ShmoopTube

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Here’s your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by sticky hair.

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And what creates sticky hair?

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Honey combs.

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Here’s a passage about an experiment performed on the communication of honey bees.

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If the air was the same near the bees that

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were dancing and the bees that weren't, what would the scientists have to conclude?

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Here are your potential answers…

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Well, we know how the samples turned out—

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the air was different on the dance floor than it was in other parts of the hive.

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This question is asking us something interesting, though: If the samples of air looked the same,

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what would that mean?

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Option A—There is no chemical signal generated by the waggle dance.

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That wouldn’t necessarily be true.

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An absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence; it just means we didn’t pick it up.

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Option B—Both air samples contain the waggle dance chemicals.

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We can’t confirm that. With two similar samples, we can’t definitively tell if they

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both contain waggle dance chemicals, or if neither of them do.

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The great thing about the actual results is how they showed clear evidence.

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Two similar samples just won’t cut it.

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Option C—They could not find evidence of

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a chemical airborne signal generated by the waggle dance.

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Hey, now THAT sounds scientific!

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“Could not find evidence” is very important;

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it’s simply declaring the result of their experiment. It’s not making any claims about the bees,

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their dancing, their smells, or their behavior.

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It’s simply saying, “We didn’t find evidence,” which would be absolutely correct.

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Just to be sure, let’s take a look at D…

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“The bees must be singing instead of dancing,

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because there’s no chemical signal.” That’s absolutely not true.

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You can’t suggest that something is singing just because it doesn’t smell,

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unless you’re talking about Uncle Ronnie, who is always singing in the shower…

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