On Demand
Scientifically Averse
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum co-authors of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future continue the conversation about why American students avoid science.
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There are many reasons our nation is scientifically illiterate- from poor training of teachers, to the co-option of science by special interest groups confusing the general public, to the lack of great role models and grand challenges to heighten student interest. No easy solutions, but started this effort to help educate the public, and act as a trustworthy foundation of knowledge: www.moreorlesstrue.org
Students avoid science because teachers have made the subject absolutely boring, boring, BORING! Did I say boring? In fact, teachers have done that to most subjects. English class is boring; history class is boring; math class is boring; art class is boring; gym class is boring. You teachers have bored us to death! It's amazing more kids don't drop out of school due to the sheer boredom of how education to taught in this country.
One thing teachers don't understand is that they have to be marketers just as much as educators. Sell the kids on science; don't scare them with complicated theories that have no connections to their lives.
In fact, the "textbook" probably should be banned from science class. Science is an active pursuit best learned by "doing," not through forced reading assignments of dry text. Just like learning a computer, playing a musical instrument or dating for that matter, "doing" is vastly more important when it comes to understanding than just reading about it.
This, of course, requires unionized teachers to get off their fat butts and get the kids engaged. If they can't, they should be fired and replaced with an engaging teacher (like a Frank McCourt) that gets kids excited about the subject. Those teachers should receive double the standard salary along with cash bonuses tied to their students performing well on tests.
I have a firm belief that subjects should be taught by teachers who have majored in the subject they are teaching. How many science majors are teaching science?
Also, science is learned in the lab. More labs, less mind-numbing lectures.
Mooney-Kirshenbaum story in the current issue of The Nation...
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/mooney_kirshenbaum
I agree - teaching style has a lot to do with it. My HS physics teacher's motto was "chug and plug." She drilled us on formulas, guided us through workbook "problems" in which we just had to pick the right formula and "Then, chug and plug!" I memorized the gravitational constant alright but we never talked about what gravity is or how it works or why it's important. I couldn't wait to get to college and swear off science in favor of humanities courses where I would be "allowed to think for myself." A decade later, I'm a RadioLab junkie and wish I could travel back in time to visit my 18-year-old self and say "Take the Astrophysics! Take the Neuroscience! You'll love it!"
We should consider abolishing standardized tests in high school science courses. Multiple choice is actually somewhat anti-science.
i was just at a gathering of high school students, all native born americans, and three out of four could not speak clear, intelligible english.
if you don't read and can't think or speak clearly, then mastering science is an impossibility.
If US science education is so bad, why do we have the best software, medical science, pharmaceutical research and nano-tech R&D in the world?
There's no incentive for scientists to teach science when they can make so much more actually DOING science.
In some states if you have a teaching license all you have to do is pass the PRAXIS test to get certified in science (and a slew of other subjects) because they're so desperate to get anyone in the classroom; my out-of-work art-teacher mom just got certified to teach biology and earth science. (She took a biology lab class through her local community college to brush up, and the teacher blatantly stated he doesn't believe in evolution.)
Gotta add some bells and whistles, maybe even flashing lights to the curriculum to get the attention of today's child. Most have very short attention spans!
Had high hopes for the 200 million makeover of the Jersey City Liberty Science Center when it reopened after 2 yrs, last summer. I imagined weekly classes I could take my now-8-yr-old daughter to with real scientists, maybe introducing them to scientific principles then putting them into action, in a well planned demonstration, or even lab time or a trip downstairs to the surrounding marshes and piers.
Instead, for the $18 per person entrance fee, it's basically a dusted, still mostly broken down rendition of its mysteriously 1960s-style approach (mysterious since it was constructed recently!) to a "science museum." There was one lab, with 10 times as many kids as spots for them.
Embarrassing waste of tax dollars and wreaking of corruption. I was mortified to see foreigners handing over their travelers checks expecting something fascinating.
So are there any institutions I can turn to to turn my kids into little scientific people?
It's terrifying that only 10% of Americans got all 12 of these questions right: http://pewresearch.org/sciencequiz/
My favorite bit is that 58% polled favor federal funding for stem cell research, but only 52% know what a stem cell IS.
Only a small number of people have what it takes to be a scientist, which is like being a good detective on a case who refuses to give up when everyone else does. As for scientific LITERACY, that is another matter. I do agree that scientific literacy is important, and some hands-on laboratory experimentation should be taught by people who have majored in a science and who also have that unique ability to convey to students a degree of understanding about what it is they are really doing. But such people are rare and should be given a financial incentive to do it if we want an increase in the number of students encouraged to pursue science as a career.
Bill Maher and his film, Religulous, takes the view that religion is one of the bulwarks against science.
Aren't humanities departments shrinking at universities and colleges in favor of sciences and social sciences? Can your guests respond to that?
Science is not special in the area of ignorant reporters. Most business news horrible. Most "culture" reporting is very weak.
this is not a knock on these two writers, but we here this sort of story (i believe its true) from many sources, who lament how various nations do much better at producing scientists. but how will be produce scientists if we don't have a strong manufacturing base, and career path for scientists and engineers (and yes, i know chemists can work in big pharma and the oil industry) but overall, where do scientists go to work?
Gary, while teacher might be boring, guess what, that is called working, the problem is we don't push kids to do teh work, and they show up for something once and then want a medal and put it on thier resume. Stupid baby boomers think that they send their kids to school to be entertained, education takes work, dillegence and patince, which is why earning a degree used to be a big deal, its not marketing, its work. Get it?
Don't blame teachers because kids parents won't uphold standards, and think that education is marketing blame the stupid loser parent.
Paulson we don't have teh best, it comes form other countries and foregin immigrants the Ipod for instance was invented in india.
The problem is not a lack of science majors teaching high school science. Keep in mind that students will forget the particular lessons of science class, and will only remember the the broadest ideas and principles. You don't need to be a science major to understand those things.
The big problem is a lack of scientific thinking, not a lack of scientific knowledge. Scientific thinking is not something to withhold from students until high school. Rather, it is something that children should be learning as soon as they get to school. Waiting until high school is too late.
We weren't ever going to teach about causes of autism in high school, so having scientists teach high school wouldn't address that issue. Rather, it is understanding and trust of the the scientific method and approach that is missing, both from anti-science parents and our primary schools.
People also have a poor understanding of statistics. In fact, much to my dismay, some public radio hosts show their ignorance on this subject in some of their interviews.
associating the vaccines debate with "celebrities" doesn't help the debate, which is far from dead. science has, so far, isolated single vaccines and their threat to an infant's health, and have found nothing. it would be far more impressive (and scientific!) to take on the overcrowded vaccine schedule for children 0-6 years. this includes the heavy use of "multivalents", vaccines that cover three or more diseases at once. science needs to prove that piling so much into an infant's body DOESN'T cause harm of any sort--particularly as they are no guarantee that the child will not suffer one of those ailments in their lifetime. no one's done that yet. do we really need a vaccine for chicken pox or rotavirus in this country? can mr. mooney answer that? i doubt it. so stop knocking the doubt of ordinary people--it's that doubt that may push science to test this the right way, at last--not the way pharmaceutical companies would have it done.
in addition you want science in school, then you have to pay for it, and budges are constanlty getting cut so we can keep the football team
I believe there is a culture of anti-intellectualism in our society that causes people to shun science.
I was a teenager not too long ago and to my recollection, people were more concerned with pop culture rather than being educated. MTV was what thrived in school and the pressure to fit in was incredibly great. This mindset continues onto adulthood, that is why our society is lacking in general knowledge.
But there are cultures that encourage and pressure children to rigorously compete against each other in their educational attainment. That is why so many of our engineers and PhD's are foreign or come from immigrant families.
Many schools are beginning to introduce new programs to help kids understand science in a more practical way.
The high school that I attended taught physics in dance and chemistry in cooking.
The Times today has a story on Wyeth ghost-writing scientific papers.
Maybe people don't care about Science because some of the concepts are hard. What could be more relevant than science? Science explains the universe. But it takes some imagination.
We witnessed the politicization of science during the previous administration in Washington, in the area of stem cell research. Research using embryonic stem cells has never been illegal in the U.S. But after decades of study, there had been no progress in embryonic stem cell research, while adult stem cells had already cured dozens of diseases in human patients. Consequently, private investment in embryonic stem cell work had dried up, because unlike adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells faced the age-old problem of foreign protein rejection [http://www.fumento.com/biotech/stemcell2009.html]. Institutions already invested in embryonic stem cell research then realized that they could bypass the scrutiny of private investment sources, by getting funds from the federal government. Getting taxpayer funds through legislative fiat----rather than demonstrating scientific promise of embryonic stem cells----proved to be a simpler task. All they had to do was hide in the background, while Democrats accused Republicans of being religious fanatics opposed to scientific progress. And the scheme worked. The public never saw Republicans making scientific arguments on the senate floor, because nightly news programs found it more convenient to showcase the moral and religious debate, instead of the scientific one. Political demagoguery succeeded, and science was the loser.
This issue was highlighted for me when I read yesterday's NY Time piece on teh best NYC public schools. The number 1 school, New Explorations into Science, Math, and Technology (NEST+m) had 99 percentile scores in Englis, Math, and Social Studies, but only 91 percentile scores in Science. Even a school that supposedly has a focus on science is not excelling in it compared to other fields.
We've discovered in trying to fund an educational science film competition intended to correct some of the "non-education" going on (www.HowScienceWorks.Org) that there are very few funders of such things.
Only the Sloan Foundation actually funds science related arts and they focus on a very small number of recipients.
Until foundations (and the public) are actually willing to support good science education, it will be exremely difficult to move it forward.
How does the media contribute to scientific illiteracy? Watch the movie Armageddon.
Steven Spielberg has been particularly pernicious in his depiction of scientists in his film. In ET, the only thing they wanted to do was kill the alien and dissect it. Scientists were anti-life, real people were pro humanity.
We are going to need a new generation of young scientists willing to overhaul the American approach to industrial chemicals of "implement now, test later."
I am hoping, anyhow, because there is a lot of work to do.
The reason private investment dried up for ES cell research is because it's a deadend scientifically. Foreign protein rejection hasn't been solved in over a century. Even the magic of OBAMA won't change the fact that he threw your tax money down a rat hole, for the sake of placating the far left who bought into the election year demoguogery of the religious right standing in the way of scientific progress.
The vaccine debate IS a good example of scientific illiteracy in this country. Most of the anti-vaccine literature shows a severe lack of understanding about immunology, statistics and research methods, and even toxicology. For example people who express concerns about exposing a young baby to "too many" viruses/bacteria in vaccines clearly are not aware of the wealth of microorganisms (viruses, bacteria, fungi etc) that a baby encounters just by being born (through vaginal flora), or of the difference in exposing a person to live versus killed or attenuated viruses/bacteria. People also do not understand the difference between association and causation (eg, just because many children show signs of autism after receiving a certain vaccine does not imply that the vaccine CAUSED their symptoms. It has been proven to a vast majority of scientists that this is a temporal but not causal relationship). Finally, if people understood the toxicology of heavy metals such as mercury, they would know that the neurologic signs of mercury poisoning have nothing in common with autism. As a pediatrician I see every day the lack of sceintific awareness in even my well educated patients. It is frustrating and the media seem to have furthered many misconceptions by their own lack of understanding. I see this across the board in issues including many parents' demands for antibiotics to treat what is clearly a viral illness in their child. People have graduated from high school and college without understanding the basic differences between bacterial and viral organisms, the ways in which they causes disease, and the best ways to treat them.
There will always be a cultural bias against science, because the ability to observe carefully and reason therefrom is often a threat to arbitrary authority; our society is built less on this than all traditional societies, but the arbitrary authority of parents, preachers, bosses, and governments is still there, malign, and unwilling to cede power.
More tongue-in-cheek: If you want an answer to our scientific, mathematical, and technological iliteracy problem in a single word, that word would be a name: Lysistrata.
Let me make this more clear:
Science is not about a collection of facts or particular specialties.
Science is a method and approach to building and testing knowledge, and its results.
That's it. So, either you trust that approach's ability to discern facts over time, or you don't. Trusting personal anecdote over larger studies means your don't. Understanding the importance of replicating results and determining mechanisms means your do.
We can teach this to 1st graders, and once they understand/trust the approach, we can then let them know a bit more about what the approach has been used to learn. However, teaching scientific facts and findings without first teaching the approach in a way that students can really get a grip on -- which takes years -- gets us right where we are today.
The fundamental problem is a widespread lack of the critical thinking and logical reasoning skills necessary to science, not a lack of knowledge of science per se. These skills can and should be taught.
[21] thatgirlinnewyork:
why don't you join my coalition. we can use advocates like you.
www.cfic.us
I don't really understand this whole conversation. Surely it's as "easy" as not destroying the natural instinct for trying to understand.
If I'm met with a science skeptic I just ask; have you ever used a cell-phone (or driven a car, or watched TV, or flown on an airplane, or eaten a hamburger....)? How do you think that happened? And there is science - what's so hard about that?
I'm in my 60's and I still marvel at everything I see. Even driving down a scenic delight like the NJ Turnpike I wonder at the planes landing, the lights, thunder clouds, container ships, wet lands, little birds chasing crows...
It's all science.
religion
scientists being stereotyped as being nerds
poor communication of science issues by journalists
association in the public's mind of science with anti-environmentalism and corporatism (synthetic vs organic; "natural" and folk healing vs modern biomedicine & pharma; etc)
Notice the inability of the guests to distinguish their political policy proposals (which may be justified) with SCIENCE.
- No science is "settled." Not global warming, not even the ELECTRON, OR GRAVITY -- our understandings of any area of science is never the same as it was, say 20 years ago.
- So the guests are not advocating for SCIENCE, but for their PUBLIC POLICIES (With which I might agree,) but that was not the advertised topic !!!
So, notice that we are not to trust the studies coming from drug companies UNLESS IT IS IN SUPPORT OF VACCINES !!! Etc., etc.
Science teaching needs to begin in early childhood. However, elementary teachers themselves don't know science and they are overburdened with too much that has to be squeezed into a short day with heterogeneous classes. One way to begin solving the problem would be to teach literacy via reading science and answering questions that require true comprehension, synthesizing the reading and thinking about the answer, not just simple answers.
With all due respect to you Brian, it's time you put the Thimerosal hypothesis behind you. To say that 'we can't rule anything in or out' because we haven't found the cause is to ignore the very essence of the scientific process, which is not something you often do.
While it is understandable that you should have objection to the scientific process in this particular instance for obvious personal reasons you've mentioned previously on your show, it's time you let this discredited hypothesis fall into the scientific trashcan so that we can locate the true cause of autism once and for all.
That's the beauty of the scientific method and you know that all to well.
Sincerely yours,
Adam
A popular television crime show a year or so ago had a story whose denouement involved fraternal twins who could not be convicted because the female twin had taken hormones, which changed her DNA so that it was identical to her brother's. I was HORRIFIED that script writers would be allowed to put such nonsense on TV.
True, there is no one to one statistical correlation between autism and vaccines. However, there may be a direct correlation for a small subgroup of children diagnosed as autistic. There may be a subgroup for which genetic factors play a cause. There may be another subgroup for which there is a correlation with maternal health factors, the use of Pitocin during labor and other birth history factores. It is possible that autism is not a 'specific disease entity' but a group of symptoms given the name of spectrum disorder.
Oh please, more "real" scientists in classrooms? How many of us suffered in college science classes with scientists who were proficient in their fields, but hadn't the faintest idea of how to talk to non- (or prospective) scientists? Sorry, but "passion" for a subject is not sufficient. Teaching school-aged children is a skill all its own, and without that, all your knowledge and "passion" will be useless. Science teachers must have a thorough subject grounding, of course, but they also need to be prepared to teach it to their audience.
@thatgirlinnewyork
It is good to be sceptical and to doubt but it is not good to be misinformed by incomplete or even false information.
http://xrl.us/be8jo5
(Vaccines and Autism: A Tale of Shifting Hypotheses)
I've heard bits and pieces - enough to make my blood boil.
Dear Brian, there is a difference between individualism and egoism. When 300 million repeat and repeat in unison: "We're soooo individualistic, we have a democracy (not true in any sense), we're are the best and the brightest (personally I disagree); my Boss is my Lord (hard to fight beliefs); the rich are rich because they deserve to be rich (hard to fight beliefs), etc." - all 300 million are probably not individualist.
The woman who was talking about the relevancy of the humanities and the sciences doesn't know what she is talking about. Many children are naturally curious and the function of schooling is to keep this curiosity alive and add KNOWLEDGE (what's that? in the context of American psychobabbling lie "we teach how to think" - sure look around, sooooooooo many thinkers). Unfortunately, the function of American schooling from prenatal care with its sages (Warren Buffet), saints (Jack Welch), Menschen (Bernard Madoff) and gentlemen (Pedro Espada) is creation and cultivation of corporate marching zombies. American school is successful in its mission. The world is paying for it.
The greatest interest in science and the greatest successes are in those cultures which underplay the pragmatic aspects of learning and stress its pure joy. Learn from them.
dr anna
amy from nj--read the wyeth story in the nyt, and convince us that the pharmacos so many pediatricians follow like sheep are blameless in convincing professionals like you that the vaccines you administer are blameless, as well.
passing through a vaginal canal (and its associated flora) can't compare to injecting a child with a virus grown inside a rhesus monkey or cow--or the synthetic components that accompany it.
when scientific "facts" affect by profit, they can be, and often are manipulated. doctors are not scientists--they merely understand it on a level that is not wholly investigative. perhaps you, as a professional who needs to continue your education throughout your career, can step away from the "anti-vaccine literature" and encourage better, independent scientific inquiry on the subject.
yes, it's possible that a significant cohort of children react badly to this crowded vaccine schedule (because they receive several before the mmr+v, and should be considered in their totality). isn't this reason enough to explore genetic similarity among patients in that cohort, as well as alternative treatment paradigms so that harm doesn't continue to be done?
Science and math were always boring and difficult. Kids were taught and told that they had to learn it and they did and society advanced. That is when kids listened to adults. We now live in a society where adults listen to kids. This is a great mistake.
There are more systemic reason for the failure of science education, it is (1) the failure of imagination -- there are few dreamers anymore in a docile and beaten population; (2) the institutionalizing of phony idols - music, movie and sport stars and lying politicians over people who do real things -- scientists, engineers, builders, manufacturers; (3) the failure of interdisciplinary support like reading about science, engineering, explorers and teaching music (which trains the brain) and (4) the spoon feeding of info like using a calculator instead of a slide rule and paper and pencil to actively work problems out.
Few kids today can think or dream outside of the narrow box they are put in. (5) The teaching of science and math needs to be supported at home, too. We think we can send our kids to school and a miracle will happen. Well the tenured fat-cat union teachers ain’t what they used to be. The parents need to make their kids do their home work and study. Parents need to know things and be able to teach and support their kids. How does this happen in a society that has so many kids are having kids? Perhaps there should be mandatory (Dem nanny state idea) summer classes for parents of kids who are failing to learn to help them support and help their kids at home.
pl hayes--with all due respect for the reference, these studies offer analysis of theories versus isolated "evidence. this definitely has a place in the dialogue. this scientific inquiry needs to continue, as even this analysis doesn't represent any sort of open and shut case. we all know that science is progressive, rather than regressive, and deserves a volume of continued study. it's also helpful when such investigators can prove zero influence by pharmaceutical companies.
calls'em--one of your more sober analyses, and one in which i wholeheartedly agree. what's interesting is that you propose helping parents become better parents, framing as a "dem nanny state" idea. kudos for traveling left of center and admitting that progressive social ideas could have merit!
To the fellow who said that microbial pathogens are not the cause vaccine injuries, I agree. the damages are caused by chemical toxins and proteins.
My articles are posted here:
http://www.vaclib.org/basic/gk/
I will post one paragraph (in my next post here) from one of the articles to make my point.
Excerpt:
Injected proteins are also the likeliest suspects in causing paralytic symptoms. In the absence of digestive juices in the blood, these proteins decompose (putrefy) yielding extremely poisonous endotoxins, like ptomaines, creatins, xanthins, purines, indoles, skatols, phenols, leucomaines, uric acids, and indoxyl-sulphuric acids. These toxins are often eliminated (removed from the blood) vicariously through the mucous membranes or by diffusion into the spinal fluid. In the former, this irritating excretion causes an inflammation attended by mild fever, malaise, perhaps slight stiffness in the neck, with recovery in a few days for most children. In the latter case, if the child is already in a toxic state, with subnormal adrenal glands, the toxins build up in the mucous membranes of the sinuses. As the membranes of the brain are in close proximity, it is a simple matter for these fluids to penetrate brain tissue and the spinal cord. Stiffness and paralysis follows from that. The prognosis for recovery hinges on how quickly these toxins can be eliminated from the system, and may account for numerous reported clinical successes through fasting and detoxification supervised by chiropractors and naturopaths during the 1950s through to today.
@thatgirlinnewyork
With all due respect to you too, I think you cannot have read or understood that article I linked to. It directly addresses your original comment here in which, leaving aside your impossible demand for proof of a negative!, you made the specific false assertion that no-one had looked at the (seriously and ironically flawed even from a purely theoretical point of view) “vaccines that cover three or more diseases at once” and “overcrowded vaccine schedule“ hypotheses.
Wishing for “zero influence by pharmaceutical companies”, while laudably idealistic, is also unrealistic and unnecessary. The normal scientific standard and ethical principle of full disclosure in declarations of interest is sufficient. And anyway, science is by its nature robust against breaches of that principle (and even outright fraud), as anyone who has followed the antics of some of the anti-vaccination 'scientists' can confirm.
Science does not progress by flogging dead horses or by attempting to arrive at the truth by the elimination of every implausible hypothesis a planetful of crackpots and cranks is capable of generating. Funding (further) investigation of already discredited hypotheses is pathological to science, and in the case of medical science, harmful to health. The true causes of autism (and maybe remedies for it) will be found by diverting our limited resources towards the investigation of plausible and promising avenues of research.
calls'em 51
i have to agree with thatgirlinnewyork u have some great points there (except for the union bashing) thanks
I think we need to make science discovery open ended and joyful in young children, and introduce concepts early, building on them as kids mature. Why not teach increasingly complex ideas found in biology, chemistry and phyics every year instead of piling it all on in a scarey course in high school?
I also believe that if we can use sophisticated marke5ting techniques to sell soap powder and bottled water, we can "sell" science. See www.changethebrandofscience.org. Thanks
"I think we need to make science discovery open ended and joyful in young children, and introduce concepts early, building on them as kids mature. Why not teach increasingly complex ideas found in biology, chemistry and phyics every year instead of piling it all on in a scarey course in high school?"#57
I agree. Personally I had these (and other subjects, such as history and geography) every year since 5th grade until graduation from high school.
What exactly are kids taught now? How many times can one repeat "Donald Trump is our great leader, or, Jack Welch is the greatest man alive?" Why do I have a feeling that someone (who can it be, who can it be in America Inc.?) wants this population to be stupid?
"I think we need to make science discovery open ended and joyful in young children, and introduce concepts early, building on them as kids mature. Why not teach increasingly complex ideas found in biology, chemistry and phyics every year instead of piling it all on in a scarey course in high school?#57
I agree. Personally I had these and many other subjects, such as history and geography, since 5th grade until graduation.
We are the last industrialized country that doesn't use THE METRIC SYSTEM! No wonder we stink at science.
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