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How To Make Science Popular Again?
Ars Technica has an interesting look at the recent book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, a collaboration between Chris Mooney, writer and author of The Republican War on Science, and scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum. While it seems the book's substance is somewhat lacking it raises an interesting point; how can science be better integrated with mainstream culture for greater understanding and acceptance? "We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry. We recognize there are many heroes out there already toiling toward this end and launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate. But what we need — and currently lack — is the systematic acceptance of the idea that these actions are integral parts of the job description of scientists themselves. Not just their delegates, or surrogates, in the media or the classrooms."
a big part of the problem I suspect is that people don't get to do much science around the house or at school. I suspect that if they were actually allowed/encouraged to do so you would see a rapid increase in the public's interest in science. unfortunately, DIY science has been under attack for quite some time in the home and in the school system its self. mostly in the name of safety... The proper response to safety concerns would be to educate the public on relevant safety practices rather than ban or severely limit scientific experimentation by the public. It would also help to show how the sciences are relevant to everyone's every day lives. Much of the reason the public's interest in the sciences is lower than it could be is that they do not see why knowing basic science is useful to them. It has to be more expansive than "because it will create jobs" which it will certainly but the immediate impact of the sciences must be emphasized.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Not to make this a US only problem, but the books reference do apply strictly to US. There was a big sea-change in the 90s where smart became unpopular. The culture today is obsessed with celebrities and other voyeristic experiences. What is needed is some good old fashioned competition. When other countries start to drastically exceed the US in science innovations and applications to daily life, then some of us will wake up from the stupor and numbness of "reality" tv. It's already happened in several key areas like commonly available bandwidth to the home. Society needs to: wake up and rediscover the joy of learning, creativity, and exploration.
As you can tell, I think this article touches on a very serious problem. Sagan said it best:
Here's a pretty solid quote from Alun Anderson, New Scientist editor, "Science writing used to be slightly apologetic: [puts on whiny voice] "this is all going to be terribly difficult, but I'll try and make it easy for you". Like they've sugar coated something you don't really want to take. Our goal was to really change that - change the people and the ideas - to be self-confident. Science often suffers from this sort of cringe factor - "I'm a boring scientist, you probably don't want to talk to me". My policy was if you're talking to someone else the approach is: "what's happening in science is the most interesting thing in the world, and if you don't agree with me just fuck off, because I'm not interested in talking to you". You had to have that kind of attitude." Teh article here--> http://www.sussex.ac.uk/alumni/notablealumni/interviews/alunanderson/
The general idea being there is a lack of discord in fields of research because the money for research comes with strings attached in the form of corporate sponsored research or politically motivated public-sector grant processes.
Here's a nice example of one way the social science of economics has become irrelevant.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/09/why-economists-rarely-saw-bad-things-about-the-fed.html
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Chris Mooney interviewed earlier on The Colbert Report about the importance of science. Funny, tragic, effective.
I'm glad the article mentions this aspect of the problem. I work in a university maintaining computer equipment. Just last week I was in a biology class as it was ending, and the professor got into a heated debate with a student who was clearly a creationist. And it reminded me of how some who should know better do so very little to help the religious understand science, rather, they distract from the actual questions that need to be asked. (For the record, I was raised a creationist and I am certainly not one now, if I am religious in any sense it is perhaps in the vein of Einstein's 'god'.. and I can tell you that if anything impedes the creationist coming to understand evolution, it is belligerent atheists who do not understand the creationist mindset.)
As an example.. back to my anecdote: The creationist assumes that all scientists are acting out of some personal vendetta to get god, that's what his bible literature and church has told him. The teacher immediately makes the tactical blunder of outright implying 'you can't scientifically prove your myths' and as correct as that may be, saying this outright only confirms the fears of the student, making the student become defensive, hence confirming the fears the teacher has that his student is living in a delusion. And the conversation can go in circles for hours, the teacher not really helping the student, the student not learning anything about scientific methodology.
How different that conversation would have gone if the teacher simply started things off by saying 'science is simply a method for testing and observing the world. it cannot prove or disprove the existence of your god. that's not what it's for. some religious people think god exists and used evolution and the big bang to create the universe. scientifically, we can't know. all we know is that pretty much all observational evidence points out that the universe is expanding and that life is evolving. it doesn't tell us how/why/where it all came from.'
I don't know if this would convince the student, but it would at least be a start, rather than arguing about the student's internal belief system, which will certainly not get the student to crack that textbook and start analyzing the facts for himself.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
Very well said, sir. The solution I came up with for this problem would be to have a separate class in school teaching logical reasoning and the scientific method. Science teaching should be approached as a system of thought rather than a collection of facts. I mean, I am as fascinated by science as anyone and yet even I can remember being bored to tears in all of my science classes because of this dry treatment.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
The problem is that on top of economy and culture, politicians also take into account... politics: what will benefit most MY home state, what will please MY core constituents most... When an administration does not even heed simple facts (there's no link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, condoms are the most efficient weapon agains AIDS...) , there's no chance it all Science will get a fair hearing.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
"We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry."
Science is relevant to every last person on the planet, given the science behind world-altering technology related to Nuclear energy, Climate Change, and biological engineering (just to name a few). The problem isn't that it's irrelevant (although that may not have been the author's precise intent in that word.) The problem is that what little science is picked up by the general public is subject to spin by those who have nothing to do with (and little comprehension of) science, namely politicians.
What's required isn't to make science popular, it's to make fact checking and critical thinking popular. It doesn't matter how little or much you understand of Clean coal technology (as an example); when you are subject to misleading information from all angles of mainstream media what you need is the ability to think for yourself or you are going to be led astray (from science). Too many people are willing to believe whatever 'preferred news outlet x' has to say on a subject and their beliefs quickly align with whatever interest the "journalist" has in mind for them. They proceed with their lives thinking that they are sufficiently informed since they were assured by their favorite news outlet that the "science behind" a particular issue aligns with their interests.
You can't change the laws of the universe, and well done science is almost as unwavering. When these things conflict with what you want, your best bet is distraction and misunderstanding. THATS the problem we face.
Agreed. TFA worries about how scientists can also worry about public relations. Perhaps the first thing that needs to be done is getting people interested enough that they might care about science in the first place, and not just in a facile way of "wow--isn't that neat?" I'm mainly talking about teaching science in primary and secondary school. Currently, the anti-intellectual climate (which is often anti-science as well) isn't helped by bad schools, bad teachers, and bad curriculum choices.
Example of the problem. I taught high school math and physics for a few years in the early 2000s in the US. In my physics classes, I encouraged a lot of analysis and actual thinking to earn a good grade. We would do lots of hands-on experiments, from which we'd derive data, and then analyze that data and compare it to theory. I encouraged students to bring in their own questions they encountered in daily life that were related to the things we were discussing, and we'd investigate them. A lot of students balked when I required them to think on tests, rather than just regurgitate information or solve another problem exactly like one they did ten times on a homework assignment, but eventually most of them learned a lot of critical thinking skills. By the end of the year, I'd trust most of them to set up an experiment, collect data, and analyze results in the real world, as well as to critically evaluate that sort of task done by others, at least using the limited mathematical tools they had at their disposal. Many of them also left with a much more curious attitude about how the world worked than when we began the year.
This worked great in the private school I taught in, since we have freedom over the curriculum. Contrast this to my first year teaching in a lower middle class public school where I was straightjacketed by a state curriculum.
I had to teach algebra II to a bunch of kids who had crappy preparation. Many of them had a substitute teacher for much of algebra I, most had little understanding of even pre-algebra, and some of them couldn't even do basic arithmetic without a calculator. (By "basic" arithmetic, I mean things like 12 minus 7.)
I came into this classroom late in the fall, because the previous teacher quit after she refused to try to teach algebra II to students who couldn't even understand basic math. She wanted to do remedial work so they might actually learn something useful, rather than just how to move meaningless symbols around. Almost all of my 140 students were juniors or seniors, and for most, this would be the last math class they would ever take. Very few would go to college. What did we teach them?
One example: we spent almost 6 weeks on conic sections. Mostly on how to put equations in standard form and name the various characteristic parts, since that was required by the state curriculum, and my high school cared much more about that than whether the students actually could do anything. When we got to exponential equations, I tried to give them an application involving compound interest and loans, and I found that only 2 out of my 140 students knew what compound interest was. And most of them couldn't follow the application anyway, because before they took my class, they had never been asked to use algebra to actually DO anything before; to them it was just moving meaningless symbols around until they solved for a variable. The only reason they were taking a second year of algebra was because in that state it qualified them for a better diploma.
So, in other words, we were graduating a bunch of students who could put the equation of a hyperbola in standard form, even though they didn't really know what a hyperbola was, but they had never heard of compound interest and had no tools for evaluating the terms of a loan. (Maybe this has something to do with the economic fiasco?) And I couldn't spend more time on the latter, because the state curriculum required me to move on.
These students had no critical thinki
Of course, a lot of it has to do with education... but a lot of education has to do with what your philosophy of life is.
For example... more recently, it seems, individualism has been raised to an incredibly high pedestal. It no longer really matters what others think, as long as you think you're doing the right thing. It doesn't matter what your parents teach you; in fact, your parents really don't know anything. It doesn't matter how well you do in school, as long as you are popular and have "social skills." It doesn't matter how you succeed in your line of work, as long as you think you do well. It doesn't matter what kind of art you produce, as long as it's "self expression." It doesn't really matter what you learn, as long as you LIKE learning it.
With that sort of prevailing pop-culture attitude/philosophy, how CAN scientific endeavors thrive? There's no reason to look or learn about science. It's just some other guy's research, why would I want to read about it? Why should I care?
There IS a correlation between some historical scientific figures and their philosophy of life. For example, some believed in a Creator, and that had a great deal to do with their philosophy of science, and thus gave them a reason to pursue it. That's just one example, there are examples of completely atheistic scientists too, I suppose.
Short version: if your philosophy of science (which comes from your philosophy of life) gives you no reason to pursue scientific endeavors (including "education") then why should I expect you to do so?
And, at least in the US, when our schools promote a rather distinctly weak philosophy of life and philosophy of science, when the schools are more interested in "educating" with political and social agendas instead of actual useful educations..
I actually came from a homeschooling situation and then went to a public junior college for a year or two. I learned far more before high school than most of my junior college peers knew... and not just in scientific subjects, but things like grammar and vocabulary. As for what I missed socially and politically... yes, I did miss out on some things. Like drugs and learning that wearing pants such that you have to hold them up with one hand is "cool." And learning that treating girls like sex objects is a good thing to do. And learning that lying and cheating is the way to succeed and get an education... or at least get through high school. Somehow, these kids were in "college," presumably "graduated" from high school, and didn't even know what an "adjective" or "adverb" was... let alone how to do simple algebra or what in the world an ion is.
I think there's something wrong with a lot of our philosophy... philosophy of education, of science, of life... and it distinctly shows up in schools. It seems that the ones I saw in my limited public school experience that succeeded were of two kinds. The first: they came from a family that promoted (or required) a different philosophy. The second: they were older people that realized what a failure the philosophy they had or their family had, and were now working to fix it by finishing their education and actually working hard and learning. I very much respected the older (30s and 40s) students in my classes because I knew they were likely having a harder time than I was (had children, had full time jobs, etc) but were still dedicated to doing it. I didn't particularly respect the normal-aged college students that didn't care about learning and just didn't want to get an F, because then they'd have to take the class over again (what a drag!)...
Having finally read this book (despite low expectations), I can confirm that per the poor reviews it offers very little that's new. When it does forward a unique point of view, such as this suggestion that public communicator become part of the job of 'the scientist' (as in just about every scientist), it's absolutely ridiculous. Scientists usually have enough on their plates with little things like research, grant writing, internal politics, etc., without some science writers who completely lack data to back up their thesis telling them to start up and maintain a blog, column, or attend even more conventions. Those who do maintain such things tend to be either 1) incredibly busy, busier than I'd like to be, or 2) have a lighter research load than is desired by many. I'm not badmouthing option 2), it includes scientists who do try to focus more on public outreach and teaching, which is very admirable and valuable. Just don't expect every person interested in scientific research to want to devote their time to it.
All of this is a little beside the point, too. Sheril and Chris make a large part of their thesis into blaming the scientists for a lack of communication. It's why this recommendation quoted in this article is one of their only unique ones, unique in how extreme it is. While you can blame scientists for misrepresenting the importance of their research (not all research has a direct practical benefit, even if it's fantastic), blaming them for not being in the public sphere is difficult when we already have so many teaching scientists and public scientists who would love to come on television or radio and do attend conventions. The thing is, when they can even get on a show relevant to their expertise, they get a 2 minute blurb at best to dumb down their subject and try not to mess things up. They get paired with a creationist or 'holistic doctor' or just general ignoramus and have to spend their time (again, just a few minutes) attempting to debunk the inanity. That is not an environment conducive to educating the general public nor for raising appreciation for the sciences. The (partial) exception is public radio, where scientists can speak about their research for twenty minutes to an hour on something like Science Friday.
By focusing on scientists, they avoid the larger problems with the public's appreciation of science. Everyone here at slashdot knows about the fantastic solar cells that are 'just around the corner' and other tech predictions which never come to market and the same applies to science articles in general: there's a glut of misrepresented research which has been illegitimately hyped up for sensationalism, especially in medicine. Such irresponsible journalism, supported by low-level science journalists as well as their editors (either one can make a piece way too hyped), leads to a mistrust of news about scientific breakthroughs. Now, I don't have data for that (just like Sheril and Chris!), but I know that I ignore every article about a scientific breakthrough just around the corner unless I have to 1) debunk it or 2) it's related to my major and I know that other people do the same. Furthermore, journalists often simply don't understand the science they're reporting and make serious errors. Chris knows this, he's criticized shoddy science journalism in the past on his blog and made it into a theme. He knows that it hurts the reputations of scientists and the general undestanding of science. Apparently, however, rather than promoting good science reporting directly or finding a market solution to avoiding too much hype, it's time to blame the scientists for not reaching out enough.
Sorry, got on a bit of a rant there. Aside from poor journalism and a generally inhospitable media, there's also the problem of science education in school (mine was atrocious, in retrospect) and the elephant in the room: anti-intellectualism in all its forms, including a number of religious and political movements. Despite all of these forces working against the pu
I agree to the extent of what I can relate to in what you say, although you have to be careful with your suggested course of action. I think there's a tendency in reform to try to address the problem blindly hoping it works, it's a way to do it, but it's not very safe. The safe and efficient way to do it is to look at how countries with a successful educational system do it, and try to model after them, without straying from what's been tried and met with success.
It's often said that you can't just copy another country to fix your issues. That may be true most of the time, but like I said education is the same problem for anyone, and because of that looking up to a successful as a role model is a good and relatively safe thing to do.
You just got troll'd!
If there is a difference in IQ tests between different races (and if you manage to genuinely isolate cultural factors from your testing, then I'm gobsmacked), then it's a very small difference, or else it would be obvious to us. And if the difference is that small then it's (a) going to overwhelmed in pretty much all instances by more significant factors such as upbringing, amount of free time, etc. and (b) worthless to base generalized behaviour on. Besides, everyone is shagging each other so in a century's time, it will all even out anyway.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
And of course, Michael Crichton was a man with a serious sense of debate and mature behaviour when it came to Global Warming.
Bonus points for reading the section above that one about Michael Crichton's misuse of Peter Doran's work, and similar issues with his "evidence".
I have to disagree with the tone of the majority of these postings. Maybe my non-scientist friends (and relatives) aren't representative of the population as a whole, but it seems to me that the public is extremely interested in science, politics, philosophy, etc. I hang out with a bunch of stand-up comics in Brooklyn and they're constantly bombarding me with questions about my research as well as the state of the art in science in general. There was also a poll recently (can't find the link, but I think it was a /. post a few months ago) suggesting that, in general, the public perceives what scientists are doing as important, relevant, and interesting, and that the majority of the people have a great deal of respect for scientists. The poll also found, however, that it doesn't work both ways, which is probably pretty telling as to where an examination of the type undertaken by the authors of the book in TFA should start.
I think the problem lies in the fact that everyone (media, scientists, laypeople) confuses a very vocal minority of anti-intellectuals with the populace at large, and that some really bad policy decisions are made because of it. I know people will probably point to other polls saying 'X(large) % of people don't believe in evolution' or whatnot, but we can reasonably ask how much those people actually know about evolution and why they should believe a theory if they don't have any understanding of it (especially if it goes against their preconceived notions in some way). The problem lies in the teaching of science and critical thinking skills in general. I'm not sure how indictable the parents are in this instance, since many parents are laypeople in their own right. Poverty of knowledge is just like any other poverty: a self-perpetuating cycle. But that doesn't mean that the average person wouldn't want to talk about science and increase their understanding of it, even in a casual setting. We as scientists occupy a unique position in the public's eye, and we should take advantage of it (after all, when's the last time someone wanted to talk to their accountant uncle about the breakthroughs going on in the world of accounting?).
I have been in academia literally all of my life and have yet to meet more than a small handful of the kinds of folks you speak of. My grandfathers worked on atomic energy and mass production of penacillin, as well as take a turn at being the Dean of the UNC School of Pharmacy. My mother and father both worked in the university for most of their careers.
Yes I have had a couple of bad teachers, but they I while I could call them arrogant or dogmatic I could hardly call them privileged, and in retrospect it seems like they were on the edges precisely because of their dogma. My tenure in physics taught me to be prepared to think outside of dogma, explicitly and implicitly, and this was re-enforced when I changed my major over to English.
I see this stereotype bandied about, just as the leftist and rightist stereotypes are pushed around and feel that they are just as damaging to the American political landscape as racial stereotypes where to its social landscape.
Sorry, but you seem to state that
however; it is certainly true that
just so we could move forward, could you please give some example of a "real IQ test" which uses logic, math, and spatial recognition without any cultural biases? Most of the cases I have seen have shown problems that probably have the same solutions in different cultures, but are much easier to solve for people who have some specific experience or lack some other experience (e.g. a pattern of numbers may match some standard sequence in a culture and so the "next in the sequence" may be completely different in one culture from another. For bonus points, please tell us how to identify good "real IQ tests"; for example an association of testers you would recommend.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
There are many reasons for why science isn't popular these days.
Start with looking into an old manual for some technical device. Often you will find wiring diagrams, mechanical overview and a lot of things and descriptions. This may not be too interesting for adults, but curious kids will certainly look and even disassemble some devices. Just ask yourself - have you disassembled a clock? Gotten a shock from a CRT? Blown a fuse?
And in schools it's often all about theory and little hands on.
Sure - with today's embedded tech it's very hard for kids to learn anything by taking things apart.
And then there are people that thinks that kids shouldn't get their hands dirty.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
That's not the reason. People have always been consumerist. And to a certain extent, people have always been apathetic about science. I'm of the belief that what has changed is not the amount or type of education people have received in science, but how they have perceived it.
There was a time that when a respected scientist made a statement on something, people sat up and (politely) paid attention. Remember Feynman's report on the Challenger disaster? Name me from memory one other member of the committee? Carl Sagan was frankly, sensationalist in the way he went about things. But nevertheless people watched his programs. Scientists didn't have to be attention seeks to get respect either.
Einstein was 20 years past the media hype that surrounded his results, but such was his stature as senior physicist that it took only one short letter signed by him to convince Roosevelt that an atomic bomb was a) feasible and b) worth spending $2 billion on research and development for. Going farther back, scientists like Stokes and Kelvin sat on many important committees and inquiries deciding and investigating important issues of the day.
Once upon a time, governments would request that scientific societies produce reports or conduct studies into important matters. Nowadays, governments question, condemn or ignore such reports.
What happened? Why did Jane Fonda movies about a meltdown burrowing to the center of the earth or movies about instant freezing ice storms have more impact on our Nuclear and environmental policies than sound science? When Steven Weinberg asked the US congress to fund the Superconducting Super Collider, why did they find it so easy to decline him? The money? The Europeans have spent that amount and tenfold more on CERN and the LHC. Why, after Daubert v. Merrell Dow, do lay judges have to decide weather a scientists is actually an expert in a particular field. How did George Deutsch, a man with only a high school diploma, come to be in charge of NASA press releases?
Scientists are not respected in our society anymore. Lay people with no knowledge of the field whatsoever feel free to argue with, nitpick and outright dismiss studies and experiments. Paid think tanks command more influence than the Royal Society when it comes to science and education policy. Science by press release has become a bigger way to gain fame and funding than a mountain of research papers.
Society is to blame for this state of affairs. But should we really be looking at the education system, or parents, or teenagers, or the TV? What caused the change in attitude to science in the Anglophone world? The media? Marketers? Politicians? The legal system? All of the above? None of the above? Whatever did it, we'd best go about fixing it, because it sure as hell won't correct itself.
May the Maths Be with you!
Selective pressure will save the day.
As the world continues to make scientific progress (albiet more slowly than theoretically possible, but that is acceptable), it will slowly become increasingly difficult for the unintelligent and uneducated to survive.
Consider, for example, how many people are being victimized by identity theft as a direct result of failing to understand the Internet. Consider also how many livible-wage-paying jobs require computer literacy. Both examples are limited to computers, of course, but they demonstrate what I believe to be a continuing trend.
Plenty of people would *like* to believe that their inability to understand science is the fault of the scientist for being too unskilled to explain it to them. Might it instead be that gaining a deeper level of understanding of the universe requires a deeper level of intelligence than the average human has?
So, I say stay the course. Advance as we can, make our lives more complicated as those advances dictate, and allow natural selection to weed out those who can't cope. Yes, this attitude isn't exactly compassionate. But mother nature has never been known for her compassion.
I read somewhere that teaching is 1/4 knowledge and 3/4 theatrics. Actually, teaching is 10% knowledge and 90% understanding your target audience. Mythbusters understands its target audience, which explains the presence of Kari on the show! Jamie and Adam are not scientists, they are showmen. If they did insist on rigorous adherence to traditional scientific method, nobody would watch the show. Nevertheless, they do teach how to cleverly devise experiments to test a hypothesis, and there is a lot you can learn from watching. Perhaps the most important thing you can learn is that experiments sometimes don't turn out the results you expect.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So, how do we make science (and other "intelligent" subjects) popular again?
Here are a two suggestions:
Participate in activities that involve active learning, exploration, and participation in the real world rather than passive entertainment or propaganda. Here are a few ideas:
I could go on-and-on with all kinds of activities that people could participate in that have foundations in chemistry, biology, maths, engineering, etc. Unfortunately, we seem to gravitate towards activities that involve consuming (media, shopping, food, etc.) rather than producing something. To consume something all you need is money and appetite. To produce something you actually need to think and develop skills.
It seems to me that a widespread brain leak has been occurring in most of the western world, where science has lost the popularity it had gained (somewhat) during the 60s.
Wrong. I was born in 1952, and science NEVER was popular. We nerds were shunned as parias and only started getting respect when computers started getting popular with non-nerds.
I blame the sorry state of US public education, where the science teachers can make the fascinating into something as dull as watching paint dry.
Free Martian Whores!
There is no 'natural' gravity to 'Sports Figures' or pop stars. This is a trained, social response.
People worship "American Idol" over Stephen Hawking, because they are SOLD and MANIPULATED these values. Crude appeal to animal sensations are made, and then rewarded socially, when "appropriately" responded to.
Again, the selective placement of these "investments" is no accident or whim.
The Soviets successfully made becoming a Physicist or Radiologist desirable and even "sexy" objectives for several decades.
Before this, Napoleon instituted the reformation of Académie des sciences. Becoming an Engineer was thereafter regarded tantamount to the status of peerage, for earlier generations. In fact, this status remains in those Asian and mid-East countries that emulated the French model.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
For all the references to popular esteem of the sciences the 1950s and '60s, no one is asking, 'why?'
I think the answers goes to why we follow spectator sports. It also goes to why we have the current political environment.
People like Us v Them. We like having winners and losers, even if it means sometimes begin a loser.
Fox News and MSMBC have the following they do not because the common man wants to get in to the minutia of the government sausage factory. We are not a nation of policy wonks. It's Democrat v Republican; conservative v liberal.
Science was the same way after WWII. It was our scientists v their scientists. Our bomb v their bomb. Our rocket v their rocket.
The problem with science, though, is that it isn't sexy. By the time you're an elite scientist, you're old and grey whereas elite sportsmen are young and vigourous and all the things our hindbrains crave.
Not true. While a successful scientist is usually able to maintain a productive level of performance longer than an athlete, the physical sciences and mathematics are very much a young persons game.
And science is slow - you can't follow Fermilab like some do a baseball team. Let's face it: science is slow and tedious and not very exciting day-to-day.
Again I disagree. Sports are slow. Sunday on the pitch is exciting. Perhaps the highlights of training camp are exciting. But the thousands of hours in the gym, lifting the same weights or climbing the same stairs for hours are just as boring as thousands of hours of practice a musician goes through or the preparation a scientist goes through.
The difference is not the speed and the amount of drudgery to achieve excellence.
The difference is scheduling. For the sports fan, the practice is boring but come Sunday noon, there will be excitement. For the music fan, the practice is boring but come Saturday night, there will be excitement.
For the science fan, we don't know when the excitement will come. Science doesn't work on a schedule the same way.
You want people to be able to discuss science the same way they discuss politics? You want the public adoration for scientists bestowed upon athletes? Just make science the Us v Them competition it was during the height of the cold war.
I wonder if the lack of interest in Science in general is due to there being less and less 'easy' things to discover?
Back in the 1800's/1900's, Science was often associated with inventions or entrepreneurial activities. Now so much of science is very minute discoveries, often requiring specialized equipment and intense training, that the average person out there probably feels very distant from it.
What grabs the average mind more, the invention of the steam engine or the discovery of some obscure physics particle? To appreciate the physics discovery, you need to have a much greater understanding of physics, while just about anyone can be excited about a big steaming engine:)
Unless said "TV celebrity" slept with me last night, I don't give a shit who they did sleep with.
This is an attitude that needs to be cultivated. IMHO
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
I would argue that what most people call anti-intellectualism is actually anti-elitism. Americans, in general, don't dislike intellectuals. They do take a very dim view on elitists, however. Elitists are often intellectuals of one stripe or another though, and it's more comforting to suggest that people don't like you because you're smart rather than admit that people don't like you because you're a pushy, meddlesome asshole.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
You've almost got it. Sure, rivers were polluted, but now they are not - we have the technology to fix it. Safety standards have been developed. All the while life expectancies and quality of life improved. And if you think a mythical, idyllic subsistance agrarian utopia ever existed, think again - it was/is nasty, short and brutish, or "social cost" in your euphemistic words. Ask any third-world person which he would prefer.
If we said that rivers can never be polluted, then the industries would never have been built. The end result of such path would be a lower standard of living.
"...running industry as a terrifying dehumanized process..." This applies only to someone who does not understand it.
In short, you are an example of our society, which fears progress, fears the unknown (which is pretty much everything) and where "the perfect if the enemy of the good".
P.S. What is your point in referring to "poor brown people"?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I'm curious, and wish you had discussed the sorts of people from whom you were hearing such nihilistic views of scientific discoveries. In my own experience, for whatever it's worth, people actually in the thick of science tend to range all over the map on how they interpret the actual meaning of the facts.
Nihilism has certainly played a part, but that primarily seems to come from a set of novice scientists (undergrads and the like) who (I imagine) would be like that whether or not science was a significant facet of their lives. IE, it is the same sort of thinking that jumps to the "moral relativism" idea which is popular among many young college students.
I certainly agree that nihilistic views turn off a lot of people to science, and that it would be good if there was a general shift away from that sort of view. However, I do wonder how much the idea that science discoveries undermine the meaning in our day-to-day is simply a product of the person hearing about those discoveries.
Short anecdote to finish: I have a young nurse friend who has over the past year or so become enamored with that TV series "The Universe" (I think it's on Discovery?). This idea of the universe utterly dwarfing everything that has ever happened or will happen on Earth tends (in my experience) to make people feel unpleasant, sad, etc. She instead has found it more or less awe-inspiring. That's the kind of response I like to see from people, because the universe -is- amazing. By extension, our exploration of it via science is amazing.
I wonder what it is in a person that makes them react differently. It's sad.
Russia and France were mature countries with secular ideals. The US was settled by religious fanatics who were often hounded out of their home countries.
Despite some American leaders being Freethinkers, the mob remained and remains simple religious beasts, especially
in rustic areas originally settled by the lower classes. The resurgence of religion, especially Evangelical Christianity, means that the "Christian Taliban" theocrats are seeking control of the country. That's hardly a climate receptive to science.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The last science fair I did in public school was ridiculous.
Here were some of the rules, that they sprung on us a week before submission...
1: no electricity.
2: no acids.
3: no bases.
4: no projectiles.
5: no gases.
6: no glass.
7: no metal.
8: no liquids.
9: no living things.
10: nothing sharp.
11: no chemicals of any kind.
12: nothing scary.
I had to scrap my rail gun at the last minute to do some solubility in water BS, and I still ended up breaking a few of the rules to do even that.
Spatial cognition has been shown to be culturally variable
I love the example given in Language and Cognition: Investigating the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis:
'Follow me to Pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia. I came here because of the way the locals, the Kuuk Thaayorre, talk about space. Instead of words like "right," "left," "forward," and "back," which, as commonly used in English, define space relative to an observer, the Kuuk Thaayorre, like many other Aboriginal groups, use cardinal-direction terms â" north, south, east, and west â" to define space.1 This is done at all scales, which means you have to say things like "There's an ant on your southeast leg" or "Move the cup to the north northwest a little bit." One obvious consequence of speaking such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot speak properly. The normal greeting in Kuuk Thaayorre is "Where are you going?" and the answer should be something like " Southsoutheast, in the middle distance." If you don't know which way you're facing, you can't even get past "Hello."'
Happy moony
"Popularized, maybe, with the moon shots and all, but NEVER popular."
I was born in 1959, and your statement is dead-on.
Ever ready to reap the benefits of science, American culture is still bitterly backward and only changes slowly despite what popular media would have us believe. The capable few change themselves, while the mob just drone along as usual. America despises smart people, exalting the retarded (note all the programs for window-lickers) and largely abandoning their gifted superiors. The US school system was a Hellmouth long before Jon Katz wrote about it.
We need a self-aware, pro-science counterculture than can enable those who are deserving and eager, and rescue/separate them from their toxic inferiors.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
As WrongMonkey said, it sounds like you went to a pretty "Movie Stereotype" High School. My experience was different. One of my best friends was easily the best all around athlete as well as the smartest person at my high school. Basketball was his real interest and he spend a lot of time honing his abilities. Unfortunately for him, he stopped growing at about 6'3" so any serious future basketball playing got tossed out of the Window. Years later, he still plays ball in the Faculty league at Notre Dame where he is a professor. I would put myself in the top five or so in my class in intelligence and was also a pretty darn good athlete in high school. I didn't have anyone that could compete with me in short distance running (50 yards to 1/4 mile), had a 40 inch vertical, and was deceptively strong. Unfortunately I topped out at 5'10" cutting my organized sports career shorter than I would Have liked. ;(
Football was the sport I was referring to when I was talking about strategy but don't kid yourself if you don't think intelligence doesn't play a part in other sports. The friend I talked about above, myself, and two other intelligent, height challenged individuals played in a lot of 3 on 3/4 on 4 tournaments up until our mid 20's. We beat teams that all appearances suggested that we didn't even belong on the court with because we played smart and played as a team. It is amazing what some really quick thinking can do to make up for inferior physical skills.
When off the court/field/gym my friends and I mostly did nerdy stuff (And still do to this day when we get together). Talk about computers/science/philosophy, have LAN parties, play strategy board games, play AD&D, that sort of thing. I guess I get angry when I see people who like sports get lumped into this category of being idiots because of how much sports enriched (and continue to enrich) my life. Maybe it was never your thing, perhaps due to complete lack of interest or early exposure, perhaps due to being born with a frame that didn't lend itself to organized sports but try to open your mind and see how it could be enjoyable for others. Who knows, you might find yourself enjoying them. ;)
It may have been. Curiously, the 1920s had a lot in common with the 1997-2007 era, with technology being popular and nerds were common. From Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's
That book was required reading in a general studies history class I took in the late seventies, I still have the paper copy. Apparently my college wasn't the only one using that text, as the whole book's hosted at the University of Virginia's web site. It's a well written eye opener.
Free Martian Whores!