On the new book website, there’s the most extensive write-up yet of our argument and scope. I’ll repaste it here, as it explains precisely why we’re concerned about the gap between science and mainstream culture, and what we must do about it:
In his famous 1959 Rede lecture at Cambridge University, the scientifically-trained novelist C.P. Snow described science and the humanities as “two cultures,” separated by a “gulf of mutual incomprehension.” And the humanists had all the cultural power—the low prestige of science, Snow argued, left Western leaders too little educated in scientific subjects that were increasingly central to world problems: the elementary physics behind nuclear weapons, for instance, or the basics of plant science needed to feed the world’s growing population.
Now, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, a journalist-scientist team, offer an updated “two cultures” polemic for America in the 21st century. Just as in Snow’s time, some of our gravest challenges—climate change, the energy crisis, national economic competitiveness—and gravest threats–global pandemics, nuclear proliferation—have fundamentally scientific underpinnings. Yet we still live in a culture that rarely takes science seriously or has it on the radar.
For every five hours of cable news, less than a minute is devoted to science; 46 percent of Americans reject evolution and think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old; the number of newspapers with weekly science sections has shrunken by two-thirds over the past several decades. The public is polarized over climate change—an issue where political party affiliation determines one’s view of reality—and in dangerous retreat from childhood vaccinations. Meanwhile, only 18 percent of Americans have even met a scientist to begin with; more than half can’t name a living scientist role model.
For this dismaying situation, Mooney and Kirshenbaum don’t let anyone off the hook. They highlight the anti-intellectual tendencies of the American public (and particularly the politicians and journalists who are supposed to serve it), but also challenge the scientists themselves, who despite the best of intentions have often failed to communicate about their work effectively to a broad public—and so have ceded their critical place in the public sphere to religious and commercial propagandists.
A plea for enhanced scientific literacy, Unscientific America urges those who care about the place of science in our society to take unprecedented action. We must begin to train a small army of ambassadors who can translate science’s message and make it relevant to the media, to politicians, and to the public in the broadest sense. An impassioned call to arms worthy of Snow’s original manifesto, this book lays the groundwork for reintegrating science into the public discourse–before it’s too late.
Once again, you can check out the new book website here.
June 22nd, 2009 at 3:50 pm
For every five hours of cable news, less than a minute is devoted to science;
And half of that scant minute is wrong, and the other half will “give the other side equal time”.
The death of actual reporting, finding facts, verifying them independently and presenting those facts, isn’t limited to science reporting. The present a said, b said, but we’ll give more time to a to present their POV, infects all of the alleged news now.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Given the anti-academic sensibilities of many Americans, does your book look into the option of getting science out of academic institutions and back into the private sector, national labs, and other ‘real-world’ places?
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:48 pm
I believe that “science” has become an over-used black box for public use in todays world. Too often you hear of science as backing obscure health products, as posing a threat to genuine humanistic endeavors as well as over-zealous religious fanaticism, and finally as the King that grants Western thinking authority over other cultures. I think that students and citizens need to be educated in a manner that fluently combines the humanities and sciences, so that one can watch the evening news and see and understand stories about the most recent scientific discoveries and understand their importance for humanity and ethics.
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Likely, a weak case for a “polemic.”
Take global warming. Is it really a function of party affiliation? Or standards for actually doing sound science, versus politicized science? The latter indeed appears to be the case, when Kyoto’s carbon emissions scientist, Dr. David Evans, relates a meeting of pro- and skeptical global warming scientists facilitated thru Australia’s Senate.
Here, we see “consensus” face data sufficiency and falsification standards – something real scientists ought not to find subject to debate.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Hey Lemming,
You bet it does….
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:59 pm
As Evan’s sees the global warming alarmists: “It felt like we were ignorant wayward children, now being set straight on the way things really are. Here were the authority figures telling us we were wrong, wrong, wrong. Just shut up and listen. Presumably that was how we were meant to feel.
Who else among the policymakers but Sen Fielding has the sense to ask the obvious questions? To do du diligence? “It’s as if [the alarmists] had never before encountered real live competent skeptics or their arguments.” “Science” without dialog? This is how pathetic global warming alarmism poses – as propaganda!
Evans continues: “Like the mainstream media, alarmists suppress and avoid skeptic thought at all cost. This has left alarmists generally very ill informed about either the skeptic arguments or the caliber and numbers of skeptics. It is easy for alarmists never to encounter competent skeptics, and to believe their own political line that the skeptics are just a few misinformed cranks in the pay of big oil.
Yielding these bullet points:
1) “We pointed out that they hadn’t actually presented any evidence that carbon was the main cause of global warming. No response.
2) “We pointed out that the models were wrong because they predict a hotspot and there was no hotspot.
3) “We showed them the diagram of the model predictions versus the radiosonde observations in my No Evidence paper (page 7). (Warning: horn tooting. That document explains why, despite media impressions, there is no actual evidence that rising carbon dioxide levels are the main cause of global warming. I recommend at least the introduction.) But if there is no hotspot then there is no water vapor feedback, in which case the feedback factor must be less than 1.2, and so the climate models exaggerate predicted temperature rises by at least a factor of two. All IPCC models and calculations of temperature rises rely on a large feedback factor, but the missing hotspot is empirical evidence that it is in fact small.
“I thought it appeared from their faces they this was news to them, or at least an unusual argument.” Denial, dissimulation, and ignorance of a contrary interpretation of the relevant evidence isn’t what I’d uphold as “science.”
”It felt more like a political meeting than a science meeting, because there was a lot of posturing, spin, trying to counter the fog of spin and misinformation, and only a little truth-finding. 90% politics, but a bit of science sneaked in.
Evans ”overwhelming impressions were of authority and arrogance. I felt they tried to intimidate us into acquiescence… The arrogant attitude was very strong. Lots of spin, some brazen statements, talking down to us and lecturing, and authoritative statements that they knew it all. They ignored the contrary evidence we presented, and never acknowledged any point, no matter how small, unless we demanded it. Their chief tactic was to appear confident and knowledgeable (in some cases using jargon fairly meaninglessly), and to talk past us. They never answered our specific questions in the terms they were asked, as if denying that the questions were even worthy of discussion. The lords were lecturing us ignorant peasants. And all this from a science team that was describing, literally, a different planet!”
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:44 am
Does anyone have the time to discuss:
a. How the paper (indirectly) linked above differs from actual scientific research reports.
and
b. How the poor state of science education fails to train people to spot the difference between science and non-science.
If ill-considered did this months ago, a link will suffice.
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:00 am
I am announcing that the 9th North American Paleontological Convention is meeting later this week at the University of Cincinnati, in Cincinnati, OH. Of special interest will be Thursday’s sessions, beginning with the morning session on “Evolution and Society” which will feature talks by Genie Scott, Executive Director, National Center for Science Education, and Ken Miller, Professor of Biology, Brown University. In the afternoon there will be an afternoon session on Science Literacy with two talks discussing some of the themes of Chris Mooney’s recent blog entries, including a talk on methodological naturalism by invertebrate paleontologist Keith B. Miller (no relation to Ken), who is an evangelical Protestant Christian (and of course, accepts evolution as valid science). For more details see here:
http://www.napc2009.org/
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:05 am
@ Chris -
BTW, I forgot to mention that Jason Rosenhouse will be participating in a noon-time panel session Thursday afternoon. So you might especially find that of interest.
Cheers,
John
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:25 am
For reasons too numerous and complex to relate here, American children are simply not taught any critical thinking or skeptical techniques in our public school system, and certainly in most private [religious] school systems.
The global warming debate has devolved into a political diatribe ill-served by almost all politicians, who are pathetically ignorant on scientific matters. I say this as a human-caused global warming skeptic. You can insert the politically charged word “denier” if you are politically inclined and don’t want to research the IPCC models or methods for yourself, or are a confirmed progressive [liberal] who will blindly follow some loud-mouthed politician. Note also that I think the earth is about 4.5 billion years old; I believe in evolution theory; and I am an atheist. I really don’t like being called names or being stereotyped.
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:52 am
“We must begin to train a small army of ambassadors who can translate science’s message and make it relevant to the media, to politicians, and to the public in the broadest sense.”
That’s pretty vague. Will there be further details about this oddly phrased “army of ambassadors,” how it will be trained–high school or college level?–and how it will be implemented into society? Will it be like the AmeriCorps program, or less formal. Will universities fund it, or will the government? I can’t fathom what form all this will take.
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:58 am
gillt…well, that’s why we wrote a book…check it out!
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:25 am
Forgive the insistence, but if I’m reading it correctly, then what you’re hinting at is a pretty radical thing to propose!
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:39 am
@gillt: not necessarily radical. Here in Quebec, as well as in the U.S., a huge number of scientists are nowhere in communication skills. Science programs in the universities are offering NOTHING about how to popularize science, science communities are NEVER talking about how a scientist should act politically and socially as a citizen (social scientists are doing this a lot more).
So, rather than seeing this as something military, you should think about it as a change of attitude.
A change of culture, if I’m reading Chris’ mind correctly…
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:56 pm
I see. Well shame on me for buying into the hype.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:08 pm
“…or are a confirmed progressive [liberal] who will blindly follow some loud-mouthed politician… I really don’t like being called names or being stereotyped.”
Then perhaps you should not stereotype, yourself.
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Pascal So, rather than seeing this as something military, you should think about it as a change of attitude.
A change of culture, if I’m reading Chris’ mind correctly…
Didn’t Marx say that “cultural change is the opiate of the intellectual”? – or rather, isn’t this how neo-Marxists construe Marx?
Based on this utopianism, I see no cause for optimism – rather, the reverse: pessimism.
Instead, since US society is being revolutionized by IT, the proper issue is what actually constitutes knowledge. Thus the internet conserves knowledge and spreads its standards of information-attainment.
Properly harnessed to contemporary institutions of knowledge keeping, science standards ought to improve over time. This incremental improvement is what Karl Popper expects of the Open Society, but what institutionalized science keeps down – as seen above in Evans account of the boot-licking authoritarianism of the “consensus” on AGW.
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Orson: Didn’t Marx say that “cultural change is the opiate of the intellectual”? – or rather, isn’t this how neo-Marxists construe Marx? Based on this utopianism, I see no cause for optimism…
None of this is based on Marx, nope, it’s good old Anglo empiricism in the tradition of Hume and Isaac Newton.
Now *your* thinking, on the other hand, (”intellectuals” addicted to “cultural change” blah blah blah) is heavily influenced by New York intellectuals like Kevin Phillips and Irving Kristol–who *were*, in fact, heavily influenced by Marx. Kristol was a recovering Trotskyist. And it showed ; – ).
Further, nowadays, this view about conspiracies of elite social changers is pushing 40 years old. We are a long ways from Nixon’s 60’s and 70’s. All the scientific organizations mentioned in this article are not “hippies” or “elite” Great Society social tinkerers. They’re scientists.
So get some new ideas. Empirically-based ones this time.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Oops. I meant that Kevin Phillips link to point here: http://tinyurl.com/kugfmv
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:32 pm
The authors said: “We must begin to train a small army of ambassadors who can translate science’s message and make it relevant to the media, to politicians, and to the public in the broadest sense.” Does this make any sense?
If we can agree on this, then the only issue to resolve is what religion these missionaries will preach.
Actually, what we need is a small army of unbiased scientists to validate or refute the global climate models. Are there any unbiased scientists out there?
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Are there any unbiased scientists out there?
If there wasn’t unbiased scientists then the computer you’re typing on wouldn’t work. Science is empirical. If something doesn’t comport with reality, then someone shoots it down (or the technology doesn’t work).
That’s how careers are made (or not, as the case may be) in the sciences.
And only ideologues don’t get this kind of common sense.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:24 pm
[...] From a Scientist and a Writer: A Plea to Change Our Science-Anemic Culture A plea for enhanced scientific literacy, Unscientific America urges those who care about the place of science in our society to take unprecedented action. We must begin to train a small army of ambassadors who can translate science’s message and make it relevant to the media, to politicians, and to the public in the broadest sense. An impassioned call to arms worthy of Snow’s original manifesto, this book lays the groundwork for reintegrating science into the public discourse–before it’s too late. [...]
June 24th, 2009 at 1:29 am
Orson: Didn’t Marx say that “cultural change is the opiate of the intellectual”? – or rather, isn’t this how neo-Marxists construe Marx? Based on this utopianism, I see no cause for optimism…
JJ replies: None of this is based on Marx, nope, it’s good old Anglo empiricism in the tradition of Hume and Isaac Newton
[JJ - it's sarcasm ; ) ]
THE CHALLENGE is to show us how such utopianism is empirically practical (but then some people don’t do sarcasm).
June 24th, 2009 at 6:41 am
Who said anything about utopia? The idea is to *mitigate* climate change. Pragmatism, not utopia.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Orson was saying: Didn’t Marx say that “cultural change is the opiate of the intellectual”? – or rather, isn’t this how neo-Marxists construe Marx?
Based on this utopianism, I see no cause for optimism – rather, the reverse: pessimism.
I don’t know what Marx really says, but having myself studied History, I can guarantee you that cultural changes do exist…