How much do we need?
I always get frustrated when people think that science is about knowing scientific “facts,” and not about the process.
13 thoughts on “Scientific Literacy”
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How much do we need?
I always get frustrated when people think that science is about knowing scientific “facts,” and not about the process.
Comments are closed.
Another reason for the mars frontier. Illiterates die.
Ken,
it’s very un-PC of you to think that in the 21st Century we should allow natural selection to naturally select weaker specimens to be removed from the gene pool.
And I’m WITH you!
If we allowed nature to take it’s course more often, some of the Karl Rove hater, hand wringer, and stupid people in general would NOT be sucking up our resources and money.
The irony is that he’s trying to teach his kid how to pick a winner in the fifth when he should be educating him on the dangers of gambling. Can I say that he’s putting the cart before the horse? Can I say that? Did you see what I just did there?
You make me titter Titus…I think the problem is that we take for granted that experts have used the scientific method to come to their conclusions, and that their conclusions have been verified by others. Sadly this is not the case, and the media rarely has the mental strenght to ask simple question that would make this flaw in their reasoning/conclusion obvious.
How about CNBC, Martin Bashir, and complete dumbitude.
The segment is titled, “Running on Empty”, and it shows the gas gauge on a car where the low-fuel warning is lit, showing the yellow outline of the GOP elephant symbol.
The premise is that Republicans have been hammering the President for high gas prices, and now that gas prices are plummeting, those same Republicans are nowhere to be found.
I mean, as Drill Here, Drill Now person, where do I begin.
1) If there is substantial relief at the pump, that will “pump” billions of dollars in savings into consumers wallets and genuinely stimulate the economy without tax or government grant gimmicks, and maybe that will indeed reelect Mr. Obama despite Fast and Furious and everything else. People can and do vote their (short term) pocket books. If gas gets low enough, I think people will reelect Mr. Obama, because most people are not voting on ideology but on whether to let the President keep his job as our “national CEO”, and those are the political breaks.
2) Oh my, gas is going from $3.80 in April to below $3 after Labor Day. $3 gas is still very expensive, people. $4 gas was a sure thing that Mr. Obama is out; $3 gas means a (somewhat) closer election.
3) The reason gas is getting cheap is not because of peace breaking out, not because of burgeoning supplies, but that the world economy shows signs of a meltdown. This is not politically a good way to get cheap gas.
4) To the extent that supplies are increasing, here and “over there”, do you think the Evil Boosh and Cheney (Oil Men, I tell you) could have put in place foreign policies (Iraq’s increasing production) and domestic policies (government support for research on conventional energy, something the enviros hate, leading to the fracking revolution).
5) To the tediously inevitable talking head wheeled out to argue that U.S. drilling doesn’t affect world prices, where do I start. Balance of trade? Oil prices decided on the margin, and US is still one of the top 3 oil producers including Russia and Saudi.
6) The President has been trying to “jawbone” increases in energy prices as an energy and an environmental policy since his initial candidacy.
I don’t agree with everything our fine Libertarian host Rand has to say, and I don’t dismiss out-of-hand everything proposed by the Left, but where does CNBC come up with such a profoundly stupid host?
His IQ was 40 points too high for MSNBC?
Rand,
That process thing is a big one. I’ve seen many a pseudo-scientist (not all of whom are named Al Gore) who can mimic the language of science without demonstrating any knowledge of the scientific method. Little things like burden of proof and falsifiability tend to really trip them up.
S.T.E.M. doesn’t happen much without inspiration. Nanny statism kills much of that inspiration. Consumerism may also be part of the problem. When I was a kid, we built many of our toys. As a 10 y.o. in WA state we saw hydroplane races. So we cut pieces of scrap plywood into hydroplane toys and pulled them behind our bicycles over jump ramps.
The gas stations were giving away paper lunar modules (you had to get tab A in slot B, etc…) I put mine on a string going to the four corners of the attic and flew it to a landing over and over.
I’m sure there’s a law somewhere today making that illegal. (Unauthorized toys? To jail with them!)
Science is play for adults.
On the contrary, Li-poly batteries and brushless motors have made it more fun than ever to make RC hydroplanes, etc. And have you noticed that $20 RC toys at Wal-Mart (the kind you don’t mind tearing apart to reuse the speed controls, etc) are a whole lot more interesting than they were 30years ago? Or even 10 years ago.
And these guys are still going strong:
http://www.sciplus.com/
I see no evidence of the nanny state (blessed be she) ruining our (I mean, our kid’s) toy making fun.
Sure we have more stuff to play with, but are they? Bob, we built our own toys. All kids did. I don’t see all kids building their own toys today. What I see is mom and dad buying them new stuff all the time that never gets looked at after the batteries drain. We didn’t need no stinkin’ batteries.
“Screw creativity, television tells me what to think!”
I’m a science teacher. There are new national standards being evaluated at this time for how science should be taught in the future. The standards are heavy on process (conducting experiments, etc.) and seem to be trying to lighten up on memorization of facts. While they are a real improvement over the current standards, I wonder how much good the emphasis on the nitty-gritty of experimentation really does for most students. Such work is very helpful for future scientists, but only a tiny percentage of our students will become scientists. Yes, we need scientists, but this is as silly as trying to put everybody through pre-med, knowing that we have to have doctors.
My gut, as a PhD scientist and educator, is that students need a core of basic information about how the world works, or they are functionally illiterate and ignorant in science. Newton’s laws and DNA are to science something like verbs are to English. If you don’t know what verbs are, you’re pretty much stuck in language development. Similarly, without a core of basic knowledge, you’re stuck in science knowledge. And in a world where sci-tech issues are increasingly important, we are ignorant at our own peril.
But this core has to be limited. Honestly, I see 7th graders being taught 1s2-2s2-2p6 orbitals and such rubbish. The only utility of that, as far as I can see, is that it’s something easy to test. Such things are only important in high school chemistry, and only in the context of valence electrons. You can show the concept in a few images, and the key point is that it’s related to why atoms bond in particular ways when they form molecules. Or trying to teach circuits to 9th graders–really? The average 14 year old really has to know about parallel circuits?
I’d rather we focus on the concepts needed to explain the science they see in the world around them. Why doesn’t my cell phone work well inside that building? Why does my shirt glow under black light? Why do airbags save lives? Look at what interests people, and they’ll be desperate to understand why; force them to learn largely irrelevant facts, and they’ll sleep in class.
Personally, I believe that for most students, what they need to learn about the practice of science itself in school can’t be found in endless hours spent trying to locate sources of uncertainty in their labs, or “solve problems” about which they lack too much basic knowledge (such as projects to decide if a nuclear plant is a good idea at a certain site, etc.). I believe citizens need to have a sense that nature is understandable and follows a general set of rules, which can be deduced by careful experiments. They need to know there is a successful general process for conducting such experiments. In any experiment, small effects can be important, or irrelevant, depending on the conditions and necessary accuracy of the experiment; these modify the general set of rules. They need to know that many (most??) experiments lead to uninteresting null results. We need to be honest that new discoveries can cause us to rethink even fundamental ideas. Above all, young people need to know of the central place science and technology will have in their lives, so that they will hopefully care enough to make informed decisions.
I’d add the importance of not fooling yourself. If I were drawing up a science program (which would probably be a terrible idea) I’d spend a good deal of the first part on measurement (with some optical illusions thrown in) and how preconceptions color observations. And maybe some logical fallacies, just because.