Online lecture: Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future

Saffron · Thu May 06, 2010 7:03 am

A friend of mine works at NIH and alerted me to this lecture series. I thought there might be a few here on BT that would be interested in the upcoming topic. There is a link at the bottom of the post for the netcast.

TOPIC: Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future
SPEAKER: Chris Mooney, Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, author
DATE: Monday, May 10; 10 a.m.
LOCATION: NIH Clinical Research Center (Building 10), Lipsett Amphitheater
Chris Mooney is a 2009-2010 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and author of three books, including The New York Times bestselling The Republican War on Science, Scientific American-Storm World, and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum.
In the past, Mr. Mooney has also been visiting associate in the Center for Collaborative History at Princeton University, and is a contributing editor to Science Progress and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect magazine. He has been featured regularly by the national media, having appeared on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, MSNBC's Morning Joe, CSPAN's Book TV, and NPR's Fresh Air With Terry Gross and Science Friday.
This lecture is being videocast at http://videocast.nih.gov/.

Saffron · Thu May 06, 2010 7:23 pm

Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney & Sheila Kirshenbaum
http://www.amazon.com/Unscientific-Amer ... 0465013058

From Publishers Weekly
Mooney, author of the bestselling The Republican War on Science, and Kirshenbaum, a marine scientist at Duke and former congressional science fellow, argue that the public ruckus caused when astronomers stripped Pluto of its planetary status demonstrates the disconnect between scientists and the general public, who share only a sense of mutual distrust. The authors place the blame for this squarely on both sides, as well as on the media (TV shows that misrepresent medical science and films that portray scientists as evil or nerdy), and plead for an improved level of discourse. But their repeated assertion that science and religion are compatible will not convince anyone who believes otherwise. Mooney showed his ideological colors in The Republican War on Science, and with their attacks on President Bush, he and his coauthor can't be accused of being nonpartisan here, despite their call for less partisan, nonideological debate. Some readers may also balk at paying $25 for a book nearly a third of which consists of notes and documentation. Nevertheless, Mooney and Kirshenbaum make valid arguments that can only help to further the public debate about these important issues. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

samo84 · Thu May 06, 2010 9:09 pm

thanks pal ... the link you provided doesn't have the video anymore or i may missed something because i tried to search for the topic title plus authors , both ways turned null results.
i have found the book and will give it a quick read until i get more time to read it all, thanks again for sharing this interesting topic , keep it up

Saffron · Thu May 06, 2010 9:33 pm


	samo84 wrote: thanks pal ... the link you provided doesn't have the video anymore or i may missed something because i tried to search for the topic title plus authors , both ways turned null results. i have found the book and will give it a quick read until i get more time to read it all, thanks again for sharing this interesting topic , keep it up

The lecture has not happened yet. It is Monday, 5/10 at 10AM. I am hoping that it is not just a live broadcast. I want to be able to watch after work on Monday.

samo84 · Thu May 06, 2010 10:02 pm

oh sorry missed that

GaryG48 · Mon Jul 12, 2010 6:40 pm

"You know how much time people spend debating and interpreting the bible?

I'm not talking about lives lost or tragedies carried out on behalf of it; I'm just talking time. What if we spent that time concerned with natural events and with figuring out our own planet and beyond? What if we used our most valuable resource for discovery?

Why don't Americans value science? You can hear how despondent Sagan is in the video. We could do so much if in one voice we all decided to give it our best shot at finding Real answers and dedicating ourselves to truth.

We need more people interested in discovery. We need people who can lend their own creativity and perspective to help find solutions to mysteries. I wonder how many intelligent people are out there that have turned their backs on science because they have been taught to believe that the word of God is final and that science runs counter to it.

_________________
Camacho"

Hope it is okay, I moved PC's note here as my comment will be OT in its original forum.

This point can use some discussion. Are we indeed anti-science here in America? I have never thought so. I have always thought we are the most science and technology driven sub-culture in the West. So my answer to PC's question is, I think Americans spend orders of magnitude more time on science than they do debating the Bible. I think the nonsense we see and hear from a few reactionary school boards, as tragic as it is, is the babbling of the lunatic fringe.

That said, I also think we are intimidated by Big Science. We spend a lot of time reading about, thinking about, the questions science is trying to answer but most of us feel unqualified to actually contribute to the solutions. I just read Longitude by Dava Sobel. She tells how a watchmaker solved the problem of how to find one's position east or west of their starting point on the earth or at sea. Every scientist from Galileo to Harvey had tried and failed to find the answer. Something for us neophytes to think about.

MartinParish · Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:02 pm

Interesting post. It raises several questions, namely, are Americans by and large scientifically illiterate? if so, is it a problem? if it is a problem, what can we do about it?

Part of the difficulty here is that we live in a world of increasing specialization, where each of us needs to know a great deal about a specific subject to perform well on the job. Medical billing, computer programming, accounting, physics or medicine, to give just a few examples, are all professions that demand specialized knowledge. As the sum of human knowledge increases, it becomes more and more unreasonable to expect any single one person to know about subjects outside their field. You wouldn't expect a doctor to know a lot about computer programming, or a computer programmer to know a lot about physics. Therefore a certain degree of scientific illiteracy is inevitable, because the human memory is limited and people are bound to focus first on the knowledge that will benefit them most directly (knowledge related to their career field and their personal lives). You could argue that we all know trivia about celebrities or sports teams that will never benefit us, and that if we all read Scientific American in our spare time instead People Magazine, scientific illiteracy wouldn't be such a problem, but expecting people to avidly devour articles on complex subjects in their spare time may be expecting too much as well, because unlike myself, most people aren't nerds.

So from one perspective, we could say a certain degree of scientific illiteracy is inevitable and may not even be a problem. But from the perspective taken by this film, it's definitely a problem, because we live in a democratic society. To a greater or lesser extent, we all take part in making choices about the direction our country will take. If most people don't know very much about science, how can they make informed decisions about things like (just to give a couple examples) climate change or vaccinations for their children? So from that standpoint, it's definitely important to make sure the general public knows some basic science--the problem being it's not really clear how we would set about doing so.

I've often heard the media blamed for scientific illiteracy--there may be some truth in that accusation, but it's a serious exaggeration, because the media can't really educate people about science. People only read an article if they want to, so the media must focus first on publishing things that people want to read. Publishing more science articles won't necessarily improve matters--it will only do so if people read said articles.

I think therefore that the ultimate responsibility has to lie with our educational system. The main purpose of middle school and high school, after all, is to equip people with the basic knowledge they need as citizens of our democratic society. If we think the general public should know more about redox reactions and the ideal gas law, middle school and high school would be the place to teach them. If we think the general public should know more about basic biology, middle school and high school would be the place to start. I think that very often we try to teach too many subjects in middle school and high school, we try to give children a "diverse enriched educational experience" where they take jazz band and drama class and history and English, etc., etc., rather than acknowledging that science and math are the most important topics we can cover given the realities in today's world. If there is a solution to scientific illiteracy it has to start with our educational system. The media can help (or at least they should try) but they can't fix this one singlehandedly.

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