Are Americans science-savvy enough to make informed decisions?

[sinkingfeeling]

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2008-08-11-science-savvy-americans_N.htm

Seventy-six percent of Americans say presidential candidates should make improving science education a national priority, according to a national Harris Interactive survey of 1,304 adults in November and December. Results were released this spring.

But only 26% believe that they themselves have a good understanding of science. And 44% couldn't identify a single scientist, living or dead, whom they'd consider a role model for the nation's young people.

These results are disturbing, science education experts say, because scientists aren't the only ones who must distinguish solid scientific methods from bogus ones. Some important scientific questions are being debated this year, including food safety, imported-product safety and the effect of biofuels.

"People will respond to demagoguery if they don't believe they have sufficient knowledge and sufficient confidence in their ability to weigh arguments and assess what's behind them," says Walter Massey, a board member of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, which commissioned the survey.

"The danger is that we move increasingly toward being a society where the most important decisions are ultimately made by fewer and fewer people."

Edited: Forgot to add link to quiz. Test yourselves.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/sciencefair/

[GoesTo11]

1. It wouldn't be so bad

if there weren't a political party trying to continually distort the facts.

[sourmilk]

2. No. Even something as simple as Geography is a mystery to many USAsians...

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/EDUCATION/11/20/geography.quiz/

• Thirty-four percent of the young Americans knew that the island used on last season's "Survivor" show was located in the South Pacific, but only 30 percent could locate the state of New Jersey on a map. The "Survivor" show's location was the Marquesas Islands in the eastern South Pacific.

• When asked to find 10 specific states on a map of the United States, only California and Texas could be located by a large majority of those surveyed. Both states were correctly located by 89 percent of the participants. Only 51 percent could find New York, the nation's third most populous state.

• On a world map, Americans could find on average only seven of 16 countries in the quiz. Only 89 percent of the Americans surveyed could find their own country on the map.

• Only 71 percent of the surveyed Americans could locate on the map the Pacific Ocean, the world's largest body of water. Worldwide, three in 10 of those surveyed could not correctly locate the Pacific Ocean.

• Although 81 percent of the surveyed Americans knew that the Middle East is the Earth's largest oil exporter, only 24 percent could find Saudi Arabia on the map.


The Canadian joke is that this is the reason why we will never have to worry about the USA attacking Canada.

[natrat]

3. really dumb and getting dumber, but not their fault per se

[Prophet 451]

4. 20% of your populace...

...believe the sun orbits the earth. 'Nuff said.


(stat from NY Times two months ago)

[sofa king]

5. If acing that test all it takes to be a geek, we're doomed.

I do, however, approve of the two questions designed to annoy home-schoolers, though.

But seriously, every sixth-grader should know the answers to each of those questions by heart.

[NoFederales]

6. Not gonna happen. The latest trend (over the last two years, and more) is to take math

out of science--I shit you not. We don't need math in chemistry or physics or biology because it should all be conceptually taught. Curriculum supervisors state that Freshmen and Sophomores who experience these "conceptual" offerings will be fully prepared for Advanced Placement Bio/Phys/Chem later in High School.

The Pushers of these curriculum packages sell them to idiot admininstrative curriculum supervisors, completely pulling the knickers over their heads and spanking them into submission I guess. Teachers are without voices, and get ignored when objections are made. Corporate Pushers run school districts.

Add to the mix the popular anti-intellectual derision that follows the academically gifted, and you don't need no fucking survey. Who really gives a shit? It ain't the masses and their masters.

Statistically (in a global population sense), a fight or flight reflex can move a significant majority of a population to react. That's why the FEAR card is so persuasive and effective as we witnessed from the * administration. Demagoguery in education or economics or whatever is not going to impact a population to a progressive position.

These fights will have to be made, and won, at local (neighborhood) levels and even there, the inertia against apathy is great. Would that it was otherwise, but the fight in the trenches begins at home.

NoFederales

[Joanne98]

7. NO