & Science teaches students how to better incorporate a scientific mindset and problem-solving techniques into their thinking and decision making. The course focuses on the errors humans tend to make, and the approaches scientists have been developing to reduce those errors as well as to harness our human strengths. It is designed as a general introduction to scientific thinking with opportunities for interaction and hands-on experience with a scientific reasoning toolkit.

“The motto of the course is show don't tell,” Koschinsky said. “There's a lot of going back and forth between lectures and experiential activities. For instance, the third class is called Senses and Instrumentation, and it's about how we need to use instruments to go beyond our senses. The topic is introduced by Jordan Kemp, a physicist, and then there are several activities with equipment from the Astronomy Department that let students experience movement that can only be captured by slow motion cameras or light spectra that require diffraction glasses.”

A core mindset of the course is to teach students how to not fool themselves, or reduce the likelihood of fooling oneself. But that also means getting comfortable with being wrong — something that the instructors hope to model to students by engaging alternative perspectives.

This is balanced by the can-do spirit of science. Other core concepts in the course include the purpose and limitations of science, dealing with noise and uncertainty, human reasoning quirks, and more.

“I find it so inspiring to see there are a teachable set of tools we can use to think better both individually and collectively,” said course teaching assistant, Noa Perlmutter. “I’m excited to share that sense of optimism and the idea that we can become more effective in understanding and changing the world with everyone who will take the class.”

Of course, the current political turmoil in the U.S. and globally played a role in the desire to offer such a class, designed around the ability to use scientific reasoning to address political problems.

“Everyone who teaches the course felt like they wanted to step up and do something to help strengthen democratic debate,” Koschinsky said. “It’s our way of contributing to more reasoned debate, both in terms of mindsets as well as tools.”

The interdisciplinary team leading the UChicago course includes: Reid Hastie, the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science at the Booth School of Business; Jordan Kemp, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of Physics; and Eamon Duede, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University who recently completed a joint Ph.D. at UChicago’s Department of Philosophy and the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science and Philosophy. And teaching assistants Noa Perlmutter (cognitive science) and Doug Williams (public policy/data science).

—This story originally appeared on UChicago’s Center for Spatial Data Science website.