Earlier this year, the president delivered a State of the Union address that included one sentiment with which I could strongly agree: it’s time to take science seriously.
“Tonight I announce an American Competitiveness Initiative, to encourage innovation throughout our economy, and to give our nation’s children a firm grounding in math and science…. [W]e need to encourage children to take more math and science, and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations.”
Sounds great. Unfortunately, however, we’re off to a painfully slow start (thanks to Hark for the tip).
A comparison of peoples’ views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution. Only Turkey ranked lower.
Among the factors contributing to America’s low score are poor understanding of biology, especially genetics, the politicization of science and the literal interpretation of the Bible by a small but vocal group of American Christians, the researchers say.
“American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist, which is why Turkey and we are so close,” said study co-author Jon Miller of Michigan State University.
I have a hunch the Dobson crowd won’t find that last part very encouraging, but if the fundamentalist shoe fits….
Regardless, this trend is not only embarrassing; it undermines national progress and competitiveness.
PZ Myers makes a compelling case that it’s time to start holding certain parts of society responsible for such wide-spread confusion, if for no other reason because change is so necessary.
Americans are being rolled in large numbers by an ideological ‘elite’ nested in our churches and in the Republican party — the reason we are falling so far behind in our understanding of the biological sciences is that political and religious authority figures are lying to the people and fostering ignorance, and Americans are dumbly falling for it…and the more ignorant they are, the more they depend on those false authorities.
Bruce Chapman, the president of the Discovery Institute, the leading proponents on intelligent-design creationism, said, “A better explanation for the high percentage of doubters of Darwinism in America may be that this country’s citizens are famously independent and are not given to being rolled by an ideological elite in any field.”
This is absurd. To hear Chapman tell it, “independence” leads people to believe things that are obviously untrue — and that’s a good thing that should be encouraged. Nonsense. People aren’t confused about modernity because of a maverick attitude; they’re confused because they’ve been misled by people like Chapman.
And let’s please not forget that this is not just about national pride or intellectual bragging rights. As scientific breakthroughs continue to happen, we’re trailing just about every democratic society on the globe on the basics of biology. The president’s State of the Union was absolutely right — maintaining our position as a world leader in science will be impossible if the nation rejects scientific truths.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. Even if most of society embraces bogus science, it doesn’t really matter; most Americans aren’t going to pursue careers in science anyway. A limited elite will understand biology, go into the field professionally, and come up with life-saving breakthroughs for the rest of us. My concerns are therefore alarmist. After all, most Americans have been rejecting modern biology for a long time, and we’ve still been the premier nation for science for decades.
My response to this is two-fold. First, those limited elite will be less and less inclined to pursue science seriously when their teachers are intimidated into ignoring the underpinnings of biology and their school districts won’t purchase textbooks that convey accurate information. It’s a national problem that isn’t going away.
Second, eventually there’s a tipping point. The United States isn’t just trailing potential competitive rivals by a little; the gap is huge and growing. The competitive advantage the U.S. enjoyed is shrinking. At what point does the anti-science push become simply too much of a burden?
And do we really want to find out?