"Is U.S. becoming hostile to science?"

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) -- A bitter debate about how to teach evolution in U.S. high schools is prompting a crisis of confidence among scientists, and some senior academics warn that science itself is under assault.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/10/28/science.debate.reut/index.html

THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON SCIENCE, by Chris Mooney.....hits the nail on the head

Have to keep the populace stupid so that they will just go along with the guvmint.

an educated populace is a dangerous populace to an authoritarian government.

It is more a question of just how hostile to science our society is.

America has become extremely anti-intellectual during my lifetime(I'm forty-four). Our society has gone from merely making fun of the "eggheads" to outright denial of scientific realities. It simply amazes me that when I was a child, the question of evolution was pretty much settled, excepting for the few crackpots and fundies who always had their head stuck in the sand over such issues. If you had told me twenty six years ago when I graduated high school that ID would be seriously considered as fit material for teaching in public schools, I would have laughed.

But over the course of the past quarter century, our society has regressed intellectually, and this regression directly mirrors the rise of the religious right. I've got to hand it to them, their plan was genius, start hitting the little offices that nobody really cares about, but that have long term impact, like running for school boards nation wide.

Now that they have some serious control of what this society teaches, we're all going to pay for it. I've watched in amazement as the generations that followed me into public schooling have emerged less educated than I, and much more willing to embrace RW/fundie dogma as the truth.

If this continues, we're going to slide right into the Dark Ages again, when superstition ruled the land, and intellectuals were burned at the stake for witchcraft. And sadly the way things are going now, this may not be in the far future.

Judging from the amount of advertising time devoted to questionable remedies (on AAR, no less) people are willing to believe almost crackpot with an instant fix for obesity, cholesterol, or whatever. The problem with those might be not so much that people buy these goods despite the fact there is no scientific basis for them, but that the FDA allows these ads in the first place.

I do think the American people are not well-educated in critical thinking skills. I think schools exist to develop a compliant workforce, not a well-rounded populace.

To teach a section on how advertising works, the types of pitches, the technical methods, how easily people can be duped, etc. etc. One of the most useful course sections I've ever had in my life.

Five years later, I was talking with my best friends little brother who was taking the same class from the same teacher and asked him how he like the marketing section. He asked what marketing section. I ran into my old Social Studies teacher at the grocery shortly after, and apparently somebody put some pressure on the school board and had that section yanked.

You are correct, each new generation is lacking, in ever great amounts, the ability to think critically.

Funding of pure research has been cut every year for well over a decade. Anti-intellectualism is rampant throughout the nation. As a people we can barely read well enough to read street signs, instruction manuals are beyond most of their comprehension. Grade inflation is so bad that non-tenured teachers are routinely fired for failing too many students. Cheating is endemic. The falsely named hypothesis of ID is gaining traction all over. Accurate definitions are out of fashion, just throw any old word out that you think might be appropriate.

That's not really the case, but given the amount of numbskulls here the other day arguing against evolution WHEN THEY DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND IT (like, that it doesn't deal with abiogenesis, and doesn't posit that man came from monkeys but a common ancestor), it's alarming.

I had no idea we had so many dumbasses when it came to science on here. Granted "so many" is really just a tiny ignorant minority, but it sure feels like the stupidity got amped up for a day or two.