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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
Yes, your post is primordial slime. It's not like it was intelligently designed.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
in the article.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wrong. They asked the questions and did not like the embarrassing answers America gave. Like our child mortality rate, our scientific literacy rate is not something to be proud of. The majority of American do not believe in the big bang or evolution. You may, but most do not, whereas in the rest of the first world, most people do believe in these things.
Where are you getting 'asshat within the White House' from? The National Science Foundation is not located in the White House. Why blame the President for this? This was not an editing error. The questions were asked, but the answers were deliberately omitted.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
When TFA says "data on Americans' knowledge of evolution and the big bang", that suggests it's a measurement of Americans' awareness level of the existence of the topics.
But when the TFA says "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", that suggests it's a measurement of American's agreement level.
Awareness != Agreement != Acceptance
For example, while I might be FULLY AWARE of and understand the reasoning behind Christianity, that does NOT mean that I accept the notion as true.
TFA seems to be suggesting that if you disagree with some topic, that you simply do not understand the topic, which is a complete fallacy.
Big Bang is, well, Big Bang, and only some religious fundies would have issues since the rest of us don't really care one way or another.
Sharing ancestors with apes, well, bit less so.
Evolution: now this is different since it's a demonstrated fact.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Looks like stupid and pissed off is the new cool. Science and facts just get you cussed at ... its sad.
The spelling and grammar police can kiss my ass
I think you forgot to mention how Al Gore and the Internet made all of this possible. I'm sure Apple had something to do with it, too, but that's another thread entirely.
Let's face it, atoms do show up out of thin air. How else can you explain the weight I've put on lately? Damn new heavy elements. I sure wish those scientist types would stop discovering them.
From TFA:
That explains nothing.
And ...
So the guy pushing for the removal cannot maintain a consistent argument for that removal.
When it comes to this sort of polling, there's a little thing that slips by the people who comment on them.
When people from other countries take this sort of test, we get a solid mix of answers, taken seriously.
When people from the United States take them, a regular sample of about 33% hit the "funny answer button."
You get high school students who will, given the chance, answer "Who was Martin Luther King?" with "D. A famous dentist."
You get people on the Internet who answer "what is evolution?" with "D. A clever fiction thought up by some guy."
Yeah, we have more people who really do believe in some things, but we also have a massively higher number of folks who get handed a "no points toward your final grade" test, fill in "D" for all of the answers, and spend the next 45 minutes staring off into space, because the results DO NOT AFFECT THEIR LIVES IN ANY RATIONAL FASHION...
The majority of American do not believe in the big bang or evolution
Good. I don't either. I merely accept them as models that make useful predictions and which are subject to amendment in light of experimental evidence. Mind you, that might be because I'm a scientist and not a priest.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
To the average layman/Joe/Jane "knowledge" of the truth of the Big Bang and Evolution is really tantamount to believing that they are true (that is, valid explanations of our reality). If you go off of a high school education, what do teachers really tell you aside from a few weeks' lecture (at best) and showing some pictures in a book? How does that equate to knowledge of these things aside from "my teacher told me it was true". Perhaps we're just doing a horrible job of managing our credibility on topics such as these. People in all walks of life both deny and affirm the validity of these two theories, yet they seem to appear everywhere (and are wildly [un]successful at their pursuits). Widespread belief in the (in)validity of these two things does not denote the working value of a high school level education, if not even a higher education outside of the areas relevant to these theories. In my opinion, of course.
"The prevailing theories in science might one day be overturned so why shouldn't I remain ignorant?"
These are the same people who will insist that using anything more abstract than C means you're not a real programmer.
At the end of the day, thinking for them is more about ego-defense than actual synthesis.
Sorry, these two theories are not on a level playing field. Evolution is a ridiculously strong theory, it's really hard for anyone to not "accept" it unless they do so based on entirely irrational beliefs.
I might think, if not say, someone who doesn't "believe" in evolution is an idiot. I would not say the same thing about the Big Bang for various reasons, among them the fact that the Big Bang does not explain the state of existence at T(Big Bang) - 1. It does not explain creation, and in fact creation is inherently inexplicable unless one resorts to "Magic" of one form or another.
See, this is why I like Electrical Engineering. Everything I work with is invisible, nobody can explain how it works (there aren't even any good theories*), and it can kill you if you forget to turn it off. Even if it doesn't kill you, it might give you cancer or muck up your offspring. The behaviour of any given device is erratic at best, taken for granted, or just plain whacky.
But for some reason, nobody comes up with a "God did it" explanation. Sure, we've got the magic smoke explanation, but nobody takes that seriously except the Rastafarians.
*No, really. Look at the quantum level, but try not to think about it or you'll go blind.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
No. Not in regards to scientific issues.
You can refuse to accept that the Earth is not the center of the Universe, but that DOES mean that you do not understand the SCIENCE behind it.
At least the scientists try to understand what actually happened. If they find out that the big bang didn't happen like they though, they will revise the theory, like most of the theories were revised as proof was found. Classical mechanics (you can accelerate up to infinite speed) -> relativity (actually, you can only accelerate up to c, but never reach it) -> quantum mechanics (electrons do not behave as tiny spheres with a charge after all, they behave as tiny spheres with a charge and waves at the same time) is one example.
On the other hand, religious people do not revise their holy books, they just say that whatever proof to the contrary exists, it must be false/created by devil/etc.
Also, I really like when religious people argue that their religion is the only true religion when using the same arguments as all the others - "It's written so in the book". For example, why are Christians right and Muslims/Scientologists/Ancient Greeks/FSM believers/etc wrong?
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.
The above is the most important point in the thread. Science is not about belief -- it's about evidence. And the another important difference between belief and science is that science can change based on evidence and beliefs do not. They act as filters on new information instead.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
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
nobody can explain how it works (there aren't even any good theories*)
Quantum electrodynamics produces results that agree with experiment to thirteen significant digits. It is probably the most accurate, successful theory ever devised.
Having a degree in Electrical Engineering and also a second major in applied physics and time in grad school for nuclear engineering and physics, let me illuminate this subject a bit.
Engineers don't really delve into the why of things. The learn the basics and then hammer on the practical applications. You get just enough theory to get by.
Physics is more or less the opposite. They work with lots of theory and theoretical models. The applications they leave to the engineers ...and the applied physicists. Applied physics tends to be in the middle; they test the models in the real world and they try to find useful applications for the data/model/results.
The point is, though, engineers aren't taught things like high-level theoretical models because they wouldn't really be useful for them. There are certainly theories and models that explain 99% of what goes on in EE.
If you're asking what are fundamental forces like electricity, magnetism, and gravity... Well, people are working on that too, although progress is slow.
The first long term settlements in America were by extreme religious groups like the Pilgrims and Puritans. The idea that America didn't used to be particularly religious is not historically accurate.
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).
Perhaps the real conclusion to be drawn here is that americans are more prone to be skeptical of absolute assertions based on prevailing theories.
While being decidedly unskeptical of absolute assertions based on a 2000 year old fairy tale.
From the deleted.txt file:
In response to another group of questions on evolution asked by Gallup in 2008, 43% of Americans agreed with the statement that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so,” while the 52% agreed with either of two statements compatible with the theory of evolution: that human beings developed over millions of years either with or without God’s guidance in the process (figure 7-12). These views on the origin of human beings have remained virtually unchanged in nine surveys since the questions were first asked in 1982 (The Gallup Organization 2008c).
In other words, significantly more than half of Americans know very well that the Christian creation story is a fable, and this has been the case for nigh on 30 years, at least. Headline: Genesis believers are minority in US.
Enough with the incessant navel gazing about this; the widespread and growing religious fanaticism you use to rationalize your loathing for your culture is a fiction. Secularism is (thankfully) firmly in control of the governance of the US, has been for several generations and shows no sign of abating, despite what you're being told inside the hysteria filled echo chamber of your choice.
"the two topics force respondents to choose between factual knowledge and religious beliefs."
i.e. the respondents might belief X is false even though they know X is true. That's the best description I've seen of the stupidity of religion.
Well that would be because evolution has been demonstrated and observed in the lab and nature at the small scale, with the most solid example being the development of anti-biotic resistance by pathogens. So it's not a huge leap of faith, given the fossil record available that shows an evolutionary progression and consistent genetic variation (now that we can sequence whole genomes fairly cheaply), to believe that it applies with larger and more complex organisms. In contrast, creationists/intelligent designers have squat for proof that stands up to any scientific scrutiny. So the burden of proof is placed on the opponents of evolutionary theory because there is plenty of evidence that the theory of evolution is fairly accurate (although it could be improved) and no evidence that the ridiculous creationist alternatives have any predictive capability.
From a strictly scientific viewpoint, neither of those have been definitively proven.
From a strictly scientific standpoint, no scientific theory has ever been definitively proven, in the mathematical sense of the word. Scientific theories can be disproved (falsified), but not definitively proven. For some theories, the mountain of evidence supporting it can be so big that it is essentially considered proven by laymen, but the scientific standards of proof are much higher.
And the theory of evolution is one such theory with a large mountain of evidence in support.
Humans and apes share 96% of their DNA. I forget which comedian asks if you have sandwich that's 96% crap and 4% ham, would you still call it a ham sandwich?
That by itself doesn't prove we descended from apes, but sure would seem to lend it scientific plausibility. If you're faith leads you to a different conclusion, that's fine. But that doesn't mean the rest of us need to teach it in school or avoid teaching what science can measure.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Interesting, if true. Do you have a source?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I would guess your mix of family and friends are fairly well educated? Not a random sample then. There is a dangerous strain of anti-intellectualism loose in America these days. A belief that common sense beats book learning, too much of which will in turn kill common sense. It amounts to a pride in ignorance.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Your theory is testable and observable?
I pity you - you have been brainwashed into feeling stupid when wondering about these things. The smartest people on the planet wonder about the origin of the universe, and have discovered many wondrous things, yet you idly dismiss them.
Your overconfident arrogance would be annoying if the tortured remains of your natural curiosity were not pitiful.
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
"[W]hen people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was [perfectly] spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." - Isaac Asimov
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
The same gap exists for the response to a second statement, "The universe began with a big explosion," with which only 33% of Americans agreed.
I wonder how many of the remaining 67% are people who accept that the big bang happened, but understand that it wasn't an explosion.
Technoli
until the baby reaches three days (they don't issue birth certificates until then,
Would you care to detail which countries? I live in Europe and the birth certificate can be issued immediately after birth in my country.
That is exactly what I was about to say. If someone asked me if I "believed" in evolution, I'd answer "No", because I don't "believe" in it. I don't "believe" in anything, I don't have any kind of "believes". I am against "believing" things.
On the other hand, I understand that based on existing evidence, evolution is the the best theory we have. Off course, some things about evolution might be wrong, but you have to differentiate between 'evolution' and 'the theory of evolution'. Our understanding of how genetic mutation occurs changes constantly, and we prove ourselves wrong all the time. On the other hand, there is no doubt that genetic mutations occur throughout generations, and that living things evolve into other living things, and thats how we got here.
That's not the same as "believing" in evolution. Believing in evolution is as stupid as believing in god, or believing in anything else for that matter. Understand, comprehend, reach conclusions. Never, ever hold believes. it's time we get rid of that word.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I think you misunderstood Beardo the Bearded's post. He wasn't arguing that electricity is magic. He was pointing out that electricians don't think of electricity as magic, even though it behaves strangely.
I agree with the parent that the primary, or at least one of the primary motivations that caused the board members to actually act on this was that the survey results were embarrassing. However, that does not mean that their objections aren't valid.
It is unsurprising that this effort was spearheaded by a philosopher, attuned to the precision or lack thereof of language and its epistemological implications.
The first thing I noticed about this was that the questions are indeed imprecise: it would have been more appropriate, if the questionnaire is indeed meant to test knowledge to say something like "The biological theory for the origin of man most supported by the evidence is that [earlier question]." Testing belief separately is not a bad idea, though: otherwise we really are trying to ignore reality.
The second thing that occurred to me was that South Korea did second-worst on the evolution question. Apparently, ~30% of South Koreans identify as Christian.
Christians aside, there could very well have been a small minority of perfectly scientific individuals who still answered "no" to either of the questions because of their poor phrasing. Perhaps they prefer to say that the universe "expanded rapidly." I am much more familiar with evolution than astrophysics, and wonder what is really meant by "developed from earlier species of animals." More than one species? Do they mean that transitively, or are they asking about a radical horizontal transfer theory? We could also argue about the precise meaning of "developed from" and "earlier." Of course, I would still answer "yes" because I don't want to troll the NSB survey, but maybe if I were having a bad day...
The questions are blunt instruments to capture the public understanding of the topics. I don't have a problem with rewriting them and hopefully expanding them into more questions. In the end, though, even Bruer agrees that pedants trolling the survey is not a (statistically) significant issue.
The "primordial soup" theory, one of the corner stones of evolution has been largely rejected by scientists
The "primordial soup theory" isn't even a _part_ of Evolutionary Theory, let alone a "cornerstone" of it.
> ...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.
To pick one data point Singapore is 2.31/1000, and the US is 6.3/1000: the US rate is 273% higher. See here. You seem to be basing your "less than 1%" difference on the fact that all of the developed countries have an infant mortality rate of less than 1%, but this is a ridiculous way to compare statistics for rare events.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
True, however the United States of America, the nation as it was conceived by the Founding Fathers, was also very much based upon the idea of religious tolerance. It was precisely because of this that the United States managed to attract the best and brightest in the past: that people could be assured of their safety regardless of their own personal religious beliefs and practices. Unfortunately, it seems that increasingly growing and vocal groups are all set to overturn this longstanding principle...
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Actually, you're the one twisting the stats, whether intentionall or not. If you'd said "less than 1% of all births" then what you said would still have been technically true, though it also is pretty meaningless given that all countries have less than a 1% infant mortality rate. Also how exactly does "measurement error" fit in here? Are people accidentally deciding babies are dead when in fact they're alive?
which is totally what she said
If the USA would be a country like Afganistan or Italy without nuclear weapons I wouldn't care and hope that some day they will understand that religion is not a good source to find out how the universe come into existence, but a possible good source for ethics and mental stability (as long as you do not become a fanatic). The real problem is that there are so many religios fanatics running around in the US believing in all kinds of things including Armageddon. And now think one of those crazy guys becomes president and pushes the button... This possibility frightens me most. Therefore it is very good to hear that the US is reducing their nuclear potential. Even though they will still be able to fry everyone on this planet. But at least not six times.
The question should be, if a sandwich is 96% ham and 4% crap, would you still call it a ham sandwich. And yes you would. A disgusting ham sandwich but a ham sandwich still.
And we are not descended from Apes, we share a common ancestor. And we share one with most life if indeed not all.
And faith shouldn't go against facts and be considered normal.
If my faith led me to believe gravity doesn't affect me, wouldn't I be considered normal if I jumped of a building? No, I would be called insane. If ignoring the theory of gravity is insanity, then so is ignoring the theory of evolution.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Americans are far more likely to be ignorant religious loonies who refuse to believe scientific fact in favour of archaic superstition and myth and profess to follow the word of a deity, meanwhile trying as hard as they can to ensure that the poor and sick don't get the help they need.
Can someone please explain why America is like this?
Stick Men
These are not "fights over science." They are fights between high confidence viewpoints backed by strong, yet malleable theoretical underpinnings, and the viewpoints of ignorant, and/or gullible, and/or critical-thinking deficient and consequently superstitious low-functioning who subsist on a diet of dogma and wishful thinking; compounded enormously by our huge social error of putting religious delusion off-limits for serious public criticism at most levels, particularly in schools.
Our problem is a social problem brought on by the underlying theocratic disease we continue to allow our people to suffer from.
It isn't going to go away until/unless all currently popular religion is treated the way it should be - the same way we treat Odin and Zeus. As the imaginary creations of primitive societies. This should be done in school. As part of normal education. So kids have some chance of escaping the cycle of ignorance that religion uses to propagate itself. Kids should be exposed to the (many) falsehoods used as arguments for religion, from the loaded dice of Pascal's wager to the complete and utter intellectual bankruptcy of creationism.
Even then, I bet it takes a couple of generations to die down to the level of, say, astrology. We'll never eradicate it completely, or at least, not until we edit gullibility, stupidity, and the inability to think critically out of our own genome, and expose the underlying dogmatic thinking as part of a normal education.
Countdown before some poor utterly deluded person comes in here to "defend" some religion or other: 3, 2, 1...
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"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.
"You can use a quantum level theory to get useful results"
Therfore it's a "good" theory in the same way that if the hooker gets your rocks off then she is a "good" hooker. Just be carefull not to fall in love with your theories or hookers.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"After 350 ppm, it does not rise anymore. Whoops. Why does this happen ? Surely this formula of yours predicts otherwise. That's because this formula is only to be applied to the sunlight that passes through the athmosphere, avoids co2 on it's way in, hits the ground, gets re-emitted and then hits co2 on it's way out."
You seem to be blissfully unaware that the infra-red radiation re-emmited from Earth is at a different wave length to the visable/ultra-violet radiation that it absorbed. Climatologists and the IPCC are well aware incoming infra-red is absorbed by GHG's, it's the reason why infra-red astronomy requires a space based telescope.
"And please don't start about fractals having large-scale shapes until you've at least READ about what chaos is."
Chaos theory and fractal dimentions were covered in my maths major, is that good enough for you?
"A chaotic system can be, at a specific point, a perfect triangle."
Again you seem to have failed to take your own advise, a triangle could be used as the stating point for creating a fractal but it is not in itself a fractal nor is there anything chaotic about a perfect triangle. Climate is the long term statistics of weather and is in a state of dynamic equilibrium on human time scales, it only becomes chaotic when feedbacks occur due to a considerable forcing being applied. Geologic records indicate that when this occurs the climate system tends to amplify the direction of forcing. Super computers are used to explore the effects of feedbacks using FEA, as I have shown by quoting Fourier the effects of forcing via inreased CO2 can be worked out on a pocket calculator and has absolutely nothing to do with chaos theory.
As for water vapour, see my first post where it talks about knowing the difference between a forcing and a feedback.
"Of course this theory makes [IPCC] policies totally incomprehensible."
I think you mean UNFCCC. The IPCC do not formulate or offer any political policy.
"Heh, I seriously doubt you'd even be able to tell me the name of a single program capable of answering this question without googling"
Mathematica is the first to spring to mind, it can implement FEA simulations to abitrary resolutions.
BTW: I have been following climate science for three decades, which is well before Google or the IPCC came into existance, at first it was simply a natural extention to my interest in computer simulation via finite element analysis (in which I am degree qualified). I suspect you dislike my use of Google because the links it provides conflict with your bald asertions.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"The international ranking of the United States improves somewhat when these alternative measures [controlling for varying stillborn assessments] are used but it is still relatively low and appears to be deteriorating."
The CBO report doesn't exactly support the grandparent.