What I find interesting, and should cause a shortage of a particular argument on the Dope, is that religion apparently overrides science in this one area but not all. It would be interesting to find out if there are other areas where this happens.
Another interesting finding from the study:
So, this dispels the ‘only idiots disbelieve in evolution’ in two ways. First just because someone says they agree with evolution does not mean that they understand what they believe in, which makes the agreement meaningless.
Second, those who do not accept evolution are just as scientifically literate as those who do.
I don’t know if the study really proves the OP or not, but I don’t think it really gets to the heart of the problem either way.
The troubling consequence of widespread professed disbelief in evolution is not that it means these people are scientifically illiterate when it comes to gravity or thermodynamics or 99% of science. Instead, what is troubling is that these folks regard scientific consensus to be less important than their cultural identities or political or religious ones. We want citizens like the lefty who is persuaded by the science that nuclear power kills fewer people than coal (or natural gas), or the righty who is persuaded by the science that fluoridating water is probably safe. Etc.
Most policy questions cannot be solved by scientific consensus. But man, it sure sucks that on the few policy issues that really do turn on science, we cannot overcome cultural and religious attitudes. That’s why creationism is such a totem–it represents the quintessential example of identity trumping science, and suggests a propensity to let identity trump science among its adherents, even if they are otherwise well-versed in science.
Isn’t that wrong by definition? The moon landing hoaxers might know a lot more about the Apollo program than the average Joe. But who’s more ignorant? Would you say they’re just as knowledgeable about space flight as anyone else?
I suspect that rather than demonstrating anything about “literacy,” it demonstrates the human capacity for mental compartmentalization. I have known several people working in scientific careers, including a biologist, who simply did not accept the Theory of Evolution. Their objections generally are based on what they believe to be a “common sense” approach that “mere happenstance” could never provide a method to accomplish such phenomena as symbiosis.
(The biologist was working as a taxonomist on existing fauna, and her specific daily tasks did not require her to examine the evolutionary chain that produced the various groups that she was categorizing.)
While religion clearly plays a major role in producing such people, it is not necessary. Several of the doubters I have met, including the biologist, were atheists.
I’d be interested in looking at people who don’t have a background which compels them to disbelieve evolution. I’d also be interested in parsing out educational backgrounds in which the professors of all sciences themselves did not disbelieve evolution.
People believe things that make their world view comfortable, and what they have been taught from the cradle shapes what is comfortable. I agree with tomndebb that the discomfort brought about by a belief in evolution is ameliorated by compartmentalizing that aspect of science.
But a disbelief in evolution is nevertheless an indicator of either scientific illiteracy or a refusal to accept the obvious. I mean, it’s pretty darn obviously correct.
I think it’s misleading and counterproductive to test “scientific literacy” on the basis of personal “belief”, i.e., whether a person is merely willing to affirm their adherence to a certain statement about mainstream scientific theory.
Rather, they should be tested on their awareness of specific evidence concerning scientific theories and on their understanding of what such evidence implies.
For instance, a test might ask something like, “Why and how do paternity testing and evolutionary biology similarly rely on DNA evidence?” A respondent who understands the principle that more nearly identical DNA implies a closer genetic relationship, and that the principle applies both to identifying a biological father and identifying an evolutionary ancestor, is more scientifically literate on this issue than someone who doesn’t.
Even if the more literate person happens to believe that the DNA similarities between humans and other animals were deliberately simulated during miraculous creation by a deity.
Ah, so in your view some kinds of science are quite valid, and other kinds, using exactly the same methods of evidence-based theory, challenge, and peer review, are complete bullshit.
Methinks this has less to do with science and evidence than with your particular preconceived notions and biases, which seems to be exactly the point of the OP. Whether this particular study happens to be valid or not, I have certainly seen studies showing that scientifically knowledgeable individuals are far more likely to accept the scientific consensus on climate change. Perhaps in the case of evolution, religion is a more powerful driver of mental compartmentalization than simple ignorance or economic motivations.
Exactly my point. Sometimes loosely referred to as cognitive dissonance, the power to dismiss evidence and believe contradictory things simultaneously, or to have a system of double standards.
Isn’t that wrong by definition? The moon landing hoaxers might know a lot more about the Apollo program than the average Joe. But who’s more ignorant? Would you say they’re just as knowledgeable about space flight as anyone else?
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This. Denial of evolution is in itself “scientific illiteracy”.
What I have seen is that people that for a living do the good fight and defend evolution in schools and academia is that crank magnetism is very strong with the deniers of evolution. Groups like the National Center for Science Education have found so many incidents of the same creationists and Intelligent Designers moving to remove climate science or to “teach the controversy” that a few years ago the NCSE decided to also add Climate Science to what was mostly an organization to defend evolution in schools and academia.
And that’s the point. Believing in evolution in the same way some idiot believes in the latest junk science is not scientific literacy. Understanding it is. Though he claims that creationists can be taught evolution, in my experience they lose it as soon as the final is turned in. The first thing I ask a creationist in here or in real life is to explain what evolution says. They seldom can.
Well, but only in the sense that if somebody reads a sentence to you correctly and you repeat it, you are “closer” to literacy than if you repeated a sentence that was read incorrectly.
Either way, you’re not really entitled to credit for being able to read.
Likewise, docile acceptance of scientific conclusions that doesn’t involve any actual understanding of the theories or the evidence that produced them doesn’t really qualify as “scientific literacy”.
Can’t or won’t? I suspect creationists (or at least those for whom school wasn’t so long ago) could recite what they learned but it would stick in their craw to do so.
I understand what you are saying but I think you are ultimately not correct, and here’s why:
There is so much damn science these days that docile acceptance is about all anyone (even the moderately scientifically literate) can manage for most of it.
Of course there is docile acceptance and there is docile acceptance. Someone’s “belief” in a scientific conclusion could be as docile as religious faith. However, it could also be the result of a very considered view that, given that one cannot study everything oneself, the best one can do is accept scientific conclusions that are the consensus peer reviewed conclusions of other scientists.
This is one of the reasons why the first of the OP’s postulates (“just because someone says they agree with evolution does not mean that they understand what they believe in, which makes the agreement meaningless”) is wrong. It may well be that the person’s agreement is an indication they understand the benefit of relying on the work of others who have adopted the scientific method, even if they don’t understand that work.
If so, that person’s agreement is far from meaningless: it is an indicator (not conclusive, but an indicator) that they may well be of a scientific mindset.
Well, I’m not claiming that docilely accepting a scientific conclusion that you don’t understand fully makes you scientifically illiterate.
I’m just opining that docilely accepting a scientific conclusion that you don’t understand at all makes you scientifically illiterate, even if the conclusion in question happens to be correct. (Of course, so does blindly rejecting a scientific conclusion that you don’t understand at all.)
Most somewhat knowledgeable people are in the broad middle ground between subject-matter specialists and completely ignorant accepters of authority.
If somebody has at least a vague understanding of the general principles on which sexual reproduction and evolutionary selection work, and some awareness of the evidence that supports those principles, I’d consider them sufficiently scientifically literate to make their adherence to evolutionary theory more than mere prejudice or guesswork.
WRT evolution, I’m not that persuaded that one has to understand the scientific underpinnings in the same way that I should need to understand quantum theory and general relativity before I can present myself as scientifically literate on how the universe works.
The reason is that evolution is so obvious, and competing explanations are so abjectly improbable. I don’t know that Darwin could defend DNA science, but he could look at locally isolated populations and figger out they were uniquely locally adapted, having apparently descended with modification.
IOW, evolution is easily the most obvious–indeed; the only–scientific explanation for the world as we see it.
As an ironic aside, most Creation Scientists believe in massive amounts of evolution, on a scale of extent and rapidity far beyond what a mainline scientist would accept. In order to support a paradigm in which an ark of known size could support all the (land) animals which currently exist, Creation Science generally holds that Noah’s ark took on animals at the family and genus level. While most Creation Scientists are coy about giving out actual numbers, it’s generally in the range of 5-10 thousand unique pairs. Those pairs, upon exiting the ark, began re-populating the earth. Most of the diversity we see today represents modified descendants from those original pairs, according to Creation Science. They don’t like to call it “evolution” because their basic idea (I think) is that all of the DNA for all of the expression we see today was present in the ark progenitors.
It is nevertheless a remarkable amount of evolution in an incredibly short period of time to generate the diversity we see today.
I don’t think this tells us anything interesting at all.
Imagine that major mainstream religions had it as gospel that electromagnetism was a divine illusion but that all other areas of science could be reconciled.
Run the survey again and you’d find that “belief” in Maxwell’s work was not an accurate indicator of scientific literacy in other areas either.
The above sounds nonsensical but of course the theory of evolution carries much the same authority(and we all know how to use “theory” in the correct way here don’t we?)
Those with a strong enough cultural or doctrinal imperative will accept the rest and justify their way around the problematic issue. No great surprise there it just confirms their status as fallible human beings and their unsuitability for a career in evolutionary biology.
