Real Scientific Literacy
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/real-scientific-literacy/"What does it mean to be scientifically literate? There is no completely objective answer to this question, it can be defined in multiple ways and the bar can be set anywhere along a spectrum.
Many tests of scientific literacy essentially ask a series of scientific facts they are tests of factual knowledge, but not scientific thinking. This glaring deficit has been pointed out many times before, and was so again in a recent editorial by Danielle Teller. She writes:
There are a number of problems with teaching science as a collection of facts. First, facts change. Before oxygen was discovered, the theoretical existence of phlogiston made sense. For a brief, heady moment in 1989, it looked like cold fusion (paywall) was going to change the world.
I agree. A true measure of scientific literacy should be a combination of facts, concepts, and process. Facts are still important. Concepts without facts are hollow, and facts without concepts are meaningless. Both need to be understood in the context of the process that led us to our current conclusions.
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A good read. A necessary read, IMO.
immoderate
(20,885 posts)--imm
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)Thanks.
hunter
(38,301 posts)immoderate
(20,885 posts)--imm
longship
(40,416 posts)HuckleB
(35,773 posts)SoLeftIAmRight
(4,883 posts)long long list
VWolf
(3,944 posts)both a knowledge of "facts" and a thorough understanding of the scientific method.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)The piece, and its part 2, are quite good, especially considering the conciseness of them.
Without any understanding of how scientific findings are achieved, the average person isn't equipped to be skeptical.
shadowmayor
(1,325 posts)Fukushima
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)shadowmayor
(1,325 posts)Scientifically literate people, media and otherwise should be demanding to know just what exactly is going on at Fukushima? Any idea where reactor 3 might be? What is the total leakage? How many people have been affected. In a science based culture, folks would want to know. Instead, we have another Benghazi meme, shut the fuck up Donnie Trump 24/7 and Kardashians to boot!
The fact that this issue was so easily and quickly relegated to yesterday's news shows how scientifically illiterate we are.
And if it is mentioned, you can cue up the "It's not that bad" stories in 3 .. 2 .. 1
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)You seem to have a topic that you want to discuss that may not be related to the content of the OP.
shadowmayor
(1,325 posts)I chose a single topic - Fukushima - that involves science for any coverage of this disaster - as one prime example. Hell, declines in biodiversity, the immunologic effects of a meat industry packed with antibiotics, the odds of getting killed by a terrorist vs getting shot accidentally by an angry white American, pine bark beetles and forest fires in the west, there's no end. I just chose one glaring example dealing with the problem of ionizing radiation spilling into the biosphere to little notice or concern. Just one word, one topic that requires some science background to discuss or report what I hoped would be an obvious example of the general scientific illiteracy that permeates our culture.
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)~snip~
We have to dissolve phenomena into their elements and consider each of these elements. Only then do we see the otherwise invisible regularities. So, too, in the social sciences. That is called engaging in theory.
~snip~
Lastly, let the beginner keep in mind that any particular theory is never valid in itself, but is always a part of a theoretical structure and can only be understood as such. One cannot grasp a particular proposition outside of its theoretical framework and discuss it as such. One has to understand it in its relationship to the other links of the chain to which it belongs.
Schumpeter, J. A. (2003, March)*. How does one study social science? Society, 57-63. *Date of translation
First, that perception of a set of related phenomena is a prescientific act. It must be performed in order to give to our minds something to do scientific work on-to indicate an object of research -but it is not scientific in itself. But though prescientific, it is not preanalytic. It does not simply consist in perceiving facts by one or more of our senses. These facts must be recognized as having some meaning or relevance that justifies our interest in them and they must be recognized as related-so that we might separate them from others -which involves some analytic work by our fancy or common sense. This mixture of perceptions and prescientific analysis we shall call the research worker's Vision or Intuition. In practice, of course, we hardly ever start from scratch so that the prescientific act of vision is not entirely our own. We start from the work of our predecessors or contemporaries or else from the ideas that float around us in the public mind. In this case our vision will also contain at least some of the results of previous scientific analysis. However, this compound is still given to us and exists before we start scientific work ourselves.
~snip~
Now, so soon as we have performed the miracle of knowing what we cannot know, namely the existence of the ideological bias in ourselves and others, we can trace it to a simple source. This source is in the initial vision of the phenomena we propose to subject to scientific treatment. For this treatment itself is under objective control in the sense that it is always possible to establish whether a given statement, in reference to a given state of knowledge, is provable, refutable, or neither. Of course this does not exclude honest error or dishonest faking. It does not exclude delusions of a wide variety of types. But it does permit the exclusion of that particular kind of delusion which we call ideology because the test involved is indifferent to any ideology. The original vision, on the other hand, is under no such control. There, the elements that will meet the tests of analysis are, by definition, undistinguishable from those that will not or-as we may also put it since we admit that ideologies may contain provable truth up to 100 per cent-the original vision is ideology by nature and may contain any amount of delusions traceable to a man's social location, to the manner in which he wants to see himself or his class or group and the opponents of his own class or group. This should be extended even to peculiarities of his outlook that are related to his personal tastes and conditions and have no group connotation-there is even an ideology of the mathematical mind as well as an ideology of the mind that is allergic to mathematics.
Schumpeter, J. (1949). Science and ideology. The American Economic Review(39) 2, p. 346-359.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)...are those who erroneously think they are scientifically literate and spend their time lecturing on the topic.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)kristopher
(29,798 posts)HuckleB
(35,773 posts)That's about right.
Archae
(46,297 posts)News channels use outdated and outmoded terms like "missing link," or want to give space to "both sides."
Even if the "other side" is a group of crackpots.
Entertainment media still describe those with brains as "nerds," "mad scientists," or "geeks" who either want to destroy the universe or will never get the good looking girl or guy.