Gallup released the results of a new national poll this morning on science, and unfortunately, modern biology didn't fare well: "Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."
There are all kinds of relevant crosstabs, most of which aren't surprising -- the more politically conservative you are, the more likely you are to believe the creationist argument. The more educated you are, the more likely you are to accept evolution.
But even if we put all of that aside, I tend to consider the same question when reports like these are published: does scientific literacy within the American mainstream really matter? At first blush, it's tempting to think that if millions of Americans choose to be wrong about science, it doesn't seem especially consequential. In our daily lives, it's an issue that doesn't often arise.
There is, however, reason for concern, and it ties into a larger context about the public's understanding of and appreciation for the scientific basics: if the United States continues to fall behind other nations in science education, our future dims.
The country just can't afford confusion on a grand scale about scientific basics -- not just about biology, but also in areas like climate science. When activists, mainly on the right, launch anti-science initiatives, such as changing school curricula, there are real and broad consequences in the long term to public confusion.
The competitive edge the United States used to enjoy is vanishing. The country needs to start taking science seriously again -- our economy depends on it -- and ignorance costs far too much. Results such as the new Gallup poll on biology should serve as a wake-up call.
Neil deGrasse Tyson gave a lecture a few years ago that stuck with me on the "philosophy of ignorance," in which he said a lack of appreciation for basic scientific principles will hurt America's scientific output, which has traditionally been the nation's largest economic engine.
"If nonscience works its way into the science classroom, it marks ... the beginning of the end of the economic strength this country has known," Tyson said.
To care about American economic competitiveness is to care about science.
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Now this is a "cold war" front I might be able to enthusiastically support: closing the "scientific literacy" gap!
Just remember that the more scientifically literate you are, the more skeptical you become about the hoax of global warming.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/29/science_and_maths_knowledge_makes_you_sceptical/
Another member of the species Homo Sap, the hairless biped that lacks frontal lobes and opposable thumbs, and can flunk the IQ test low enough to be a Republican, heard from.
Did you hear that it's been proven Republicans have smaller brains? Just look at the low forehead of Paul Ryan to see the truth.
Paul Ryan has an unusually low hairline, not an unusually small frontal lobe. Mayhap we could keep the pseudoscience of phrenology out of a discussion thread on science.
And by the way, it's not been proven Republicans have smaller brains. Different brains in some ways, yes. Smaller brains, no. And brain size has been proven not to be an indicator of intelligence. So maybe use your big liberal brain to overcome your own bias the next time you feel an urge to ignore reality in favor of an insult.
Quit trolling. You're implying that climate scientists and physicists are among the most scientifically illiterate on Earth? Be serious.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/03/thick_kids_racist/
Henry,
NOBODY disagrees that global warming is occurring; there is just too much empirical data that shows that it is happening (good "empirical"). The argument, such that it exists, is whether the earth can heal itself and adapt or whether we humans have to intervene.
June already addressed your inability to read past the headlines so I won't go there. But, sometimes it is important to go to the source and see what was actually written - headlines are only to catch your attention and often DON'T reflect what is true.
Having now taken a moment to look more closely at the polling results, I even see some room for slight optimism. The percentage of Americans rejecting the scientific consensus on evolution may be distressingly high, but at least it hasn't increased significantly since the polling started in 1982.
Furthermore, given that there are few, if any, areas of scientific inquiry as profoundly impeded by the influence of religious faith as is evolution (and biology in general), I'm not sure whether the results here can safely be extrapolated to reliably imply anything about "literacy" in other scientific areas. Has any polling been done on that? I'd be interested to know...
At any rate, while they may reject the notion of evolution, regardless of the many advances made in our understanding of the processes by which evolution operates (i.e. genetics), I suspect that many of those who embrace that rejection would nonetheless welcome exoneration of criminal charges by "DNA evidence", would accept successfully tested gene therapy if their lives depended on it, would not reject the implications of disease risk assessments based on genetic testing, etc.
Convincing the religiously zealous that advancements in our human understanding of nature don't necessarily require rejection of their faith takes time. It was only in the past few years that the Catholic Church acknowledged that it may have been a bit, you know, unfair to Galileo...
"To care about American economic competitiveness is to care about science."
Oh Steve, don't you know that those opposed to science believe that their Christ is coming back for them - so learning and science definitely don't need to be known. Which leads to the assault on education, and answers the question of why any "learning & knowledge" are to be shunned at all costs.
I wish that we could ship those people to Texas and then force it to secede from the union, but alas, that's not going to happen.
I'd like to see a geographic breakdown of the replies. Likely the overwhelming majority of the 46% who are morons are already there in Southern Traitor Land.
TCinLA: Really if you take a geographic breakdown study of all these kind of opinion polls, it would pretty much always be the South bringing the country as a whole down. It's kind of what they do. They're just idiots, really.
I would add social sciences to your list. One social science is economics. Another is political science. Both originated from political economy.
Many Americans appear to need to relearn the lessons of the Great Depression. Our current crisis providing the opportunity to do so.
The question I have is, how long will it take? Do we have to go through another Republican era, complete with economic collapse? After all, the 2008 collapse was not quite sufficient to teach us the lessons we need.
Some include history as a social science, not just political economy or econ and poli sci. Since some of the more conservative ilk fail to see the similarities between our present situation and that of the late 1920s (which I would urge is an even more important lesson than the Depression itself), it might be relevant for inclusion.
We in the United States waste more money on squashing attempts to lie to children about science and religion than likely anywhere else. I live near Dover, PA, where money was wasted because Christian creationists thought they could force their particular version of their religion on others. It was stopped but cases like it keep on coming. The stupidity and hypocrisy of creationists is ridiculous. They should all be kept from using the science that they hate. With their drag on the economy and intellect of the US, we will lose our first world nation status.
As former Phila Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez used to say (paraphrasing now): Welcome to Pennsyltucky, Land of Giants!
BTW, Mr. Lopez, who I believe now works at the LA Times, published an informing and entertaining collection of his Inquirer columns using that title:
Land of Giants: Where No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
http://www.amazon.com/Land-Giants-Where-Good-Unpunished/dp/0940159309
For those who've already enjoyed kindly Dr. Maddow's fine work, and Charlie Pierces's Idiot America, this also makes a good read...
> With their drag on the economy and intellect of the US,
> we will lose our first world nation status.
That boat's already sailed, I'm afraid. About the only thing that would save it is if the Republicans all stayed home in November, and Democrats suddenly developed the intellect and integrity of Rachel.
As it stands, the firehose of right-wing money from Citizens United is going to wash away any hope of progressives having any say in government for the next decade or so.
I grew up in a creationist household and got to know the mindset fairly well in the process of getting out. The spread of creationism has an far bigger impact than the denial of global warming.
Creationists believe that all evidence is conditioned by your presuppositions -- that people who believe the evidence supports evolution only do so because they believe in evolution in the first place. Only when you hold the right beliefs can you see the evidence in the right way. Any evidence that counters your beliefs can then be dismissed because it comes from people who disagree with you.
Does this mindset sound familiar? It's behind the birther conspiracy -- Obama's birth certificate must be faked because it comes from Obama. It's behind Fox news -- mainstream reporting that seems to undermine the Fox narrative must have a liberal bias. It's behind a whole host of wacky, right-wing beliefs -- that the Constitution is divinely inspired, Jefferson was an orthodox Christian, the fourteenth amendment created a new kind of citizenship, Obama is a socialist, whatever.
No, this "believe the right things and the evidence will follow" approach to reality is deeply dangerous. Reasonable people should fight it every chance they get.
David King, thank you for posting that. Last night an acquaintance who is christian was trying to explain to me that I "simply must believe because the end is near" and she doesn't want to lose me to eternal damnation. (lol..too late) Her argument was that if I would just believe, then any proof I wanted would become evident to me. I thought she was just being her own brand of crazy. I had no idea that this is a common and accepted thought process with them.
Ninz, I'm glad my post helped. And, yes, the mindset is everywhere, as the poll shows.
This particular question, I believe, is not being answered honestly by respondents. It is a litmus-test question, to the extent that if you belong to a Judeo-Christian religion, you know what the proper "believer" answer is, and you may quote the "proper" answer instead of what you really believe in your doubting-Thomas heart.
If you were to start with a question about how long ago the dinosaurs lived, and accepted every answer greater than 10,000 years as disbelief in the Biblical account as an actual timeline, you'd have a much different percentage.
--This reminds me of my favorite question to Biblical literalists: "Tell me, what day did God create the dinosaur fossils?"
@Henry Cobb - I read the article your link points to, and wondered why the piece didn't actually link to the actual government-funded survey. Being the Egalitarian Communitarian that I am, I googled to find a copy of the actual study. What it actually states is that the scientific community needs to find another way to reach people regarding the dangers of climate change besides simply giving the facts. Why? Because people's ideological leanings will still keep them "stupid" and even a bit more so, if their core belief is that government is "bad" - no matter how much education they have. Here's one of the study's much more eloquent ways of saying it:
"Among Egalitarian Communitarians*, science literacy and numeracy, as reflected in Science/Numeracy, showed a modest positive correlation with concern about climate-change risks (r = 0.08, p = 0.03). But among Hierarchical Individualists**, Science/Numeracy is negatively correlated with such concern (r = -0.12, p = 0.03). Hence, cultural polari-zation actually gets bigger, not smaller, as as science literacy and numeracy increase.
*meaning, progressives
** meaning, conservatives
(Footnotes are mine for the purpose of this post)
Although the study does not mean what The Register seems to think it means, thanks for pointing us to it - it is very interesting and I look forward to reading it in full.
Here's the direct link to the study:
The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change
http://www.law.upenn.edu/academics/institutes/regulation/papers/Kahan%20Tragedy%20of%20the%20Risk-Perception.pdf
Actually, in re-reading the article, it does do a good job of pointing out the actual points of the study, but it's headline "The more science you know, the less the worried you are about climate change" completely mischaracterizes the study's results.
Wildly misleading titles are a malady endemic to science journalism.
June; I knew it was incorrect . Thank you for taking the time to research it .
Truth has a liberal bias
I'm sorry, but this is bullpuckey. Make the economic argument if you want; it's certainly a salient concern. But suggesting science "doesn't often arise" in our daily lives is itself a proclamation of science ignorance. Cooking is science. Driving is science. Soap is science. Agriculture is science. Medicine is science. The understanding and application of science has literally made our world--the good and the bad of it--what it is today.
A faltering U.S. economy is just one more externality of a scientifically illiterate populace. Science ignorance makes mass fear compaigns more feasible, for we fear what we do not understand. Science ignorance is what gives opinions based on magical thinking validity in the eyes of the public. Science ignorance passively promotes denialism. I could go on (and on), but the point is this: going about our daily lives regarding the technology that makes it possible as some magical, self-perpetuating black box of marvels is an abdication of our responsibility to be informed citizens. Science ignorance is a threat not just to the economy, but also to our way of government, our quality of life, our health, global ecology, and more.
Science is intimately, inextricably bound up in our daily lives, and it does no one good to suggest otherwise. And if you knew better, and used that line as a throwaway hook, then frankly Mr. Benen, shame on you for knowingly perpetuating the myth that science is some vague hand-wavy thing off in the distance that no one needs to think about except insofar as it threatens Americans' global economic domination.
Said by a person who probably didn't even take biology in high school!
You are confusing "faux science" with science - if you don't know science, how do you know what is "fake science"?.
I really liked your comment "cooking is science". OK so EXPLAIN what YOU know about science that improves YOUR cooking? "If your turn the oven on, it gets hot" does not qualify!
There may be technology in our daily lives but do YOU understand that technology, or do you let others make decisions for you about how that technology affects YOUR life? That is the point here!!
What are you babbling about?
I have degrees in science and engineering.
I understand the thermodynamics that make my car run and what sort of things can adversely effect engine efficiency.
I understand what the application of energy does to the molecules in my food and how to manipulate that to produce the results I want.
I understand on a molecular level how soap is made and why it works the way it does.
I understand what happens to the cells in my body when I experience an allergic reaction.
I understand the functioning of agro-ecosystems and the current research into diversity and sustainability in food production, and what those things mean in the larger context of a healthy planet.
Do you?
Science and science communication is my life's work. It's literally my business to understand how science applies to daily life and translate academic-speak into something comprehensible by non-scientists.
Don't tell me what I do or do not know. Instead, put your head back up your ass and leave it there until you have something worthwhile to say.
OUCH!! - and well deserved!!
MechTrek, MEA CULPA.
I do sincerely apologize. Your comments were correct. The only "excuse" I can offer is that I had several bogs open (and two monitors going) and mixed up (in my head) your with another blogger on another website!!! I'll be more careful in the future and use only ONE screen when I am "blogging"!!!
I appreciate the apology and explanation, once. I've certainly put my foot in it before when trying to multi-task. Have a good weekend. :)
Can you imagine man created in the last 10,000 years. What a mess, dinosaurs and giant mammals running around everywhere, rotting vegetation melting into crude oil, coal and diamonds right before your eyes, ice ages every other month and one man and one woman incestually begatting the billions of us now. Would make a good work of fiction with proper editing.
The reason Americans do so poorly on these tests, is that questions are skewed.
I want to see a test that asks about American Idol, the names of fast food franchises, and NASCAR drivers.
And then I want to see how OUR scores compare to them stinkin' Your-o-peens!
What's really sad is the price of ignorance in this country...
Wow ... that's 'bout all I can say 'bout that.
As a biologist desperately trying to instill some scientific order into the thought processes of our particular group of American college freshmen, I find the comments here more interesting than the article and that's rarely the case. The program I teach in is largely pre-medical and even given that fact the ignorance and lack of interest in science that I see in many (perhaps even most) of the students staggers me. Very few arrive with a desire to learn and the openness of mind necessary for the process of learning. Most simply plan on becoming doctors. The mindset is largely that of a vocational school. There is little intellectual curiosity. Occasionally, however, we are 'blessed' (and yes, I use the word with the appropriate sarcasm) with a student who can think. The rare student who learns to do more than just memorize things that they 'need to know to be a doctor'. Given the vocational nature of the mindset of many students, I am always amazed how quickly classes on evolution fill. Many of the students are just curious enough to want to know how to prove Darwin wrong. But, it does keep them in the classroom and sometimes we win them over to the light.
Wow, that's 'bout all I can say 'bout that.
It seems to me that there is something of a flaw in this research, and it would be somewhat remiss to say that this offers a complete picture.
What appears to be missing is that those of us in a fourth position are missing (though I suspect that they are lumped in with 'evolved, God guiding'. That position is that evolution is simply the mechanism that God created to help his creations of all types adapt to changing conditions. Did that play a part in the creation of man? Very probably. I do NOT think that evolution and the Christian faith need to be contradictory positions.
Just additional confirmation that as a group, Americans are fairly stupid.
President Bush is a creationist. Due to his strong beliefs, he set up the Faith-Based Community Initiative (FBCI), a White House program specifically designed to promote faith-based charities over secular ones, and put into place other policies with similar goals.
And yet I see that during the Bush years, the number who believe in pure creationism declined while the number who believe in evolution increased. Now, during the Obama presidency, those numbers have turned around.
So, is it a delayed effect of the Bush policies? Or is it that while Bush was in office, Christian Fundamentalists were more quiet, knowing that one of their own was in charge... but now that Obama is in office, they've become far more active? Or is it the increasing loyalty to Fox News and the Right Wing media (and their increasingly rallying to the side of willful ignorance)?
to me the most distressing part of the poll is that 46% of college graduates don't believe in evolution...even 25% of post-grads don't believe
i'll also note that there is little distance between what independents [39%] and democrats [41%] believe...the gop [58%] is the outlier, yet again