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Textbook Reading
Lesson 1: Living Sometimes, the evidence will go
against “common sense” or popular
Organisms opinions. For example, many
people use plastic cutting boards
What is Science? because they think they have
fewer germs than wooden ones.
What do you think of when you
hear the words science or But just “thinking” something is
scientist? When some people hear not science. To test which kind of
the word science, they imagine cutting board is really best,
someone working with dangerous scientists exposed wooden and
chemicals in a laboratory. plastic cutting boards to germs,
Although some scientists do work cleaned them, and then checked
with dangerous chemicals, and how many germs were still left.
many do work in labs, there is
They were surprised to find that
much more to science than this.
although the plastic cutting board
looked prettier, the evidence
showed that the wooden board
actually had fewer bacteria. What
was shown by the evidence was
not the same as what had believed
by many people. When this
happens, science says we should
trust the evidence.
There is much more to science than working with
chemicals in a lab.
Science is a way of understanding
the world based on repeated tests
and evidence. If scientists are
doing their job right, they should
base their conclusions on evidence,
not just on what most people think
is true. Evidence is an
observation of a thing, group of
The plastic cutting board had more bacteria than the
things, or a process that takes wood.
time.
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