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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."
As a graduate student in physics, it has long been obvious to me that the general public has NO idea of what is going on in science. There are a variety of reasons for the scientific ignorance of the general public.
1. The common "Who cares" attitude about science. This is rampant in society -- try talking to a non-scientist about some scientific issue and watch the eyes of most people glaze over.
2. The media dramatizes and reduces complicated scientific issues into 2-second sound bites. This is why, for example, so many people misunderstand what Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity actually state.
In some sense, this is a dangerous development for society. The US Founding Fathers supported the creation of public libraries because they realized that having an informed public is important for good government. This does not mean that everyone should be an expert at say diagonalzing a Hamiltonian, but at least actually know what the heck Quantum Mechanics is about (and no it will not help you lose weight). Scientific progress is creating technology that will revolutionalize human society and even what it means to be human. These are things that the public, as a democracy, should understand because it affects everyone.
Just last week, I read an article in Mother Jones magazine about Robert Moses, a 60's civil rights leader who now is strongly advocating better math education for minorities, both through his own actions teaching in a Mississippi school (he commutes weekly from his Massachusetts home, bless those dedicated liberals), and in his book, Radical Literacy . (I just ordered the book, ISBN 080703127, but haven't got it yet.)
I absolutely agree that math and science education should be a stronger emphasis in schools (math is probably more important than science, but they each fuel the other). And clearly, inner-city schools, and other poor schools, provide lousy education, especially in math and science. And as the survey cited here demonstrates, that lousy education shows.
Here in Pleasanton, California, a wealthy suburb, my Rotary Club awards prizes each month to a "student of the month." I'm amazed each month that these kids all take multiple AP classes (sometimes five or six) and have GPAs of 4.15 or 4.25. When I went to school, even taking AP Calculus, it was mathematically impossible to have a GPA greater than 4.0 -- speaking of "math literacy". But what about the many inner-city students who never graduate from high school, and lack even the basic math skills required to work at a cash register? (Ask your local McDonald's manager how they work around the lack of functional literacy and math skills.)
Another book plug: I just finished the book And Still We Rise , a reporter's account of a year in an AP English classroom in South Central Los Angeles. It's a remarkable book that left me feeling hopeful (unlike most books in this genre, which leave me frightened and numb). But alas, that book focuses only on just a few dozen surviving geniuses, and not thousands of their peers whose best efforts could not overcome the cruel challenges of the inner-city school environment.
Finally, I read an article in yesterday's newspaper (the Valley Herald), recounting a new bill by my local state legislator, who wants to exempt more new teachers from needing teaching credentials. The bill's stated intent is to allow more skilled professionals to teach, but I suspect the real goal is to circumvent teaching standards and put more lower-cost teachers into classrooms without adequate training.
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
Science would probably be in a much better state if people didn't jump to conclusions based on the most cursory of searches for data.
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I don't think that people reject science because of a perceived lack of explanatory power. I certainly agree that there are many questions which science doesn't have the answers for (metaphysical questions, which cannot be attacked by the scientific method, as well as more prosiac mysteries such as what determines the mass of the electron.) But that isn't the problem. You might claim that it's the problem if, for example, the phenomenon of ESP has been convincingly demonstrated and yet cannot be explained by science. In reality, there is absolutely no good evidence in favor of ESP, UFOs, or any of the other staples of pseudoscience. Uri Geller has been videotaped surreptitiously bending spoons when he thought nobody was watching, yet some people still believe he possesses supernatural powers.
The problem is rather that people aren't taught to think critically. With rudimentary critical thinking skills, the vast majority of the silly claims that one comes across (especially on late-night TV) can be easily debunked. Without the ability to perform such critical evaluations, our natural tendency to favor florid and exciting stories takes over. That's how we get these little grey men from Sirius.
Critical thinking skills are generally useful, but especially so in science - the majority of proposed scientific theories are wrong, and a lot of the work of science goes into proving theorists wrong. However, even scientists aren't explicitly trained to think critically. We're expected to pick it up via osmosis, and some of us apparently fail to learn the lesson. For example, some of the more rabid endorsements of "psychics" have come from practicing scientists. Typically, these psychics refuse to perform in front of professional magicians; whenever they do, guess what? Their mysterious powers disappear. (Magicians are familiar with the methods of fooling people, and aren't easily fooled.)
The problem with science is that there is always doubt, and most people don't want doubt, they want certainties.
For example: from where I sit, I cannot see into my garage - in fact, I cannot see my garage at all. Therefor, if I am to be absolutely precise, I cannot state that my car is in the garage. It could have been stolen, it could have disappeared in a puff of smoke, it could have been abducted by aliens. Each of those is a hypothesis, just like the hypothesis that the car is setting there. If I am to be precise, I cannot state for fact that my car is there or not.
However, since my garage is locked, my car is locked, and had the doors opened I probably would have heard them, the hypothesis that it was stolen is unlikely. Given the body of evidence supporting conservation of matter, the hypothesis that it went poof is unlikely. And any aliens that could reach Earth would have little use for my car, so even if the Drake equation is bunk it would seem unlikely aliens would have stolen it. The most likely hypothesis is that my car is right where I left it (relative to the Earth's surface).
However, that sort of thinking doesn't make sense to the average person. "How can you *not* know your car is out there?" And when a scientist says "I cannot conclusively disprove it", they think that means that is must be true.
Most so-called "science" teachers just teach that water is H20, that natural gas burns in oxygen, etc. In short, they teach facts, rather than teaching the tools to THINK, and to CHECK what you think. It's easy to test if a student can regurgitate the facts you've crammed down their throat - testing if a student can actually THINK when confronted with a new situation is hard, and subject to opinion (read: "If I flunk this kid, can his parents cast doubt upon my grade?").
Until we actually start teaching kids to THINK, to constantly question what they know, and to take nothing for granted, we will have this sort of nonsense running around. And since the Industrial Revolution the purpose of public schools has been to turn out organic labor units, not thinking individuals.
And before you pat yourself on the back, smug in your superiority - when was the last time YOU actually stopped to think about your opinions, and to ask "Now, what are the underlying axioms of this belief? What truths must I hold self-evident to get to this belief? How can I test if those beliefs are true?"
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...richie - It is a good day to code.
He said if you cannot explain your idea to an intelligent freshman, then you don't really understand it yourself; an even better test might be to explain your idea to an intelligent twelve-year-old.
Neither does a "democracy" where 50% of the population pays 4% of the taxes and votes for the leaders who charge the other 50% of the population the other 96% of the taxes, for that matter.
One percent of America's population holds 40% of the wealth.
I hope you are not suggesting that it is unfair to have that one percent of the population pay 40% of the taxes.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Body ... Mind ... Spirit ... ???
The thing that amazes me is that people will absolutely insist there is only the body. Then, someone shows them the mind, and they say, "Okay, I accept I was wrong about the body thing. There is a mind. But there's nothing beyond the mind. I'm positive!" At each step they admit they were wrong and revise their beliefs, yet they fall right back into insisting their new theories are correct beyond all doubt and that there is nothing else.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
I'm not attacking you personally, but I have found that anyone who is 'comfortable' with their beliefs has simply stopped examining those beliefs. Being comfortable with your beliefs is like being comfortable with syphilis. Belief is a sort of disease that comes from the ego's need to protect itself from reality.
Am I trying to prove God doesn't exist? No. Am I trying to prove that he does exist? No. I'm just asking: why do we need to prove anything about God?
When you lay aside everything you think you know and think about it at that basic level, it really is quite mystifying.
There is truth in the religious experience, it didn't come from thin air. I have felt this much. But just how much of what we're told is authentic and how much is contrived to meet current political/power needs?
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
What a fucking retarded statement.
What does believing in the factual existence of anything have to do with "putting something into" anything? There is a difference between philosophy and religion. They are both sets of beliefs and (sometimes) guidelines for behavior. The difference is that the philosophical beliefs usually evolve over time with experience and reflection, while religious beliefs exist because some psychos a long time ago claimed that Ralph the Holy Head of Lettuce laid down the law thusly (or whatever your fantasy happens to be).
The teachings of religion [...] even separated from the supernatural aspect have the cause of making the world a better place.
Absolutely hilarious.
Catholicism teaches you to be happy in what you do and do what makes others happy.
Someone else wanna go ahead and knock that current-events setup out of the park for me?
Religion isn't meant to feed those of religious power.
I think religion is probably just a perplexing psychological manifestation with roots in humans' primordial fear of the unknown and the unbearable knowledge of certain death. But it's better said here. Spend the $15, it's worth it.
I'll leave you with this thought: Consider the plight of the non-believer, surrounded 24/7 by people who actually believe this stuff; surrounded by a population of which 65% honestly believe there are angels flying around them throughout the day. It's literally like being trapped inside of a mad-house for your entire life.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
In explaining the scientific illiteracy of the US population, the author of this article talks about the number of Americans who believe in psychic powers, UFOs and astrology. The author then writes:
This is terribly misleading writing. Unlike the previous three issues, the vast majority of scientific evidence supports the belief that the global temperatures are currently rising, and will continue to do so. While scientists may disagree about how high the temperature is going to rise to, or what factors are most to blame, the fact of global warming accepted by the vast majority of scientists. As written, the article could be read to imply that global warming, like psychic powers, UFOs and astrology, is pseudo-science.
Just had to get that cleared up. Carry on....
Evidence suggests that there must be many undiscovered modes and ranges and domains of perception. The human brain is fundamentally unable to conceive of certain profound dimensions of mathematical relationships, as the human eye is fundamentally unable to perceive light beyond a specific range of wavelength. Although, even the slightest glance of what is possible is enough to make someone be called a "visionary" (pun)
The obvious criterion to consider first is energy. All of human perception (and exceptions thereof) depend on the transference of some form of energy: light, heat, vibration, chemical energy. The next logical question is to ask is: is it possible to create a sensory mode that does not depend upon the emission, transmission, or reflection of energy? The obvious center point to this Is that one would need some medium by which to transmit information, but this is not true if one finds a way to detect information that is already present.
Consider: mass distorts space. If one can find a way to detect the logical distortion of a distant object, thereby making it possible to sense an object indirectly. Therefore, the true question is, is there an efficient by which one can detect gravity waves?
Enough rambling for now, i'm tired.What do Americans teach their kids at school, if not that the Earth goes around the Sun once a year?
That the Earth revolves around America.
This is such an apt comment, I fully agree. It's incredibly concise too, but just to beat a dead horse I feel I need to elaborate:
Of two previously powerful Empires in history (make no mistake, the U.S. is more or less an Empire) The Roman Empire and The British empire suffered from what is basically Ethnocentrism.
That is, that American culture is in power, thus it's citizens view the world from their position of power and conclude that: "Since we are the most powerful and influential country in the world, why bother caring about the world outside my little realm? I live in the best country in the world, and I don't need to go elsewhere to know that."
Furthermore, this leads to inward looking, and a decline of the very social forces that put an Empire into power in the first place. It happend to the Romans and The British, and probably many more.
So, I find it interesting that this "apathy" on the part of a large percentage of the American population is just a symptom of a larger problem at work: Ethnocentrism. Make no mistake - the United States will continue to be the major power for some time, probably well after everyone who is reading this comment is dead and gone. However, this attitude will eventually lead to the erosion of the foundation that makes the United States as powerful as it is right now.
(No, this is not a troll, just an observation, look this stuff up yourself.)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I think the US would stack up well against most other countries -- certainly the people who come to the US are an elite among their own countries, and are not representative, so you won't know by talking to people here. For all the flaws and compromises of our education system, the idea of a liberal arts education -- in high school as well as college -- has a greater following here than most other places. Lots of reformers (particularly among conservatives/capitalists) are essentially proposing a more vocationally-focused educational system, more like in other countries. The vocationally trained really don't need to know science -- an understanding of molecules is useful in very few professions.
I heard a test of basic scientific literacy about five years ago showed that literacy among Americans was about twice the percentage of Europeans, and three times Japanese. It was about basic things like what a molecule is, what DNA is, etc. I was quite surprised. (No country did that well -- I think the US was like 20%). Sadly I cannot find a reference -- make of this what you will. However, I would generally be suspicious of international comparisons based on formalized testing, and comparisons done in school -- the real judge of an education system is not what students know, but what adults who have finished schooling know. This reference was the best I could find -- A comparison of interest in science:
I'm immediately marked as wrong because of one single phrase.
If you knew better you would know that science doesn't rely on "belief" but on reproducibbility and practical disproof/proof of theory.
Perhaps you should take a better look at how scientists react when confronted with a large body of sworn testimony of hundreds of highly trained individuals--people who are quite capable of identifying airplanes, satellites, meteors, weather balloons, and lightning. Said evidence would stand up in any court of law. Don't you think it at least warrants some open-minded scientific investigation?
Science, like anything else, is affected by belief. When people *believe* something to be untrue, they sometimes ignore reasonably solid evidence.
I'm not saying we have been visited by extraterrestrials. I suspect that we have, but that means nothing--just like if I were to suspect we haven't.
Take a look at disclosureproject.org. There's a lot of stuff in that testimony that can't be explained with lightning, weather balloons, secret aircraft, meteors, or swamp gas. And those people deserve better than to be dismissed as kooks and liars. Even if there are no extraterrestrials, there's definitely something going on that we don't know about, and that alone is worth the effort of serious research.
P.S. If anyone has any solid, verifiable information discrediting the Disclosure Project, I'm all ears. It just seems like it'd be a pretty hard thing to fake.
There's a problem with your hypothetical situation. The problem is that scientists never seem to witness strange flying objects defying the laws of physics. And those that do usually try to understand what they are seeing rather than pigeonholing it into to "aliens" category.
And there's the assumption again. I've never seen anything in the sky that I couldn't explain, either. And I've seen planets, stars, satellites, and even a comet. As an educated individual, I've never had any trouble identifying them. Plus, I'm just as able to load up Photoshop and throw together a blurry UFO photo as the next guy.
But that's not the point of my hypothetical. What I'd like you to consider is the highly unlikely (and perhaps impossible--we have no proof, after all) situation that you did see something--up close--that you couldn't explain. Do you suppose that maybe you'd keep it to yourself? Talking about flying objects doing physically impossible aerobatics would be pretty embarrassing in front of other scientists, wouldn't it?
I just want you to think about it without immediately saying "but that won't happen."