Critical Thinking Discussion

Students with code numbers starting with a 1 (e.g., 11, 12, 13, etc), must post answers to 2 of the critical thinking questions below.  You can only post an answer to a previously answered question if you are correcting an error made by a previous poster.

1. A person is declared to be dead upon the irreversible cessation of spontaneous body functions  brain activity, or blood circulation and respiration.  However, only about 1% of a person’s cells have to die in order for all of these things to happen.  How can someone be dead when 99% of their cells are still alive?
2. Explain the difference between a one-celled organism and a single cell of a multicellular organism.
3. Why would you think twice about ordering from a restaurant menu that lists only the second part of the species name (not the genus) of its offerings?  Include an example of why this might be troubling. 
4. Once there was a highly intelligent turkey that had nothing to but reflect on the world’s regularities   Morning always started out with teh sky turning light, followed by the master’s footsteps, which were always followed by the appearance of food.  Other things varied, but food always followed footsteps.  The sequence of events was so predictable that it eventually became the basis fo the turkey’s theory about the goodness of the world.  One morning, after more than 100 confirmations fo the goodness of theory, the turkey listened for the master’s footsteps, herd them and had its head chopped off.  Any scientific theory is modified or discarded upon discovery of contradictory evidence.  The absence of absolute certainty has led some people to conclude that “facts are irrelevant because they can change”.  If that is so, should we stop doing scientific research?  Why or why not?
5. In 2005, research Woo-suk Hwang reported that he made immortal stem cells from human patients.  His research was hailed as a breakthrough for people affected by degenerative diseases, because stem cells may be used to repair a person’s own damaged cells.  Hwang published his results in a peer-reviewed journal.  In 2006, the journal retracted his paper after other scientists discovered that Hwang’s group had faked the data.  Does this incident show that results of scientific studies cannot be trusted?  Or does it confirm the usefulness of a scientific approach, because other scientists discovered and exposed the fraud?