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."

Comments

Popular, or useful?

[Bakkster]

From TFA:

From quotes on websites to a joke by Stephen Colbert, they offer anecdotes about how the public was against the IAUâ(TM)s (International Astronomical Union) decision to remove Pluto from the list of planets, leading the authors to call the situation a âoeplanetary crack-upâ and then ask, âoeDidnâ(TM)t the scientists involved foresee such a public outcry?â Well, if the scientists did foresee an outcry, then what? Should they conduct a public vote next time?

Mooney and Kirshenbaum barely mention any of the scientific bases for the IAUâ(TM)s decision. Instead, they present the case as if the astronomers chose to reclassify Pluto on an inexplicable whim, and it makes one question whether or not the authors looked into any of the actual science for themselves.

I think it's pretty well established that the goal should not be to fit science into pop-culture, at least not if we want it to remain correct and relevent. Your average citizen doesn't care that pluto is only the first discovered Kuiper Belt object, they care that they learned it was a planet when they were a kid. That isn't thinking scientifically. There is no way to make the decision popular without compromising on proper science.

It's not an easy problem to fix. It seems to me like it requires you to teach people to care about science, rather than making science into something people care about. It wasn't that long ago when Bill Nye was getting kids interested in more pure science. Now about the best we have is Mythbusters, which certainly piques curiosity, although it has to resort to explosions and skipping most of the steps in the scientific method to make it palatable. They even have a "warning" for science content, which is a bad sign (tongue-in-cheek or not). Maybe we could get back to that, but it seems the prevailing momentum is toward smaller tidbits and shallower topics.

Re:Popular, or useful?

[schon]

the goal should not be to fit science into pop-culture [...] It wasn't that long ago when Bill Nye was getting kids interested in more pure science. Now about the best we have is Mythbusters

So.. we shouldn't be trying to fit science into popular culture, but the problem is that there is no science in popular culture?

I'd say one of the problems is that modern popular culture regards science as evil. Look at Spider Man. In the 60's, Peter Parker was a science student who built his own tracking devices and formulated his own "web" and "web shooters" in order to fight crime. Science was a tool - used by good and evil alike.

Contrast that with the recent movies.. Peter never does any science, or uses his intelligence to solve problems. The webbing and shooters are now part of his "mutation" (regardless that if that were the case, it should come out of his ass, rather than his wrists), and science is merely an evil corrupting influence on good, honest men like Norman Osborn or Otto Octavius.

Hollywood needs to stop portraying science as evil.

Re:Popular, or useful?

[Chris Burke]

Mythbusters is Pseudo-Science at its worst. They claim a veneer of authenticity, but make broad assumptions based on very limited and highly flawed experiments with no controls groups. It's an entertaining sideshow at best.

Zombie Richard Feynman would like to have a word with you.

Seriously, the xkcd author has a huge point here. You want to improve understanding and respect for science in this country? Start with the basics. When the most common response to "why do you believe X?" is "because I performed/witnessed an experiment demonstrating it", then we can shift the discussion to proper experimental methods and bookkeeping. So what if the experiments are sketchy and their methods wouldn't pass muster in any journal, and as a result some people believe things that aren't true? By simply educating people as to the value of experiment, you've already won 90% of the battle.

Mythbusters is fighting the good fight for science and you should respect that.

DIY science

[wizardforce]

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.

It's all in the educational system

[4D6963]

Speaking as a European, actually science is pretty popular in the USA, globally (except for the mad handful who think science is the sworn enemy of their faith). Actually, I quite like to think of the USA as the country of nerds. Case in point, that's where all the Europeans nerds want to go cause since some time around the 1930s that's where all the big science and engineering are. In Europe (UK excluded, too much of an American satellite to be representative) we don't make offerings to the holy ghost of Charles Darwin, and we couldn't care less about science fiction (seriously, we care nowhere near as much as people in the USA do). But we're better at mathematics, physics, chemistry or biology, because secondary education didn't fail us. It's not a cultural problem, it's all an educational one.

The problem is not how "popular" or "cool" it is, the problem is with education. To put it simply and bluntly, your educational system sucks, particularly when it comes to science. Reform it. Education is pretty much the same problem for anyone, you're doing it wrong, look at how others are doing it right.

An obvious rift exists between many religious and scientific communities.

Yep, and there shouldn't be one. Science and faith aren't incompatible, some great men of science were also men of faith. But in America more than anywhere else it was turned into an epic science vs faith war where everybody picks a side and the battlefronts are shit that no one would normally care about, like biology and genetics or palaeontology or even palaeoclimatology.

Also, why the hell can't I post this comment? It says "There was an unknown error in the submission.". It seems Slashdot is crumbling to pieces day after day.

Re:It's all in the educational system

[AthanasiusKircher]

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

Re:It's all in the educational system

[PitaBred]

You get rid of the tenure system, you get rid of the ability for teachers to speak freely, and only do more to indoctrinate people to maintain the status quo and not question anything. There are cases where tenure needs to be able to be rescinded, but that should only be done in the case of academic dishonesty. And that's it.

The part I agree with you is that it's the parents that are failing. They're teaching their kids that it's ok to be mediocre, that it's cool to not be smart. They'd rather have them play football or basketball, anything other than be smart. And the popular role models for kids? Fucking morons like Kanye West straight-out saying that it's not cool to read. He gets his "information" from talking to people, apparently. Great way to learn anything scientific. Our culture is worshiping ignorance, putting appearance on a pedestal while banishing substance and intellect to the basement. Even the "geek chic" look is just that... a look. You don't have to actually know anything to be part of it.

Wrong question

[MrNaz]

I think you're a troll, but I'll bite anyway. As someone who is fascinated with all things science related, I bemoan the total apathy towards science within the community. However, I feel that it is important to point out that it is not just science that is being neglected by the community; politics, philosophy, social conscience and other highly important fields have also been totally lost to the common mind.

It's not just discussing the latest article in Nature magazine or Scientific American that results in dumb stares, but also trying to discuss things like the relative merits of current geopolitical policies of various nations, how and why the legal system has gotten to its current state, even this very subject, the apathy of the common person, is not the sort of thing that most people are able to discuss in any depth.

This may all sound very high-horsey, however, I challenge anyone to go to a party, bring up a discussion about the question of whether mathematics is invented or discovered, and see how long you can keep it up. I'm likely to get laughed at for the mere suggestion of this, someone will call me a dork or similar.

The thing is, I actually get out a lot. I travel several times a year, and spent a lot of time meeting new people. It's something that I really enjoy. I'm not a dork. I think.

So, how do we make science (and other "intelligent" subjects) popular again? I dunno, how about priming children in an environment that's a bit more stimulating than the modern day care facility. How about teaching them the basics in an environment that's a bit more positive than the jokes that are primary schools where teachers' hearts are rarely in the job. Don't even let me get started on the barbaric mass-cagefight that is high school.

You want to know why science is not popular in the first place? Because we (as a society, we can't just blame the "education system", after all, parents, they're YOUR kids) as a society are teaching our kids to be consumerist, apathetic, self-centered brats. We need a whole new social order, including a new social mindset that teaches people a proper set of values. Science and all the higher arts won't be popular again until people learn to value them.

Thus, asking how to make science popular I feel is the wrong question. The correct question is how to teach people it's value.

Re:Wrong question

[Kell Bengal]

I agree entirely. The summary talks about heros, but most people's adored rolemodel is more likely to be a non-productive sportsman or actor. Sure, they're pretty to look at, but they don't actually do anything materially useful. Compare that with the recently deceased Norman Borlog who changed the world, but nobody knows his name. Perhaps if lauded and paid scientists like we do sportsmen - make it sexy and rewarding to do science - people would see them like the heros they are.

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. 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.

We could give scientists better pay, but capitalism isn't set up to reward the scientist - just the person who exploits their work. The modern mindset is to make money at any cost, and the idea of paying scientists to learn about the fundamental nature of the universe is disruptively out of step with the cash-squeezing mentality of the world.

What are we left with? The fruits of their labour. Scientists discover things of beauty, magnificent vistas of science that are accessible to all. The fact is that most people are taught to shut up and pay attention to the TV, rather than think creatively or examine their lives.

The problem with science isn't science - perhaps it's the very nature of our culture that rejects learning and instead values money, simple ideas and sex appeal. Unless we instill principles early on that value science and learning, it will never happen.

Re:Wrong question

[citizenr]

I believe that Science (like many other things) has been hi-jacked by politics.

It has been hijacked by dump people. If I turn on TV right now and switch to Discovery Ill probably see LA Ink, Most Haunted or other REALITY TV crap :(

Re:Science =! Public Policy

[Philip K Dickhead]

Look,

International capital interests are banking against a US role in the future. They own the casino, and you are a fool to bet against this house.

There is an active effort to dumb-down America in particular, and to lose the capability for sound argument in the roar of mindless accusation and countercharges.

There is a reason that Fox News and the like are funded to billions of dollars, every year. These are investments in an outcome, not wild and speculative spending.

So.

Don't get your hopes up, Eloi. You ar ein a Morlock zone - and all your cleverness and intelligence will not change the decisions that have been made for you. Enjoy fighting the school board brownshirts over "Creation Science".

Anti-intellectualism

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

However, I feel that it is important to point out that it is not just science that is being neglected by the community; politics, philosophy, social conscience and other highly important fields have also been totally lost to the common mind.

This is an old theme of American history, called anti-intellectualism. The American public isn't so much "anti-science" as anti-intellectual.

I think that GP has a point about the proper relationship between science and policy; all too often people use the authority of science to sneak in policy and value judgements as science (for example, intelligence testing). We need to be critical of the people who insist that science should set policy, as GP recommends.

However, to do so successfully we can't be anti-intellectual, and that's where I part with GP. The Republicans are the party that panders to anti-intellectualism; their war on science was real. G.W. Bush is an anti-intellectual poster boy, too.

This may all sound very high-horsey, however, I challenge anyone to go to a party, bring up a discussion about the question of whether mathematics is invented or discovered, and see how long you can keep it up.

Invented, just like chess.

Re:Science =! Public Policy

[phantasmagoric]

An active effort to dumb-down America? I call bullshit. Do you have any evidence for that besides the fact that Fox News says stupid things? 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. A few weeks ago NPR was talking about a train going through Germany trying to get kids interested in science. The founder is very concerned about the slow degradation of GERMAN intelligence and interest in science. We aren't the only ones with this problem

IQ tests can never be culturally neutral

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Not to add to what is sure to be an offtopic flamewar, but IQ tests are certainly not culturally biased. Unless, of course, you think logic, math, and spatial recognition are culturally biased.

Spatial cognition has been shown to be culturally variable; check out the work of Stephen Levinson on language and spatial cognition. It is possible to design spatial reasoning tests that are culturally biased in that regard; e.g., the Queensland Test was designed to raise the score of Australian Aborigines relative to Australian Whites.

In fact, there's just nothing culturally neutral about getting somebody to sit down to answer an intelligence test. Read the New Yorker's article on the controversy about the Pirahã and ask yourself, in the end: how would you administer an IQ test to this tribe, and would the results be more indicative of their "intelligence" or of their cultural differences to us?

To paraphrase William Labov: if you want to figure out how intelligent somebody is, you have to enter the appropriate social relationship with that person. IQ tests simply fail this; they presuppose that everybody is a well-mannered urban European middle-class authority-fearing white-coat-deferring sit-downer, who is just delighted to sit down and perform decontextualized, pointless intellectual exercise on command.