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Pew Survey Documents Gaps Between Public and Scientists
PvtVoid writes: A new Pew Research Study documents an alarming gap between public perception of scientific issues and the opinions of the scientists themselves, as measured by a poll of AAAS scientists. Even worse, the gap is partisan, with clear differences between Republicans and Democrats, and between conservatives and liberals. For example, while 98% of AAAS members agree with the statement that "Human beings and other living things have evolved over time", only 21% of conservatives agree, compared with 54% of liberals. Global warming, similarly, shows an ideological gap: 98% of AAAS scientists agreed with the statement that "the Earth is getting warmer mostly due to human activity", compared with 21% of conservatives and 54% of liberals. Encouragingly, almost everybody thinks childhood vaccines should be required (86% of AAAS members, 65% of conservatives, and 74% of liberals.) Go here for an interactive view of the data.
The correct figures for the Global Warming question are: AAAS members 87%, conservatives 29%, liberals 76%.
Take, for example, Global Cooling back in the 1970's. That was refuted with Global Warming in the 2000's
It was refuted in the 1970s, not the 200's. It was never a popular theory. No one should doubt Global Warming on the basis that the scientific community switched its stance. It never did: the majority of scientists were saying it was warming all along.
now it's simply Global Climate Change
It has been called "climate change" since before 1988, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed. Today, people act like the name is some kind of knee-jerk defense against the switch between "global cooling" and "global warming" when in fact, there was no name change at all, nor was there ever a switch.
If controlled for social factors, IQ is by far the best prediction of your future educational performance. So the chance of becoming a scientist is directly correlated to your IQ.
The original IQ test, as invented by Alfred Binet, was created to determine in what class to put children who started school. In 1882, France introduced compulsory education, but many children in France had no or questionable birth certificates, and when they were about to start school, it was not clear what their real age was and which class would be suitable for them. And then there were the children who required special care, and until the beginning of the 20th century, it was up to the subjective judgement of the respective teachers to determine which children should get it. Thus Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon developed a test to more objectively assess the educational potential of a child, the Binet-Simon-Test, which was to calculate something called the "intelligence age" of a child, and which was used as a criterion in what class to put a child.
It should thus be expected that the IQ as measured by the Binet-Simon-test (and the later development Stanford-Binet-test and all subsequent IQ tests) is quite predictive for your educational career, because that's what they were invented for.