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Evolution, Big Bang Polls Omitted From NSF Report
cremeglace writes "In an unusual last-minute edit that has drawn flak from the White House and science educators, a federal advisory committee omitted data on Americans' knowledge of evolution and the Big Bang from a key report. The data shows that Americans are far less likely than the rest of the world to accept that humans evolved from earlier species and that the universe began with a big bang."
Shame? It's a not bad starting point...
One that hath name thou can not otter
If your beliefs separate you from knowledge, then you lack knowledge. Their polls are about measuring knowledge. Removing it because some beliefs keep people intellectually backwards is a shame.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Why are we concerned if people, in general, accept the big bang theory or evolution? Why not worry about general relativity and quantum mechanics?
For the vast majority of people, it simply does not matter. Will it pay my mortgage or put food on my table if the sun revolves around the earth or the other way around? If not, then why should they care?
We're all (sometime I wonder though) nerds here, so we care, but most people don't. I know that the operation of my GPS navigator depends on both general relativity and quantum mechanics, but it works whether I believe them or not. How many other people know or care?
A better question would be to ask if they believe that the scientific method is a valid method of seeking the truth. Another question would be if the scientific method was the only valid method of seeking the truth.
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
Like our child mortality rate
We count babies as "born" which most countries end up counting as "stillborn," which hits a different category in the stats. For that matter, we have premature births which end up with nice, healthy babies - that most countries can't even keep alive - or won't even try...
Some European countries don't count a baby death as "infant mortality" until the baby reaches three days (they don't issue birth certificates until then, and the infant mortality stats use birth certificates for generating that statistic).
> ...which is measured differently than pretty much every other First World nation on the planet.
No it isn't. This claim is plucked out of thin air whenever someone mentions the US' relatively high child mortality rate. I must have seen this happen a dozen times now, and (unsurprisingly) there is never any substantiation given.
International medical studies always go to great lengths to identify and, where possible, eliminate bias due to differences in reporting methodology. A comparative study of child mortality does *not* simply use each nation's definition of what constitutes a live birth.
"not meant to be anti-agw, though obviously, until tried or proven from first principles, the jury is still out"
RF = 5.35*ln(C2/C1) = 3.71 W/M^2 for a doubling of CO2 concentration - Fourier's 1824 prediction of the GHG properties of CO2 derived from it's spectra. Faraday confirmed Fourier's predictions by experiment in the 1850's. A modern version of that experiment can be seen here.
"Anyone mentioning the subtle detail that climate is chaotic"
Usually doesn't know the difference between climate and weather, let alone the difference between forcings and feedbacks.
"The only systems we can predict are systems that are, thermodynamically speaking, in equilibrium."
Yeah right, the size of expansion joints in bridges and railway tracks are picked out of a hat.
"But if the AGW "debate" proves anything, it's that science is no longer allowed to tell people "we don't know"."
No, what it proves is that a measly few million bucks worth of anti-science propoganda can create a huge army of usefull idiots such as yourself to create the impression of a debate about a well understood climate forcing.
The rest of the "science" in your post is so wrong it makes creationist arguments look reasonable. The whole thing is an accurate demonstration of the GP's astute observation that "stupid and pissed off (at the IPCC) is the new cool".
Ironically, your post also contains the cure for your ignorance in your call to teach scientific philosophy, unfortunately you don't seem to have taken your own advise and uncritically repeat the misinformation and red-herrings fed to you by lobbyists.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.