Science a Mystery to U.S. Citizens 1656
maddugan writes "CNN and probably others are posting their synopses of the National Science Foundation's biennial report on the state of science understanding in the US. Sixty percent of those surveyed believe in ESP, psychic power, and alien abduction."
So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Polled Who? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'll bet dollars to donuts that these 60 percent of people believe that Elvis is still alive.
No not me replys please (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Widening a mystery to slashdot editors! (Score:0, Insightful)
90 percent also believe... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not so. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And how many believe... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not so. (Score:5, Insightful)
At one point in history a scientist was a respected professional. Now that the public has seen that scientists can be bought to testify to almost anything (smoking does not cause cancer) the trust has been broken.
When people talk of professional ethics its not just to maintain the good of those in the field, but also to maintain a status in the general public.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are people just so arrogant as to not be able to admit, or perhaps even afraid to admit, that there are just some things that have not been explained yet? Things that are just beyond our current grasp, but not necessarily beyond our potential grasp?
*sigh*
BlackGriffen
CNN survey (Score:5, Insightful)
Either:
b) Americans think they know everything
c) All of the above
Re:The solution to this (Score:2, Insightful)
This reasoning is flawed. There is no link between the fact that USSR/ Cambodia etc. were Atheist and the fact so many got killed. There is no causality.
Re:So what? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure you're reading that statement right. Saying yes means you DO think that they exist, but saying no does not deny the POSSBILITY that they exist: it merely states that you do not now think they do (perhaps because you lack enough evidence to convince you positively that they do).
It's a common misconception, but to "I do not believe." is a very different statement from "I believe not." The first is not itself a statement of belief (at least no more than a belief about your own state of mind), the second is.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Galileo claimed the Earth revolves around the Sun, which at the time was quite controversial and extraordinary. However, simply observing the planetary motions proved him right. Nothing extraordinary there.
On the other hand, _every time_ any one of these claims is tested in a controlled, scientific matter, they _never_ work.
Wow, you've researched every claim and every test of those claims? Man, you must be exhausted. I rather expect that you're just repeating something you've heard from someone else. I have read quite a bit about near-death experiences, enough to convince me that there is more to us than our biological bodies.
I didn't stop there, however. I looked at the evidence with a critical mind. How does this jive with my own intuition and experiences? The fact that I am aware of myself and my surroundings is incredible, and I cannot accept that this awareness arises simply from my electro-chemical brain. I have emotions and desires, quite apart from food and shelter.
I don't care to convince you to believe it, but I emplore you to keep an open yet critical mind. And don't simply disbelieve because it seems too extraordinary, otherwise you might end up thinking the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Re:if you claim it's fake, you can ignore it. (Score:3, Insightful)
People are stupid, easily misled and believe what they want to believe. It doesn't help that a sizeable contingent is more than willing to take advantage of that for financial gain.
The Amazing Randi [randi.org] has had that million-dollar prize [randi.org] to prove *any* paranormal powers for how long? That's pretty telling.
*Sure*, paranormal powers *could* exist, but my cat *could* have created the universe Last Thursday as well. But if they do exist, it's none of the quacks running around today.
Re:Credulity, Skepticism, "Crossing Over" (Score:2, Insightful)
-David Hume
Re:Not so. (Score:3, Insightful)
Evolution cannot be tested by science, either. To my mind, Evolution is not a Scientific Theory in that you cannot devise an experiment where the results would disprove the tenants of Evolutionary Science. Experiments that can disprove a theory are, to me, the foundation and tradition of the Scientific Method.
I know I'm going to catch hell for saying the above. I know that people are going to trot out all kinds of modern Philosophy of Science types who say that I have it wrong, but I just disagree.
Now, do I believe that Evolution Theory is true and that evolution occurs? Yes, I do. I believe a lot of things that aren't based on Science. I believe that OJ is guilty, for example, based on reasoning. Reasoning alone does not make for Science. Reasoning is what Aristotle did concerning the natural world, and it led him to false conclusions more than once.
You see, one of the problems with Science today, to my mind, is the dilution of the term. We have lots of "Scientists" who rarely, if ever, use the Scientific Method. Holistic Scientists, Environmental Scientists, Cosmological Scientists, Computer Scientists, Mathematical Scientists, Social Scientists, Political Scientists, yes and even Evolutionary Scientists. These, and a hundred others, are terms developed to embue those fields with the highly respected aura of Science and the funding that comes with it.
I'm not opposed to those things being studied, but is it any wonder that people are confused about what Science is? When you abandon the Scientific Method for expediency, it's just a short step to ESP, UFOs and other such claptrap.
Many years ago, I worked as a Systems Manager for Social Scientists and I can tell you, these people built their theories on what they wanted to believe, interpreted their data to make it come out right and discarded any data that didn't support their views. I talked with them about it and they admitted that it was typical in Social Science and it was extremely rare for a Social Scientist to come up with a result that they didn't believe going into an enquiry. That's not Science, that's what the psuedo scientists that are being criticized by this report do. Does this report criticize Social Scientists?
Re:This is obvious... (Score:2, Insightful)
We in the United States of America do NOT live in a Democracy, we live in a Republic. Remember your "pledge of allegiance"
The democratic process is certainly used within a republican system, but the two concepts are not interchangeble.
That aside, I agree. Not only are the general public ignorant of most of the science going on today; they are indeed ignorant of how most all of their world works. People today just take things for granted... the iron gets hot, the milk in the fridge is cold, the traffic lights are never green for simultaneously crossing traffic, etc. Very few people ever ask "why", and even fewer ever seek out an answer.
Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes.
Good thing they can vote and write letters to their congressmen, though. Otherwise our politicians might do something stupid, like ban new areas of medical research or make it hard to approve new reactor designs because "nukular" power is "like, totally scary and dangerous", especially when compared to buying oil from nations whose populations only want to kill us.
I'd go off here on a tangent about how we should have a Constitutional amendment requiring prospective voters to demonstrate at least third-grade science and literacy skills before you get to vote, and maybe, I dunno, maybe an eighth-grade science education before you can run for elected office.
But since that would require a vote... and since more than 50% of the people aren't even up to Copernicus and Galileo yet, oh, never mind...
The more I think of it, a "democracy" in which 50% of potential voters are unaware that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but they choose the leaders who control what research can and cannot be done... well, it just doesn't sound like that great a deal. (Neither does a "democracy" where 50% of the population pays 4% of the taxes and votes for the leaders who charge the other 50% of the population the other 96% of the taxes, for that matter.)
Bottom line, I think it's over for us. We jumped the shark in 1969 with the moon landings, and it's all been downhill from here. Maybe it's time we realized that for the US, democracy has finally become a bug, not a feature. A hobble against our progress, rather than our guarantor of freedom. (And a pretty lousy guarantor at that, if the Slashdot crowd's rantings about recent antiterrorism legislation is to be believed.)
Furthermore, the current US practice of importing skilled workers because the majority of its own citizens are, to put it gently, a bunch of drooling fucknozzles, is clearly only a stopgap measure. Maybe it'll keep the patient alive for another decade or two, but it's not going to solve the underlying problem.
Are there any Asia-Pacific nations that need high-tech folks with English skills, and have sane immigration policies that will give Westerners with the requisite skills and/or clue a shot at doing something useful with our lives? Democracy is not a requirement. Just give me a functioning capitalist economy (sorry, Japan, not until you get your banking system in order) and a high level (hell, even a basic level) of literacy.
Someone's scientists are gonna start the nanotech industrial revelotion, or get heavy into bioengineering, or lob some stuff up there and make a self-sustaining lunar colony, or something even cooler that none of us have imagined yet, and I don't want to miss out on either the excitement or the financial rewards.
wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
It was indeed extraordinary. Observing the motions of the "wandering lights" with Galileo's "magic glass" was very extraordinary. Actually seeing the moons of jupiter revolve about the planet was a world shaking event for those that saw it and understood the Ptolemeic worldview that was official church dogma. It just *couldn't* be so. but you lool in the glass, and it *is* so.
Extraordinary.
Re:Public Crap Versus Scientific Crap (Score:2, Insightful)
There is evidence for scientific theories that can be judged objectively by anyone who cares to do so. ESP, alien abductyion, etc. fail to ever provide any evidence that we can apply the scientific process to. All evidence for those events is hearsay, speculative, or achieved through dubious means.
It's very difficult to "believe" in ESP when every ESP capable person put in a scientific study fails to produce results that are better than chance.
Re:Always the possibility... (Score:2, Insightful)
In the end, what does this mean? (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of the others, however, such as the belief in pseudoscience, I'm not sure are as alarming. Is this really a disbelief in science, or simply a turning away from something I call "scientific exclusivism"?
Allow me to explain. Science, logic, empiricism, and the like are very good at explaining stuff. In fact, you can explain a whole lot of things with these. But you cannot explain everything with them; there are holes. And there are holes in every school of thought out there; the universe is just plain not simple enough to allow for a single set of principles to explain all things. So to fill in those gaps, something else is needed. And whatever this "something else" is, it has its own holes, ones filled in by science. They complement each other, rather than conflict.
Also interesting to note is the conflicts you see in any exclusivist system. A religious fundamentalist will blithely ignore what he sees every day, in an attempt to justify his own beliefs. But a militant atheist will weave together a maze of logic which, in the end, contradicts itself, usually by an assumption that lack of proof positive equals proof negative. And then there's Objectivism, but going into the exclusivist errors in that one will take more time than I currently have. In the end, though, it all goes back to Goedel's theorem that no system of methematics can be both consistent and complete at the same time. It's true for schools of thought as well; if you want to be truly consistent in your beliefs, then it is impossible to stick with only one.
There has been a growing trend among academia for scientific exclusivism lately, that is, the idea that science can explain all things and anything else is ridiculous superstition. This bothers me; in its own way, it is as bad as any religion, and breeds the same sorts of intolerance (albeit with different targets). If this test shows a trend away from exclusivism -be it scientific, religious, philosophical, or whatever- then someone is doing something right for a change.
Re:This is obvious... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, it all comes down to gradeschool -> highschool because most Americans won't take any decent science once they're in college (if they go to college).
A recent study shows that 99% of slashdoters... (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the major problems with psuedo-science is..
Unexplained != Inexplicable
Just because we don't know why some things happed does not mean there is some supernatural reason behind it.
ESP has never been proven to be anything but statistical number games or fraud. Cold reading is a well documented skill that has been used for centuries.
Psuedo-science != Relegion
Religion takes things on faith. People believe in religion for many reasons. Psuedo-science attempts to prove something is true by using scientific ( language, tools,
To summerize what alot of people have said already...
"But too many people believe it not to be true"
This is a classic appeal to populatity. Common knoledge is often simplified or all together wrong.
"You cannot prove that it's NOT ESP"
I don't have to. That is an appeal to ignorance. By that reasoning I can prove and disprove anything I want. Basic critical reasoning says that I don't have to prove you wrong, you have to prove to me that you are RIGHT.
"ESP is a faith just like any other science"
Nope, see above. Science has the feature of being peer reviewed and have reproducable results. ESP has never been proven in any controled environment.
As most of the slashdot public has proven this article is quite right.
Re:Surprised? (Score:1, Insightful)
Well at least science brought us some nifty things, like the electron powered horseless carriage (subway). I don't see many subways powered by: psychic energy, aliens, prayers, planetary influences... Can the public at least acknowledge that?
Psychic power? (Score:3, Insightful)
While they are rebuffed by scientists - does that make these things "fake" or non-science?
Part of the Great Witch Hunt was physicians, along side of their Church counterparts, who killed off any "medicine men" or faith healers. Kind of ironic considering they [hunters] were advocates of prayer for healing and both sides treated illness with their limited knowledge of the human body.
We look back and assume that the medicine men were crazy shamans - but they were in fact scientists in every sense of the word. Be very careful not to get on either side of this debate because in the past the debate was based on politics and not based on science what so ever. [look into the real history of the American Medical Association]
"Science" is a mystery. We can only study what is before us.
I don't believe in these things - most of all the UFO portion. But look here [psiexplorer.com] for more. I do, however, think that there is too much that we don't know or don't understand about our own minds to say these ideas are all "fake".
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Science is dying!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Fact: science is dying
Science isn't dying.
Nations and cultures that depended on science, but rejected it, are dying.
About 1000 years ago, the scientific capitals of the world had successfully preserved the works of the Greeks and Romans, and built upon them to develop medicine, algebra, and giving the concept of "zero" to our mathematicians - while our ancestors were busily burning books, struggling with Roman numerals and carving crosses in people's heads to drive out the Devil.
Then the leaders turned against science, and developed an insular / religious worldview. After about 500 years of stagnation, we adopted science, broke the shackles of theocracy, had an intellectual and artistic Renaissance, followed quickly by an industrial revolution, raising living standards worldwide, and just for kicks, we put men on the moon, developed the transistor, the computer and the Internet, and - quite by accident - took over the world.
What have our former betters (who had a 500-year lead on us) achieved in the meantime? (I mean, aside from butchering a few civilians every couple of weeks.)
Science isn't dead. But unless we either wake up and fix it (not bloody likely, given that 50% of those who have to "wake up" still believe in heliocentrism), we most certainly are.
that is a sign of bad education (Score:4, Insightful)
We have probably the best university education in the world, and one of the worst public education systems in the industrialized world.
It is a side of the great inequality ruling american society - just as we have a huge disparity between rich and poor, we have a great disparity between people with good and bad education.
I dont know if people realize how problematic this is. Having large numbers of badly educated people is just asking for civil unrest. And we can really do better in the richest and most powerful nation on earth.
Of course there are communities in the states that will strongly resist education. But that pressure will be getting very weak because the internet erode the power of local authority centers.
Re:This is obvious... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, our society works to stifle that creativity and questioning. At home you are told to obey your parents simply "because." In school you are taught to trust everything the teacher says as correct. By the time you get to your teens, you've been pressed into a nice little mold of conformity so as not to rock any boats.
Our society must change, but of course it's cyclical. Who if not these same conformists are going to change society?
This is why I am against universal standards. If you allow each school to try new techniques and teaching methods, you may run the risk of some children not being taught the "important" subjects. But of course that happens now anyway. More importantly, you enable the possibility that some students will escape the molding process, and everyone will learn from those schools.
Just as nature produces a variety of species to guard against the complete extinction of life, so too must we as humans explore multiple avenues of growth if we expect to remain strong.
Re:This is obvious... (Score:2, Insightful)
And we keep raising the bar. Just two hundred years ago it was possible for the educated man or woman to know a substantial amount of everything that was then known in the world, including the scientific names of all animal species then described. No more! Most of us don't even have mastery of our narrowly defined fields anymore.
No doubt the world would be a better place if fundamental scientific understanding (and method) were more widely deployed. But in the absence of that, and in the presence of such great complexity, I think it is the position of those same men and women of modern times to shoulder a greater burden of the load of social responsiblity and provide leadership in areas that the general population, clearly, is vulnerable to being abused by hucksters...er, politicians. Given that we (and you know who you are!) have largely created this complicated world it is the least we can do. I suspect that a great deal is riding on our success in this regard.
I'm not sure the questions were meaningful (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think so, then be prepared to lose the benefits to society of a number of otherwise-intelligent, thoughtful people.
If you don't think so -- if you believe that one's religion should not disqualify one from being considered a "scientist" -- then what's the difference between a scientist who is a Christian and one who believes in other unprovable, irrational propositions such as clairvoyance or astrology?
A great many people, including some of history's most successful scientists, have their pet irrational beliefs. It probably doesn't make sense to use someone's New Age-y beliefs as the chief yardstick of their scientific literacy.
Re:Public Crap Versus Scientific Crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Some knowledge takes a lot of work to understand. If that were not true, then the Greeks would have killed themselves off with laser-guided nuclear warheads dropped from a solar-powered orbiting platform built from superconducting nano-tubes.
Re:90 percent also believe... (Score:1, Insightful)
If you don't like the idea of the non-provable parts of religion, at least accept the rules. The teachings of religion (I'm Catholic so that is what my teachings of religion are) even separated from the supernatural aspect have the cause of making the world a better place.
Catholicism teaches you to be happy in what you do and do what makes others happy. If you think about it, you will never be continiously happy doing things that you find enjoyable. All things enjoyable get old eventually unless you change your mindset to enjoy what you do. And if you enjoy what you do and you help others it is the equivalent of a win-win situation.
10 rules are not because someone omnipotent said, "gee, 11 would just be overbearing". It's because they set a rough set of guidelines. And anyway, the newer teachings of the new testiment are much simpler and broad reaching. Love God and love your neighbor. If you love God, you are happy because you derive your happiness from something non-physical. (Lets face it, physical things never made people happy. If they did we wouldn't have so many rich rock stars/actors/actresses who kill themselves/others/do other stupid shit.) And I"m sure the benefits of loving your neighbor are obvious.
Religion isn't meant to feed those of religious power. Seeing the Pope once will convince you he isn't in the position for his own good. Religion is meant to help people in their day to day lives and ultimately, delving into the supernatural, to help them in their eternal lives.
Lets face it, you always see those old church ladies helping prepair the Church or clean up after mass. How many times have they looked miserable. Now compair that to the number of times the guy in the cubicle next to you wasn't happy w/ what he was doing.
Re:Public Crap Versus Scientific Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Explain quicksort without math. Explain the behavior of gyroscopes. Explain TV.
Wow, man, if you happen to be math challenged, that's OK. But when virtually all of our modern advances require math to explain, your lack of understanding of it doesn't mean that it doesn't work.
And I agree with the other reply... the distinction between science and esp is that I can write down what I observed, explain it with math, and send it to someone across the world who can duplicate my experiments, and get the same answers from that math. If you could do that with ESP, we would use it instead of telecommunications satellites. Oh yeah, explain orbits without math. Details matter.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been a long time since I read deeply on the matter, but I believe this is incorrect. The accepted theory in Galileo's time - spheres within spheres with Earth at the centre - predicted positions of the planets visible to the naked eye quite well. However as the data improved the old model required more and more additions to explain small perturbations. Galileo did provide evidence extraordinary for his time, observations via the telescope.
Wow, you've researched every claim and every test of those claims?
Meaningless. I can lift the pen on my desk up six inches and release it, it will fall back to the desk. If I do this the rest of my waking hours until I die without it ever once falling up, it doesn't prove that when whoever pries it from my cold hands releases the pen it won't fall up, but at some point you have to move on.
Bad Questions. (Score:2, Insightful)
If the entire survey was composed of questions like these, then the survey cannot be trusted. The question is ambiguos. Change one small word, and the question's meaning changes. A fair number of people may have read: "ordinary tomatoes do not contain genes that genetically modified tomatoes do,".
Most people in the US are only nominally literate. They do not always read what is actually written on the page. I work with lots of differnt people daily. A very small percantage of them are capable of reading a sentence correctly the first time. You'd be shocked and amazed how many people just scrape by, literacy-wise. It's really important to be carefull of that sort of thing when making a survey.
I also noticed a number of evlolution vs. creation sort of questions. As that little prob is a hot spot, with scientists in many fields divided on the topic, I personally would leave that to the 'personal optionion' section of the survey. Same thing with life on other planets. The hypothesis is untestable.
The scientific method requires testing the hypotheseis; if you cannot test it, it's philosophy, not science.
PEAR (Score:3, Insightful)
What kind of shielding do they have from every other psychic individual on the planet? I mean, if someone can effect their results from thousands of miles away and hours before or later, how do they know who it was that affected the results?
If I recall some other information I heard about this group correctly, they also have noticed that sometimes the device responds contrary to the operators intention.
Re:90 percent also believe... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think most of us can accomplish these tasks without 1) going to church and 2) paying the church. If you remove the supernatural crap, all you have is morals and a positive attitude. I don't need some priest telling me that I sin all the time. I get enough of that at work.
Note: I was raised a Catholic and now consider myself an atheist.
Re:90 percent also believe... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah yes, the ubiquitous (to say nothing of plagiarist) elitist atheist karma whore. Finding George Carlin's material is slightly more difficult than linking to a Google cached page, so I suppose I should give you some credit.
If you claim that religion is fundamentally opposed to science, then you should know that atheism is as much religion as anything else. Consider the catechism:
Why is it surprising, then, that atheists so often make the following "scientific" analysis?
In summary, then, your argument is well supported by your beliefs. However, because my religion teaches common respect (Christianity), I cannot subscribe to your argument.
Re:This is obvious... (Score:5, Insightful)
When I read, the question people ask me is "What class is that for?" They don't even consider that someone could be reading for the sake of learning or enjoyment.
I read material in textbooks I find interesting. This baffles people. I read manuals for the devices I have. This also baffles people. These same people come up to me and ask why their printer won't work.
Made me think of this... (Score:3, Insightful)
-William James, The Will to Believe
Re:90 percent also believe... (Score:2, Insightful)
I am the former.
Public schools (Score:3, Insightful)
Only your teachers know the real story, which is that there aren't nearly enough of them, and getting more is tough, since as it stands right now only martyrs and discipline enthusiasts want the job.
These things have consequences.
All that separates the 1st world from the 3rd world is the schools. Without education, there's no such thing as democracy.
Re:You're Damn Right It Does (Score:1, Insightful)
In thirty years your country will be nothing against the military and economic might of a billion chinese consumers.
Re:In the end, what does this mean? (Score:2, Insightful)
The goal of science is not merely to explain the universe around us. If we just wanted an explanation, myth would probably work just as well. Science is different because it has predictive power. It leads us to new discoveries by (correctly and precisely) predicting future observations.
Science doesn't have to "explain everything" in order to be accepted as valid versus, say, creationism. If science was way off about the way things worked, your CD player wouldn't work, you wouldn't be able to read this, and likely you'd be dead by now. It is simply untenable to regard our scientific knowledge as one possible (but possibly wrong) explanation, unless you can find a way to explain how we accidentally built all these working computers and nuclear reactors.
Two other notes: firstly, your statement of Goedel's incompleteness theorem is incorrect, and doesn't really apply to fuzzy issues of science vs religion anyway. Goedel's theorem is a statement about formal systems. Secondly, you start by claiming all these various schools of thought "complement each other, rather than conflict." You then go on to claim that the schools of thought you don't particularly like do conflict with one another, and in fact are internally inconsistent.
Re:CNN survey (Score:2, Insightful)
Either:
a) Web surveys are seriously flawed
b) Americans think they know everything
c) All of the above
How about self-selection bias? Most people likely to read a science story on CNN.com are most likely more interested and informed about science than the general population.
Re:In the end, what does this mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry but that argument doesn't stand up to a moment's examination. First just because our current set of scientific theories don't explain everything says nothing about science's ability to explain everything, which seems to be your argument. Just because I don't know something today doesn't mean I can't learn something new tomorrow. Second, I don't see and you give no evidence at all to back up, the claim that the current holes in scientific theory are complemented by any alternative "theory" (presumably some form of religion). There are plenty of phenomena that are explained by neither science nor any alternative theory. Believing in lots of contradictory systems does not get you any closer to a "complete" understanding of the universe than believing in any one of them.
In the end, though, it all goes back to Goedel's theorem that no system of methematics can be both consistent and complete at the same time. It's true for schools of thought as well; if you want to be truly consistent in your beliefs, then it is impossible to stick with only one.
I'm sorry but you are just plain wrong about this. Godel's theorem is about mathematics and mathematics alone. It cannot be applied to other fields of knowledge such as general philosophy. If your argument is based on the belief that Godel's theorem is applicable outside mathematics then you need to go back and try to understand Godel's theorem again. For example, Boyer states that: "Gödel showed that within a rigidly logical system such as Russell and Whitehead had developed for arithmetic, propositions can be formulated that are undecidable or undemonstrable within the axioms of the system." Clearly many philosophies are not "rigidly logical systems..." and so Godel's theorem does not apply to them.
if you want to be truly consistent in your beliefs, then it is impossible to stick with only one.
This is so preposterously not what Godel's theorem states that I am beginning to suspect you are a troll. Please go back to a good account of Godel's work and take another run at it.
Re:CNN survey (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, thanks for beating me to this recommendation. :-) A cute point about this particular paper is that it actually won an Ig Nobel Prize a few years back. Now, it sure ain't a flawless piece of work, but it is a result that you ignore at your peril. For those who won't bother to click through or read the linked paper, the punch line is exactly what the title says: not only do *most* people from a given population think they're at about the 60th percentile in ability for X, for almost values of X, but they do not correct their inflated self-assessments even when confronted with data that should clue them in. So, you might think that somebody who was in the bottom 10% but who thought they were better than the average student at, say, "proper" English grammar could recognize that this might not be true if you confronted him or her with their own written work and a representative sample of student work. But they don't; if anything, they now think they are even better than they did before.
Now, I suppose the Ig Nobel was awarded to them because in some sense this is a "duh" result. But the real point is that it really does completely crush what might seem to be an obvious and humane teaching strategy: provide students with models of superior work and have them strive to meet that ideal. I hope some of you just had your blood run cold when you just realized why this won't work.
Now it gets even better once you realize that this same effect can help explain why education about science and technology is especially hard to design. A big strong argument in favor of Real Science in comparison with PseudoScience is that the Real kind eventually leads to very tangible yet nearly miraculous things. So Real Science gives rise to miraculous stuff like rewritable CD players and genetic engineering, while astrology and ESP only seem to lead to bad TV specials. Now, you think that this difference would be clear, and that you would listen to the people who brought you the Magical Machines when they point out that astrology is complete crap. But they don't.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Re:Science: The OTHER Fundamentalist Religion (Score:1, Insightful)
Sigh.... can you prove Santa Claus doesn't exist?
>
Its called "cold reading".
>
Really? Actually, there has been zero scientific evidence (double-blind studies, etc) of any type of psychic abilities, whether "remote viewing" or "spoon bending".
I wish (pray?) that more people understood the basics of the scientific method and critical thinking. There would me far more Carl Sagans and a few less Madam Cleos.
Hypothetical Situation (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble with all this stuff is that somewhat fringe ideas that might be worthy of further study (what if there are [disclosureproject.org] really alien visitors?) are lumped together with complete idiocy [scientology.org].
I've got a strong engineering background, and enough college physics to understand the basics of relativity, but I question some beliefs of the scientific establishment. The sad fact is that there are likely a lot of scientists who really would like to take a serious, open-minded look at the UFO phenomenon, but the only way to examine it and keep the respect of one's peers is the weather-balloons-full-of-swamp-gas approach.
At the moment, modern science isn't capable of giving serious attention to things like the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors. Why should it be trusted to be the final word?
Science and Superstition. (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't be too cocky, people. ;)
1) There are 'superstitions' which have been scientifically verified in their effect. For instance, aspects of Ayurvedic medicine are being vindicated in the recent past, mostly by bio-engineering companies that take data on particular 'medicinal' rices and use it to obtain patents. That doesn't mean that Astrology is an effective tool at predicting the future. It does, however, indicate that it is sometimes profitable not to ignore information obtained by some process other than the modern scientific method. (Another one I've heard about recently, but don't have as much knowledge of - the Chinese have been using Wormwood for many years to stop tumor growth and sometimes reduce it. I'm sure google can tell you more.)
2) There are scientific givens that have been proven false. Medicine and nutrition have good examples to examine; they are peer-reviewed like every other scientific field of endeavor, and yet it shocks me at times how quickly previous 'common knowledge' was mitigated by some sort of different finding, if not outright retracted.
In a longer time frame, our concepts of mechanics have been altered since their first inception... consider that quanta follow very very different rules. It doesn't prove Newton extremely wrong, but it sure as hell indicates that Newton would have been blowing smoke out his ass if he said, "This is it, it's all done now."
3) There are conditions under which modern scientific method fails to apply. Let's assume for a moment that some condition is extremely hard to reproduce. Maybe even mathematically provably hard. We'll say it's some quantum effect or other, and it only happens under very precise conditions, some of which we can't currently measure because we don't have appropriate instruments. A thing happens, and is empirically observed, but cannot be replicated at this time. Did it happen? Of course. To say that there can be no such event would be naive at best. We have had past instances of this.
4) There are conditions which cannot be measured and re-created by scientific method, because of some inherent quality of these conditions. The irony here is this - it's a statement of faith. This can't be backed up by scientific evidence. I happen to believe it. It can neither be proven true or false, except experientially. (Think 'anecdotally.')
Now, here's the kicker: To deny point #4 suggests faith in the converse - That all conditions can be measured and re-created by scientific method, regardless of the inherent qualities of these conditions. Not to say that science is a religion, but this hints at blind faith that the scientific method can provably describe all possible states that we experience. I say 'blind faith' - 'scientific' people denying their own experience are just as unwilling to see as people denying truly empirical data.
I personally believe that scientific methodology is a tool, and a great one. We can make computers and predict the movements of gases across the universe, and we can make statements about what we should eat and how we should live if we want to be healthy. It doesn't tell us much about how we should act or what we should value, and it doesn't tell us anything about things that cannot be predicted. So scientific knowledge is useful and grand, but there are more things in this world than are enumerated in your philosophy. ;)
And yes, I believe that people can know things without scientifically acceptable reasons.
Re: science, pseudoscience and religion (Score:1, Insightful)
For those arguing science == pseudosciece == religion, I have two words for you:
Peer Review.
This is what separates true, hard science from the claims of cranks and weirdos, and even from religious authority.
Ideas in the realm of science must undergo INTENSE scrutiny and criticism from the scientific community before they will be accepted. This is part and parcel of the scientific method and one of the reasons science is so great at explaining the physical world. Every claim is held accountable and forced to prove it is a correct explanation.
The fact that so many people don't understand this, and that they consider scientific knowledge to be the same as any other kind of knowledge is appalling.
As for religious scientists, consider, just for a moment, the possibility that the two aren't mutually incompatible! Only when you subscribe to LITERAL interpretations of religion do they become incompatible. I would wager most (not all of course) religious scientists view their faith as something to answer questions science simply cannot answer. For instance, science tells us IF we can do something; religion answers the question SHOULD we do something. Liberal religious scholars are understanding that post Enlightment, religion has to step back and not try to answer questions about the physical world.
However, compare the 6,000,000 Southern Baptists to the few thousand Unitarians and you will see why there is such a clash. Many many people still accept religious explanations for the physical world over scientific ones, or at least try to hold them on equal footing when these are clearly not the same kind of truth. Blah, so much for the post Enlightment age of reason.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
"They laughed at Galileo. They also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
Now, which do you think is more likely to be closer to 99.999% of the weirdo claims you hear?
PS Galileo could actually explain his results. If you can't, you ain't Galileo.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
"The plural of 'Anecdote' is not 'Data'."
dave
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
A talent that's worth a million bucks from James Randi. From what I understand, there are more dowswer's who actually believe in thier abilities and go after Randi's million that just about any other paranormal field. They all fail.
I don't know about any particular "sense" or mystic impulse like some may claim, but the stick twisted in my hands to point down when I walked over our well.
An oft-repeated experiment is to have people with dowsing sticks walk a course over several sprinkler heads. The stick will invariably twist over the heads. After the experiment, you can reveal that the entire course ran straight over a water pipe that should have pegged as much as the sprinkler heads if you were actually detecting water.
Do I have any idea how it works? No. Is it mysticism, my own brain playing tricks on me, Alex Chiu's magnetism, dark matter, or something else? I dunno. I think anyone who claims to know is probably full of crap.
Why? Any number of experiments like the above show that it's the mind doing it and that dowsers do no better than chance when tested. But obviously you believe in your "deep mystery" so much that anyone who thinks they have an answer - an essential part in science - is "full of crap".
It's interesting to note that consultations of profession psychics among police investigations is not unknown as well. Why does anyone suppose this is useful?
Why do you presume it's useful? If there's an urgent mystery to solve - a lost child, say - it's easy enough to turn to anyone who offers the hope of a solution. And frequently they can offer vague answers - "he's alive and there's water nearby" - that have a decent chance of turning out as true. And, hey, people forget prophesy all the time; this is a nice list of prophesies done by Jean Dixon and others for the People's Almanac [google.com] - pretty much all failures.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would they get a flame job in the press if the majority of people don't realize it's crap? Public outrage doesn't happen if the public isn't outraged.
[TMB]
Re:In the end, what does this mean? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with pseudo-science is that it is typically made up of theories that should be, but are invariably not, empirically verified. For example, ESP is something that can easily be tested in a lab. Far from being open questions (like philosophical debate as to whether god exists), questions that can easily be answered with a simple lab test are closed.
Science doesn't attempt to "explain" anything-- it goes further than this by requiring standards of verifiability. Pseudoscience on the other hand claims to produce results, but mysteriously "stops working" when subjected to a sceptical eye.
Something that is purely conjectural like the existence of alien life forms, god/gods, etc does not fall under the umbrella of science or psedoscience.
BTW, your remark about Godel is utter nonsense. Goodels theorem has nothing to do with belief systems, it merely addresses mathematical axioms and their logical consequences.
Re:Scary (Score:2, Insightful)
Take Australia for example. The country (if you don't include Alaska) is roughly the same size as the USA and it's direct neighbours are the sea life. So, using your environment theory, that would make Australians even more we-are-the-world than American's. But they don't think like that.
I think your theory just got blown out of the water. Oh yeah, and Australia is the island/nation/continent in the South Pacific, not to be confused with Austria, a land-locked European nation.
Re:So what? (Score:1, Insightful)
What's significan't here isn't merely the fact that he made these observations, but that others who make the same observations will get the same results.
This is what differentiates solid evidence from unreliable anecdotes.
Re:Of course you can't disprove that... (Score:3, Insightful)
The basement of the Pentagon is where Cthulhu lives. The reason they crashed a plane into the pentagon was to break the magicks and free Cthulhu! Why else did you think someone immediately drew a triple chalk line across where the wall had been?
Re:Quantum Phenomena are microscopic! (Score:3, Insightful)
Superconductivity, to name but one, is a macroscopic quantum phenomenon. So are superfluidity of liquid helium, lasers, Josephson junctions, Bose-Einstein condensates, the photo-electon effect, and numerous others (such as all of chemistry).
Re:This is obvious... (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd have gotten a survey course anyway. Actually teaching one of the philosophies that accept the existence of a reality that can be reasoned about would itself be too controversial to get taught exclusively.
What about the photos? (Score:1, Insightful)
There is some legitimate science in the area-there is a frenchman named Valee (who was the prototype for the frenchman in Close Encounters) who has looked at this from the perspective of "If I were an alien, why would I visit somewhere" and come up with some interesting theories. THere are a lot of people (sorry, it's been a while and I've forgotten the more reputable names) who have studied the patterns of the observations, and there is a lot of interest here too (but you'll read 20 trash books before you find one even vaguely respectable).
There is a lot of genuine science in fringe areas, but the fringe areas represent areas of truly unknown phenomenon. The X-files is entertainment, but many (perhaps most) of the wierd things that have been used in stories there have had some reasonably scientific investigation in amongst the loonies. I am a PhD practicing physicist, and I get a lot of loonie explanations of particle physics and relativity all the time-the fact that there are kooks in the field does not mean that particle physics and relativity are not "science". The difference is that the true unresolved mysteries in those fields are not accessible to amateurs and are generally beyond amateur experience (you don't have Joe Sixpack watching neutrino oscillations in his backyard-video at 6).
Another example is alchemy-for thousands of years alchemists were the gold refiners of the world. They just didn't have the atomic hypothesis at their beck and call, and so they spoke of changing base metal into gold, not about separating the gold out from the zinc like we would today. If you read their works sympathetically, translating into modern jargon as you go, you will find they used pretty much the same technology as we did up until well into the 20th century (which has more to do with working lower grade ore than anything else). They even probably made some fairly nasty things like fulminate of mercury to leave laying around to deal with anyone who tried to burglarize the gold smelter! They did a lot of roasting during final processing, and if you roast fulminate of mercury (trying to copy the alchemist you saw roasting some stuff which "turned into gold", and the alchemist tried to not leave a lot of finish processed specie lying about) you will learn not to mess with wizards!!!
Re:Surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course there are things we don't know. On the other hand, when the first 99 experiments fail to detect ESP (or whatever your preferred pseudo-science is), most people start to see a basic trend developing...
There's a difference between keeping an open mind and checking your brain at the front door.
-JS
Re:CNN survey (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ethnocentrism (Score:3, Insightful)
You points about America are true about some Americans and untrue about others. Polititions which are strong isolationists don't do well in elections in most of the US, because the US is a nation of immigrants. The US gives out Billions in aid to other nations each year. Many Americans do feel that we should take care of our domestic problems before we stick our noses in other countries problems. But many others, especially those with greater knowledge of world events, realize that we can't just ignore the outside world and need to work with other nations to our mutual benefit.
ethnocentrism Pronunciation Key (thn-sntrzm)
n.
Belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group.
Overriding concern with race.
Racism is still a problem in the US, and it's definatley worse in some areas of the country than others, but I do believe that progress is being made.
I believe that you weren't trolling, but I don't think you're right. The US is a place where everyone has a right to voice their opinions. If you're looking for examples of ethnocentric people in the US I'm sure you will find them. It's this freedom of speech which allows not only the ethnocentrics to voice their opinions, but also the immigrants, and people from other nations. Freedom of expression allows people to put forth their views, and keeps the US engaged with the world around US.
I'm not saying that I think the US will be the most powerful nation in the world forever, but I think we're more likely to crumble from moral decay like our predecessors did, than from ethnocentrism.
Re:This is obvious... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is odd. Developmental psychology has shown that the vast majority five year olds don't have the brain centers involved in different parts of abstract thought and that they don't fully develop in most people until 10. You can talk to a 5 year old about Bell's Inequality Theorem, and they can even learn to parrot it back, but they don't actually understand it in the same way that they don't understand that if you pour a volume of liquid from a short container into a tall container, the tall container doesn't contain more liquid.
Math (Score:3, Insightful)
I only got up to geometry, but am a professional programmer for a living. And quite frankly I don't use much math. Very few fields use math. But we all use english to communicate to each other effectively.
Re:This is obvious... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hypothetical Situation (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a problem with your hypothetical situation. The problem is that scientists never seem to witness strange flying objects defying the laws of physics. And those that do usually try to understand what they are seeing rather than pigeonholing it into to "aliens" category.
I'm an astronomer. I spend quite a bit of time looking at the sky, probably more than any non-astronomer here. I haven't seen any unexplainable lights in the sky. I've seen things I couldn't explain at the time (when I was a child). For example, in third grade I saw a silvery point above the western horizon one afternoon. I pointed it out to a teacher who pronounced it a weather balloon. All the kids called it a UFO. Of course, I know now that I was looking at either Venus or Jupiter, both of which are easily visible in the daytime if you know where to look.
I pull this joke quite often when I'm in a crowd. I'll find Venus or Jupiter and start pointing at it. Most people will describe it as moving in a way that describes the laws of physics. What's really happening is that without nearby references it appears to move. It's hard to find, so if you look away and back, it may have seemed to disappear. The problem is that untrained people are very poor observers, especially if they don't understand what they are seeing and how their perceptions color their understanding.
Even professionals like pilots are susceptible to misidentifying objects in the sky. Reports of pilots taking evasive action to avoid hitting Venus are common.
Until there is something beyond eyewitness report and doctored photos, there's very little to investigate.
Learn to Think for themselves (Score:2, Insightful)
99.99% of people are embedded in a web of social relationships: parents, child, friend, co-workers, etc. But only a small fractions of the population need to use on a daily basis math beyond making changes at the grocery store.
Similarly, every one is born, loves, hates, cries,
and then dies. Since HS usually does not offer a Philosophy of Life course, these things get dealt with in the English classes! So the % distribution of classes is actually fairly reasonable.
While I agree that there should be more basic science education, I'd suggest that a far more important addition would be a Psychology, Philosophy and Logic course.
Teach our kids to THINK clearly for themselves and be aware of the pitfalls. This is something that will help them in any paths they choose in life.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is dogma, as recited by the devotees of Carl Sagan and SCICOP.
This is common sense.
Take these three statements:
I am wearing a white shirt.
I am typing this while waiting for my appointment to talk with the President of the US.
I am meeting the president to neogotiate how the surrender of the US to Zeus and family will occur.
One of these you probably accepted right off; it's very possible that I'm wearing a white shirt. One of these you were probably a little skeptical on; it's more unlikely for someone to be writing on Slashdot while waiting for the president. One of these - the completely extraordinary claim - you probably didn't even pause to consider it. Would you believe it if I sent you a picture of me and Zeus? My guess is that it would have to turn up on the 6 o'clock news for anyone to believe it, and even then many would be skeptical.
My wearing a white shirt is an ordinary claim, and takes little to no evidence; my neotiating the surrender of the US to the Greek gods is an extraordinary claim, and takes extraordinary evidence.
Re:Math (Score:3, Insightful)
Mathematics is a way of thinking; namely, a systematic approach to solving problems. We are not taught algebra because we will need to solve quadratic equations, but because we will need to solve problems in general and, contrary to the apparent beliefs of the general populace, the systematic, logical approach is usually the most effective.
Math is the language of logic, and therefore of the sciences. As such it is absolutely necessary in order to have a functional understanding of the modern world. Expecting someone to make rational decisions regarding the technological society we live in without an understanding of mathematics is like asking someone to debug the Linux kernel without knowing C.
High school algebra serves the same function as Pascal; teaching concepts. That you are about as likely to use Gaussian Elimination as you are to be paid to program in Pascal doesn't mean that either of them should be eliminated from the standard curriculum. To do so would be a grave disservice to the student.
The fact is that if you didn't have an understanding of algebraic structure you would be an utter failure as a programmer, but that concept has already been dealt with by other responses.