America Dumbs Down

[Junior]

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/america-dumbs-down/

 

 

 

The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?

 

 

Lots of good stuff in here. Well worth the read.

 

 

South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

 

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.

 

What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.

 

Charles Darwin’s signature discovery—first published 155 years ago and validated a million different ways since—long ago ceased to be a matter for serious debate in most of the world. But in the United States, reconciling science and religious belief remains oddly difficult. A national poll, conducted in March for the Associated Press, found that 42 per cent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution. Similarly, 51 per cent of people expressed skepticism that the universe started with a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago, and 36 per cent doubted the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years.

 

 

 

Little wonder then that distrust—of leaders, institutions, experts, and those who report on them—is rampant. A YouGov poll conducted last December found that three-quarters of Americans agreed that science is a force for good in the world. Yet when asked if they truly believe what scientists tell them, only 36 per cent of respondents said yes. Just 12 per cent expressed strong confidence in the press to accurately report scientific findings. (Although according to a 2012 paper by Gordon Gauchat, a University of North Carolina sociologist, the erosion of trust in science over the past 40 years has been almost exclusively confined to two groups: conservatives and regular churchgoers. Counterintuitively, it is the most highly educated among them—with post-secondary education—who harbour the strongest doubts.)

 

The term “elitist” has become one of the most used, and feared, insults in American life. Even in the country’s halls of higher learning, there is now an ingrained bias that favours the accessible over the exacting.

 

(Emphasis mine)

 

[Comish]

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/america-dumbs-down/

 

 

 

The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?

 

 

Lots of good stuff in here. Well worth the read.

 

 

South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

 

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.

 

What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.

 

Charles Darwin’s signature discovery—first published 155 years ago and validated a million different ways since—long ago ceased to be a matter for serious debate in most of the world. But in the United States, reconciling science and religious belief remains oddly difficult. A national poll, conducted in March for the Associated Press, found that 42 per cent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution. Similarly, 51 per cent of people expressed skepticism that the universe started with a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago, and 36 per cent doubted the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years.

 

 

 

Little wonder then that distrust—of leaders, institutions, experts, and those who report on them—is rampant. A YouGov poll conducted last December found that three-quarters of Americans agreed that science is a force for good in the world. Yet when asked if they truly believe what scientists tell them, only 36 per cent of respondents said yes. Just 12 per cent expressed strong confidence in the press to accurately report scientific findings. (Although according to a 2012 paper by Gordon Gauchat, a University of North Carolina sociologist, the erosion of trust in science over the past 40 years has been almost exclusively confined to two groups: conservatives and regular churchgoers. Counterintuitively, it is the most highly educated among them—with post-secondary education—who harbour the strongest doubts.)

 

The term “elitist” has become one of the most used, and feared, insults in American life. Even in the country’s halls of higher learning, there is now an ingrained bias that favours the accessible over the exacting.

 

(Emphasis mine)

 

I would suggest the findings are more likely influenced by the red bolded above......i.e. distrust in the press being unbiased. Also, (as is almost always the case),

follow the money. As more scientists have a lucrative economic interest in their published reports, purely objective findings become rarer. Not saying that is the entire disconnect, but it can certainly muddle things and feed suspicions.

[Junior]

I would suggest the findings are more likely influenced by the red bolded above......i.e. distrust in the press being unbiased. Also, (as is almost always the case),

 

follow the money. As more scientists have a lucrative economic interest in their published reports, purely objective findings become rarer. Not saying that is the entire disconnect, but it can certainly muddle things and feed suspicions.

 

 

Do you have evidence for such a charge? Because I can assure you, academic science isn't lucrative.

[Comish]

 

I would suggest the findings are more likely influenced by the red bolded above......i.e. distrust in the press being unbiased. Also, (as is almost always the case),

 

follow the money. As more scientists have a lucrative economic interest in their published reports, purely objective findings become rarer. Not saying that is the entire disconnect, but it can certainly muddle things and feed suspicions.

 

 

Do you have evidence for such a charge? Because I can assure you, academic science isn't lucrative.

 

Government grants ??

[NUance]

 

I just love it when people take a viewpoint of some conservative Christians and act as if all Christians shared those beliefs. It makes people look so stupid.

[Junior]

 

 

I would suggest the findings are more likely influenced by the red bolded above......i.e. distrust in the press being unbiased. Also, (as is almost always the case),

 

follow the money. As more scientists have a lucrative economic interest in their published reports, purely objective findings become rarer. Not saying that is the entire disconnect, but it can certainly muddle things and feed suspicions.

 

 

Do you have evidence for such a charge? Because I can assure you, academic science isn't lucrative.

 

Government grants ??

 

 

Government grants fund entire labs.... but the professors in charge make substantially less money in academic science than if they were to have a similar position in industry. That being said, there's really only one way to repeatedly get a grant, and that is to propose a good idea and then actually produce useful data. Your charge is that scientists routinely falsify data in order to obtain a grant, but you have yet to demonstrate this. Does it happen? Sure, from time to time. Sadly, there are a certain percentage of humans in any industry that cheat to get what they want. Is it common? Absolutely not.

[Junior]

I just love it when people take a viewpoint of some conservative Christians and act as if all Christians shared those beliefs.

 

 

Where was that done?

[NUance]

 

I just love it when people take a viewpoint of some conservative Christians and act as if all Christians shared those beliefs.

 

 

Where was that done?

 

 

What?

[It'sNotAFakeID]

 

 

I would suggest the findings are more likely influenced by the red bolded above......i.e. distrust in the press being unbiased. Also, (as is almost always the case),

 

follow the money. As more scientists have a lucrative economic interest in their published reports, purely objective findings become rarer. Not saying that is the entire disconnect, but it can certainly muddle things and feed suspicions.

 

 

Do you have evidence for such a charge? Because I can assure you, academic science isn't lucrative.

 

Government grants ??

 

 

Government grants are awarded to studies that will be conducted in the future, not studies with published results. Ethically, you're not supposed to have a financial interest in the results of your study; it's a conflict of interest that biases one towards a specific interpretation of the results, a specific method of achieving the results he wants, and is just overall bad science.

 

I could see where your line of thought if you say that prior results were influence by financial interest in order to obtain a government grant for a future study, though. Like if I wanted a grant for a study on a better disease prevention method than vaccines, I might first conduct a study where I bias the results and conclude that vaccines are highly ineffective.

[Junior]

 

 

I just love it when people take a viewpoint of some conservative Christians and act as if all Christians shared those beliefs.

 

 

Where was that done?

 

 

What?

 

 

.....are you drunk?

[NUance]

 

 

 

I just love it when people take a viewpoint of some conservative Christians and act as if all Christians shared those beliefs.

 

 

Where was that done?

 

 

What?

 

 

.....are you drunk?

 

 

Not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning!

[It'sNotAFakeID]

 

I just love it when people take a viewpoint of some conservative Christians and act as if all Christians shared those beliefs. It makes people look so stupid.

 

While I don't think that was done in the article, I feel it's just the overall salience of a specific group of conservative Christians that lends way to the belief that all Christian conservatives are nut-jobs. I'm willing to bet that for every 1 whacko conservative Christian, there are about 8-10 conservative Christians who are not "insane in the membrane."

 

Let's imagine that these two groups of people are on two different stages talking to the same audience. The 1 whacko, somehow incredibly funded by special interest groups, has a megaphone that is hooked up to 8 amplifiers. The 8-10 non-whackos, funded by nobody but themselves, just have their voices. Let's say that it's an audience of 50,000 people. Of those 50,000 people, only those close to the stage of the 8-10 non-whackos might hear what they have to say. The rest of the people, the majority, will only hear and remember the words of the 1 whacko.

[Creighton Duke]

 

 

 

I would suggest the findings are more likely influenced by the red bolded above......i.e. distrust in the press being unbiased. Also, (as is almost always the case),

 

follow the money. As more scientists have a lucrative economic interest in their published reports, purely objective findings become rarer. Not saying that is the entire disconnect, but it can certainly muddle things and feed suspicions.

 

 

Do you have evidence for such a charge? Because I can assure you, academic science isn't lucrative.

 

Government grants ??

 

 

Government grants fund entire labs.... but the professors in charge make substantially less money in academic science than if they were to have a similar position in industry. That being said, there's really only one way to repeatedly get a grant, and that is to propose a good idea and then actually produce useful data. Your charge is that scientists routinely falsify data in order to obtain a grant, but you have yet to demonstrate this. Does it happen? Sure, from time to time. Sadly, there are a certain percentage of humans in any industry that cheat to get what they want. Is it common? Absolutely not.

 

1. University pushes for profs/researchers to secure grants

2. Prof/researcher secures grants, attains tenure and widespread recognition

3. Prof/researcher takes advantage of recognition; begins consulting on the side

4. Prof/researcher leaves academia. The little pay, but exposure and facilities that university provided has been parlayed into lucrative non-academic gig

[Creighton Duke]

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/america-dumbs-down/

 

 

 

The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?

 

 

Lots of good stuff in here. Well worth the read.

 

 

South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

 

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.

 

What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.

 

Charles Darwin’s signature discovery—first published 155 years ago and validated a million different ways since—long ago ceased to be a matter for serious debate in most of the world. But in the United States, reconciling science and religious belief remains oddly difficult. A national poll, conducted in March for the Associated Press, found that 42 per cent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution. Similarly, 51 per cent of people expressed skepticism that the universe started with a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago, and 36 per cent doubted the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years.

 

 

In response to the South Carolina bit, here is a picture of their state capital. Does any of this surprise you?

[Mavric]

Government grants fund entire labs.... but the professors in charge make substantially less money in academic science than if they were to have a similar position in industry. That being said, there's really only one way to repeatedly get a grant, and that is to propose a good idea and then actually produce useful data. Your charge is that scientists routinely falsify data in order to obtain a grant, but you have yet to demonstrate this. Does it happen? Sure, from time to time. Sadly, there are a certain percentage of humans in any industry that cheat to get what they want. Is it common? Absolutely not.

 

This would definitely be in the eye of the beholder. How many examples of government-funded studies do you want about nearly meaningless topics?