James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist and communications consultant based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.
I usually like to refer to the actual study, but I can't find it, so we'll have to make do with the Independent's story on a survey of thousands of British primary and secondary schoolchildren that found most have no idea that science is something of value.
The story starts off with the now predictable gnashing of teeth over the finding that "among every generation of school leavers, there are tens of thousands of potential scientists who are, partly owing to ignorance, turning their backs on careers with a science component." But the really depressing part comes in the form of some questions put to 4,000 pupils, aged nine to 14, by a team from the University of York. Prepare yourself:
Is science needed for a career as a...?Granted, Jamie Oliver is a chef (the Naked one). But 76 percent didn't know Marie Curie was a scientist? At first I wanted to know how American students would compare. But then I realized I probably don't.The percentage of children who think that no science is required in each of these fields is shown in brackets.
Astronaut (28 per cent)
Pharmacist (40 per cent)
Plastic surgeon (47 per cent)
Mechanic (55 per cent)
Botanist (64 per cent)
Beauty therapist (75 per cent)
Racing car driver (77 per cent)
Chef (84 per cent)Are these people famous scientists?
In brackets is the percentage who think that these individuals were not famous scientists, engineers or inventors.
James Dyson (69 per cent)
Alexander Graham Bell (53 per cent)
Marie Curie (76 per cent)
George Stephenson (78 per cent)
Robert Winston (82 per cent)
Jamie Oliver (92 per cent)
Comments
Three points:
* "science" and "engineering" are distinct and different. You can do science that have no connection whatsoever to engineering, and people have engaged in engineering far before there was anything we would recognize as science. Bad poll for conflating the two.
* For a number of those jobs you really do not need science. You may be using science results two or three steps removed but that is no more "needing science" than needing science to make a raft. People have been cooking, beautifying and even done plastic surgery long before there was any science to back them up. For at least cooking and beautifying people are still commonly doing so. Just because you can describe or model an aspect of an activity in terms of science doesn't mean it depends on it.
* I am a scientist, and I only recognize three of those names myself. I could google the rest and likely realize I do know them or their work, but I guess the schoolkids didn't get to do that so why would I?
This is a lousy poll, most likely made expressly to make for a nicely selling alarmist headline. There's no source since it would not hold up to ten seconds of methodological scrutiny. The only takeaway message here is "media distorts and makes things up whenever it suits them" nothing else. I'm disappointed that you link to trash like this.
Posted by: Janne | September 25, 2008 9:50 PM