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Are US Voters Informed Enough About Science?
Naturalist writes "For decades, educators and employers have worried that too few Americans are preparing for careers in science. But there's evidence to support a new, broader concern in this election year: Ordinary Americans may not know enough about science to make informed decisions on key questions."
Whew.. I thought that question would be harder!
I thought it was general knowledge that ordinary people (not just Americans) don't know enough to make informed decisions. Not just science based issues, but all issues.
That's the beauty of democracy. You don't have to be qualified to have an opinion.
"Most people"probably aren't qualified to have a meaningful opinion on economics, agricultural policy, foreign policy, military strategy, etc., etc.
That's the price you pay for giving everyone a vote.
Science has *nothing* to say about the existence, or otherwise, of a supreme being.
Now, who's uninformed?
However, since most religions are mutually exclusive, statistics suggest that at least a majority of those people who believe in a supreme being are wrong.
I suspect that most of the reaction is about those who believe in creation (or even God for that matter); I could list several more:
1. Global climate change
2. Viability of alternate energy sources
3. Carbon credits
4. "Scary" parts of nuclear power.
5. Where the power from the electric car will come from.
I'm certain there's more. Disclaimer: I'm a conservative, which probably gives you some sort of impression of my views on the above.
Four out of three ordinary Americans agree they don't know enough about math and science. :)
Science has lots to say about the means by which such a being could act, and places restrictions on the time, place, and manner of such creative acts. Many of the things that science has excluded as possible means (barring massive deception on behalf of the selfsame being) are means that are expressed in religious texts. As a religious scientist, one is restricted fairly strongly to believing those texts only metaphorically, or not at all.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
How about economics? Psychology? Current events? Foreign relations?
People don't know enough about anything to make an informed decision when it comes to the actual issues. Campaign managers know how to spin anything to make their guy look good and the other guy look bad. I consider myself a fairly smart guy and there have been times where I've accepted a candidate's not-quite-straightforward answer until someone calls them on the facts.
No.
Long answer: Meh... There's really just the consolation that maybe Americans at least were never all that science savvy to begin with so the current state is nothing new. A more rigorous science education would probably be better.
I'd say a good start on that is to get the fucking religious dogma masquerading as science out of the schools. You know what I mean: intelligent design.
A good second step would be to hire more teachers who are actually good at science and math, but that would mean increasing the salaries and that probably won't happen. It used to be that intelligent women would do fulfill this need because of few career options but nowadays women can go on to science based careers not just in education. I've taught earth science to elementary education majors, very few of them found math and science to be enjoyable, but instead feared it. I can only presume they would transfer this to their students.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
That's the thing about voting. You get to vote regardless of whether someone thinks you have The Right Information about whatever topic. It's representative democracy. There are other forms of government that only let you decide in certain selected circumstances.
Almost every election we hear some variation on: "Americans are stupid. We hate them, their religion, their culture, and the things they like. Why won't they vote for us? Don't they know we're better than them and can lead them from their benighted ways?"
Yeah, we know. That's why you keep losing.
It's not just the yanks suffering from this.
Here in the UK we've had a bunch of morons sitting around outside a power station protesting about it burning coal. Fair enough, thats only mildly moronic but when they are also rabidly against any nuclear power alternatives it becomes stupidly moronic and when they suggest that everyone currently working in the power industry should be forced to move to the Shetlands and build wind farms it's unbelivably moronic.
Also people like Prince Charles speaking out about GM crops sets everyone a bad example.
This isn't a job interview. At least it shouldn't be. We can't possibly have enough information to determine who would do the best job of running the country. If we could judge that objectively, then there would be virtually no political decisions, instead just some skilled advisors in each subject.
Democracy is all about the subjective factors. Is a public health service better than lower taxes? Should we invest more in education? How much more? Is it better to have extra perks for minorities or should everything be equal? Is the level of immigration too high, too low or just right?
None of these have a right and a wrong answer. You pick the answers that seem right to you and pick the candidate that most closely represents your views.
Actually, if they otherwise put their faith in double-blind tests or whatever sound methodology, I couldn't care less if they also believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn or whatever.
But the most worrisome phenomenon is the large mass of people believing in homeopathy, magic (as in, that you can actually change the universe by refusing to believe it's really like that), natural snake oils, conspiracy-theory science, and the like.
I mean, seriously, there are people buying wooden volume knobs and $500 ethernet cables, believing that it makes their MP3s sound better. (I mean, an MP3 is already digital and a network cable transmits digital information. A 1 is a 1 is a 1, and 0 is a 0 is a 0. It doesn't sound "warmer" or "more natural".) At least one on the Hardware Central forums believed he can hear differences in how MP3's sound, based on the hard drive brand. And not because of hard drive noise or interference, but because the magnetic coating somehow makes a difference, like in old cassettes.
There are people who believe that power lines cause brain cancer. Or that they can detect a turned on cell phone by getting a headache near one.
There are people who think that "natural" minerals are healthier, and that, say, salt processed industrially has mollecules that are unnaturally round and regular, and can't be processed as well by the body.
There are people who drink water with extra O2 in it and think it actually makes a difference in how well oxygenated their body is. As if would even make a difference. (No, seriously, calculate it.)
Etc.
And while I'd love to point fingers and laugh at the USA, trust me, it's no better in Europe.
And anyway, that should already tell anyone all they need to know about voters and science. The above mentioned people have a right to vote too, you know.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
But science is predicated on what we see and observe. Should a supreme being decide to throw the rule book out the window, do all kinds of crazy shit, but then (being omnipotent), change everything around so we didnt see any of it then we'd be none the wiser.
So no, science doesnt restrict the acts of a supreme being at all. Do you really think God (should he exists) spends his days saying 'MeDammit, if only the laws of Physics were different....)
Omnipotence is the ultimate get out clause.....
An omnipotent being could very well make it so that all religions are correct at the same time, even the mutually exclusive ones.
Omnipotency is weird like that.
That is not omnipotency that is market segmantation. Like selling basically the same car as a chevy or an oldsmobile or a buick.
I will have a sig when the market demands it.
Why not?
If something exists, it is part of the natural world and can be examined through the scientific method.
Why is a supreme being excluded, tucked away in some comfortable pocket safe from rational enquiry? Science says that it is highly unlikely that dancing can affect rainfall. Science says that it is highly unlikely that anyone can walk through walls, or walk on water, or heal the sick by touching or praying. Practically any rational thinking human being will agree with these assertions and many more, but when it comes to God they suddenly go on the frotz like a malfunctioning robot.
So why can't Science say that your garden variety supreme being is highly unlikely to exist? Because a lot of people might get their widdle feewings hurt? Because they are afraid of there being no afterlife?
God is an unnecessary link in the chain. Adding God to the equation solves nothing and raises a million questions. By the remote possibility that he/she does exist, he/she ain't doing much. We evolved ourselves out of the mud and the slime. We learnt to walk, to cook food, to build skyscrapers and airplanes and put a man on the fucking moon. We did it our fucking selves. We are our own gods. That's the 'miracle' right there.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
the possibility that something exists is always there.
but actually saying that it exists with no evidence is just plain crazy.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Then you get a supreme being that is intentionally trying to make its existence seem unlikely or absurd, but still punishes you for all eternity if you do not believe in it.
Sounds like a loving deity to me.
In either case, the religious text are wrong in some respects, unless you take them metaphorically as the GP suggests.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
From: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html ... I would like to propose a different and more illuminating metaphor for American science education. It is more like a mining and sorting operation, designed to cast aside most of the mass of common human debris, but at the same time to discover and rescue diamonds in the rough, that are capable of being cleaned and cut and polished into glittering gems, just like us, the existing scientists. It takes only a little reflection to see how much more this model accounts for than the pipeline does. It accounts for exponential growth, since it takes scientists to identify prospective scientists. It accounts for the very real problem that women and minorities are woefully underrepresented among the scientists, because it is hard for us, white, male scientists to perceive that once they are cleaned and cut and polished, they will look like us. It accounts for the fact that science education is for the most part a dreary business, a burden to student and teacher alike at all levels of American education, until the magic moment when a teacher recognizes a potential peer, at which point it becomes exhilarating and successful. Above all, it resolves the paradox of Scientific Elites and Scientific Illiterates. It explains why we have the best scientists and the most poorly educated students in the world. It is because our entire system of education is designed to produce precisely that result. ... Let me finish by summarizing what I've been trying to tell you. We stand at an historic juncture in the history of science. The long era of exponential expansion ended decades ago, but we have not yet reconciled ourselves to that fact. The present social structure of science, by which I mean institutions, education, funding, publications and so on all evolved during the period of exponential expansion, before The Big Crunch. They are not suited to the unknown future we face. Today's scientific leaders, in the universities, government, industry and the scientific societies are mostly people who came of age during the golden era, 1950 - 1970. I am myself part of that generation. We think those were normal times and expect them to return. But we are wrong. Nothing like it will ever happen again. It is by no means certain that science will even survive, much less flourish, in the difficult times we face. Before it can survive, those of us who have gained so much from the era of scientific elites and scientific illiterates must learn to face reality, and admit that those days are gone forever. I think we have our work cut out for us."
"In the meantime, the real crisis that is coming has started to produce a number of symptoms, some alarming and some merely curious. One of these is what I like to call The Paradox of Scientific Elites and Scientific Illiterates. The paradox is this: as a lingering result of the golden age, we still have the finest scientists in the world in the United States. But we also have the worst science education in the industrialized world. There seems to be little doubt that both of these seemingly contradictory observations are true. American scientists, trained in American graduate schools produce more Nobel Prizes, more scientific citations, more of just about anything you care to measure than any other country in the world; maybe more than the rest of the world combined. Yet, students in American schools consistently rank at the bottom of all those from advanced nations in tests of scientific knowledge, and furthermore, roughly 95% of the American public is consistently found to be scientifically illiterate by any rational standard. How can we possibly have arrived at such a result? How can our miserable system of education have produced such a brilliant community of scientists? That is what I mean by The Paradox of the Scientific Elites and the Scientific Illiterates.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
True, but that's not the type of religion people base their lives on. The simple fact that there is a sentient, all encompassing being does not stipulate that there is an afterlife, that it's necessary live a good life or that homosexuality is a sin. You need a more specific set of beliefs for that.
I'm not religious myself, but just to play the devil's advocate:
1. Belief that it's all a metaphor doesn't necessarily make one any less religious. Saint Augustine argued exactly that: that the whole genesis is a metaphor and only an idiot would take it literally. He got sanctified by the Catholic Church. So...
2. (A possible) God doesn't have to obey his own rules, or exist _inside_ the universe he created.
Think of (a possible) God in terms of, say, a game programmer. Let's say you're this uber genius nerd in a CS university, you're bored enough one week and write the uber-universe simulation. Sort of like a SimCity or Children Of The Nile or The Sims 2 or Spore. Except let's say you're really really smart and have an uber-computer and those little creatures on your screen actually go sentient.
Now think about your position in the universe you just created. You're entirely outside it. In fact, there's no way for you to ever be _in_ it. You could create a character in that world, but it won't be _you_.
Also realize that whatever rules you set there, don't apply to _you_. E.g., if you set those creatures to no longer need to eat, it doesn't mean _you_ also suddenly don't.
Now also realize that you didn't sign any contract or anything. You can change the program's rules or bypass them any time you feel like it. If you want to raise a mountain over there, or have a jolly good flood, who's to stop you? Conservation of mass and energy? You can just change a variable and create more mass and energy. And if a bunch of those simulated people nailed your avatar to a cross, pfft, who's to keep you from resurrecting that char? Laws of biology? Pfft. You wrote the laws of their biology, and can amend them. Or change a bit in the database and have that guy up and kicking like nothing ever happened to him.
Or if that's too hard to palate, think Blizzard and WoW. All Blizzard employees exist outside of the world of Azeroth. In fact, they can't ever really be _in_ that world. They can create characters there, but the real "gods" at Blizzard are and remain fundamentally outside the world they created, and are not subject to their own laws. If they want to do something as mysterious and supernatural as creating a whole new island, or indeed a whole new planet out of nowhere (see the Burning Crusade launch), who's to keep them? If they don't like their own rules, who's to keep them from changing those rules?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
By around age 5 I learned most (if not all) of these facts from watching TLC or Discovery.
That we teach and test facts is part of the problem with science education in the US. I'm a science teacher at a public charter school and I struggle with this problem constantly. The comprehensive curriculum and Grade Level Expectations (standards) emphasize science as an inquiry skill. If I follow the GLEs, the most important skills I can teach are inquiry. That is to say, I should be teaching kids to ask questions, design experiments, do research, be curious and skeptical. This is a perfect science education. It doesn't matter if kids know exactly what the carbon cycle is, or if the sun is the center of our solar system. Instead, I'm giving them the skills to learn about these content knowledge areas.
Unfortunately, when it comes time to take a standardized test, 20% of the test asks kids to call upon their ability to do science by making predictions, designing experiments or comparing data. The other 80% of the test actually tests content knowledge (facts).
If you're familiar with blooms taxonomy, you know that regurgitating facts is the least mentally strenuous and intellectually challenging task. It's great if a kid knows that the earth orbits the sun and that sun orbits the center of the milky way and the milky way is part of a super cluster of galaxies, but isn't it more important that a kid knows how to do a good scientific experiment? That she knows what a control is, what a variable is and can shout, "BOGUS!" when an infomercial tells her that something--that clearly has not been--is scientifically proven.
What we need to do, is push for teaching and assessment (standardized tests) that challenge kids to think. We want science fairs that don't just show what the solar system is, but rather show off quality experiments that kids did regarding the solar system. Every citizen would benefit from the ability to not just know what a neurotransmitter is (that's what teh intertubes and books are for), but rather how to use scientific reasoning in solving problems and learning.
If you have kids, try encouraging your kid's teachers to try experiments in class. If you know what good science looks like, volunteer to help conduct a quality, rigorous experiment in your kid's school. Most of my colleagues at the elementary level are liberal arts majors that have NEVER been taught good science. They don't know what it looks like because their teachers failed them. If you sincerely care about your kid's education, help out the teacher. It has to start somewhere!
Encourage your kids to ask questions and then help them find the answer. Don't just look the damn thing up, teach them how to create a test that will either answer the question or lead them to more questions. Science is beautiful and doesn't have to subtract from the natural beauty of the world, rather it adds to it and reveals the subtle beauty and elegance of everything.
[Rant concluded.]
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
Good call. I'll mod him up right after this post.
The only thingn worse than democracy is everything else. No single person or even group of people is smart enough to know everything, and even very insightful people (Edward Gibbon, for example) make bad or inneffectual legislators. Even the ancient Greeks had problems with democracy, and Athens had what, about 10K people at the time? Problem is, every other system sucks worse. Democracy is the way it is because we are the way we are, and if people didn't suck, you wouldn't need government in the first place.
Evidence here: http://www.bythefault.com/2008/08/10/someone-missed-a-science-class/
-- 42 --
Wow, I did all that stuff because I wanted to help people. Not because I was afraid of a fiery hell or wanted a wonderful afterlife.
My experience is that people who help in the name of religion are doing more of a look at me thing. They want to look good and want to go to heaven. It is a peer system like highschool. They want to be cool and in the 'in' crowd. So they go along.
Beyond that, a lot of their 'good' work is used just to push their agenda. Will that christian homeless shelter take in a homeless man who refuses to embrace god? The ones around here require you to console with a church leader and read the bible. Which is why I choose not to donate my money or time to them.
I just wanted to do something good.
See this is why you want deliberative democracy. In practice this means replace the presidential veto with a large "jury trial", say 100 jurors (a large jury eliminates the need for jury selection). Congress critters would vote not just "yey" or "ney" but also for an "advocate". Any advocate receiving at least 5% or 10% from either the house or senate would have the right to argue in the trial. Mr. President could also name an advocate. In the trial, the advocates would try to convince randomly selected ordinary people that the law was good or bad, or to drop specific provisions, like pork. Advocates could also parade around expert witnesses, expose the biases of other witnesses, etc.
Such a system is really the only way to bring more science into government because people can not be expected to know much. Such a system is also the best way to control government spending.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Actually, I prefer to think of it this way.
It's not possible to combine the thought processes of tens or hundreds of millions of people into anything that resembles thinking or reasoning.
On a large scale, democracy cannot make wise choices in governing, nor can representative democracy be counted on to make wise choices of governors.
The one thing that makes democracy worthwhile is accountability. Democracy is no good at selecting good leaders, but it is better than any other kind of system at throwing bad ones out. Sometimes a bad leader might get lucky with the timing of an election of course, but in systems where opposition to the regime is a crime, a bad regime can always hang on until it's preferable to face jail or worse than tolerate for an instant longer.
This, incidentally, is why I don't believe in term limits. I don't believe in democracy's ability to select good leaders. However, it can pressure incumbent leaders not to be as bad as they might be. I therefore favor a system without term limits, provided the machinery of accountability is healthy and intact: open government, an independent and confrontational free press, an intact and reliable voting system. It is critical that leaders fear the wrath of the people, otherwise there is no point.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Schroedinger's God can exist and not exist at the same time, as long as you don't look at Him.
This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
Religion does not really have a problem with science. Religion has a problem with God. Everytime Religion comes face to face with something God has done, Religions freak out.
If you don't believe in God, you can just skip my reasoning here. If you do believe in God, and believe in a God that made the universe, please bear with me a few minutes.
Western peoples once believed the Earth was the center of the universe and the Sun an all of the planets and stars rotated around the Earth. When the Copernican model of a heliocentric solar system started to be taught, religious leaders opposed it. It contradicted their dogma and their doctrine. They thought that if the dogma and doctrine were proved wrong it would undermine religious authority. This still goes on today and is often portrayed as a 'fight' between 'science and God'.
But, for believers anyway, it was God that made the Earth and the Solar System. Who on Earth is powerful enough to try to dictate to God that God got it wrong? It seems the leaders of most religions think they are!
Religion was being brought face to face with the works of God. In particular a heliocentric Solar System. They didn't like it. Too bad for God! God should have known better! How dare he oppose doctrine and dogma like that. Who did God think they were undermining the Church's authority?
Its still going on today. Science reveals the way a part of the universe works through Evolution, quantum mechanics, or the big bang and Religions get in line to oppose it. They don't like being shown how God does things.
Its not 'science vs. God'. Its 'Religion vs. God'.
Religions don't like the way God chose to create the universe and they want to outlaw the study of God's creation (science). Religions do not like it when God gets God's way!
If Religions don't like the way God made the universe and the mechanisms at work in the universe (like Evolution), then those Religions should make clear to their followers how they disagree with God and don't like how God chose to do things. They should make clear that they prefer a book printed by Mankind or dogma created by Mankind over God's way.
If only God stayed out of their way, most Religions would be much happier.
(non believers can now return to their regularly scheduled programs)
The way he said it was kind of a cop out, but the idea has some reasonable basis. Let us assume for a moment a supreme being. this being is so vast and powerful as to be incomprehensible to human brains. Let us assume that his supreme being has,through out history, acted through Avatars (Christ, Buddha, Krishna, etc) to reveal portions of itself to mortal man. Being limited, these people who have been shown some portion of Truth, believe that they have seen the whole Truth. They are wrong, but they believe it.
The Supreme being, being.. well.. Supreme... understands that people cannot see all of It, and therefore considers all followers to be Its followers. No religion, even the ones that claim a monopoly on truth need be entirely right, but none need be entirely wrong either. From a logical prospective, religions have many individual tenants each conceivably with its own truthness and falseness. You're presenting a scenario where if any one piece of the religion is false than it must all be false. Think how it would be if science were held to same standard:
'Oh, well, ya know I thought we had something with his whole evolution model, but i can't figure out how this one piece fits so we'll just have to scrap the whole thing.'
Religions, from this point of view are analogous to sweeping models, not to individual facts which can be proven or disproven. Like every model, some parts are going to be stronger than other parts, and you're never likely to able to be sure of the whole thing.
Now I'll grant you that some people are far to dogmatic to look at their religions that way, but it doesn't mean it not a viable way of looking at them, and many people use some modified version of this way of thinking of their and other religions. Unitarian Universalists and many Neo-Pagans think of religion this way for certain.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
All the religions focus on banning behaviors that were perceived to be harmful to their regional society at the time. The differences are largely because they were started in different places and times.
Several religions consider pork unclean. The religions sprang up in the Middle East where water was scarce. Pigs use lots of water. Therefore, pork ranked right up there with gluttony in the absence of a modern world market. There were also health issues, IIRC.
Even banning homosexual behavior could possibly be explained away as a desire to preserve evolutionary diversity. If having a percentage of people who are homosexual in the gene pool confers some evolutionary advantage, and if saying "Sex with your own gender is wrong because it can't create children" made it more likely that those traits were preserved in future generations, it's possible that the seemingly arbitrary rule in question prevented the trait from dying out by attrition. That certainly doesn't make it right in a modern world where artificial insemination can produce the same effect, of course.
The point is that you shouldn't assume that those seemingly arbitrary rules you talk about really were arbitrary. It is equally possible that they served a necessary purpose at the time which simply no longer makes sense in a modern world.
Just a thought (and admittedly a somewhat bizarre one).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Atheism is in itself a belief system. The belief that there is no God.
Like the way not collecting stamps is a hobby ?
Also a lot of the rules made sense in the context of how ancient people thought. Many of the Kosher dietary restrictions were created during the Babylonian captivity, as a way to keep the Hebrew National Identity alive. Many of them specifically forbid dietary practices common to Babylonian society of the time in order to limit the contact between Hebrews and Babylonians. Breaking bread and eating together have been symbols of friendship since time immemorial, limiting the ability of Hebrews to so so with their captors slowed assimilation (Ironically Kosher laws have performed similar duties many times since).
Similarly, religious laws require sacrifice of food stuffs made great sense in the ancient world. Sure people thought the Gods wanted the stuff they were sacrificing (and why not when you have a very anthropomorphic concept of God), but since most of the food sacrificed was taken and stored by the priestly classes, it also conveniently provided food storage for emergency use and a way to feed and cloth such non-essential people as artists, scribes and administrators. It is arguable that sacrificing food to the Gods was the basis for civilizations (or at least one of them).
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.