Critical Thinking Exercises

Write a question stem and answer for the following extracts. Try to think of questions that tackle
issues such as Getting the Facts, Evaluating the Facts, Drawing a Conclusion using Logic, and
Evaluating a Conclusion.

In 1764, the Royal Society in London published a paper by Thomas Bayes, a Presbyterian minister
and amateur mathematician, which addressed a tricky problem in the theory of probability. Till then,
mathematicians had focused on the familiar problem of working out what to expect from, say, a
tossed die, when one knows the chance of seeing a particular face is 1 in 6. Bayes was interested in
the flip side: how to turn observations of an event into an estimate of the chances of the event
occurring again. In his paper, Bayes illustrated the problem with an esoteric question about the
location of billiard balls rolled onto a table. He came up with a formula that turned observations of
their final locations into an estimate of the chances of future balls following them. All very trivial -
except that the same basic issue underpins science: how do we turn observations into evidence for or
against our beliefs? In other words, his work enabled observations to be used to infer the probability
that a hypothesis may be true. Bayes was thus laying the foundations for the quantification of belief.

EARLY in the autumn of 1674, Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society in London,
received an extraordinary letter. Sent by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (pictured, left), a draper from
Delft in the Netherlands, it contained an unlikely sounding claim.
Using a microscope of his own invention, van Leeuwenhoek had seen tiny creatures, invisible to the
naked eye, living in lake water. Some of these "animalcules" were so small, he later estimated, that
30 million of them would still be smaller than a grain of sand.
Royal Society fellows were sceptical. Even with his most powerful instruments, the celebrated
English microscopist Robert Hooke had never observed anything like the little creatures.

If we look at school as children’s work, then absenteeism becomes a kind of red flag, a signal that
something has gone wrong in a child’s health or emotional life, or within the family or in the school
itself. Children may avoid school because they are trying to avoid negative feelings, like anxiety and
depression, or negative experiences, like exams or troubling social interactions. On the other hand,
they may be pursuing some positive reward — a parent’s attention, the chance to play video games
all day or, for older kids, more illicit pleasures. And there is overlap, the experts point out: a child
who misses a great deal of school for reasons that look like truancy may become increasingly
anxious — and embarrassed — about going back. In fact, missing school intensifies both the
academic pressures and the social pressures that are waiting when a child returns, setting up a
dangerous cycle in which the more you’re absent, the more you want to stay out.
An imaginary number is the square root of a negative number. Such numbers have become essential
tools in microchip design and in digital compression algorithms: your MP3 player relies on
imaginary stuff. Even more fundamental than that, imaginary numbers underpin quantum mechanics,
the theory that gave rise to the electronics revolution. Little modern technology would exist without
complex numbers - numbers which have both a real and an imaginary component.
In the 16th century, when the Italian mathematician Gerolomo Cardano came up with imaginary
numbers, even negative numbers were treated with deep suspicion. Though they were difficult
beasts, Cardano pressed ahead. At one point, Cardano even wrote that they were "useless", but it is
clear that he found them intriguing as well as frustrating. "Cardano wrote a formal expression for
complex numbers, he could add and multiply them, but he could not give them any practical or
geometrical sense," says Artur Ekert of the University of Oxford.
Rafael Bombelli built on Cardano's work in the 1560s, but imaginary numbers were not taken
seriously until mathematicians found links between them and constants such as π and e. In the 18th
century, Leonhard Euler showed that e raised to the power i × π equals -1 (where i is the square root
of -1). Now imaginary numbers are indispensable.
It seems fitting that their role in quantum theory is to explain the most bizarre aspect of the theory:
that quantum objects such as atoms and electrons can exist in two or more places at once. Physicists
and philosophers still argue over what this means, but it is clear that the mathematics only works
when it includes a complex number known as a "probability amplitude". Without imaginary
numbers, you won't get an answer that reflects the reality of the physical world. And you won't get
an iPod either.

For much of the past two decades, the F.D.A. has emphasized speed over certainty in its decisions —
an industry-friendly stance that plays down safety concerns in favour of getting potential cures to the
market as swiftly as possible. But a series of drug, medical-device and food-safety controversies
have led some agency medical officers to insist on better information before approving products and
to lobby internally for risky products to be pulled from the market, putting the speed-oriented old
guard on the defensive.

In 130 BC, a ship fashioned from the wood of walnut trees and bulging with medicines and Syrian
glassware sank off the coast of Tuscany, Italy. Archaeologists found its precious load 20 years ago
and now, for the first time, archaeobotanists have been able to examine and analyse pills that were
prepared by the physicians of ancient Greece. DNA analyses show that each millennia-old tablet is a
mixture of more than 10 different plant extracts, from hibiscus to celery. "Scholars and scientists
have often dismissed the literature on such medicines, and expressed doubt about their possible
efficacy, which they attributed only to the presence of opium," says Touwaide of the Smithsonian
Institution's National Museum of Natural History. He hopes to resolve this debate by exploring
whether the plant extracts in the pills are now known to treat illnesses effectively.
Two separate studies show that men who smoke have a lower concentration of proteins in the testes
that are essential for producing sperm, while women who smoke during pregnancy may be sowing
the seeds of infertility in their unborn child. In one of the studies researchers obtained 24 testes, from
37 to 68 day embryos after legally terminated pregnancies. They found that the number of germ cells
– responsible for forming eggs and sperm – was reduced by 55 per cent in fetuses from women
who'd been smoking while pregnant. They also found a 37 per cent reduction in the ordinary or
somatic cells in the embryos.

There is now compelling evidence that foods high in sugar, fat and salt - as most junk foods are - can
alter your brain chemistry in the same way as highly addictive drugs such as cocaine and heroin. The
idea, considered fringe just five years ago, is fast becoming a mainstream view among researchers as
new studies in humans confirm initial animal findings, and the biological mechanisms that lead to
"junk-food addiction" are being revealed. Some say there is now enough data to warrant government
regulation of the fast food industry and public health warnings on products that have harmful levels
of sugar and fat. One campaigning lawyer claims there could even be enough evidence to mount a
legal fight against the fast food industry for knowingly peddling food that is harmful to our health,
echoing the lawsuits against the tobacco industry in the 1980s and 90s.

The ability for brains to control inanimate objects, like computer cursors, robotic arms, wheelchairs,
has seen significant progress in the last decade. A case in point is the recent success at Andrew
Schwartz’s lab at the University of Pittsburgh where macaque monkeys fed themselves using a
robotic arm controlled only by their thoughts.

Some professions have to worry about absenteeism—employees not reporting to work. But in the
medical field, researchers are calling attention again to the troublesome trend of presenteeism among
health care workers and its implications. It's common knowledge that medical residents often work
well beyond the 30-consecutive-hour limit—and sometimes put in more than 80-hour workweeks.
Now, a new analysis shows that in addition to fatigue, many residents treating patients are sick
themselves. "The real issue here is what is best for patient care," Jena said. "Knowing your patient
well doesn't compensate for being infectious." He suggests that for residents, "If it's contagious—for
example a viral cold—or if it's enough to cloud your judgment, stay home."

Hunger is a complex sensation, but it is determined in part by neurons located in the hypothalamus,
which send signals to the brain telling it that you're either hungry or sated. Those neurons get their
message from hormones, including insulin and leptin. When the body develops a resistance to these
messengers, people become more prone to overeating and weight gain
Psilocybin was found to ease end-of-life anxiety in small study of patients with fatal cancer. All
patients agreed to take a "moderate dose" (0.2 milligrams per kilogram of body weight) of psilocybin
(and niacin on another occasion) to see if the psychedelic drug might offer some relief from their fear
of death and disease. The unusual decision to have each patient serve as both a subjects and then as a
control—rather than having two separate groups, one treated with psilocybin and one with niacin—
was taken because the researchers believed "that to be the ethical course to take, given the life
circumstances subjects were encountering," (i.e. imminent demise). In other words, the scientists felt
that all the terminally ill patients should be allowed to experience any potential benefit from the
psilocybin treatment.

A new surgical education initiative developed by the RCSI will help prevent infection in patients
following surgery. It has been developed specifically for trainees to improve practice in the areas of
hand hygiene, the optimal use of antimicrobial prophylaxis, the care of wound sites after surgery and
the prevention of bloodstream infection that can result from infected intravascular devices.
This teaching programme will assess the trainee’s current practice and their knowledge of
interventions to minimise healthcare-associated infection (HCAIs) and facilitate access to national
and international guidelines.

Students who are fit—based on their high aerobic capacity and low body fat—also tend to perform
well in school and on standardized tests. In addition to regular exercise, brief periods of movement
such as jumping or stretching can help improve children’s concentration. Exercise may turbocharge
the brain by raising levels of neuronal growth factors, which foster the formation of new connections
between brain cells.

Numerous climatologists sound the alarm about the possibility of runaway global warming. British
economist Thomas Malthus predicted in the 19th century that the rise in population would lead to
widespread famine and catastrophe. It never happened, but that didn’t stop Stanford biologist Paul R.
Ehrlich from renewing the warning in his 1968 book The Population Bomb when he predicted that
global famine was less than two decades away. Catastrophe didn’t arrive then, either, but does that
mean it never will? Not necessarily. Still, people often worry disproportionately about disasters that
are unlikely to occur. 

The adapted virus that immunized hundreds of millions of people against smallpox has now been
enlisted in the war on cancer. Vaccinia poxvirus joins a herpesvirus and a host of other pathogens on
a growing list of engineered viruses entering late-stage human testing against cancer. After a decade
of development of so-called oncolytic viruses, the newest strains hold the most promise yet,
researchers say. In a two-pronged attack, these viruses specifically target tumor cells while
delivering a cargo of immune-boosting genes.