Via Mike Dietsch: an interview with Lawrence Krauss, the chair of the Case Western Reserve physics department, in which Krauss talks about the downward trend in scientific literacy among Americans today:
“We live in a society where it’s considered okay for intelligent people to be scientifically illiterate. Now, it wasn’t always that way. At the beginning of the 20th century, you could not be considered an intellectual unless you could discuss the key scientific issues of the day. Today you can pick up an important intellectual magazine and find a write-up of a science book with a reviewer unashamedly saying, ‘This was fascinating. I didn’t understand it.’ If they were reviewing a work by John Kenneth Galbraith, they wouldn’t flaunt their ignorance of economics.”
Which isn’t wrong, I’m ashamed to admit. I used to be pretty good about understanding scientific concepts, but I’m so lazy about reading them now, every time I pick up TIME magazine and see a science story, my eyes glaze over and I flip the page, looking for the book reviews in the back.
Krauss also talks about how this willfully functional illiteracy affects public policy:
“…we’re living in a time when so many scientific questions are transformed into public relations campaigns–with truth going out the window in favor of sound bites and manufactured controversies. This is dangerous to science and society, because what we learn from observation and testing can’t be subject to negotiation or spin, as so much in politics is. The creationists cut at the very credibility of science when they cast doubt on our methods. When they do that, they make it easier to distort scientific findings in controversial policy areas. We can see that happening right now with issues like stem cells, abortion, global warming and missile defense.”
He’s talking about the fight over Darwinism versus Creationism in high school curricula, but it’s the larger point that’s interesting, since it’s also the thrust of this Will Saletan piece in yesterday’s Slate — that in talking about stem cell research on the campaign trail this year, Democrats are shading the truth to support their own political ideology by talking about a “ban” on research (really a lack of federal funding for the same) and cementing the unsupported Conventional Wisdom that stem cell research is the Rosetta Stone of Future Medicine.
All of which only convinces me that I probably ought to read SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN more often.
