[matthewsimon]

Oh my god -- a class of fifth graders in 2009 wasn't aware of two relevant scientific papers published in 2008?

The only way to explain these pre-teen children's ignorance of this knowledge is that there's a conspiracy dedicated to hiding the facts from them!

No, in practice eleven-year-old kids usually aren't reading the current scientific literature -- they're learning from their teachers and reading texts that have been written for students, and it's not surprising that it takes a few years for new information to permeate the educational system.

I understand the concern the piece is raising, but surely there are better examples than that, right?

[MichaelGG]

I thought the article was quite clear on this. The more important point is: _Probable causes? In fact, there's no scientific evidence that cellphones, pesticides, global warming or the alleged insufficiency of wildflowers are linked in any way to CCD._

Not knowing recent research on it might be fine. Maybe the articles were in Spanish and hard to find or something. But if the lesson ended up with kids getting concerned and writing letters, and they say "yea we're not sure, it could be some stuff that's unrelated", that sounds like a missed learning opportunity, maybe.

[_delirium]

I don't think the kids are doing too badly on that one, though, because you'd get results not entirely dissimilar if you polled working biologists. CCD is a particularly tricky example because everyone agrees that something is happening, but no causes have proven links. Yet there presumably is some cause or set of causes, so scientists differ in their hypotheses as to what those causes might be. I suspect if you were to poll, you'd find that very few think a link to cell-phone towers is probable, but quite a few think a link to pesticides is probable.