Science a Mystery to U.S. Citizens

maddugan writes "CNN and probably others are posting their synopses of the National Science Foundation's biennial report on the state of science understanding in the US. Sixty percent of those surveyed believe in ESP, psychic power, and alien abduction."

Comments

Scientists trust each other(peer review explained)

[No Such Agency]

Human scientific knowledge has grown to such staggering amount since the Renaissance (when, if one is willing to be generous, one person might hope to know the entire scientific body of knowledge in their society), that nobody can verify everything themselves. That's why we have peer review. The peer review publishing process ensures that any study has to be scrutinized by an editorial board of other scientists who ARE experts in the field of study. The well-conducted science with verifiable results gets published, the rest gets discarded or redone properly.

Sure, I suppose the reviewers for a journal could conspire to knowlingly let a fraudulent paper through, or suppress a valid one with interesting results that go against the accepted theories. In the first case, the bad science would inevitably be noticed by the journal's readers (other professional scientists, after all), and the editors would be disgraced. In the second case, some other journal's editors would accept and publish the paper, "scooping" journal #1 and claiming the glory of publishing the groundbreaking new research.

Like all self-policing systems, it has flaws, but by and large it works fantastically well, uncovering charlatans and incompetents, and allowing the dissemination of well-validated new information to the scientific world. It's not physically possible to verify everything in life yourself, which is why you sometimes have to trust others to properly verify things for you. But that trust cannot be blind, nor based on "faith". This holds as true for your doctor or auto mechanic as for the editors of a journal.

The Demon-Haunted World

[stereoroid]

This was one of Carl Sagan's last books, which IMHO does a very good job of educating the reader in the ways of "bullshit detection" (not his choice of words!). In response to some previous comments, he also uses some good examples to explain the difference between a) allowing that something is possible, and b) believing people who tell you it's actually happening, and who will enlighten you (for a few dollars more).

(I'm not going to post a link to one bookstore and thus give it more hits - your own favorite bookstore should have it.) Alternatively, if your attention span doesn't allow for the absorption of an entire book, at least go and rent "Contact". After all, if there weren't other civilizations out there, it would be an awful waste of space...