What a good baseline set of knowledge, below which "Scientific Illiteracy" Lurks?

Great Debates
1

In this Pit thread, Budget Player Cadet inveighs against scientific illiterates, and the attendant difficulty in engaging in debate with them, pointing out how it’s hard to argue about the reason behind the commonality of various reports of near-death experiences when your opponent has never heard the basics of how the human nervous system works.

Cadet’s request is a simple one – don’t enter into a debate if you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. But his request is unlikely to be followed, in large part because the most ignorant – the lowest quartile, let’s say – are often the ones unaware of how little they know. Since they’re unaware of the gaping holes in their knowledge, they are unlikely to self-censor.

BUt that gave me an idea for this thread. What is a good baseline for scientific knowledge? That is, what are the set of facts that we would expect a reasonable adult to know? That reasonable adult would know enough to realistically assess his own limitations in a given area.

Yes, yes – I know the SDMB is teeming with expertise far beyond that of ordinary mortal men. I’m sure the collection of folks here are not average. I’m asking for examples about what a reasonable adult should know.

For example, I’d say a reasonable adult should know that in statistics, there’s such a thing as sampling, and margin of error, and at a basic level what they are and what they imply. I’d say a reasonable adult should be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, understand percentages, and apply basic formulas like “area of a rectangle” to real-world objects.

That reasonable adult should understand the basic layout of the solar system, be aware of galaxies, know that the Earth revolves and rotates, and have a rough order-of-magnitude understanding of the distances between the Earth and her moon, the Sun, and to other stars.

What else? And am I wrong about the above? Should it be more? Less?

2

I believe a reasonable adult should know

Evolution is the fundamental guiding theory of biology, and without it, nothing in biology makes sense. Creatures do not try to evolve, nor does evolution have an end goal, or a perfect creation.

That radiometric dating gives a fairly accurate age of the earth and many old things (billions, not thousands).

The greenhouse effect is real and not debatable, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and human beings have been releasing large amounts of CO2 and other gasses into the atmosphere for the last 150 years or so. Current climate models predict that the Earth is in a warming trend, and that this warming is not adequately explained unless you take into account human factors.

3

I draw a baseline at 8th grade. By then an individual should have encountered and understood the basic principles of biology (both life sciences and human physiology), geology, physics, chemistry and the like.

For example here is a list of the core concepts students should learn in 7th and 8th grade according to the Utah education standards:
atmosphere, atom, crust, density, diffusion, gas, liquid, models, mass, matter, molecule, particle, solid, temperature, heat energy, volume, acquired trait, asexual reproduction, genetics, nucleus, organ, organism, osmosis, system, tissue, inherited trait, offspring, sexual reproduction, cytoplasm, diffusion, membrane, chloroplast, cell, cell wall, classification, classification key, kingdom, organism, species, chemical properties, physical properties, chemical change, physical change, reaction, reactants, products, respiration, photosynthesis, temperature, molecules, heat energy, chemical energy, atoms, energy, food web, food chain, photosynthesis, respiration, predator, energy flow, solar energy, chemical energy, mechanical energy, producer, consumer, prey, mutualism, parasitism, competition, environment, capacity, volcano, earthquake, weathering, minerals, fossils, sedimentary, magma, metamorphic, rock cycle, igneous, sedimentation, deposition, geology, paleontology, energy, potential energy, kinetic energy, force, gravity, complex machine, wave, friction, amplitude.
Basically anyone who didn’t understand the core concept of each of these words I would consider scientifically illiterate.

4

A reasonable adult should have some grasp of basic concepts, sure, but more importantly, they should have the ability to look for answers to things they don’t know* in the right places*.

My grasp of biology is only 1st-year level, for example, but I know enough to know when and where to look for more info if I need to. My grasp of geology and archaeology are better, but if faced with a PhD question, again, I know where to look. That’s an acquired skill.

5

I know the OP is concerned with the role of science in society, but it may help to consider what goes on in more specific situations like an engineering company.

In industries that significantly involve some kind of science, what seems to work best is what you might call an “overlapping hierarchy”. You need experts in aerodynamics, heat transfer, solid mechanics, ergonomics, electronics, etc., not to mention airport operations and scheduling, manufacturing, to build an airliner. No one person can master all those fields and the CEO of Boeing probably knows enough about whatever discipline he started his career in, but not much at all about the others.

The CEO can’t run the company unless he trusts his employees to a very large extent. If he feels the need to independently verify even a tiny fraction of the engineering, he’s not going to have time to do the CEO job, which is to make decisions based on data he can assume to be correct. I can’t see how society could work any differently. If science is going to benefit society, then society has to trust scientists. That trust comes about by a not wholly rational process and involves social factors.

The “overlapping hierarchy” is that a supervisor doesn’t have to understand everything his employees are doing, but he has to understand some significant fraction of it, say 30-50%. The effect of this is that the CEO of Boeing may not really understand anything about laminar flow theory, but he has a guy who works for him who has a guy who works for him…who understands enough of it to manage the guy doing the actual work.

I don’t know how to implement the overlapping hierarchy in society in general. If, for example, the government wants to raise your taxes to pay for some kind of climate change mitigation, the concept of the consent of the governed means that the taxpayers have to understand something about atmospheric physics, or they have to trust the scientists who do. The former is infeasible. If the latter doesn’t happen, scientists need to ask themselves why it is that people trust a layman who happens to have a radio show, and not scientists.

6

That 's a very tall order. I would guess that not one person in a hundred could explain the difference between a chemical property and a physical property.

7

But more to the OP’s intent - In my field (with some specifics I think everyone should be able to identify/know about bolded):
I’d expect someone to know basic geology - the mineral/rock distinction, common rock-forming minerals (Quartz, Calcite, Feldspar, Amphibole, Pyroxene, Olivine, Mica), the sedimentary/igneous/metamorphic rocks in rough outline (Sandstone, Limestone, Lava, Shale, Schist, Granite, Chalk), the bare facts of plate tectonics and continental drift (Pangea), an idea of geological time if not any specifics of various ages, fossils & evolution & mass extinctions(Burgess Shale, K-T boundary, Ice Age, Australopithecus, Neanderthal), some basic geomorphology like basic river vs aeolian vs glacial vs marine landforms, an idea of geological/physical cycles, like carbon and water cycle.

8

I am an actual scientist (or at least I was at one time in my life), and I’d flunk that test on at least a few of those.

Don’t know much about geology…

9

One thing to begin with: So far as anyone can tell after a great deal of scientific investigation, apart from human beings themselves, the Universe is not in any sense human. We are simply in this Universe, we have no reason to think any other part of it is like us. The forces of nature have no minds or personalities or volition (as far as we know – a reservation always implicit in science, and that is the next thing the layman should know about it). You can study and understand them, but you cannot communicate with them, you cannot propitiate them.

That is the greatest fundamental insight of the modern scientific world-view, and it stands on its head the instinctive contrary assumptions of all previous cultures and most earlier philosophies, even Aristotle’s.

10

I think knowing how to think scientifically is more important than memorizing any particular set of facts. How to recognize bias, how to set aside personal prejudices, how to separate fact from opinion, knowing when not to jump to conclusions-these processes and others should be taught before any facts are memorized, in my opinion.

11

Ugghh… I had to teach a remedial science class to kids who needed to pass the ridiculously easy science TAKS or they wouldn’t graduate (they had all failed it like 4 or 5 times by the time they got to me).

I hammered this into them with examples, pictures, definitions, etc over and over and over. It was the ONE thing I wanted them to learn, just to prove I hadn’t been wasting my breath the entire year.

Not one of them could give me the definition at the end of the year. <_< It is just a great mystery to some people and they can never distinguish them, I guess.

12

I’d be happy if people knew the difference between weight and volume.

13

Martin Gardner’s* classic Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science should be required reading. And Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World.
*Definitely believes in God, BTW.

14

Definitely yes, to both books. It does no good to memorize a set of facts, if you do not have the internal means to separate fact from fiction in the first place.

15

People can fill their brains with only so much stuff. What people need to know is going to be a strong function of their particular situation. Even the same person may need to know different things at different times. There was a time when I used to get a lot of fracture mechanics problems, so I devoted a lot of brain-space to fracture mechanics, but that was several years ago and I’ve let a good deal of that go in favor of stuff that is more useful to me today.

That said, is there a core of scientific knowledge that is valuable for all people, places and times? Feynman said that if only one scientific fact could be preserved, it should be the fact that all matter is made of a few different kinds of atoms, because so much knowledge flows from that simple concept.

I’m going to focus on physics because that’s what I’m most familiar with. Knowing the explanation of changes in motion as being caused by forces is fundamental. Things don’t just float around randomly. It would be good to know that heat is just the motion of molecules and that it can be made to flow from a colder place to a hotter place only by doing mechanical work. It would be good to know the difference between voltage and current. It would be good to know that pressure is what makes a fluid flow. It would be good to be familiar with the idea that the stuff that goes into a region of space minus the stuff that goes out equals the change in the amount of stuff in the space.

What do people not need to know? Quantum mechanics is fascinating and useful in several areas of technology, but the average person can get by without knowing anything about it. Some argue that the philosophical implications of QM are interesting enough that everyone should know them, but the philosophical implications are widely misunderstood even by scientists.

16

I agree. While it would be hard to be able t0 do that without knowing some facts, the key thing in this day and age is being able to look things up (say on wikipedia) and figure out if it is cited well or if it’s conjecture or if it’s complete BS.

Further to my post, above, I don’t remember much of what I learned about geology, but I could look it up very quickly and know what was real science and what was not.

17

I think you have a ridiculously high expectation for a baseline. I have a degree in Engineering and I don’t recognize half the terms you’ve listed. The ones I do are along the lines of “chalk, the stuff you write with” and “lava, the stuff that’s hot”. I’d say a reasonable baseline:

Biology: Understanding of evolution, and the basic functions of common body organs like the brain, lungs, heart, liver, and kidneys.

Natural Science: An order of magnitude knowledge about the age of the universe and earth. Basic concepts of plate tectonics and continental drift. An understanding of the greenhouse effect and basic details of climate change.

Chemistry: Knowledge of the atomic theory. A basic understanding of what compounds are, and how chemical reactions take place.

Physics: Newton’s laws.

18

Are you kidding?

You’ve used about a half-dozen terms I’ve never even heard of – for example, Burgess Shale, Schist, Amphibole (that doesn’t even appear on my Firefox spell check, BTW), Olivine, and K-T Boundary. I think your expertise in your field is misleading you as to what is commonly understood or concepts that are reasonably expected of a decently-educated individual.

I tend to align myself with Czarcasm here – just like literacy, the importance should be on identifying the basic scientific concepts and methods which are broadly applicable, rather than, say, having a good memory of a certain set of established facts. After all, literacy is based on understanding and using the written language, not on the ability to say a few words about the great vowel shift or comment on the influence of French on modern English.

So, I’d tend to identify things like understanding the scientific method and being able to distinguish between a hypothesis a theory as being the crucial elements of scientific literacy. After that, being able to grasp the basics of things like evolution, gravity, geology and reproduction, and be able to explain in one’s own words the importance of those fields or concepts. If someone is familiar in general terms with most of the items in Bartman’s list, I’d say that they were scientifically literate, for sure.

19

What’s CO2, Professor?

With due respect, you’re way off base, because you aren’t answering the OP. This isn’t baseline knowledge or even close to it; these are conclusions DRAWN from baseline knowledge.

I wouold argue that scientific baseline knowledge can be summed up by the titles of the major units of science class in Grade Eight, or something close to it. I’d say someone has baseline knowledge of science if they know:

MATH:

  • Fundamental arithmetic and algebra
  • Some inkling of statistics

PHYSICS:

  • Newton’s laws of motion
  • A basic understanding of gravity
  • A basic understanding of how electricity works
  • A basic understanding of what is meant by force, work, and energy
  • A basic understanding of how light and sound work
  • A basic understanding of the states of matter and manners of transition
  • A basic understanding of the universe; what a star, a planet, a moon and a galaxy are, that the Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun, that the Moon revolves around the Earth

CHEMISTRY:

  • An understanding that matter is made of atoms, that atoms combine to form molecules
  • A basic understanding of common chemical reactions, like combustion

BIOLOGY:

  • A basic understanding that living creatures are made of cells
  • A basic understanding of the major systems of the human body
  • A basic understanding of the major taxonomic divisions of animals (reptiles, fish, birds) and their characteristics
  • A basic understanding of health problems common to humans

GEOGRAPHY:

  • A basic understanding of the arrangement of the world’s continents and countries
  • A basic understanding of how seasons and weather work

That’s BASELINE knowledge. I’m sure I’m missing a few points, but when you start talking about global warming you are way past baseline knowledge.

20

It technically concerns “innumeracy” and not “scientific illiteracy”, but something like Verizon Math should not be possible. Things like orders of magnitude are so essential to understanding basic science that I think it qualifies, though.