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How Not to Be Fooled · Chapter 6

One Study Is Not a Law

Error bars, replication, and 'I'm not sure yet' as a complete sentence

Coin streaks, cherry-picked graphs, a second classroom, and a pocket list of questions. Jules learns that not being fooled means trusting the world a little more than the story — and checking twice.

12 panels · ~6 min read

A kid pins a single classroom experiment on a bulletin board labeled as science, while a researcher looks unconvinced.

Panel 1

A simple bar chart of plant growth includes whisker-like error bars showing the measurement could be higher or lower.

Panel 2

A kid stares at a streak of heads-up coins on a table while a researcher treats it as ordinary luck in a small sample.

Panel 3

A kid cuts a wiggly chart down to one dramatic upswing and tosses the rest of the paper in a bin.

Panel 4

Two classrooms run the same plant experiment; one plant thrives and the other does not, showing the need to repeat tests.

Panel 5

A researcher writes that she is not sure yet on a chalkboard, treating uncertainty as an honest scientific mood.

Panel 6

A small cluster of twelve survey slips sits beside a gym floor covered in thousands of slips, showing sample size.

Panel 7

A height lineup of kids includes one extremely tall visitor standing apart, an outlier in the group.

Panel 8

A faded miracle plant-food poster hangs beside a quiet follow-up chart that found almost no effect.

Panel 9

A kid reads a newspaper headline while a researcher holds a short pocket checklist of skeptical questions.

Panel 10

A kid annotates the original park map with notes about models, samples, averages, causes, and uncertainty.

Panel 11

At night a kid closes a notebook while a researcher leads the way down a real park path toward the pond.

Panel 12

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