An excellent article shared by Eli Fennell, with a really superb introduction by him. No point in me writing something when he’s said it so well.
Science isn’t Facts, It’s a Method and Way of Thinking Critically
Originally shared by Eli Fennell
Why Americans Are Bad At Science
When it comes to science, Americans have a love-hate relationship: we love most or all of the advancements and improvements science brings us and the supremacy and prestige it brings our nation globally.
At the same time, more of us believe in angels than evolution; far too many of us feel comfortable letting preventable diseases make a comeback rather than get kids vaccinated, even though we’re mere generations out from plagues like Polio and Smallpox which vaccines basically eradicated; and many of us are clearly incapable of understanding the basics of the Greenhouse Effect or just don’t want to.
Yet, by many standards, even ‘Scientifically Literate’ Americans can hold some pretty ridiculous beliefs while rejecting scientifically solid evidence. Or can they?
The problem, as the following article explains, is more in how we define Scientific Literacy, as well as in how we often teach science: as a collection of ‘facts’ to be learned by rote and taken ‘on Faith’ due to the authority of the person or people teaching it. This, unfortunately, is not very different from how religious indoctrination works: one is taught by an assumed authority, e.g. a preacher, that (for example) God is Love, Evil is of the Devil, or Prayer Power can cure cancer. This is the root of the conflation some religious people even make between Science and Religion, whereby they wrongly suggest that science is itself some species of religion or belief system.
What is missing, then, is a proper education in what science really is: an evolving method of scrutiny and investigation of claims and evidence, subject to critical peer review, where the strongest evidence is those which have been tested and challenged the most, in the most ways, with the best tools and techniques, by the largest number and greatest diversity of researchers, and which over time lead to the greatest number of verifiable claims, discoveries, and predictions (predictive power being especially important; i.e. the theory of gravity accurately predicts a lot of things about the behavior of masses, such as the speed at which all objects freefall towards Earth).
Evolution isn’t some hunch Darwin had which has been simply accepted: it has been challenged in millions of ways large and small and survived these challenges; explained a great deal of evidence across numerous disciplines (biology, geology, paleontology, etc…); and is one of the most powerful predictive tools available for knowing the characteristics and properties of living things, past and present (i.e. by knowing the theory of evolution by natural selection, we have accurately predicted millions of biological facts that were later confirmed with other evidence). It is actually one of the most well proven and robust theories in all of the sciences, and for all intents and purposes can be called a fact.
Likewise the microbial theory of disease, which predicts that infections are caused by tiny organisms like bacteria and viruses, is the ultimate basis for the discovery of antibiotics and vaccination: the former kills bacteria, while the latter prevents infections in the first place by safely exposing the immune system to nonlethal doses of a disease, causing the body to produce antibodies against further infection.
If Americans were better taught ‘The Scientific Method’, instead of just memorizing an assortment of facts and evidence, then we would see a great difference in popular American opinion on critical areas where we are falling woefully behind. It would also be good for science itself since, as I can attest from my own background in scientific methodology, many scientists are no more competent at scientific inquiry than a layman. For example, I encountered more than a few evolutionary researchers, even very intelligent ones, who still mistakenly ascribed teleological properties to the evolutionary process, i.e. they mistakenly believed that evolution operates with ‘goals’ (e.g. the sex drive is for reproduction, when in fact it simply that the sex drive happens to increase reproduction and thus has been ‘selected for’ over other mutations that were less beneficial or even harmful to reproduction).
#BlindMeWithScience #ScienceEducation #ScientificMethod
http://qz.com/588126/theres-a-good-reason-americans-are-horrible-at-science/