Scientific Savvy? In U.S., Not Much--NYTimes

[Demeter]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/science/30profile.html

"By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: August 30, 2005

CHICAGO - When Jon D. Miller looks out across America, which he can almost do from his 18th-floor office at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, he sees a landscape of haves and have-nots - in terms not of money, but of knowledge.

...

While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are "scientifically savvy and alert," he said in an interview. Most of the rest "don't have a clue." At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people's inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process.

...

At one time, this kind of ignorance may not have meant much for the nation's public life. Dr. Miller, who has delved into 18th-century records of New England town meetings, said that back then, it was enough "if you knew where the bridge should be built, if you knew where the fence should be built."

"Even if you could not read and write, and most New England residents could not read or write," he went on, "you could still be a pretty effective citizen."

No more. "Acid rain, nuclear power, infectious diseases - the world is a little different," he said.

......

Lately, people who advocate the teaching of evolution have been citing Dr. Miller's ideas on what factors are correlated with adherence to creationism and rejection of Darwinian theories. In general, he says, these fundamentalist views are most common among people who are not well educated and who "work in jobs that are evaporating fast with competition around the world."

But not everyone is happy when he says things like that. Every time he goes on the radio to talk about his findings, he said, "I get people sending me cards saying they will pray for me a lot."

[rodeodance]

1. te he. well......praying is better than picking up a gun.

.....Lately, people who advocate the teaching of evolution have been citing Dr. Miller's ideas on what factors are correlated with adherence to creationism and rejection of Darwinian theories. In general, he says, these fundamentalist views are most common among people who are not well educated and who "work in jobs that are evaporating fast with competition around the world."

But not everyone is happy when he says things like that. Every time he goes on the radio to talk about his findings, he said, "I get people sending me cards saying they will pray for me a lot."

[gratuitous]

2. And it's not like the Times is helping this any

With their "even-handed" reporting on evolution, stem cells, and global climate change that creates a false equivalency between peer-reviewed scientific research and opinion dressed up like science.

Twits.

[etherealtruth]

3. RW Christian Fundamentalism = anti -intellectualism

[Mountainman]

4. He must have been reading some of the posts the freeptards write.

[ret5hd]

5. this situation is by design...

no different than the catholic church of yesteryear and the scientologists today...scientific knowledge is only to be entrusted to those indoctrinated enough to not see the dichotomy evidenced by things like fossils, atomic theory, evolution, etc, and "creationism".

[wli]

6. it looks worse from here

Math and computers... boy do people have NO CLUE what's going on.

[WindRavenX]

7. Although the current evolution shitstorm is a good indicator of...

Although the current evolution shitstorm is a good indicator of the extremely poor state of science education in this country, what's even more troubling is that most Americans don't even have a fundamental understanding of even the most basic science; i.e, what an atom is, what atoms are made of, basic scientific processes (how to carry out an experiment, what a hypothesis is), how to use basic scientific equipment (erlenmeyer flasks, pipettes, heating plates), how to read a table of elements...the list goes on and on and on and on.
It's frightening.
With only 2 years of my biology degree completed (a BA, not even a BS!), it is absolutely terrifying to me to hear people say the most backwards ass things with regards to science...perhaps the most disturbing is the almost state of denial about human evolution.
Showing fossils of early humans, I've gotten responses of "if the scientists think the fossil is male, why doesn't it have one less rib than the female?"
:scared:

And some people think DNA is a joke. How can *that* molecule, they say, be the molecule that transmits genetic information?

[KansDem]

16. On the civics side...

I amazed at how ignorant Americans are when it comes to American values:

Many Americans are unable to name the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment. The percentages of those responding who were able to identify individual freedoms:

58% — freedom of speech
18% — freedom of religion
14% — freedom of the press
10% — freedom of assembly/association
2% — freedom of petition
http://www.theinternetparty.org/commentary/c_s.php?section_type=com&td=20020910000140

So I have to laugh whenever I hear BushBots repeating the mantra "They hate us for our freedoms!" "Yeah, Ya' think so? What are those freedoms?" Only 2 percent would be able to answer. Talk about blind (and ignorant) allegiance to the Bushistas!

[Jackpine Radical]

17. You're wrong about the 5 freedoms.

They are:
The freedom to choose Coke or Pepsi
Target or WalMart
The freedom to make others worship Jeeeezus
The freedom to make other nations give us oil
The freedom of corporations to do what they damnwell please

[KansDem]

19. Oh, the "New Freedoms"

I forgot about those, the truly important ones. But you forgot "Freedom to watch FOX or CNN," but I suppose that falls under the general freedom of "The freedom to choose Coke or Pepsi."

[Coastie for Truth]

8. There's even a dumbing down of math, science, engineering

curricula in colleges.

I went to engineering school 40+ years ago, my son graduated ten years ago.

The real ball buster was field theory - and field theory has degenerated into "Here's the Matlab solution" --- even sillier with Fourier series -- all MatLab. (I have nothing against MatLab - use it myself)

Too much of a Windows GUI -- and Visual C++ and Visual J++ ---> not enough writing raw code from scratch.

And this is for the elite.

[Tesha]

9. I've been convinced for years that the end of Heathkits...

I've been convinced for years that the end of Heathkits marked the
beginning of the end of electrical engineering.

"So which end of this soldering iron do I hold?"

Tesha

[Coastie for Truth]

10. Heathkits - and Ham Radios from components

[sam the dawg]

12. all of it "dumbed down"

went to engineering school after retired.
not an MIT level school.
Could not believe how the kids "get through school"
The super stars are the ones who cheat the smartest/best.
copy copy copy - not a clue what the numbers mean.
One super star, who received the 'best student' award upon graduation, had the distinct advantage of working from the professor's textbook solution manual (heat transfer) and other similar resources that were not available to other students. Sharing answers on exams, taking solved test problems into exams in calculators, etc. all are SOP. Profs and administrators look the other way to get people through the system. No wonder this country has ethical/competence issues. No wonder corps ship jobs overseas. The foreign students, (asian) did the work on their own and got the correct answers faster. Never received awards. Domestic students were like duh -- probably hung over from previous night's beer party. Everyone gets through because people are graded on the curve. It's not easy to run a race for "place" (top 25% = A) when your opponent has the answers in advance and you do not.
New World Order

[Bill McBlueState]

14. one point

If things at your school were anything like they are at my school, the Asian students probably had at least as many borderline-illegitimate resources at their disposal as did the Americans. There are solutions manuals for even the most obscure textbooks circulating among them, all written in their native languages. I don't know where they get them.

[Gregorian]

22. There is nothing wrong with having the solutions.

They called it "spoon feeding" when I was in school. Well, I'll tell you, the only way I learned anything was by seeing how it worked. This so-called Socratic method doesn't work for everyone. I say spoon feed, give the solutions, show, show, show, and show some more. Then we will have an entire society of educated people. Not just those who could elicit the answers. I say don't hold back anything. I would have been a much better engineer if I hadn't had to curse and swear my way through college trying to figure out what the god damned textbook was talking about. I learn by seeing. When I was two, I had already discovered what a screwdriver could do. It sent me to the hospital, but I learned.

Right now, college is preparation for the corporate world. Not for learning, per se.

This applies to technical studies. Not literature and such.

[mainegreen]

11. I'd love to see the breakdown

by region or state. I'd bet you'd see some interesting things..

[indigo32]

13. This is going to be extremely detrimental to our society

I have said for some time we are becoming positively anti-intellectual here, and it will do nothing but harm to us as a society.

[Bill McBlueState]

15. the hucksters know this and take advantage of it

"American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century."

Think of all those ads, even on Air America, where words like "molecular" and "quantum" get thrown around (as though they're synonyms) to convince people of the most ridiculous claims. Decades of this leads to having a bunch of people who think homeopathy works, or that magnets are magical.

[Mithras61]

18. I always got a chuckle...

out of the claim "margarine is only one molecule away from being plastic" from some of these people, but most of them didn't understand why even when I explained it to them.

[Igel]

20. I don't see anything in fundamentalist teachings that

say statistics are wrong, or that Maxwell's equations or optics or genetics or simple inorganic chemistry is evil.

It's not the lack of education, it's what motivates not caring about education.

But you can also find grad students in many fields that are helpless in understanding how basic appliances work, or think that asking "Was Katrina as strong as it was because of global warming?" has a simple yes/no answer.

[sam the dawg]

23. fundamentalism

what I see in fundamentalism that concerns me, is a lack of interest in or concern for clear correct thinking and objective reasoning. Also, some groups foster dependency on a leader to tell (interpret doctrine/scripture) followers what to think and what to do. This is not consistent with self reliance, individualism, and independence that made US as a nation and many protestant faiths stong and sucessful.
When religion is used as a opiate of the people, it is a drug. Science and developed intellect can free one to explore and embrace the great mysteries of our cosmos including all concepts of "God".

[Igel]

24. I think fundamentalism is a symptom, not the problem everybody

else does. I've known highly literate and educated fundamentalists, and non-fundamentalists that had no interest in education.

There's a strong correlation between fundamentalism and disinterest in education, but it's just that, a correlation, and I think people get it backwards. It's not just fundies that avoid education.

Some of it is a lack of perspective, self-respect, sense of alienation and a desire to 'know what others don't' to yield a false sense of superiority and even group identity.

Some of the grad students that were anti-science fools actually looked down at their fellow grad students in science and engineering.

[Gregorian]

21. The young republicans are coming!

The dumbing down translates to- republican. But that is prejudiced. Only time will tell.

When the television is used for COPS and Bay Watch instead of calculus, algebra, physics, art history, and all of the things that people think are so god damned dull, then you can expect a society of wine and entertainment. Another Roman empire.

We have the tools, but we just aren't going to use them.

[HockeyMom]

25. The Bible

All scientific facts are contained in the Bible. :sarcasm: