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Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Science Journalists One Cause of Americans' Ambivalence?


The following article is posted to stimulate conversation. The failure of the writer to define terms like "creationist" and "tradition" is problematic and perhaps provides a clue as to why many doubt the claims of journalists writing on science. He labels all creationists as "climate deniers" which is not the case. I am a creationist and I have written extensively on the reality of climate change.

The ambivalence many Americans feel toward the claims of scientists likely has many causes. I think people are tired of the creation vs evolution framing of popular science journalism. Americans who have little training in the sciences often fail to distinguish between popular "science" and true science. At the end of the article I have included links to articles that offer balance to Adam Frank's perspective. --Alice C. Linsley


New York Times (Read the article here.)
By ADAM FRANK
August 21, 2013


ROCHESTER — IN 1982, polls showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created human beings in their present form. Thirty years later, the fraction of the population who are creationists is 46 percent.

In 1989, when “climate change” had just entered the public lexicon, 63 percent of Americans understood it was a problem. Almost 25 years later, that proportion is actually a bit lower, at 58 percent.

The timeline of these polls defines my career in science. In 1982 I was an undergraduate physics major. In 1989 I was a graduate student. My dream was that, in a quarter-century, I would be a professor of astrophysics, introducing a new generation of students to the powerful yet delicate craft of scientific research.

Much of that dream has come true. Yet instead of sending my students into a world that celebrates the latest science has to offer, I am delivering them into a society ambivalent, even skeptical, about the fruits of science.

This is not a world the scientists I trained with would recognize. Many of them served on the Manhattan Project. Afterward, they helped create the technologies that drove America’s postwar prosperity. In that era of the mid-20th century, politicians were expected to support science financially but otherwise leave it alone. The disaster of Lysenkoism, in which Communist ideology distorted scientific truth and all but destroyed Russian biological science, was still a fresh memory.

The triumph of Western science led most of my professors to believe that progress was inevitable. While the bargain between science and political culture was at times challenged — the nuclear power debate of the 1970s, for example — the battles were fought using scientific evidence. Manufacturing doubt remained firmly off-limits.

Today, however, it is politically effective, and socially acceptable, to deny scientific fact. Narrowly defined, “creationism” was a minor current in American thinking for much of the 20th century. But in the years since I was a student, a well-funded effort has skillfully rebranded that ideology as “creation science” and pushed it into classrooms across the country. Though transparently unscientific, denying evolution has become a litmus test for some conservative politicians, even at the highest levels.

Meanwhile, climate deniers, taking pages from the creationists’ PR playbook, have manufactured doubt about fundamental issues in climate science that were decided scientifically decades ago. And anti-vaccine campaigners brandish a few long-discredited studies to make unproven claims about links between autism and vaccination.

The list goes on. North Carolina has banned state planners from using climate data in their projections of future sea levels. So many Oregon parents have refused vaccination that the state is revising its school entry policies. And all of this is happening in a culture that is less engaged with science and technology as intellectual pursuits than at any point I can remember.

Thus, even as our day-to-day experiences have become dependent on technological progress, many of our leaders have abandoned the postwar bargain in favor of what the scientist Michael Mann calls the “scientization of politics.”

What do I tell my students? From one end of their educational trajectory to the other, our society told these kids science was important. How confusing is it for them now, when scientists receive death threats for simply doing honest research on our planet’s climate history?

Americans always expected their children to face a brighter economic future, and we scientists expected our students to inherit a world where science was embraced by an ever-larger fraction of the population. This never implied turning science into a religion or demanding slavish acceptance of this year’s hot research trends. We face many daunting challenges as a society, and they won’t all be solved with more science and math education. But what has been lost is an understanding that science’s open-ended, evidence-based processes — rather than just its results — are essential to meeting those challenges.

My professors’ generation could respond to silliness like creationism with head-scratching bemusement. My students cannot afford that luxury. Instead they must become fierce champions of science in the marketplace of ideas.

During my undergraduate studies I was shocked at the low opinion some of my professors had of the astronomer Carl Sagan. For me his efforts to popularize science were an inspiration, but for them such “outreach” was a diversion. That view makes no sense today.

The enthusiasm and generous spirit that Mr. Sagan used to advocate for science now must inspire all of us. There are science Twitter feeds and blogs to run, citywide science festivals and high school science fairs that need input. For the civic-minded nonscientists there are school board curriculum meetings and long-term climate response plans that cry out for the participation of informed citizens. And for every parent and grandparent there is the opportunity to make a few more trips to the science museum with your children.

Behind the giant particle accelerators and space observatories, science is a way of behaving in the world. It is, simply put, a tradition. And as we know from history’s darkest moments, even the most enlightened traditions can be broken and lost. Perhaps that is the most important lesson all lifelong students of science must learn now.

Adam Frank, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, is the author of “About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang” and a founder of NPR’s 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog.




3 comments:

Alice C. Linsley said...

Please don't ask me about the Ken Ham-Bill Nye debate. Think elephant and two blind men.

Anonymous said...

For some, faith in human intelligence and science has replaced God as the ultimate good in our existence. Secularized humanity has thought Science would accomplish the 'good' that God ‘should’ have provided, but had failed to bestow. But many of us realize that science has long ago abandoned its social contract with us; an implied contract that it’s ultimate good was to alleviate sickness, pain, suffering, famine, and division among us. Consistent with human behavior through out the ages, Science has become corrupted. Many of us now recognize that Science is also capable of producing costly, destructive, solutions that become politicized, forging data to justify social engineering, prostituting its intellect for corporate funding, soiling the environment, and advocating for eugenics. Science has ceased to be the Savior of humanity, and is recognized by many as the Grim Reaper.

This is why people have learned not to worship at the altar of Science. As Adam Frank stated, “the most enlightened traditions can become broken and lost,” and people recognize that Science is broken and lost, even if scientists have not. Man does not exist for Science, but Science for Man.

It is The Eternal, and the exalted altruistic values of love, compassion, caring for the weak, feeding the hungry, offering the stranger shelter, and offering a drink of water to the thirsty that have been recognized and honored for centuries by religious communities. These are the values that have sustained humanity for millions of years through catastrophic natural disasters, disease, and famine. Perhaps, if reconsidered and adopted,they can even save the bodiless entity called Science.

Alice C. Linsley said...

You are describing scientism, not science. Scientism is ideological and largely in support of atheism. Science can serve the cause of Christ because it is concerned with discovery of what is real and true, and how things work, processes that can be observed, the testing of hypotheses, etc.

You mention religious communities. Many scientific discoveries have been made by the religious, both those in orders and laity. Here is a quick list of Christians in the sciences:

Hildegard of Bingen
Isaac Newton
Blaise Pascal
Maria Gaetana Agnesi
Gregor Johann Mendel
Michael Farraday
Mary Anning
Agnes Giberne
Sister Mary Celine Fasenmyer
Roger and Robert Williams, chemists
Martin Gaskell
Stephen M. Barr
Jennifer Wiseman