216 Million Americans Are Scientifically Illiterate (Part I)
The good news: America's science literacy rate is up from a pathetic 10 percent in 1988. The bad news: it's still only 28 percent.
By David Ewing Duncan
Technology Review
“Ignorance feeds on ignorance.” – Carl Sagan
Let’s start by focusing on the positive. In just 17 years, over 50 million people have been added to the rolls of Americans who can understand a newspaper story about science or technology, according to findings presented last weekend at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
Michigan State University political scientist Jon D. Miller, who conducted the study, attributed some of the increase in science literacy to colleges, many of which in recent years have required that students take at least one science course. Miller says people have also added to their understanding through informal learning: reading articles and watching science reports on television.
Okay, now let’s talk (dare I say rant?) about the 200 million Americans out there who cannot read a simple story in, say, Technology Review or the New York Times science section and understand even the basics of DNA or microchips or global warming.
This level of science illiteracy may explain why over 40 percent of Americans do not believe in evolution and about 20 percent, when asked if the earth orbits the sun or vice versa, say it’s the sun that does the orbiting--placing these people in the same camp as the Inquisition that punished Galileo almost 400 years ago. It also explains the extraordinary disconnect between scientists and much of the public over issues the scientists think were settled long ago--never mind newer discoveries and research on topics such as the use of chimeras to study cancer, or pills that may extend life span by 30 or 40 percent.
(Continued here.)
By David Ewing Duncan
Technology Review
“Ignorance feeds on ignorance.” – Carl Sagan
Let’s start by focusing on the positive. In just 17 years, over 50 million people have been added to the rolls of Americans who can understand a newspaper story about science or technology, according to findings presented last weekend at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
Michigan State University political scientist Jon D. Miller, who conducted the study, attributed some of the increase in science literacy to colleges, many of which in recent years have required that students take at least one science course. Miller says people have also added to their understanding through informal learning: reading articles and watching science reports on television.
Okay, now let’s talk (dare I say rant?) about the 200 million Americans out there who cannot read a simple story in, say, Technology Review or the New York Times science section and understand even the basics of DNA or microchips or global warming.
This level of science illiteracy may explain why over 40 percent of Americans do not believe in evolution and about 20 percent, when asked if the earth orbits the sun or vice versa, say it’s the sun that does the orbiting--placing these people in the same camp as the Inquisition that punished Galileo almost 400 years ago. It also explains the extraordinary disconnect between scientists and much of the public over issues the scientists think were settled long ago--never mind newer discoveries and research on topics such as the use of chimeras to study cancer, or pills that may extend life span by 30 or 40 percent.
(Continued here.)
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1 Comments:
I paid particular attention to the sentence: "Elites’ exploiting their scientific knowledge for power is also not new".
In my opinion, this is exactly what Al Gore and the Church of Global Warming are engaging in. The same thing the Roman Church did to Galileo 400 years ago, so, too, does the Church of Global Warming today do to those who don't subscribe to their doomsday sacraments.
Al Gore wom an Oscar for his documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' and said in his acceptance speech that the fight against global warming is a moral issue. Moral issue? One of the hallmarks of the liberal left is moral relativism. Where does Al Gore get the effrontery to lecture on morality? I suppose if you are scientifically illiterate, you'll be duped in to believing in the morality of the Church of Global Warming. But, for those of us who are literate on science and are skeptical about the causes of global warming, we're going to continue taking on the Church of Global Warming just as Galileo did against the Roman Church 400 years ago.
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