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The US Public's Erratic Acceptance of Science
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. general population is often the butt of jokes with regard to their understanding of science. A survey by the Associated Press now shows just how arbitrary and erratic the public's dissent can be. 'The good news is that more than 80 percent of those surveyed are strongly confident that smoking causes cancer; only four percent doubt it. Roughly 70 percent accepted that we have a genome and that mental illness is seated in the brain; about 20 percent were uncertain on these subjects, and the doubters were few. But things go downhill from there. Only about half of the people accepted that vaccines are safe and effective, with 15 percent doubting. And that's one of the controversial topics where the public did well. As for humanity's role in climate change, 33 percent accepted, 28 percent were unsure, and 37 percent fell in the doubter category. For a 4.5-billion-year-old Earth and a 13.8-billion-year-old Big Bang, acceptance was below 30 percent. Fully half of the public doubted the Big Bang (PDF).'"
Vaccines are effective. Safe? I guess you can call crossing the street in a crosswalk safe. Some people do get run over and killed but most come out OK. Not as safe as simply not walking around lots of cars. But safer than jaywalking.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Science conflicting with religion isn't the problem, its when some people treat science as if its a religion by having blind faith in theories that have extremely hard to believe data that doesn't match up with common sense.
Common sense can certainly be wrong, but being that the nature of the universe (big bang theory versus god did it) doesn't really make a difference to most people. Doesn't matter which ones true and which one isn't. And lets not ignore the fact that the big bang theory has a metric fuckton of problems with it when you look at where the universe is today. By problems I mean things that don't match up with current observations and can't be tested at all given our current technology.
I personally don't have a problem with the big bang theory in general, but you have to be pretty fucked up in the head to think that everything about the current theories from high level physicists makes sense when they basically end up saying 'well, all these unbreakable rules of physics ... yea, they didn't apply back then ... because' and then they all have varying reasons for it, many of which are simply invented to fit the situation with no evidence that its the way it happened.
You're trying to mix people who use religion to be evil with science. Thats your problem, not a problem of either religion or science. Religion has no place in science, by definition, yet you seem to be pretty religious (i.e. have faith in unprovable things) about science.
You also have a pretty fucked up understanding of Christianity. You might want to start with looking at who actually proposed the big bang theory in the first place, and until you do, shut the fuck up you ignorant twit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
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Yes, unless you're a Republican, in which case you probably reject most scientific fact and believe in a literal interpretation of the Holy Bible.
That is a step up from the Democrats and Progressives that reject both science and the Bible to believe in astrology, tarot, witchcraft, magic, pyramid power, and other assorted nonsense.
"Only about half of the people accepted that vaccines are safe and effective, with 15 percent doubting."
Well that is kind of a loaded question, because every vaccine is different.
SOME vaccines are safe and effective, SOME are safe and not effective (i.e. a placebo, the drug companies most favorite kind of drug), SOME come with a greater risk than the disease itself.
To give the pharmaceutical industry a blank cheque by believing that ALL vaccines are safe and effective is just as stupid as proclaiming that "all drugs are safe and effective".
Every vaccine is different and the safeness and effectiveness is completely undefined for vaccines in general.