Science and the general public

Jimmy Snyder

Take a human (one that's already dead, of course) and burn it. After the fire is complete, what's left on the ground? A little bit of ash, and perhaps a little bit of powdered bones, weighing only a small fraction of the weight of the original person. That ash is more-or-less what originally came from the soil (very roughly speaking, that is).

In Newtonian physics there is the concept of the conservation of matter/mass (it's no use bringing in relativistic effects: the relativistic E = mc² component of the mass is completely negligible for such chemical bonds). So where did the rest of the mass go? Back into the air in the form of carbon dioxide and water. The vast majority of a human's mass can be chemically recombined to form carbon dioxide and water.

Granted, much of the water originally entered the human from a glass. But that water was rain shortly before, so even then one could argue the water came from the atmosphere too.

Humans are carbon based lifeforms. That's kind of obvious because if you only half burn the human, there are obvious presence of a lot of carbon. And where did all the carbon come from that makes up a vital chunk of the human's mass? From the carbon dioxide in the air. The human sucked it in through its lungs.

The human, having carbon dioxide from the air, water (originally from atmospheric rain), a comparatively small amount of minerals from plants recombine the components to form human matter.

zoobyshoe

I'm a tree.

AnTiFreeze3

Take a thread (one that's not too serious to joke about, of course) and derail it. After the derailing is complete, what's left to discuss? A little bit of the original topic, and perhaps a little bit of science about trees, weighing only a small fraction of the content of the original thread. That content is more-or-less what originally game from the OP (very roughly speaking, that is).

In Newtonian physics there is the concept of the conservation of a thread's original topic (it's no use bringing in relativistic effects: considering science is in no way applicable to a thread). So where did the original concept of the thread go? Back into the form of something far less serious than it once was. The vast majority of a human's ability to focus on one subject for an extended period of time has been chemically studied to be not very long.

Granted, much of the ideas of this thread came from other parts of the internet. But those ideas were from people, so even then one could argue that the idea of this thread was created from the ignorance of others.

Threads can be delicate lifeforms. That's kind of obvious because if only half of the posts are on topic, there is an obvious presence of a lack of concentration. And where did all the concentration come from that makes up a vital chunk of the success of a thread? From the very posters of the thread. They read it in through their very eyes.

The thread, having a set topic of discussion, an idea (originally stemmed from the ignorance of the general public), and a comparatively small amount of on topic posts combine to form a successfully derailed thread.

collinsmark

Ok, sorry. Back to original topic.

Jimmy Snyder

Yes.

nonequilibrium

Hmmmm sweet ol' meta.

AnTiFreeze3

Jimmy's the ultimate jokester.

collinsmark

I totally empathize with the OP, so I'll continue the general rant.

There was a morning radio show that I would often list to (my alarm is set to that station). In it, one of the show hosts would occasionally rave about his iPad and iPhone, making them out to be the greatest inventions since sliced bread. 'Nothing wrong so far, but then a couple of unrelated times, he asked one of the other hosts, "Why do we have to learn math in school? Who's ever going to use it? What's the point of anybody learning it?" Then he'd make some comment such as how nerds should just learn more sports.

I nearly jumped out of bed and smashed the radio alarm.

And the city in which I (we) live is one in which companies are based that design some of the individual, internal components for Apple products such as the iPhone and iPad (although this list of cities is quite large -- you might even live in one too). Some of his show's listeners that he is insulting are the very ones who are either directly or indirectly involved with the creation of his precious iPad. How can he be such and idiot? I asked myself. Ahhaghgg! Rant, rant rant!

I was considering writing them a letter (or email), but the show is restructured as of a couple months ago, with differences in the people hosting.

ThomasT

First, I enjoyed reading the replies to your OP.

Regarding your question, which I might rephrase as: how uninformed is the general public when it comes to the sciences? -- I can only guess at the answer. My friends who are working scientists or science students at some level are knowledgeable regarding scientific methods in general and informed wrt their fields. My friends who aren't professionals or students, but who've studied scientific subjects during their lives are knowledgeable wrt scientific methods in general and not very well informed wrt the current state of any particular field. My friends who have never studied scientific approaches to any subject are generally uninformed wrt scientific methods in general. I would guess that the latter group pretty much characterizes the extent to which the vast majority of the US populace is informed wrt science.

I think that this state of affairs, if generally true, is attributable to the apparent fact that the US educational system simply doesn't stress science education, but is rather a sort of warehousing of young people up to a certain age whereupon it can guiltlessly release them into the general society without any associated feeling of collective responsibility regarding their future choices and learning.

That is, afaik, the US educational system is not generally engineered to producing, and does not generally produce, scientifically literate individuals.

Danger

Sure, take all of the fun out of it...

An English stand-up comic, whose name I can't currently recall, gave a great routine at the Montreal Comedy Festival a while back. (I don't know what year it was, because they're all reruns. I just saw it again last week.) Given his presentation, I believe that it was a true story. He was on a flight, seated beside a woman from Texas. She marveled at such a huge machine taking flight, then sighed and said "I guess we'll just never know how." The whole rest of the gig was about what a wonder-filled world she must inhabit, with little people living in a cabinet in her home just to entertain her, bread going into a magic box and coming out toasted, and whatnot.

NewtonianAlch

Hear, hear. Some of you are very amusing.

Alex-NL

One shouldn't nitpick at specific facts that the general public doesn't know. For example, I recall that when professors (in all the areas of study) at MIT were asked what caused the changing seasons, a very significant portion couldn't even answer the question. Many would say that the cause was a change in distance to the sun during it's yearly orbit. It does have a small effect of course but it doesn't explain at all how the seasons on earth change differently at different lattitudes.

The really dangerous thing, as others pointed out already, is the negative and even dismissive attitude towards science. People seem to think that it's their right to be stupid and uninterested and that they should somehow defend that right.

Ryan_m_b

This is not a simple problem, there are many factors at play and the situation is different in different countries. Personally I think there are three big issues as to why the public is at best ignorant (which is not necessarily a bad thing, not everyone needs to spend years studying our fields) and at worse misinformed;

1) The Geek Meme. At some point in the 21st century being smart, specifically in academic/science subjects, became a cultural joke in the west. This manifests throughout society in both our fiction and everyday activities; even things that go against the grain such as The Big Bang Theory TV show that try to portray "geeks" in a positive light is riddled with cliché and plays on cultural perceptions. In fact the fact that we have a concept of "geek" should be worrying enough, when the avereage person starts erroneously associating unpopular activities/traits with people interested in sciences (e.g. comic reading, bad hygeine, social awkwardness, cultural unawareness, uglyness etc) it perpetuates the good at science = bad idea. I'd like to track where this idea comes from, I'm pretty sure it may have something to do with the second world war and the mechanisation of warfare which perpetuated an idea that scientists are unethical people who have no "common sense" or general knowledge of how life works. In fact it might even extend further back than that thinking about fiction like Frenkenstein.

2) Science Media. This section I'd lump together news and advertising. Science journalism isn't just bad, it's outragously misinforming. I have many journalist friends and often they've tried to defend errors in articles by saying that to be a journalist you have to be able to simplify a story for the public but IMO this excuse doesn't hold weight because nine times out of ten the problem isn't that the science has been simplified but that in simplifying it the journalist has got the report fundamentally wrong. This in itself has two big effects; firstly it means that people distrust scientists because the reports do not match with their experience. A good example being if an article reports that eating X potentially causes cancer and then a few years later another reports that eating X potentially reduces heart disease. The layperson is left with the idea tha scientists are just flimsily making guesses and that their experience of niether of these things is valid. The second is that newspapers deliberately bias stories in order to sell. A story about how a gene for antisocial behaviour has been found will sell more (because people are afraid of antisocial behaviour) than one reporting the identification of a gene that statistically is found more often in antisocial individuals but no reason is known why.

But beyond news we also have advertisement which has done just as much if not more harm IMO. The average person is constantly bombarded by adverts in all media trying to sell products with dodgy science. Think of cosmetic and alternative medicine adverts that are everywhere! The result is that people develop an automatic distrust and because they are unaware of how real science works they lump distrust of science reports in wit shampoo adverts.

3) Teaching of Science. The general public aren't stupid, there's no reason why any average person couldn't be taught about science properly and understand as well as we do what is going on. Whilst I can only speak for the UK I think I'm safe to say that this applies elsewhere: no one is taught science in school. From a young age science classes in school are filled with endless facts, many of which are dry and boring to the majority of people (including future scientists). It is extremely rare to find someone who has had a lesson on the scientific method itself outside of university (or increasingly these days 6th form in the UK). Consequently for the majority of people all they know of science is that when they were in school they regularly sat through mostly boring lessons where facts were presented to them. I can't think of a single experiment that I ever did at school before 6th form. I did lots of activities like making circuits or pouring chemicals into beakers and the word hypothesis may have been mentioned somewhere but there was no structure, no scientific method to understand.

Science education needs to change. Everyone going through education should be able to say what the scientific method is; they should understand publication, peer-review, observation-hypothesis-experiment-conclude etc etc. Ideally scientific method would be a module every year or so, or at least every key stage. And just as importantly science lessons in school need to teach how to recognise and debunk pseudoscience as well as covering the difference between it and real science. It's far to easy now adays for a potentialyl dangerous pseudoscience to integrate in everyday lives. At best it means people will waste money buying products that don't work. At worst national policy affecting the lives of millions will be made on the back of corrupt ideology masquerading as science (this is especially dangerous if the policy is to do with healthcare).

It's easy for people to be disdainful of the general knowledge of the general public but we have to recognise that people aren't deliberately misinformed (on the contrary the majority of people are intensely curious about the world around them) but due to cultural perceptions, bad education and deliberate misinformation they don't have a clear idea. And to be honest neither do we! Academics are intensely specialised. I'm ignorant of the majority of biology and I'm a biologist, let alone the current paradigms in the study renaisance history or some other academic subject. The biggest advantage we have is an undstanding of what science is, how it works and how to spot it. If we can just impart this to the majority of people we'll be in a *much* better position even if they don't know exactly why the sky is blue or what trees are made of.

NewtonianAlch

Ryan, that was a really good post. I think a lot more could be said, but you've hit the nail on the head and got the key points that is of concern without making it tl;dr

Although I find myself asking, why is it that in the midst of this there will still be plenty of people who sat through those same boring classes that others forgot after a week, but remembered key points and found it interesting?

I think the education system can be greatly improved as anything else, but as you've outlined earlier, I think it's more the perception that's been engrained. It would be good to get an idea of how the sciences are taught in India and China as an example, India I would suspect might have a similar system to the UK, or at least derived from it.

Scientific method or not, I think as Collin earlier mentioned, some people just don't think. It is worrying that someone could honestly claim to love his iProduct and then publicly question the importance of maths. Sadly, something's cannot be taught, common sense and basic reasoning is garnered how? I don't know.

Jimmy Snyder

There was a farmer who knew the length and breadth of his farm. He bought just enough seed to cover the ground and when he planted it, it just covered with no excess. Based on this, he told his friend from the city that the Earth was flat. His friend shook his head and rolled his eyes. "No", he said, "the Earth is round." "How do you know that?" asked the farmer. "I read it in a book." was the reply.

KiwiKid

Two years before I finished high school, they created an 'Algemene Natuurwetenschappen' (General Natural Sciences - something like that) course, which was *mandatory* for everyone at the highest level (VWO). The course looked promising to me: it was about such things as about how people found out that the earth wasn't the center of the solar system, the scientific method, DNA and all the ethical stuff of genetics, some history of science, etc.

Unfortunately, it flopped. I think the reason for this is that every teacher taught it as if it was just a combination of your average physics-chemistry-biology courses. Thus, everyone who'd chosen such courses already found themselves wondering why they'd have to learn more of what they already knew, and those who *didn't* choose similar courses complained that they had to learn stuff they didn't care about and weren't going to use later. No teacher felt the need to correct these misconceptions.

So, yeah... Things can be done much better.

btbam91

I took a gender studies course as a general education requirement and all I heard for an entire semester was how fake science was. Shaking my damn head...