Just in time to feed into the discussion surrounding Unscientific America, there's a new Pew Research Poll about public attitudes toward science. As is usually the case with social-science data, there's something in here to bolster every opinion.
The most striking of the summary findings, to me, is the second table down, in which the fraction of people saying that "Science/ medicine/ technology" is the greatest achievement of the last 50 years has dropped from 47% to 27% since 1999. About half of that shifted to "Civil rights/ equal rights," which is hard to begrudge, but the other half seems to have gone to "Nothing/ Don't Know," which is kind of sad.
(There's a note suggesting that this is probably a fishy result caused by using differently worded questions, but still...)
On the depressing end of things, roughly half of Americans still think that lasers work by focusing sound waves, and that electrons are at least as big as atoms. If you want evidence that there's something wrong with the way we teach science, there it is. The numbers for evolution and global warming stink, too, but at least there you can point to large and well-funded operations promoting disinformation about those topics for political/ religious reasons. I haven't noticed a large-electron lobby, though, and I'm pretty sure there are no sonic lasers in the Bible. This is just bad education.
Education
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
"...and I'm pretty sure there are no sonic lasers in the Bible."
Oh, no? Methinks you need to study the book of Joshua in some detail!
Checkmate, I believe! :P
Posted by: gg | July 9, 2009 6:28 PM
Frankly the mind boggles at how focusing sound waves could have anything to do with light.
I wonder if this was a multiple choice question.
Posted by: Grad | July 9, 2009 6:44 PM
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
Watson, describing Holmes in "A Study in Scarlet"
"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
Sherlock Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet"
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | July 9, 2009 8:38 PM
Isn't the whole idea of the size of an electron rather ill-defined? It's an elementary particle, so it's point-like. Other definitions of size that come to mind are the classical electron radius (which I don't think has any physical significance), and the the volume occupied by the majority of its wavefunction. And if we use the latter definition, electrons are about the size of an atom.
Posted by: miller | July 10, 2009 1:08 AM
Grad, the quiz is here. Yes, multiple guess.
Posted by: abb3w | July 10, 2009 2:15 AM
It isn't just the general public that has an issue with focused sound waves as lasers. Several years ago at the Oregon Academy of Science meeting, the keynote speaker's (a physicist) talk was about that - sound waves as lasers. Actually, he was up front saying that they weren't lasers, but that in certain situations you could get an amplification of sound waves due to acoustics. Still, he kept calling things "lasers" and "laser-like".
Posted by: Brian | July 10, 2009 10:07 AM
So the question was "Lasers work by focusing sound waves: true/false". Presumably half of people who had no idea how a laser works just guessed true (maybe more, following the lead of the question). I'd say the take-home message is closer to "people have no idea how lasers work" than "think that lasers work by focusing sound waves". Still not great.
Posted by: APP | July 10, 2009 10:36 AM
The issue isn't that religion has some specific alternative theory for any of this particular reality shit. The issue is that religion indoctrinates people into a mode of magical fantasy-based thinking that deludes people into thinking that reality shit in general simply isn't important. Thus, the religiously indoctrinated pay no attention to it.
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | July 10, 2009 11:41 AM
Quantum Electrodynamics requires the electron to be a point, with size = 0. For over a century, physicists have struggled with nonphysical behavior of any model of the extended electron.
July 10, 2009, 8:00 am
Non-Evolution of God, Part 2
By Nicholas Wade
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/non-evolution-of-god-part-2/?hp
A post last week on Robert Wright’s new book The Evolution of God produced many insightful comments. I’d like to thank readers for sharing their thoughts and to remark on some of what was said.
But first, I should note that Mr. Wright took issue with the post. He said in an email:
Thanks for writing about my book “The Evolution of God.” However, I’m afraid that you misunderstand the argument I’m making in it. You write that evolution “provides a simpler explanation for moral progression than the deity Wright half invokes.” In my scenario, evolution and a deity aren’t alternative explanations. The deity (if there is one–and I’m agnostic on that point) would be realizing moral progress through evolution’s creation of the human moral sense (and through the subsequent development of that moral sense via cultural evolution, particularly technological evolution).
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | July 10, 2009 12:33 PM
Hate to be the dissenter, but does it really matter whether or not Americans know the basic structure of an atom? If supporters of science make such a claim, I think we are compelled to back that statement up with verifiable reasons, and to explain why learning about any particular scientific topics is more beneficial than whatever such people are learning about or doing instead.
One would have to invest a lot of time to grasp even a rudimentary understanding of lasers. Without learning about transverse and longitudinal waves, requirements for a medium, let alone the confusing issue of photons, memorizing "EM" or "sound" as a correct answer would just be trivia.
Of course, there is always the benefit of gaining knowledge, solely for the sake of becoming more knowledgeable people. However, while I find this argument personally motivating, it seems to me a tautology, nonetheless.
Posted by: adina | July 10, 2009 10:12 PM
I agree with adina here...do people really need to know how big electrons are? and some of them might not be interested. I'm not interested in learning about economics ... yet a servay like this would make economists panic that i didn't know enough about what is actually a really important issue at the moment. At least as important as science.
Posted by: Lab Rat | July 11, 2009 1:55 PM
Your consistent knocking of "social science" suggests you are either ignorant or bigoted. I think its a little of both. For such as well spoken, educated, accomplished, and articulate person - it surprises me you would be so anti-social science. So, what really is your beef with social science? Why cant social science make claims that are just as valid as those made by the hard sciences?
Posted by: Jordan | July 11, 2009 2:45 PM
"Why can[']t social science make claims that are just as valid as those made by the hard sciences?"
Seems to me the thread is about public perception of experts, not experts' perception of other experts.
I find it troubling that so few adults in the USA can rank electron-atom-molecule by size, or know that the Moon can be seen sometimes in daylight. Social Scientists should likewise be troubled that, when asked if the US was allied with North or South Vietnam, college students split 50-50 (i.e. were purely guessing). That only a minority can define Capitalism or Communism. That a majority of Americans deny that there is a Class System. That a vast majority deny that they have prejudices. That a vast majority of adults either remember no dreams at all, or deny that they dream.
Not knowing which is bigger, electron or atom, seems roughly equivalent to not knowing which is bigger, person or family.
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | July 11, 2009 4:34 PM
People have problems understanding electrons relative to atoms for the same reason they have problems understanding evolution: the scale is too far removed from the scale of their everyday experience, so after they are taught this information, it isn't easily retained. (In the case of evolution, the time scale is too vast; in the case of electrons, the size scale is too small.)
This is only a failure of education in the sense that educators haven't adequately overcome these barriers to learning, not that they failed to teach the information in the first place. Having students retain counterintuitive information is the trick. What's obvious from the survey isn't that students weren't taught the information, but that they did not retain it between when they were taught it and when they were administered the survey.
Re: Johnathan Vos Post, failing to understand the size difference in electrons vs. atoms is analogous to but not equivalent to mistaking the size of a family for that of an individual. Moms, dads, and kids have always been a part of everyone's everyday experience from the day they are born. Electrons weren't even discovered until the late 19th century. If this distinction between electrons and atoms is so obvious, why aren't we mocking pre-atomic theory Newton for being a dullard?
Real science education (the kind that gets difficult ideas like electrons and evolution to stick) will not progress unless we take the causes for lasting ignorance seriously. That won't happen so long as we're patting ourselves on the back for our own intellectual superiority.
Posted by: Rachel | July 13, 2009 6:22 PM
The absence of critical thinking goes a long way toward explaining American ignorance. Critical thinking = screwdriver, facts = screws. Why carry around a bunch of screws when I don't have a screwdriver?
Learning critical thinking requires the grace to accept ambiguity, humility to not only admit error but to seek correction, and perseverance. I don't see much of those things in our culture. Hell -- I don't see enough of them in myself.
Posted by: Eofhan | July 14, 2009 12:17 PM