{"id":2498,"date":"2008-04-16T10:10:04","date_gmt":"2008-04-16T10:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/16\/science-indicators-the-more-th\/"},"modified":"2008-04-16T10:10:04","modified_gmt":"2008-04-16T10:10:04","slug":"science-indicators-the-more-th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/16\/science-indicators-the-more-th\/","title":{"rendered":"Science Indicators: The More Things Change, the More They Don’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Sheril<\/a>, I see that the National Science Board has released a report on Science and Engineering Indicators 2008<\/a>. It’s chock full of useful and interesting information, particularly if you start poking around with the tables and figures<\/a>, which are available for download.<\/p>\n

\"i-58145258b2e78c1c9a6cf7ca6db6e32b-fig07-06.gif\"This ought to produce all sorts of discussion around here, especially given that only 43% of respondants to a public survey correctly responded that humans evolved from other animals. This will undoubtedly be seen as evidence that the creationists are winning, and we must redouble our efforts to call them idiots on the Internet before theocracy arrives.<\/p>\n

However, I would like to note that the 43% of people who correctly understand evolution is nearly identical to the 45% of the population who have the piercing intellect to discern that lasers don’t use sound<\/strong>. 53% of the public also thinks that electrons are at least the same size as atoms, and only 55% knew that the Earth requires one year to complete an orbit around the Sun.<\/p>\n

The wrong answers to all these questions are idiotic, but they’re not idiotic in a religious way, unless I’ve been missing the public lobbying from the First Church of the Acousto-Optic God. The problem isn’t religion, or political lobbying, or idiot celebrities peddling quackery– the problem is that we do a piss-poor job of teaching science, period. All fields, all areas, people are not getting the science education they need.<\/p>\n

Of course, on the positive side, I’d like to draw attention to the figure at right, showing the number of correct answers on this test over time. Which is, well, pretty much flat. Actually, there’s a tiny upward trend– slop of 0.035 answers\/year, according to Excel. So, hey, 28 years from now, we’ll have a public that can answer one more question correctly, on average, than today.<\/p>\n

I know which one I’d pick. Lasers work by focussing sound, my ass. Everybody knows, the key to laser operation is the metabolism of liver proteins from frikkin’ sharks…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Seriously, the main thing I take away from this report is that the answers haven’t budged in the last sixteen years. They didn’t have a question-by-question breakdown by year, that I saw, but I’d bet that the distribution of answers hasn’t done much, either.<\/p>\n

This is, believe it or not, modestly positive news, at least to me. As much as it may sometimes feel like we’re fighting a hopeless rear-guard action against creeping ignorance, here, in fact, things haven’t gotten significantly worse. They haven’t gotten significantly better, either, which is cause for concern, given the increasing importance of science issues, but at least we’re not looking at a situation where public knowledge of science is in free fall.<\/p>\n

It’s a small comfort, but that’s all I’ve got to offer.<\/p>\n

(Also, for the excessively literal: “LASER” is actually an acronym, for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. A laser works by pumping energy into a gain medium to create an excess population of electrons in excited states, which are then stimulated to return to a lower-energy state, emitting light in the process. The emitted light bounces back and forth in a cavity stimulating more emission, and building up a more intense coherent beam. No sharks are involved in the process.<\/p>\n

(They’re ill-tempered sea bass.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Sheril, I see that the National Science Board has released a report on Science and Engineering Indicators 2008. It’s chock full of useful and interesting information, particularly if you start poking around with the tables and figures, which are available for download. This ought to produce all sorts of discussion around here, especially given… Continue reading Science Indicators: The More Things Change, the More They Don’t<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}