Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Belief In Evolution Doesn't Measure Science Literacy

Posted by Soulskill on from the also-doesn't-measure-temperature-or-blood-pressure dept.

cold fjord writes: "Dan Kahan at the Yale Law School Cultural Cognition Project says, 'Because imparting basic comprehension of science in citizens is so critical to enlightened democracy, it is essential that we develop valid measures of it, so that we can assess and improve the profession of teaching science to people. ... The National Science Foundation has been engaged in the project of trying to formulate and promote such a measure for quite some time. A few years ago it came to the conclusion that the item "human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals," shouldn't be included when computing "science literacy." The reason was simple: the answer people give to this question doesn't measure their comprehension of science. People who score at or near the top on the remaining portions of the test aren't any more likely to get this item "correct" than those who do poorly on the remaining portions. What the NSF's evolution item does measure, researchers have concluded, is test takers' cultural identities, and in particular the centrality of religion in their lives.' Kahan also had a previous, related post on the interaction between religiosity and scientific literacy."

6 of 772 comments (clear)

  1. Wait a sec by eclectro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is no "belief" for evolutionary principles. It is not a system of religious thought.

    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    1. Re:Wait a sec by GrumpySteen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      it has not been promoted to the level of law (in the sense of the law of gravity or the law of thermodynamics

      The funny thing is, we know less about gravity than we do about evolution.

      We know that there is something that causes attraction between objects and can make predictions based on our observations of that effect, but we can't explain with any certainty how it actually works or why it exists. There are a variety of competing theories, but we don't have enough evidence to determine if any of them is even close to correct.

      Thanks to the development agriculture, selective breeding, the sacrifice of billions of fruit flies and the
      abundance of fossil evidence we've uncovered, we actually understand evolution far better than we understand gravity.

      The thing is... it's a lot harder to deny the existence of gravity when someone can throw you off a cliff to prove it.

    2. Re:Wait a sec by dave420 · · Score: 5, Informative

      No - evolution is the observed phenomenon, and the theory of evolution is the explanation of said phenomenon.

    3. Re:Wait a sec by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, you misunderstand.

      Everything you think is true is something you believe. If someone says, "1+1=2," you say, "Yes, that is true." What you really mean is, "Yes, I believe that to be true." Certainly, things are true or false absent of any belief, but when we're asking about whether or not an individual thinks something is true or false, we're exactly talking about belief. We're not talking about accuracy of scientific or mathematic laws, theories, or models. We're talking about the nature of knowledge, perception, and human understanding.

      Think of it this way. For thousands of years humans believed that when they saw a sunrise that the sun had revolved around the earth on a crystal sphere. That's what their knowledge of the universe told them was true, so that is what they believed, and that's what their knowledge told them they saw. That was as true to them as the truth you belive in when your knowledge tells you that the earth is held in orbit by gravity and rotates to bring the sun back into view. The fact that your knowledge might be more accurate or might have more evidence behind it is irrelevant. Your belief that it is true, or belief that it is false, or fundamental misunderstanding of what is truly going on doesn't change what's really going on. Nevertheless, knowing who agrees with your beliefs and therefore agree with what the common knowledge tells us about the universe can be valuable.

      You can do the same thing with any scientific model. Consider big bang vs steady state theory. Did you know that, to this day, scientific papers are published in journals relating to the steady state model of the universe? Consider the model of the atom. We've gone from the plum pudding model, to the ring model, to the Bohr model, which is still the most commonly taught model, I believe. None of them really represnt the atom that well, of course, but people still imagine the Bohr model when you say "atom" to them. That's not what an atom actually is or looks like, but that is what people believe.

      --
      The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
    4. Re: Wait a sec by tysonedwards · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It doesn't matter the amount of evidence available, there will always be deniers. Hell, there is photographic and some video evidence of the holocaust and yet there are still swarms of people saying that it never happened. 9/11, swarms of people saying 'the jets weren't even commercial airliners but were military cargo planes' and yet hundreds of millions of people if not billions watched it live with plenty of recordings available today. Some people just like to take confrontational standpoints because they find them fun.

      --
      Thirty four characters live here.
  2. Maybe it doesn't measure science literacy by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But it sure measures the amount of faith people want to put into "a wizard did it" as a valid explanation of something.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.