A letter sent by Herut Ma'oz from Tel Aviv to the management of educational television. For those interested in adding their own letter: The Educational Television, Klausner 14, Tel Aviv
To: The Israeli Educational Television
From: Herut Maoz, Tel Aviv
The subject: the program "It's a mystery"
Greetings,
I watched the "Educational 23" programs yesterday and came across an imported program, called "Zo Taaluma". On the face of it, it seems that the purpose of the program is to interest the viewers in fascinating scientific topics. Unfortunately, the program is neither scientific nor educational, to say the least. When the campaign of the educational television is that your programs have educational value in contrast to the programs of the popular channels, and that you are free from rating considerations, the appearance of such a program contradicts the goal.
What is actually wrong with the program? Well, the show tries to put silly nonsense in a scientific light, as if the question "do fairies exist" is an open question from a scientific point of view. The presentation of things is designed so that the presenter who favors the existence of fairies brings "proofs", while the presenter who favors skepticism is presented as someone who is stubbornly unwilling to accept the claim, without bringing any proof. Presenter: "In the year so-and-so saw a mother and her daughter Pia when they were engaged in gardening." The waitress: "Still, I don't believe it. Come on, fairies? Little people?".
If the aim of the creators of the program was to present a program with a hint of critical thinking, the presenter's answer would have been completely different. She would point out that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable in the extreme. that people are motivated to tell sensational stories. That the American press, which is the source of this story, is filled every day with stories of people finding an epiphany of Elvis Presley in a pile of shredded cabbage. that you cannot rely on human memory (for example, the famous experiment in which people who visited Disneyland were asked if they had seen Bugs Bunny there, and many of them answered yes. Bugs Bunny is not a Disney character but a Warner Bros. character, and it is impossible that they saw him there). Therefore, in cases of sensational claims of this kind ("the existence of fairies"), proof must be brought from the field before it is even possible to claim that this is an open question. After all, I can claim at any moment that I saw Moses. This does not make my claim an "open question", until I show the scientists his headquarters or a photo of the meeting.
Programs of this kind, which are designed to make the young viewer accept any interesting claim without examining it with a critical eye, are common on popular channels, since "mysteries" bring ratings. The "Discovery" channel, for example, is notorious for this. It's a shame that such a program also appears on educational television.
There are usually those who ask "why not keep an open mind". The reason for this is that in order to deal with reality, you have to learn to differentiate between reality and imagination. For example, the same child who grows up with an "open mind" until he does not know how to distinguish between fact and fantasy, may suffer from a serious illness, God forbid. Instead of relying on the scientific research on that disease and using a treatment that has chances of helping him, it would be easy to sell him all kinds of "holy water", which "Rachel of Ashkelon testifies that it helped her against cancer" and "Moshe Mekrit Shmona testifies that they gave him the AIDS disease". If a person does not have critical skills, if he does not know that human psychology is a very serious factor in such stories, if he does not understand that claims of healing, such as claims of the existence of demons or fairies, must be examined using tools for verifying facts and examining evidence, and filtering out the deceptive human factor, he may accept Put simply the claims of the charlatans, and this will harm his health as well as his financial situation, and there have been such cases recently.
Another example of the benefit of critical thinking is the use of all kinds of knowledge when a child is kidnapped or disappears. These newsletters, almost always, provide meaningless clues, which cause a waste of police personnel that could have been engaged in searching in more reasonable places, or in the investigation at the intelligence level. If someone who was raised on the knees of "it's a mystery" enlists in the police, he will probably believe that "there is a chance that the informants are right, it's an open question", and his budget will be wasted on persecution in directions that are not helpful, and kidnapped children may suffer as a result.
Critical thinking education is of great importance. There is an even greater importance and responsibility of the program managers on television, to identify those who try to place themselves in the light of a "scientist" when they do not use scientific tools, and of programs that disguise themselves as helpful programs when they are harmful. In my opinion, you should remove this dangerous and misleading program from your broadcast schedule, and look for a program in its place that really explains how things work, and how to differentiate between fact and wishful thinking.
Best regards,
Harut Meoz
