🧭 1. The story so far

Three lessons, one story. Here it is again, as a sequence of steps.

flowchart TD
  A["1974<br/>A prediction, with<br/>no evidence yet<br/>Molina and Rowland"] --> B["Early 1980s<br/>A measurement<br/>nobody expected<br/>Halley and Nimbus-7"]
  B --> C["1984 to 1986<br/>Other teams, other<br/>instruments, the<br/>same result"]
  C --> D["1985 and 1986<br/>Peer review: the<br/>community accepts it"]

For three lessons you have followed how one piece of scientific knowledge was made. Now suppose the ozone story were the only piece of science you knew.

✍️ Write here, on your own: complete this sentence, using only the ozone story. For each numbered gap, choose one of the options below. Then write the whole sentence out underneath.

In the natural sciences, knowledge is made by someone making a (1) that could be proved (2), (3) later finding something unexpected, other teams using (4) instruments checking whether the result is real, and the finding being accepted once it has passed (5) and been confirmed by (6) checks.

Gap Choose one
1 hypothesis / theory / law
2 right / wrong
3 experiments / instruments / theories
4 the same / different
5 peer review / a vote / a single test
6 repeated / independent / official

✍️ Write here: look at the first words of your sentence: “In the natural sciences”.

  1. How many cases does your sentence claim to cover?

  2. How many is it based on?

⚖️ 2. How far can one story take you?

Here are three sentences that someone might write after studying the ozone story.

  1. In the ozone story, the unexpected readings were only accepted once other teams, using different instruments, found the same thing.
  2. In the natural sciences, a result is accepted as knowledge once someone else, using a different instrument, gets the same result, and not before.
  3. Science always corrects its mistakes.

✍️ Write here, on your own:

  1. Which of the three sentences is the ozone story, on its own, enough evidence for?