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Canada Tops List of Most Science-Literate Countries
An anonymous reader writes "A recent survey of scientific education and attitudes showed the Canadian population to have the highest level of scientific literacy in the world, as well as the fewest reservations about the direction of scientific progress (full report). A key factor is a high level of scientific knowledge among the general population (despite comparatively low numbers of people employed in STEM fields). Another is a higher level of comfort with choosing rationality over religious belief — only 25% of Canadians surveyed agreed with the statement "We depend too much on science and not enough on faith", as opposed to 55% in the U.S. and 38% in the E.U.
I also wonder if the vaunted Canadian healthcare system plays a role. When advances in medical science are something you automatically expect to benefit from personally if you need them, they look a lot better than when you have to scramble just to cover your bills for what we have now."
I also wonder if the vaunted Canadian healthcare system plays a role. When advances in medical science are something you automatically expect to benefit from personally if you need them, they look a lot better than when you have to scramble just to cover your bills for what we have now."
I am canadian, and if we are the most scientiically literate. I really pity the rest of you.
They think maple syrup grows on trees!
The current regime seems pretty anti-science though, unless it is directly related to increasing tar sands oil extraction efficiency? http://science.slashdot.org/st... http://news.slashdot.org/story...
"[O]nly 25% of Canadians surveyed agreed with the statement "We depend too much on science and not enough on faith", as opposed to 55% in the U.S. and 38% in the E.U."
Seriously? I was expecting a survey of scientific literacy to be about, you know, scientific literacy, not asking people the relative merits, as it were, between science and religion.
I'm not sure how this proves, quote, "Canada is a nation of science geeks." It's a complete non-sequitor. It doesn't even match the data, in which 58% of Canadians couldn't understand basic science concepts from newspaper stories, and in which Canada ranks 19th out of 29th in science degrees (by percentage).
Contrawise, Americans, sure, value religion probably more highly than other countries, and might even think that we could use more religion, but that is not a question of scientific literacy or attitudes towards science in and of itself. It seems to presuppose the long-discredited Conflict Thesis, which states that religion and science are inherently always in conflict.
The clincher for me - which indisputably shows the authors' bias - is that Canada ranks #1 in people protesting GMOs and nuclear power, and the authors consider this a good sign that their population is scientifically literate!
The authors should get back to euphorically sniffing their own armpits, and stop pretending to be scientists. Or whatever you call the people that work at science museums.
Canadian health care has its problems, but it's still better than most of the alternatives.
However, the problem with public health care is that Canadians generally do not think about how their medical services are provided, and thus they are unaware of how much they cost, whether they are cost effective, and whether they represent the latest technological advances. The last point is why the summary's suggestion is laughable.
They say
I also wonder if the vaunted Canadian healthcare system plays a role. When advances in medical science are something you automatically expect to benefit from personally if you need them, they look a lot better than when you have to scramble just to cover your bills for what we have now.
but it sounds as if they're comparing the Canadian system for paying for health care with the US system, as opposed to the systems used in for example, Western Europe.
An actual connection is not required for those that are so defensive about the US healthcare reform failure that they have to make up such ridiculous assertions.
That man ordered irreplaceable scientific records be taken to the dump, destroying generations of scientific data. He's closed musea in order to build up fake War of 1812 war memorials. He's closed the scientific lakes project that was the programme responsible for identifying acid rain thanks to decades of data.
This man has been utterly destructive to Canada's intellectual property, its scientific pedigree and ability to generate new knowledge. Moreover, he's gagged scientists from discussing their own peer-revirewed data. Instead, political interns get to act as mouthpieces.
Anyone in the scientific or technical community can't help but see how destructive Harper-ism is to Canada's ability to create the next generation of knowledge.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
The governments (healthcare is a Provincial responsibility with the feds setting minimum standards and in charge of equalization payments) have an interest in educating the population on health as a healthy population is cheaper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Now look across the border and see the non wealthy Canadians who still get treated* without going bankrupt just because they got sick. Who don't have to worry about what a trip to the doctor will cost when they need treatment. (*Get treated, including preventative care, without having to wait until problems become serious enough to justify a trip to the emergency room.)
The US health care system may be really good for the wealthy, but it really is not so good for the non wealthy people who can't afford it. We socialist Canadians think everyone should have health care.
I'm Canadian and I'm very pro-science. Not because I'm left-wing or right-wing, but because my mother was a science teacher and I've basically absorbed it. I literally have no personal attributes that I can try to commend regarding my decent scientific knowledge. Regarding the fucking article, I'm Canadian and I have a science education. A bachelors to be technical. I hated science courses in university. They were dry and the instructors had no interest in helping me. It was a night and day difference from my high school experience. Back to the topic of this article, Canadians understand science to be the truth. We've got less religious disruption than the Americans, and probably many European countries. I told my mother a few months ago that "I need to tell you, growing up I didn't realize that scientific beliefs would be repeatedly questioned in front of me as if there were no experimental evidence" and she went off on some other tangent as mothers do, but I was trying to tell her that she is the basis of everything I believe in the world. My parents took me to church and it was obviously bullshit. My mom told me about chemical reactions and it made sense. I hate myself for not being kinder to my mother.
Bill 101 is necessary to preserve French in a sea of anglophones. Look at francophone communities outside of Quebec. Their numbers are diminishing. Unfortunately, we have to impose regulations to protect our language. You also have to remember that not long ago, almost all of the wealth of the province belonged to anglophones. People think that stuff is ancient history, but my grand-parents can tell you about living in a Quebec dominated by an english minority. Bill 101 exists in part to ensure that francophones will never again be second class citizens. They can get overzealous at times, but if you spend any amount of time on slashdot, you know government fuck ups are a reality. The bill does a lot more good than harm. I am disappointed that so many anglophones seem to think Quebecois are some kind of strange animal, that we act irrationally, when if you understand where we're coming from and what our values are, our actions make perfect sense. I think if bilingualism was more common in the country, then people could read french media for themselves and realize that we make a lot of sense, rather than getting second hand information with some bias thrown in. That would solve a lot of issues.
As for the attitude you got, that's a pretty unfortunate reality of a polarized country. There's generally more resentment amongst the older folks or the less educated, or those who are less in contact with anglophones. We're like 2 generations away from having taken control of our province, so it'll take a little while for that stuff to die down. The important thing is that these people are not given a podium and do not have an opinion that is considered mainstream, so their ignorance will disappear with them. Reading newspapers from other provinces, and having lived in Toronto for a while, the anti-Quebec sentiment, while not shared by every Canadian, seems a lot more mainstream...
Anyway, I'm sorry people treated you badly, but I thought the comment I was replying to was an all too common gratuitous attack. When people start talking about which region of a country is "the worst", you know that this way lies terrible generalization. You don't add to it by bashing your favourite target...
The health care system in Canada needs fixing. Many can't get a family physician because there aren't enough and have to go to clinics. Having no doctor because you can't afford one is no worse than not having one because they aren't there. Having primary care physician is the best way to stay healthy. Specialist wait times are crazy and you must have a referral.
The system is going downhill, but because it was the best 50 years ago, people here think it still is. If you talk change the radical parrots all squawk 'no American style health care!' as if that is the only other system out there. And then they are so satisfied with themselves thinking they have preserved a great system. Meanwhile they are mostly the ones who do have family physicians and are afraid of change, even for the better because they don't want to lose their doctor (which they wouldn't). Canada's health care system ranked 30th in 2000 according to the WHO. America 36th.But most Americans at least know it could be better, while too many Canadians don't think the same way about our system. Attitude is slowly changing, but too slowly.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
It is. The statement is completely true. but first you have to realize that the hospitals are seperate entities from the paper pushers in the AA adminstration. The problem isnt the healthcare provided, like most US healthcare its really quite good (our main problem isnt quality, its quantity and cost). The problem is the horribly mismanaged and innefficient VA adminstration.
Part of it is the adminstration has only a few offices that handle very large regions (consisting of several entire states each). And then the adminstration also handles ALL VA and service related benefits, not just medical care. GI bill, service-related disability pay, healthcare, etc etc on and on. That's not to excuse the problem, or that some officials tried to cover up their inefficiency by lying, but simply to show the scale of the problem.
And then politicians repeatedly NOT doing anything to fix it ("it costs too much") but demanding more and more results, and even cutting funding doesn't help either. And there is something to be said for how fighting two wars for over a decade will tend to dramatically increasing the number of veterans applying to the system, thus increasing backlogs even further.....
But as the man said:
Americans have a proud tradition and history of serving their country honorably.
And America has a sorry history, dating back to the Revolutionary war, of messing those veterans over once the fighting is done.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I live in Quebec. On Tuesday, I went to see The Lion King (the broadway show, not the movie). The show was in English, but at one time, after a long monologue from Rafiki in an African language (which was not translated), the actress turn to the audience and asked : vous avez compris?
Not only people laughed (because obviously no one understood), but they cheered for this very simple use of the French language.
We do have some fanatics who are on a holy war for the language, but most of the time the problem comes from English speaking people who act like they are a master race. They act like everyone in the whole world should adapt to them.
Because of your opinion of French speaking Canadians, my guess is you never cared to learn a few word in French. I don't know, something like : je suis désolé, je ne parle pas français, parlez-vous anglais? If you did, if you were ever polite and respectful, you would have realized that most people in Quebec would have greeted you with a big smile and would even have shown you gratitude for taking 5 minutes to learn those few words.
I'm a Quebecer, so you may despise me all you want, but it certainly seems to me that your opinion of Quebecers is only because you're just another fucking asshole.
How, exactly, is "faith" a "way of coming to knowledge?" What knowledge is revealed by believing in burning bushes, virgin births, or flying horses?
" the vaunted Canadian healthcare system"
- 17 hour average wait time in the Emergency Room
While I can't argue with you about the other ones, this one here is utter bullshit. If you stumble into the Emergency Room with an emergency, you will be treated accordingly. What people complain about is having to wait 17 hours in the ER because they sprained an ankle.
On one occasion, I ended up in the ER with a life-threatening acute heart condition. I was brought in an ambulance, and the doctor was actually waiting for me rather than me waiting for him... that's like negative wait time. On a second occasion (not so long after the first episode), I also had heart troubles but I managed to get to the ER on my own, and the nurse that does the triage sent me right into a room where a doctor arrived within 2 minutes. That is what the emergency room is about. Emergencies.
The fact that people end up in the ER for very trivial stuff is a symptom of a system that is utterly broken in many other ways (lack of family doctors, long waiting lists for specialists, and so on), but the ER itself is the one thing in the whole system that works exactly as intended, but it receives too much undeserved flak because that's what the population actually see, while they do not understand the failings of the bigger system above it.
Two trips to the ER which saved my life, a heart surgery that stabilized my condition, allows me a high quality of life and lets me contribute to society, all that without paying a dime. That is what the vaunted Canadian healthcare system is all about. By getting me back on my feet as a productive member of society, I have already paid back way more in income tax and other fiscal contributions than what the whole ordeal could have cost, so it is a net gain for society.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
I am an anglophone from Texas, but I have a love of learning foreign languages, of which French is at the top of the list. On several occasions while visiting Montreal, I endeavored to speak French *only* and my experiences ranged from delight that I was speaking French so well to the other person answering me in English, which didn't exactly encourage me to continue in French. Perhaps the ones who answered me in English could hear my accent, or maybe they were anglophones themselves and thought it simpler to reply in English. Overall, I enjoyed my visits there and I'm looking forward to going again in the future.
In C++, your friends can see your privates.
Bilingual conversations are really common here. I'm from Alberta originally, and my spoken French isn't great (I can get by, but I don't like speaking it). That said, I have plenty of friends that speak to me in French. I answer in English. We just go with whatever's easiest. Montreallers are really easy going that way.
Usually it's just faster for them to switch to English, though. Quebec French has its own peculiarities, so I found that on the few times where I started a conversation in French, it would usually switch to English just to hurry things along.