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mrlolloran t1_j16v85y wrote

Reply to comment by Swarna_Keanu in Climate Impacts Are Increasing; Textbooks Aren’t Keeping Pace: "biology textbooks are failing to share adequate information about climate change" by Additional-Two-7312

I’m guessing that since there was only 50 sentences on climate change overall there has never been an entire chapter on this in the books they’re talking about. Leads me to believe this is studied elsewhere in a specialized way but maybe I’m looking at it wrong

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Swarna_Keanu t1_j18pcti wrote

You misunderstand the statistics. An average of 50 sentences could mean that one book had 200 sentences and three others nothing. It doesn't tell you anything about the individual books. Which isn't what is important for their methodology.

They wanted to see if, on average, the topic is covered more or less. As climate change has a huge impact on biodiversity but also distribution of species, ecosystems, etc - it's an increasingly important topic to understand what happens out in the real world. If it's covered less across the books used they miss the mark of what needs to be communicated.

As I mentioned previosuly climate change is interdisciplinary. It ought to appear in textbooks everwhere it matters - from the perspective of that discipline. Unless / until climate change becomes a specific seperate subject in the curriculum - but that's evidently not the case, either.

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mrlolloran t1_j18pztl wrote

Wow, implying I don’t understand what the word “average” means is incredibly insulting.

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Swarna_Keanu t1_j18rr0b wrote

I didn't imply that.

>I’m guessing that since there was only 50 sentences on climate change overall there has never been an entire chapter on this in the books they’re talking about.

I responded to this - where you took the average as an absolute. You can't know - from the data - if there ever was an entire chapter on this in the books they're talking about.

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mrlolloran t1_j18sgxc wrote

If entire chapters are missing why didn’t they say so. It seems so obvious that that information would have been included in here that I cannot even fathom why it it would be omitted. I mean think of how much more weight the article could have. The only way that makes sense to me if it’s in the study but not the article about it and that frustrated the editor, who then editorialized the headline to match what they considered to be the importance of the study. Almost, but admittedly not quite, an ad absurdum fallacy to me given the lack of context.

It also would have been useful to include the average chapter length but maybe I either missed that or it’s in the more detailed study

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Swarna_Keanu t1_j18sx4h wrote

>If entire chapters are missing why didn’t they say so.

'Cause it's not what they measured. Happy to debate if that was good methodology or not ... but the study just is what it is. :)

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mrlolloran t1_j18to4r wrote

Studies usually have conclusions. I’m not actually a trained scientist, and I haven’t read this study, but that doesn’t mean I’ve never read a study. They looked at under 100 books, they could have and should have checked the table of contents, it would be all too easy to check this stuff. Frankly if they didn’t then I’d call it really bad methodology.

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Swarna_Keanu t1_j196ejt wrote

:) Welcome to the nonsense that happens due the the "publish or perish" mantra.

It's still informative in that the average sentences decreased. But you know - that's all it says, and all they checked. Would need to dig into the data for more. Might be that there'll be a follow up study in a couple years. And another, and another, which is when it becomes more of a useful data set.

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