The more usual events are multi-person collaborations that involve planning, gathering materials, executing, interpreting the ranges of uncertainties and the limits of the data, stating the meaning of the results, and sharing all of it for validation by a wider community of interested people. Studentsindeed, anyone up to and including scientists themselveslearn better the meaning and limits of scientific models and concepts by having experience with the measurements, or from close contact with actual experimental groups. Structured, guided experience with feedback is valuable in the learning of any skill, as has been discovered in foreign language groups, piano and dance practice, written composition, and experimental measurements and their interpretation. It is highly improbable that most students can learn to these skills by reading a textbook or listening to a lecture. At the same time, within a semester, students can gain some experience and skills with physical and biological models, measurements, and categories, and with their limits.
Laboratories are excellent places to practice and train some aspects of critical thinking.
One can learn the meaning of acceptable evidence, and experience the tentativeness of conclusions drawn on individual measurements. The laboratory experience also can demand accurate reporting and the writing of reports in acceptable form. Although theses sciences tend to merge at molecular levels, the approaches and activities of the biological sciences and physical sciences are much different at the macroworld level. Both adhere to criteria and standards of critical thinking that are enormously valuable in today's world. Quantitative reasoning is an essential part of work in the sciences.