Beets, Al Gore, and other Drama (sort of)

Nicole made an interesting post recently about the arguably horrifying lack of scientific knowledge/understanding among Americans (e.g. lack of belief in evolution and global warming) and the debate among scientists about what can be done about it. Read her post first for a good summary of what the basic ideas are to help this problem (i.e. teach science in detail which may bore some, or simplify it in order to increase accessibility at the expense of losing some depth of substance).

I think (perhaps somewhat pessimistically) that the problem of the public understanding science, and maybe more importantly, the philosophy of science, isn't something which can ever fully be resolved. It seems to be human nature to want to compartmentalize ideas into definite categories - this is right, this is wrong, this is true, this is false - according to what we've been brought up with, what our political party thinks, or what we want to believe. The public doesn't want to hear that something is under investigation and there are a number of different theories, all supported by different kinds of evidence, and that the true answer is a complex integration of them that we haven't quite figured out yet. People are uncomfortable with uncertainty and it's often easier to ignore other points of view and just focus on what makes yours "right." And if you and yours are right, that means someone else is wrong, which is good for self-esteem, group cohesion, etc.. I think people like to define an Other, so they have someone to elevate themselves and their group above or to blame things on, creating an us vs. them mentality that only serves to alienate differing viewpoints and make them more extreme. It's easy to maintain your viewpoint when you're fighting against "godless liberals" or "closed-minded Republicans", not so easy to hover somewhere in the middle, belonging to no group and unable to sum up your standpoint in a 10-second sound bite.

The other day while out to dinner I mentioned something about how I'd gone to see Al Gore's presentation last week. Now, I don't particularly like the guy or agree with all of his politics, but I appreciate what he's doing in terms of raising the public consciousness about climate change. Anyway, a friend of mine immediately said "oh I don't believe in that global warming stuff" - spoken in the same tone that one might espouse distaste for beets, or country music, or Tuesdays. I was baffled, considering I don't think she's had a science class since high school and freely admits that she knows virtually nothing about it. Unfortunately I think this is the way a lot of people come to their beliefs about important issues: they base it on what their parents/church/friends are telling them, or on their opinion of the messenger, or on their own speculations about how the world works. And while we could definitely be doing better with science education, I don't see those fundamental aspects of humanity going away. Evolution didn't prepare our minds for scientific inquiry, it equipped us to learn from our families and social groups. Our tendency to furiously guard our pride and reluctance to admit being wrong doesn't help either!

So, I don't really have a solution to propose. Obviously we should be doing something about the way science is taught in this country since there are countries where people are more scientifically literate. So it is possible to make substantial improvements - it just will never be 100% of the population that has the necessary understanding. But hey, in science you never really get perfect results anyway, right?