GCSE SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL - Evaluation - Politics - Prejudice - Bias - Spin

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Evaluation - Politics - Prejudice - Bias.

The evaluation of an investigation can be affected by
politics, prejudice and bias.

In politics, some parts of an investigation might be given
a greater level of importance than others.
Some parts of an investigation might not be mentioned at all.
The process of being selective with information so that it
seems to support the outcome you want is called spin by politicians.
Spin is not good because it is less than honest.
It is dishonest because it deliberately and knowingly misrepresents
the conclusions of a scientific piece of work for political convenience.

Prejudice means that someone has decided what they want
to believe before they do the experiments.
Prejudice can make a scientist only use data which supports
what they want to say while ignoring other data they have.
A proper scientific evaluation will consider
all of the data from an investigation.

Bias means that the interpretation of the results is unfair.
For example, a student might interpret their results to show
what they think their teacher wants the results to be.
Research which shows that confectionary is good for you
might be less credible if it is funded by a confectionary manufacturer
than if it is funded by a public health charity.

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