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."
This is obvious... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. The common "Who cares" attitude about science. This is rampant in society -- try talking to a non-scientist about some scientific issue and watch the eyes of most people glaze over.
2. The media dramatizes and reduces complicated scientific issues into 2-second sound bites. This is why, for example, so many people misunderstand what Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity actually state.
In some sense, this is a dangerous development for society. The US Founding Fathers supported the creation of public libraries because they realized that having an informed public is important for good government. This does not mean that everyone should be an expert at say diagonalzing a Hamiltonian, but at least actually know what the heck Quantum Mechanics is about (and no it will not help you lose weight). Scientific progress is creating technology that will revolutionalize human society and even what it means to be human. These are things that the public, as a democracy, should understand because it affects everyone.
60% of U.S. Citizens are smart. (Score:1, Interesting)
ESP - extra sensory perception. Lets take it the other way, do you only believe that human's have seeing, hearing, smell, touch and taste? Is it really that hard to believe that there might be some other input device on a person?
Psychic power - well, it's rathe vague, but brainwaves can be measured up to several metres away. In practice most psychics may be fake, but we're talking about a theory of biological ability here which is independant from how many people may have it.
Alien Abduction - well, I think the jury is still out on that one, and that's not a science.
(Quite frankly though I think that Aliens look at us as we do lab rats. It's not good or evil - it's clinical)
if you claim it's fake, you can ignore it. (Score:4, Interesting)
> psychic power, and alien abduction
Uh-huh. So just beacuse science can't explain things that people see, think they see, or where phenomena, it MUST be "pseudoscience", as in, a load of hogwash.
Now I'm not saying I believe in any of it either, but there's a lot of questions one could ask about this world where the answers dip into this category.
To imply that these people are ill informed is really quite immature. Cause OBVIOUSLY if you can't apply a formula to it it doesn't exist.
Majority. (Score:4, Interesting)
This constitutes a majority, of course, which means that (if my junior high civics lessons were correct) the government should be dumping huge amounts of money into researching these things, right?
Funny how I kept hearing that "rule by the majority" was good, without a single caveat about what happens when that majority is a cluster of mouth-breathing gits.
--saint
Science Knowledge, Math Literacy (Numeracy) (Score:3, Interesting)
Just last week, I read an article in Mother Jones magazine [motherjones.com] about Robert Moses, a 60's civil rights leader who now is strongly advocating better math education for minorities, both through his own actions teaching in a Mississippi school (he commutes weekly from his Massachusetts home, bless those dedicated liberals), and in his book, Radical Literacy . (I just ordered the book, ISBN 080703127, but haven't got it yet.)
I absolutely agree that math and science education should be a stronger emphasis in schools (math is probably more important than science, but they each fuel the other). And clearly, inner-city schools, and other poor schools, provide lousy education, especially in math and science. And as the survey cited here demonstrates, that lousy education shows.
Here in Pleasanton [k12.ca.us], California, a wealthy suburb, my Rotary Club [pnr-rotary.org] awards prizes each month to a "student of the month." I'm amazed each month that these kids all take multiple AP classes (sometimes five or six) and have GPAs of 4.15 or 4.25. When I went to school, even taking AP Calculus, it was mathematically impossible to have a GPA greater than 4.0 -- speaking of "math literacy". But what about the many inner-city students who never graduate from high school, and lack even the basic math skills required to work at a cash register? (Ask your local McDonald's manager how they work around the lack of functional literacy and math skills.)
Another book plug: I just finished the book And Still We Rise , a reporter's account of a year in an AP English classroom in South Central Los Angeles. It's a remarkable book that left me feeling hopeful (unlike most books in this genre, which leave me frightened and numb). But alas, that book focuses only on just a few dozen surviving geniuses, and not thousands of their peers whose best efforts could not overcome the cruel challenges of the inner-city school environment.
Finally, I read an article [bayarea.com] in yesterday's newspaper (the Valley Herald), recounting a new bill by my local state legislator, who wants to exempt more new teachers from needing teaching credentials. The bill's stated intent is to allow more skilled professionals to teach, but I suspect the real goal is to circumvent teaching standards and put more lower-cost teachers into classrooms without adequate training.
Belief versus scientific understanding (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because one "believes" in paranormal activity or "believes in astrological predicitions" does not mean the person is incapable or ignorant of rational scientific thought. For example, although I am a daily reader of my horoscope, because I find the idea of fortunes fun and intriguing, I'm not incapable of understanding how I and my collegues as scientists are capable of scientifically testing hypotheses.
Likewise although I do believe that extraterrestrial life has abducted people for whatever reason, I am not saying that I can scientifically prove that it has occured.
The report should be more critical of the publics understanding of science, and not its acceptance of paranormal activity as real. Science can be a wonderful provider of truth, but it's not the end all to truth. Something still may be true even though it has not yet been proven scientifically, eg. the graviton, the tachyon. The term is a hypothesis. Most scientist believe their hypotheses are true, and science is their proof. However, if they didn't have their belief that is was true, they wouldn't even have a will to want to prove it.
Science is a process that provides proof to ideas. The public's understanding of that idea should be what the survey is testing. And not saying hogwash such as X% of the respondance believe astrology is a science.
Credulity, Skepticism, "Crossing Over" (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a friend who tried to convince me that Jonathan Edwards of "Crossing Over" fame had real psychic abilities. He would point out some information he'd "divined" and said, "See? How could he have known that if he wasn't psychic?"
At the time, all I could say was, "I don't know how. But it doesn't mean he's talking to ghosts."
Skeptic Magazine [skeptic.com] has an article that detailed his methods, which are pretty much like the methods of other mediums and spritualists. In addition to the regular cold readings, he also had a bus-load of confederates in his studio audience, and the author of the article states how the overhead microphones in the studio audience were turned on for over an hour before the taping of the show. So he could hear what people were talking about. Of course, they were talking about their dead relatives.
The point is, I didn't have to accept a (to me) preposterous explanation for how he knew what he knew, even if I couldn't figure out exactly what his tricks were.
Re:Majority. (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a why we don't have a democracy. Even way back when our constitution was created the leaders of the country (or at that point states) realized that the majority of the people were either stupid or uninformed and therefore could not be trusted to make wise decisions for the country.
So, instead of democracy we have representative democracy. We vote on representatives to make the real decisions. Overall, this is a better system... with the minor caveat that people like bush get elected without the popular vote (but that's sort of a different issue)
Re:False headline (Score:3, Interesting)
Science would probably be in a much better state if people didn't jump to conclusions based on the most cursory of searches for data.
Re:Surprised? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is rather that people aren't taught to think critically. With rudimentary critical thinking skills, the vast majority of the silly claims that one comes across (especially on late-night TV) can be easily debunked. Without the ability to perform such critical evaluations, our natural tendency to favor florid and exciting stories takes over. That's how we get these little grey men from Sirius.
Critical thinking skills are generally useful, but especially so in science - the majority of proposed scientific theories are wrong, and a lot of the work of science goes into proving theorists wrong. However, even scientists aren't explicitly trained to think critically. We're expected to pick it up via osmosis, and some of us apparently fail to learn the lesson. For example, some of the more rabid endorsements of "psychics" have come from practicing scientists. Typically, these psychics refuse to perform in front of professional magicians; whenever they do, guess what? Their mysterious powers disappear. (Magicians are familiar with the methods of fooling people, and aren't easily fooled.)
Re:if you claim it's fake, you can ignore it. (Score:3, Interesting)
But I must say, that Randi has been playing a rather cruel joke that no one ever realizes. Andy Kaufman couldn't have played the same joke this long, and held out on the punchline.
Think about it. Randi insists on proof for the paranormal, in such a stringent way, that if anything goofy or cool ever was proved... it couldn't be considered as paranormal or supernatural. His very method of prooving such, reduces all of it to...
WEIRD SCIENCE PHENOMENA.
Now, he would probably be a man of his word, and honor the million dollar prize. But I'm still flabbergasted that no one ever realizes it.
Kids (Score:2, Interesting)
I was TA for a NATSCI course at my university (science for arts students). It was based on the history of science.
I was teaching about Zodiac signs, and thought I could lead them in with horoscopes and the Zodiac signs are the constellations crossed by the Sun, and so on...
I thought this would be a great opportunity to show the kids (first year) that belief has changed because of philosophy. So I mentioned that "back then, lots of people believed horoscopes led their lives, and ruled their actions. Now that we're more scientifically advanced, and have learned more about the nature of the universe, we don't subscribe to this anymore. For example, how many of you here believe astrology controls our lives?"
Three-quarters of the kids raised their hands.
Idiots.
The problem with science (Score:5, Interesting)
For example: from where I sit, I cannot see into my garage - in fact, I cannot see my garage at all. Therefor, if I am to be absolutely precise, I cannot state that my car is in the garage. It could have been stolen, it could have disappeared in a puff of smoke, it could have been abducted by aliens. Each of those is a hypothesis, just like the hypothesis that the car is setting there. If I am to be precise, I cannot state for fact that my car is there or not.
However, since my garage is locked, my car is locked, and had the doors opened I probably would have heard them, the hypothesis that it was stolen is unlikely. Given the body of evidence supporting conservation of matter, the hypothesis that it went poof is unlikely. And any aliens that could reach Earth would have little use for my car, so even if the Drake equation is bunk it would seem unlikely aliens would have stolen it. The most likely hypothesis is that my car is right where I left it (relative to the Earth's surface).
However, that sort of thinking doesn't make sense to the average person. "How can you *not* know your car is out there?" And when a scientist says "I cannot conclusively disprove it", they think that means that is must be true.
Most so-called "science" teachers just teach that water is H20, that natural gas burns in oxygen, etc. In short, they teach facts, rather than teaching the tools to THINK, and to CHECK what you think. It's easy to test if a student can regurgitate the facts you've crammed down their throat - testing if a student can actually THINK when confronted with a new situation is hard, and subject to opinion (read: "If I flunk this kid, can his parents cast doubt upon my grade?").
Until we actually start teaching kids to THINK, to constantly question what they know, and to take nothing for granted, we will have this sort of nonsense running around. And since the Industrial Revolution the purpose of public schools has been to turn out organic labor units, not thinking individuals.
And before you pat yourself on the back, smug in your superiority - when was the last time YOU actually stopped to think about your opinions, and to ask "Now, what are the underlying axioms of this belief? What truths must I hold self-evident to get to this belief? How can I test if those beliefs are true?"
Arguments agaist psychics (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is obvious... (Score:5, Interesting)
The flip side of this is how well things are explained. Jerome Bruner (eminent pscyhologist) used to say something to the effect that you should be able to explain anything to a five-year-old. I get to deal with four- and five-year-olds with some frequency, and though it is not easy, it can be done.
If you simply want to talk at people, the message will be received only by those who have both inclination and ability to try. If you want to communicate, you must find a way to motivate people to listen, and express your ideas in ways they can understand.
Don't blame people for something over which they have little, if any control.
Feynman agreed with you. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
My great uncle, up till about a year and a half before he died, was a well-dowser.
For those of you not familiar with the term, a well dowser finds wellwater usually with a forked stick (peach or willow is deemed best, at least by my great uncle) or sometimes by crossed wires.
Now, I don't imagine that many here on Slashdot would think much of it, but the man didn't advertise, he just let word of mouth do the work for him. He claimed to me that he could tell not only where the water was, but approximately how deep, and an relative quantity.
He was generally called in after conventional well drillers failed, although I remember he had good business among the local Amish. Apparently some of my uncle's 12(!) kids can do it also, but not all of them. None of them do it professionally. His brother (my grandfather) couldn't do it either.
Call it paranormal nonsense, or whatever have you, but the man made a little money doing it, and had a good reputation.
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, indeed, would anyone even suggest it considering the flame job they'd get in the press?
And, at the risk of ridicule: When my uncle told me about dowsing (I was about 10) the first chance I could, I found myself a forked stick and tried it. 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.
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. But, like anything that people don't understand, it's magic until they they figure it out.
One thing I have noticed about most really technical people, or at least people who believe themselves to be educated, is that they're often the least likely to ever discover any of these kinds of answers. Tesla was a crackpot...and his legacy powers your lights today, no matter what anyone says about Edison. Galileo was a crackpot...has anyone questioned his reasoning lately? When you really break it all down, does whatever crackpot theory you have pay off? If it does, it can't be all wrong.
Re:Scary (Score:3, Interesting)
One percent of America's population holds 40% of the wealth.
I hope you are not suggesting that it is unfair to have that one percent of the population pay 40% of the taxes.
Re:90 percent also believe... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Body ... Mind ... Spirit ... ???
The thing that amazes me is that people will absolutely insist there is only the body. Then, someone shows them the mind, and they say, "Okay, I accept I was wrong about the body thing. There is a mind. But there's nothing beyond the mind. I'm positive!" At each step they admit they were wrong and revise their beliefs, yet they fall right back into insisting their new theories are correct beyond all doubt and that there is nothing else.
strange beliefs (Score:2, Interesting)
This is not really a surprise since young kids are very concrete in their thinking and most haven't witnessed/experienced the destruction of large-scale objects.
However, as a kind of control I also studied University undergraduates (3rd year students) and asked them similar questions. I was surprised to find that about a quarter of these students endorsed the notion that large objects like the moon, the sun and the stars would exist unchanged forever. I also asked the University students about their spiritual beliefs. For example, did they believe in God? What surprised me was how often students would reject traditional spiritual notions, but then go on to offer up spontaneously some really weird ideas. E.g., 'I don't believe in God or organized religion, but I think my soul astral-projected through the Bermuda triangle before I was born.' (The indestructibility of large objects and the weird spiritual notions were almost never expressed by students who were science majors.)
Even in a major University it seems, ignorance and strong irrational trends were not being engaged by the educational process. Not good, if one accepts the notion that a healthy democracy requires a reasonably well-educated electorate.
The "Research" was bad science (Score:2, Interesting)
Example #1: The question about the big bang.
While the big bang has gained a lot of credibility over the last couple of decades, it is in no way a fact yet. It is nothing more than a best-guess based on very scant evidence. It's not unlikely that a better theory will be put out in the future as more evidence builds (one that changes the nature of how we percieve the big bang or one the discounts it entirely.) I believe at this time that the cosmological community does not completely agree that the big ban happened or what it means. (note: I'm not saying that it didn't happen, just that it's not even close to being conclusive, unlike Evolution.)
2) The questions about ESP, Alien Abduction, and Astrology were very closed minded. The truth is that we still do not know enough about the world we live in to throw this stuff out as pure fantasy, especially ESP (although not reproducible, there is substantial proof that something occurs that we do not understand... perhaps very rarely or commonly) It is very, very bad science to assume that something does not exist or can not occur... that's the same thinking that has held up most great scientific discoveries.
3) Asking yes or no questions treats them as simple facts, when they are not. It misses the point to putting out an hypothesis and developing it into a theory. Theories general get worked over for quite awhile before they are either discounted to evolve into more or less a fact. Once you can "build a car" out of it, then it truly has a tangible result (Evolution vs. Big Bang.) Each question has a different degree of truth. The fact is, the universe does revolve around the Earth (Einstien pointed out in the Theory of Relativity that it was just as true as saying that the Sun revolves around the Earth.)
4) Slashdot's reaction (especially those in Tech) has been it's usually self-centered "we know better" type of reaction. Slashdotters do not. In fact, I doubt if most of you can critically evaluate the survey based on social mythology, grammar/connotation, and scientific method (which never disproves anything, but does find "better" answers that can be built on.)
Many of the reactions mirror the standard Engineering reactions to anything that isn't already a well-used formula. In my experience, Engineers are very often the most closed minded and least likely to discover something new types.
5) Here's the ultimate example of why the survey doesn't work. Do you believe in ghost? Yes/No? Is yes/no a relevant answer to a phenonenom (excuse the spelling) that we can't properly place yet. Fact: We do not know if a ghost is a physical, psychological, or other type of occurance. It could all be in someone's head. It could be a strange particle effect related to the electrical signature of a previously living person and the way it interacts with the phsycial world on a quantum level, or it could be nothing at all. That wasn't exactly a Yes/No approach was it? Yet, it was a totally valid way to view the question.
Thanks,
James
Re:This is obvious... (Score:3, Interesting)
Tim
Comfortable? (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I trying to prove God doesn't exist? No. Am I trying to prove that he does exist? No. I'm just asking: why do we need to prove anything about God?
When you lay aside everything you think you know and think about it at that basic level, it really is quite mystifying.
There is truth in the religious experience, it didn't come from thin air. I have felt this much. But just how much of what we're told is authentic and how much is contrived to meet current political/power needs?
Re:90 percent also believe... (Score:3, Interesting)
What a fucking retarded statement.
What does believing in the factual existence of anything have to do with "putting something into" anything? There is a difference between philosophy and religion. They are both sets of beliefs and (sometimes) guidelines for behavior. The difference is that the philosophical beliefs usually evolve over time with experience and reflection, while religious beliefs exist because some psychos a long time ago claimed that Ralph the Holy Head of Lettuce laid down the law thusly (or whatever your fantasy happens to be).
The teachings of religion [...] even separated from the supernatural aspect have the cause of making the world a better place.
Absolutely hilarious.
Catholicism teaches you to be happy in what you do and do what makes others happy.
Someone else wanna go ahead and knock that current-events setup out of the park for me?
Religion isn't meant to feed those of religious power.
I think religion is probably just a perplexing psychological manifestation with roots in humans' primordial fear of the unknown and the unbearable knowledge of certain death. But it's better said here [godpart.com]. Spend the $15, it's worth it.
I'll leave you with this thought: Consider the plight of the non-believer, surrounded 24/7 by people who actually believe this stuff; surrounded by a population of which 65% honestly believe there are angels flying around them throughout the day. It's literally like being trapped inside of a mad-house for your entire life.
Science: The OTHER Fundamentalist Religion (Score:2, Interesting)
While scientists insist that something must be proven, this overlooks the fact that science is merely a tool to understand the Universe around us. Religion and spirituality is also a tool. It is a completely different type of tool.
There is NO PROOF that ESP and other such things do NOT exist. I, personally, know several people that work as professional full time psychics. What they can tell you about a person they have never met is astounding.
Just as fundamentalist Christians knock on doors and tell people "We are right, and if you disagree with us, you are wrong and will suffer for it," people on the other end of the spectrum often do the same thing -- claim full justification for their beliefs and state that their rules for understanding the world describe everything and that there is no other possible interpertation of their evidence.
I've worked with many people involved in science, spirituality, and religion. I've always worked at keeping an open mind. I've seen no difference between Christian fundamentalists and dogmatic athiestic scients, both of whom claim only their way is right and all others are wrong.
While there may be no proof of ESP and alien abductions, there are many things science has never disproven and there is strong evidence in remote viewing (as conducted in intelligence experiments) and other "psychic" events.
Science, like religion, does not have a monopoly on Truth and does not have all the answers. It's about time scientists became open minded enough to realize there are things they do not know.
"There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your philosophies..." (Hamlet, by William Shakespeare)
alex chiu (Score:2, Interesting)
Misleading writing.... (Score:3, Interesting)
In explaining the scientific illiteracy of the US population, the author of this article talks about the number of Americans who believe in psychic powers, UFOs and astrology. The author then writes:
This is terribly misleading writing. Unlike the previous three issues, the vast majority of scientific evidence supports the belief that the global temperatures are currently rising, and will continue to do so. While scientists may disagree about how high the temperature is going to rise to, or what factors are most to blame, the fact of global warming accepted by the vast majority of scientists. As written, the article could be read to imply that global warming, like psychic powers, UFOs and astrology, is pseudo-science.
Just had to get that cleared up. Carry on....
Re:This is obvious... (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, not ALL research scientists need to have that ability, but it certainly makes life a lot easier.
By the way I've been in India watching a blockbuster movie (in 1998), and although you can not understand the words, you can understand what is going on, because they provide enough visual cues. Again, lay people may not understand the mathematical details of your presentation, but you still can do a good job explaining the implications and providing context.
Random thoughts... (Score:3, Interesting)
Evidence suggests that there must be many undiscovered modes and ranges and domains of perception. The human brain is fundamentally unable to conceive of certain profound dimensions of mathematical relationships, as the human eye is fundamentally unable to perceive light beyond a specific range of wavelength. Although, even the slightest glance of what is possible is enough to make someone be called a "visionary" (pun)
The obvious criterion to consider first is energy. All of human perception (and exceptions thereof) depend on the transference of some form of energy: light, heat, vibration, chemical energy. The next logical question is to ask is: is it possible to create a sensory mode that does not depend upon the emission, transmission, or reflection of energy? The obvious center point to this Is that one would need some medium by which to transmit information, but this is not true if one finds a way to detect information that is already present.
Consider: mass distorts space. If one can find a way to detect the logical distortion of a distant object, thereby making it possible to sense an object indirectly. Therefore, the true question is, is there an efficient by which one can detect gravity waves?
Enough rambling for now, i'm tired.Ethnocentrism (Score:5, Interesting)
That the Earth revolves around America.
This is such an apt comment, I fully agree. It's incredibly concise too, but just to beat a dead horse I feel I need to elaborate:
Of two previously powerful Empires in history (make no mistake, the U.S. is more or less an Empire) The Roman Empire and The British empire suffered from what is basically Ethnocentrism.
That is, that American culture is in power, thus it's citizens view the world from their position of power and conclude that: "Since we are the most powerful and influential country in the world, why bother caring about the world outside my little realm? I live in the best country in the world, and I don't need to go elsewhere to know that."
Furthermore, this leads to inward looking, and a decline of the very social forces that put an Empire into power in the first place. It happend to the Romans and The British, and probably many more.
So, I find it interesting that this "apathy" on the part of a large percentage of the American population is just a symptom of a larger problem at work: Ethnocentrism. Make no mistake - the United States will continue to be the major power for some time, probably well after everyone who is reading this comment is dead and gone. However, this attitude will eventually lead to the erosion of the foundation that makes the United States as powerful as it is right now.
(No, this is not a troll, just an observation, look this stuff up yourself.)
Re:You're Damn Right It Does (Score:2, Interesting)
People who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it and I would think the only subject that most US citizens are worse at than science would be world history.
Think about this, though... (Score:2, Interesting)
Would those who truly do have paranormal talents be more likely to publicize(sp?) -- and prove -- the existence of such? Or would they, not wanting to risk being turned into lab rats and tabloid celebrities for the rest of their days, tend to keep a very low profile? Perhaps even by the time-honored technique of hiding in plain sight?
If there really are extraterrestrials among us, as some claim, do you really think they'd advertise themselves as such?
My point is this: Can ANY of us say, with absolute 142% certainty, that psi talents are hogwash and trickery? That aliens don't exist? That things like parallel universes and traversable wormholes CANNOT exist?
Of course not. To do so is to invite the eventual tripping of a large 'Murphy switch' that will prove the sayer wrong. HOWEVER -- neither can any of us, as far as I know, say for certain that such things DO exist.
That's the beauty of all the mysteries in Life itself: We Just Don't Know! Even after we discover something new, it takes decades or even centuries to learn all the various things we can do with it (Example: Electricity).
Here's the real kicker. Our science can only DESCRIBE an object, event, or living thing, in terms defined and limited by our perceptions and comprehension of that which we call 'mathematics.' It cannot, in any way, DEFINE the total nature of that object, event, or living thing.
In other words: Calling a large creature that breathes air, and spends its life in the ocean a 'whale' simply applies a convenient label that we, as a race, comprehend amongst ourselves. It in NO WAY DEFINES the true nature of that whale. How can it? I don't think any of us are deities.
In summary: Take that survey however you want to. Personally, I think it's hilarious!
Re:Scary (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the US would stack up well against most other countries -- certainly the people who come to the US are an elite among their own countries, and are not representative, so you won't know by talking to people here. For all the flaws and compromises of our education system, the idea of a liberal arts education -- in high school as well as college -- has a greater following here than most other places. Lots of reformers (particularly among conservatives/capitalists) are essentially proposing a more vocationally-focused educational system, more like in other countries. The vocationally trained really don't need to know science -- an understanding of molecules is useful in very few professions.
I heard a test of basic scientific literacy about five years ago showed that literacy among Americans was about twice the percentage of Europeans, and three times Japanese. It was about basic things like what a molecule is, what DNA is, etc. I was quite surprised. (No country did that well -- I think the US was like 20%). Sadly I cannot find a reference -- make of this what you will. However, I would generally be suspicious of international comparisons based on formalized testing, and comparisons done in school -- the real judge of an education system is not what students know, but what adults who have finished schooling know. This reference was the best I could find -- A comparison of interest in science [nsf.gov]:
Re:Public Crap Versus Scientific Crap (Score:2, Interesting)
A transistor is a very fast little valve with three connectors. One is a large pipe leading in, one is a large pipe leading out, and one is a tiny little pipe that controls the flow through the large pipes. When no electricity is going into the tiny little pipe, the large pipes don't allow any electricity through. When electricity is going through the tiny pipe, the large pipe lets a lot of electricity through. So this makes it useful as an amplifier, because just a little bit of electricity - a weak, quiet signal - can control the flow of a much larger amount of electricity through the large pipe, producing a louder version of the same signal.
That wasn't too hard. I guess you can call "much larger amount" math but by that time you've more or less included any definition of anything.
Re:READ THE ARTICLE (Score:2, Interesting)
And I note that you still have not addressed the flat-out lies in the textbooks. Why are Haekel's "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" embryo drawings still there? He faked the drawings in 1869. In 1874 he was exposed as having fraudulently passed them off. This has been repeatedly pointed out in the journals; so why keep it in the textbooks? Ditto so many other points. If the theory of evolution is so rock solid and irrefutable, why use as proofs something that has been known false for over a hundred years?
[OT]: impressive work on your page; if I can find a reason to use work like yours in my business you'll be on the short list.
The NSF is a bunch of unscientific idiots (Score:1, Interesting)
33 percent said that this statement was true (according to the NSF, this was the correct answer).
However, this is complete nonsense.
The big bang is not an explosion at all. This is an unfortunate misnomer that cosmologists would like to correct. But the bad name has stuck.
The big bang is the expansion or stretching of space. It is not that things are flying out from a point. Rather, all things are moving away from each other. It is like having an infinite rubber sheet with people sitting on it. Stretch the rubber sheet, and all the people move away from one another. Each thinks they are at the center of an explosion. It is an optical illusion - everybody moves away from everybody else and there is no center.
Run the story going back and time and the sheet was more and more unstretched and the people were closer together. When everybody is so close they are on top of one another, that is is the beginning of the big bang picture - the cosmic singularity. At that time, the universe has nearly infinite density and temperature.
Personally, it doesn't surprise me that most Americans don't understand science if even the simpletons at the NSF can't get it right.
This is exactly my point. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you knew better you would know that science doesn't rely on "belief" but on reproducibbility and practical disproof/proof of theory.
Perhaps you should take a better look at how scientists react when confronted with a large body of sworn testimony of hundreds of highly trained individuals--people who are quite capable of identifying airplanes, satellites, meteors, weather balloons, and lightning. Said evidence would stand up in any court of law. Don't you think it at least warrants some open-minded scientific investigation?
Science, like anything else, is affected by belief. When people *believe* something to be untrue, they sometimes ignore reasonably solid evidence.
I'm not saying we have been visited by extraterrestrials. I suspect that we have, but that means nothing--just like if I were to suspect we haven't.
Take a look at disclosureproject.org. There's a lot of stuff in that testimony that can't be explained with lightning, weather balloons, secret aircraft, meteors, or swamp gas. And those people deserve better than to be dismissed as kooks and liars. Even if there are no extraterrestrials, there's definitely something going on that we don't know about, and that alone is worth the effort of serious research.
P.S. If anyone has any solid, verifiable information discrediting the Disclosure Project, I'm all ears. It just seems like it'd be a pretty hard thing to fake.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Get me James Randi's phone number then. I can dowse, and consistently. I've used dowsing rods made from bent bits of fence wire, L-shaped and forked bits of wood from various different kinds of trees, wire coathangers, an old Christmas tree that had lost its needles, and a Volvo propshaft that was lying around the yard. It all works.
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.
I suspect it's not quite that simple. It doesn't work like a metal detector - you can't pick up a 2-gallon plastic bucket of water, but you can pick up a tiny trickle underground. I think it's something to do with magnetism or electric fields - before you start with the "pseudoscience charged water" thing, I am an electronic engineer and know enough about electricity and magnetism. I can detect buried electrical cables, but the response is different if there's a heavy current flowing through them.
Re:Hypothetical Situation (Score:3, Interesting)
And there's the assumption again. I've never seen anything in the sky that I couldn't explain, either. And I've seen planets, stars, satellites, and even a comet. As an educated individual, I've never had any trouble identifying them. Plus, I'm just as able to load up Photoshop and throw together a blurry UFO photo as the next guy.
But that's not the point of my hypothetical. What I'd like you to consider is the highly unlikely (and perhaps impossible--we have no proof, after all) situation that you did see something--up close--that you couldn't explain. Do you suppose that maybe you'd keep it to yourself? Talking about flying objects doing physically impossible aerobatics would be pretty embarrassing in front of other scientists, wouldn't it?
I just want you to think about it without immediately saying "but that won't happen."
Re:Math (Score:3, Interesting)
It's topics like computational complexity, boundary conditions for representational limits (when does this calculation overflow?), and information theory (how much space do I really need?) that every programmer worth his salt should have a basic understanding of. If you don't get the math, you also don't get the idea.