There is a phrase I have always hated: "Teach the controversy." It sounds fair on the surface. It sounds like balance. But in practice, it usually means putting nonsense next to science and pretending the two are equals.

What brought this to mind today is that I was helping someone in a Microsoft Access forum on another website (that shall remain nameless) and some so-called expert jumped in arguing that you don't always need primary keys. Now, to be fair, that is technically true in rare cases. Temporary tables or staging data sometimes don't require them. But as a general rule, most of your tables that contact actual, real data, should have primary keys. That's how relational databases function. (1)

This guy's take, though, was basically: "Nah, just wing it. Throw all your data in the table and figure it out later." And then he actually asked me why I don't teach that method in my courses. My answer is simple: because that's not the way it's supposed to be done. Sure, sometimes I'll show you the wrong way first so you can see why it breaks, and so you have a better understanding for the right way. But I don't present bad practice as an equally valid option. That's not balance, that's just confusion.

Same goes for computer security. One side says: keep your antivirus up to date, use good passwords, and patch your systems. The other side says: viruses are a hoax, security companies just invented them to sell software. You don't "teach the controversy" there either. One is grounded in reality, the other is a conspiracy theory.

Or take business. Every accountant on Earth knows double-entry bookkeeping is the standard. Assets on one side, liabilities and equity on the other. If someone tells you to just scribble numbers in a notebook however you feel like it, that's not a second valid method. That's malpractice.

And in politics, you sometimes hear this false balance too. If one side says the election was certified, verified, audited, and upheld in the courts, and the other side says it was rigged because of something I saw on a meme, those are not two equally valid positions. That's not a "controversy" worth teaching.

One of the places you see this come up from time to time is science education. Religious groups have pushed for decades to "teach the controversy" between Evolution and Creationism. The argument is that Evolution is "just a theory" and Creationism is another valid theory, so kids should hear both sides. But that's not how science works. Evolution has mountains of evidence behind it. Fossils, genetics, observed adaptations in real time. Creationism is not science at all - it's faith. (2)

You don't teach people that the Earth is flat alongside the round Earth as if they're both valid. You don't teach that germs cause disease but also maybe evil spirits do. You don't teach that lightning is caused by electrical discharge in the atmosphere but also maybe by Zeus throwing bolts from the sky. And you don't teach that vaccines work by training the immune system but also maybe that they're a government conspiracy to sneak trackers into you.

And in Star Trek, we saw the same thing with the Bajoran Prophets. To the Bajorans, they were gods. To the Federation, they were wormhole aliens who lived outside of time. Both descriptions existed side by side, but only one of them belonged in a science report. You can respect the faith of the Bajorans, but you do not put the worship of the Prophets on equal footing with astrophysics.

So the next time someone says "teach the controversy," ask yourself: is this really a controversy, or is it just nonsense dressed up to look like it deserves a seat at the table?

LLAP
RR

(1) This was not one of those "rare cases." It was a very simple order-entry database. The kind of thing I teach about every day.

(2) I want to be clear that I am not trying to offend anyone's religious beliefs. Whatever you choose to believe is your business. I fully support freedom of religion and freedom from religion. But the point here is that Creationism is religion, not science. Religious texts are not evidence. They are the claim. Religion has no place in a science classroom. Teach your kids all you want about it in church, but keep it out of the science class. Science is based on testable, repeatable, verifiable evidence.