Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future

via AlterNet:



Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future

By Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, Basic Books. Posted August 21, 2009.

Science matters- to politics, the economy, and our future. But do Americans really understand and appreciate that?




From Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. Excerpted by arrangement with Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2009.


Rethinking the Problem of Scientific Illiteracy

As Mark Twain put it, “The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, it’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so.” Take the army of aggrieved parents nationwide who swear vaccines are the reason their children developed autism and who seem impossible to convince otherwise. Scientific research has soundly refuted this contention, but every time a new study comes out on the subject, the parents and their supporters have a “scientific” answer that allows them to retain their beliefs. Where do they get their “science” from? From the Internet, celebrities, other parents, and a few non-mainstream researchers and doctors who continue to challenge the scientific consensus, all of which forms a self-reinforcing echo chamber of misinformation.

The anti-vaccination advocates are scientifically incorrect; there’s little doubt of that at this point. But whether they could be called “ignorant” or “scientifically illiterate” is less clear. After all, they’ve probably done far more independent research about a scientific topic that interests and affects them than most Americans have.

The same goes for other highly informed, and deeply wrong, groups—the global warming deniers, anti-evolutionists, UFO obsessives, and so on. Ignorance isn’t their problem, and neither is a lack of intellectual engagement or motivation. Anyone who has ever discussed global warming on national radio—as Chris has done countless times—can expect to be besieged by callers who don’t accept the prevailing scientific consensus and have obviously done a great deal of research to back up their prejudices. If anything, such individuals want to make a show of their erudition and proceed to rattle off a mind-boggling string of scientific-sounding claims: Global warming isn’t happening on other planets; urban heat islands (cities) thwart global thermometer readings; the atmosphere’s lowest layer, the troposphere, isn’t warming at the rate predicted by climate models; and the like. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/141679/unscientific_america%3A_how_scientific_illiteracy_threatens_our_future/

This should be posted in GD too. It is absolutely vital to so many issues - and scientific illiteracy knows no political boundaries. There's abhorrent ignorance right here on DU.

:hi:

the illiteracy rate goes up???

Whether you are a Bible-thumper or a Gaia-Worshipper, rejection of science is important to their sad sense of well-being. Reliance on faith, instead of science, is a recipe for disaster.