Hi all! Thanks for giving us the opportunity to dig into these issues. In my capacity as host of this discussion, let me throw out an initial pair of questions for Chris:
What do we know about the particular sites of resistance in the American public to scientific literacy and scientific engagement? How do we know it?

Chris, Welcome to the Lake.

Janet, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Welcome to the Lake Chris and Janet.

Is there any hope for a nation that can’t manage using the metric system?

Hi everybody, thanks so much for having me here…and I’m looking forward to digging in. Thanks in particular to Janet, and to BevW….and let the games begin!

Welcome to Firedoglake – glad you could join us today!

Janet asks, “What do we know about the particular sites of resistance in the American public to scientific literacy and scientific engagement? How do we know it?”

We know about these sites largely from polling data. They show clearly that on a topic like evolution, religious belief is a key source of resistance. Similarly, these data also show that on a different topic like global warming, the cause of resistance is different–a lot of it actually has to do with Republican Party identity.

So it is a complicated mix. I would add that in addition to polling data, we know from people who engage in these fights, say, by trying to combat the spread of creationism at the local level. As a result, they actually have talked to creationists and learned what motivates them. That’s how we know that it’s not so much scientific considerations as a fear of loss of meaning, morality, and belief if evolution turns out to be true.

Elliott asks, “Is there any hope for a nation that can’t manage using the metric system?”

Short answer: Yes. I agree the metric system would be easier all around to use, and would have many benefits, but there is ample room here for cultural differences across countries that are nevertheless pro-science.

The USA had quite a boom period for science in the late 1950s and early 1960s, without switching to the metric system.

Chris, I haven’t finished the book yet, but it’s quite a read!

From what I have read so far, though, it seems that it was written before Steven Chu became Secretary of Energy. How to you think the presence of a scientist in the cabinet will change the scientist-politician conversations in DC, especially in the Executive branch?

Resistance to science because of evolution, in particular, strikes me as raising different problems from resistance to science because of global warming data — religious convictions, presumably, are a different kind of thing than a preference to keep driving honking big cars and blasting the A/C. (I could be wrong about that.)

Do you think that there may be some segments of religious America who will dig in their heels and resist science no matter what initiatives scientists and their crowd launch? Is the target for better communication and outreach a slightly more “reachable” religious population? Do we have fine-grained data that could give scientists a good idea of which segments of the public are most reachable (and by what means)?

Hi Peterr,
We actually completed the book after the Obama administration took office. I like to say at book talks that just as my first book, The Republican War on Science, was written for the Bush years, so Unscientific America was written for the Obama years.

There are some wonderful changes that we’re seeing from this administration on science–great improvements upon the anti-science Bush years. Policy positions have been completely reversed on stem cells and global warming. Science budgets are generous even in a time of recession. And there are explicit measures being taken to stamp out the worst of the Bush era sorts of abuses within the federal government.

So Washington is a bright spot within an Unscientific America–and the administration can do a great deal to change the tone. But ultimately, the problem of scientific illiteracy may be even larger than they alone can tackle.

How to you think the presence of a scientist in the cabinet will change the scientist-politician conversations in DC, especially in the Executive branch?

And how depressing to know that this question has to even be asked seriously.

One wonders whether making progress with scientific literacy might make some other goals (maybe health care reform) easier to accomplish.

Since we’re already starting to touch on political terrain, another question for Chris:

How much of the public alienation from science is the result of concerted efforts (whether from industry groups, politicians, snake oil salesmen, or whoever)? How much is the result of personal choice (e.g., to opt out of challenging coursework, to tune in to TV that entertains but does not educate, to cede decision making to others)?

Definitely on my “buy list,” a crucial topic. Two quick questions:

1. Scientific knowledge tends to segment and specialize. It appears frequently that whole knowledge pools can’t communicate with one another. Are there forces to counter that and to help integrate scientific knowledge?

2. In areas such as BPA, a whole lot of chemists ignored safety issues, because it was in
their financial interest. Any ideas about how scientists can enforce ethical standards on each other?

I just wrote a long response to this and then lost it! Firefox crash.

First, I’ve discussed some of the relevant polling data here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine……-religion/

more in a minute

I’m surprised to hear that, given that the only mention of Chu is when you talk about him signing on to the letter endorsing ScienceDebate2008. A Nobel-prizewinning scientist is named to head up one of the most science-heavy departments, and it doesn’t get a comment?

But I digress.

Getting back to Chu specifically, have you seen anything that indicates he’s been able to shift the tone in those conversations between politicians and scientists? Or is he merely window-dressing beyond the walls of the DOE? (He’s got real power within the walls, of course.)

Chris I have not had an opportunity to read your book so please forgive me if you answer this in there but to build off of Janet’s questions, is it possible to quantify how much of the anti-science dis-respect is due to the “dueling experts” stuff where both sides have supposedly equally credentialed experts? Or from the cigarette companies all those years, just making things up and calling it science?

That last post is referencing a lot of data crunched by Pew on science and religion

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/57…..nd-science

Janet writes,
“Resistance to science because of evolution, in particular, strikes me as raising different problems from resistance to science because of global warming data — religious convictions, presumably, are a different kind of thing than a preference to keep driving honking big cars and blasting the A/C. (I could be wrong about that.)”

I’m not so sure it is quite as different as you imply. If you are a die hard Republican who thinks Al Gore is an idiot, then it is a core part of your ideological identity to reject global warming. This is not *that* dissimilar from those who have it as a core part of their religious identity to reject evolution.

The difference is only between political ideology on the one hand, and religious ideology on the other.

Janet also asks: “Do you think that there may be some segments of religious America who will dig in their heels and resist science no matter what initiatives scientists and their crowd launch?”

Yeah–but I also think we can make a ton of progress from where we are now. Remember, something like 45 percent of the USA is creationist. Let’s get that down to 30 percent and then talk about whether further efforts are futile.

Finally, Janet asks, “Is the target for better communication and outreach a slightly more “reachable” religious population? Do we have fine-grained data that could give scientists a good idea of which segments of the public are most reachable (and by what means)?”

See the links I provided earlier for the fine grained data. As for the reachable population, this is much akin to why the networks all focus on where the “independents” are leaning during campaign season. The people in the middle are more moveable. The people on the extremes, not so much. First you win the middle, then you work on the extremes…

On your second point, there is very much a “serving two masters” kind of thing that scientists are thrown into, not only in industry but also increasingly in academia. They need to focus on building new knowledge (as well as training new scientists) but also on generating revenue (through sales, patents, grants, etc.). In theory, scientists are all working together to build a shared body of knowledge, but they’re also in competition with each other for scarce rewards.

Structurally, some of these tensions may not be sustainable.

There is some enforcement of ethical standards that happens through social interactions within scientific communities — shunning can be powerful. But it might also be good if folks with more control of the institutional structures in which science is conducted shifted reward structures to incentivize attention to safety issues, care in establishing that exciting results are robust and independently reproducible, honesty, collaboration, etc.

Hi Peterr,
There is more mention of Chu than this, p. xi: “The good news is that President Barack Obama’s administration, with a Nobel Laureate as secretary of energy…”

I think we’ve seen great stuff from Chu! He was on the Daily Show, after all

http://www.thedailyshow.com/wa…..steven-chu

And he gave Smokey Joe Barton quite a science lesson before Congress

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=symYfq51aho

So he’s clearly showing some chops as a communicator

Chris,

What is your education in science?

Apologies if I missed something.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the rising cost of traditional evidence-based medicine in the US is a key factor in the growing popularity of alternative medicine therapies, which are usually much cheaper. The insurance industry has noticed this too, which is why it’s now covering alt-med treatments like acupuncture.

I know plenty of folks who worship their big honking cars . . . but I don’t think that’s what you meant.

*grin*

As a PhD-wielding pastor (and a BA in math/econ) who is married to a PhD-wielding microbiologist, I’d love to see the data you ask about. I see a chunk of religious folks who shut down at the mention of science, and similarly see a chunk of scientists who do the same at the mention of religion. When it comes to describing the size of those two groups, however, I have found that the answers tend to say more about the views of the person providing the answer than about the two groups.

The dueling experts thing is a place where I think the American public may be most vulnerable to their lack of understanding of the way scientific knowledge is built (which includes all kinds of testing, of course). And, cynically, I imagine that there are a great many snake oil salespeople who like it that way.

But installing the B.S.-detectors that, ideally, you’d want people to have is non-trivial. I’m always shocked, for example, at the number of scientists in fields other that biology who see themselves as having the expertise to “raise questions” and “express doubts” about evolutionary theory. If this is the case with actual scientists, what are the prospects for equipping the average non-scientist to weigh competing “scientific” claims?

I don’t know enough about BPA to comment knowledgeably, but let me take this question….

“Scientific knowledge tends to segment and specialize. It appears frequently that whole knowledge pools can’t communicate with one another. Are there forces to counter that and to help integrate scientific knowledge?”

Great progress in science has occurred due to specialization. It’s a huge success story. But it has this cost: Nobody in science can know everything any more. In fact, the last great universalists were people like Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt in the late 1700s.

We can’t reverse the process of specialization, given the dividends it has paid–but what we need is to separate the scientific community as follows. Some scientists, bench scientists, must specialize and excel in their fields. And we have lots of those. But we also need interdisciplinary communicators, whose depth of knowledge cannot rival that of the specialists, but whose breadth and versatility is an asset for reaching nonscientific audiences. It is this latter bunch that the science world has not always focused on creating.

I think so. Not a healthcare wonk, but my understanding is that there is a scientific literacy angle to health reform when it comes to the whole area of comparative effectiveness research and whether we heed its results.

I haven’t read your book yet Chris, but I’m wondering if it addresses the issue of the reward system as it impacts innovation. More and more it seems that the people who actually come up with new ideas are given the short end of the stick if they do so while in the employ of a corporation that backs the research. This is of course a small aspect of a larger economics issue, but have you touched on it?

The whole justification for capitalism is supposedly grounded in the idea of rewarding excellence, efficiency and innovation, but we’ve seen recently that they really reward having money at birth by giving that segment of society more money regardless of performance.

There seem to be some “alternative” medical treatments, though, that are quite expensive (and potentially dangerous to boot) — things like the chelation therapies, etc., that are on offer to “treat” autism. But maybe the cost of these can climb in proportion to the relative lack of evidence based treatments on offer and the desperation of the people seeking these treatments.

The politics around government-funded studies of alternative and complementary medical treatments is very interesting. How it would differ with a more scientifically engaged public is an interesting question.

What do you perceive of a differentiation of methods of perception. Fundies hold their beliefs dogmatically and have “faith”. The scientific thought process calls for questioning and verifying.

Re “dueling experts” and tobacco style artificial doubt creation: This stuff matters a great deal, but chiefly because it influences the media, and influences political leaders. If the press was equipped to avoid such political maneuvers, it would be one thing. But journalists too often fall for interest-driven misinformation, and fail to shield the public from it. And this has given great incentive for many companies, and many special interests, to follow the tobacco model, and essentially generate psuedoscience to achieve a particular end. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t spend money on it.

Here’s the Chris Mooney wiki for a quick review

So of course it is both. I would be hard pressed to quantify, but I will say that the two forces work in devastating combination–as follows.

Some people have a huge stake in scientific issues, and are willing to dig in, attack the science, invest millions, etc. Thus huge sweeping misinformation campaigns are created around global warming by folks with the time and the money–and the stakes–to engage.

Meanwhile, the public is off watching Idol. They don’t have nearly the level of engagement in the issues, but if and when they do hear anything about them, they’re just as likely to get a spillover from the misinformation campaign as they are to hear anything reliable.

So you’ve got to fight the misinformation, and you’ve got to get people more engaged–all at once

Thank you both for chatting today about this fascinating book. Is unscientism uniquely American? Do we see other countries and cultures rejected empirical data as readily as some of our American subgroups? How have scientists succeeded in other cultures, and are there lessons for American scientists?

In the creation of scientific knowledge (but individual bits of it and coherent bodies of it), I’m not convinced that excellence, efficiency, and innovation can always be attained simultaneously. Rather, my hunch is that there is often a trade-off — a really excellent contribution may be less “efficient” because there’s a lot of checking and re-checking to make sure things really work and are understood clearly, or a result that we understand really well may be less of an “innovation” because our understanding of it flows from its connection to other things we understand really well.

As you might guess from some of my comments above, I’m less than convinced that a full-body-capitalism approach to reward structures encourages individual scientists to make decisions that are good for the shared body of scientific knowledge, or for the coordinated efforts of the scientific community, or for the interaction of scientists and the knowledge and technologies they produce with the larger public.

I’m a journalist who took science classes in college, particularly the history of science, but did not major in it. I majored in English, though I actually wanted to switch to the history of science but couldn’t. But I certainly am not a scientist–I’m a science writer.

Thank you Elliott – it’s good to be up to speed on what Chris has written.

And thank you for being here Chris. It’s really a benefit to all when smart people don’t mind having their brains picked by the rest of us.

Hi Chris,
I used to follow your blog several motherboards ago, and I’ve started on your book.
I had no idea of the poor treatment of Carl Sagan by his scientific peers. Can you speak about that?

I call the times we are living in the Age of Stupid. It isn’t just a question of anti-science or scientific illiteracy, unreason and anti-intellectualism permeate most of our public life. Our financial system is based on Ponzi economics. During the Bush years, we saw people chosen for high ranking positions precisely because they had no knowledge of the field to which they were assigned or were ideologically opposed to generally accepted knowledge concerning it. This has continued into the Obama Administration where his appointees, while having some background in their fields, have well established records of being wrong throughout their careers.

A specific example. We are currently in the midst of a great non-debate on healthcare. It is all about funding and nothing about care. Americans are generally kept ignorant about their bodies and the major disease processes which they are susceptible to by a medical establishment that profits mightily off of such ignorance. I think it should be mandatory for basic health and anatomy to be taught to all school children from an early age. But I know this will never happen as long as we have a religious right that considers the body and knowledge of it sinful.

There is vast cultural diversity, of course, but we have uniquely American problems.

For instance, we have an indigenous creationist movement that has been with us over 100 years. In Europe this is considerably less of an issue, though it may be growing.

In a wonderful book that we reference, Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, a case is also made that distrust of the pointy-headed thinker is an integral part of the American identity that is also rather unique to us.

Finally, just look at countries like South Korea, Singapore, China….they are ralling behind science right now in a way that we certainly are not.

Cultural difference is very real across nations when it comes to their handling of science, and it is a good reason to worry about the state of our own culture, frankly.

I don’t know how one writes about hard science without

a B.S. in electrical engineering or physics.

So, what’s the gist of your disagreement with PZ Myers?

The American commitment to anti-intellectualism seems to be one of the obstacles that’s hardest to move.

With that in mind, Chris, what do you think scientists (and the scientifically engaged) might accomplish as far as increasing scientific literacy and public engagement with science by pursuing individual, small-scale strategies?

Can you share any examples of such strategies and of scientists employing them successfully? In particular, are there strategies that seem to work at getting people to care about, and learn more about, science *despite* themselves?

Carl Sagan suffered the fate that many science popularizers complain of. We give more detail in our book, but essentially, he was looked down on or even resented by some scientists–not all, but some–who in my opinion placed a premium on the value of published research but neglected the critical importance of communication. The truth, of course, is that both are important.

Sagan was the greatest science communicator in a generation–Cosmos reached 500 million people globally–so the point is, if it can happen even to him, just imagine what is happening to all the young researchers who might want to try their hand at communication and outreach….fortunately, I believe there is a sea change in the scientific community right now with respect to this topic. A lot of minds are opening about the importance of communication–although sadly, a lot of minds also still remain closed.

Art, are you saying you dispute the whole idea of science journalism? Only scientists can talk about science?

If this means only baseball players get to talk about baseball, I’m interested in hearing more!
;-)

Thanks for reading!

Whoa, I hadn’t seen my Wiki in a while, yikes.

I don’t know how one writes about hard science without a B.S. in electrical engineering or physics.

I think you are overstating how hard science is to understand. Besides how many electrical engineers and physicists can write, let alone in an informative and compelling way?

In the world of local TV, it seems like the best science-based journalists are the certified meteorologists who do the weather. Their bosses trumpet their scientific credentials (especially if the competition *doesn’t* have a certified meteorologist!), and their viewers tend to listen to them with a great deal of devotion. The best of these are quite good at “translating” their field of expertise into the language of ordinary viewers. They don’t dumb it down, nor say “just trust me on this,” but take the time to lay things out for their audience. In so doing, they treat their viewers with respect for their intelligence.

On the other hand, I am stunned at the number of journalists who have never had a course in statistics, but then go on to talk about polls, scientific studies, and so on — insulting the intelligence of those who do know statistics. And no editor or producer seems inclined to stop them from doing so.

Janet,
I know your question is about individual, small scale strategies–but that’s just part of the story.

We also need mass communication, so let me start with that before talking about individual communication.

In the area of mass communication, let me give you an example of something that really, really works. It is these two videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ

both have been seen by millions of people. Both are effective, brief case studies of science communication done in an intriguing and creative format sure to appeal to audiences that go far beyond just scientific ones.

Both educate, while also entertaining.

So I think we need a lot more of this kind of communication. But it is only one aspect of what needs to happen.

When we had the space program there seemed to be a focus and a public backing of science. It was sexy. I have often thought that we needed to return to the space program if for no other reason than to get people interested in science again.

I wonder if the lack of editorial oversight of flaky science journalism is just another species of division of labor, like super-specialized scientific research. Clearly, we run into problems when there’s *no one* else who can check our work, keep us honest, etc. But that kind of check requires expertise, which takes time and effort to develop, and which isn’t usually what an editor (for example) is rewarded for.

So many structural problems …

Just out of curiosity have you ever written about late twenty-first century catastrophism, the intersection of overpopulation, resource depletion, and environmental degradation? We sometimes talk about that around here, but I seldom see it in the MSM.

There is nothing more important or more powerful, in terms of turning someone on to science, than a good teacher, or a good friend. Science education in this country is a mess, and what we need are engaging science teachers who not only know their subject but can make it fun and give it meaning for young kids with raging hormones and a lot else on their minds.

These people should be paid what their worth–which is a lot more than they can currently hope to make.

And once again, this is just the beginning. Our polling data suggests that the vast majority of Americans–82 percent–don’t know a scientist personally. This suggests to me that interpersonal engagement, in communities, will be crucial.

What form can this take? Well, how about visiting churches. That’s something a lot of people have suggested that seems to me likely to hold a lot of potential.

Science cafes are important in this respect as well. It is great to see that movement making a lot of progress.

I have another idea that I’ve started talking about–the creation of a ScienceCorps, parallel to AmeriCorps, that would send young scientists out into communities to engage and make themselves useful by employing their specific skills in agriculture, in the green energy transition, and so forth. However, this idea needs a lot more development….

I have no objection to mass communications efforts being part of the answer to my question about small-scale efforts at communication. But I’m interested in the communications that are closer to one-to-one (or one-to-dozens) rather than one-to-thousands because my guess is that these feel more personal to the person initiating them and to the people receiving them — and I can’t help but wonder if something that feels like personal engagement with a scientist might do a lot to change the public’s view of science and scientists.

(Also, such communications offer more immediate feedback about whether the message is getting across clearly, whether it’s speaking to the audience’s questions and concerns, etc.)

I’m less than convinced that capitalism is very good at anything other than concentrating wealth and power to the point of threatening democracy and life itself. And that’s ‘pure’ capitalism, if such a thing exists. The crony capitalism that currently holds sway is much, much worse.

Methinks there is more than a modicum of creationist thinking on Wall Street. The banking system is set up in such a way that certain entities have the power to create money ex nihilo. There is a profound ignorance of the most fundamental rules of science – namely the Laws of Conservation.

The book criticizes Myers in Chapter 8, which argues that as religion is one of the key stumbling blocks to getting America more scientifically engaged, we need to get out of a culture war footing between science and religion, and help move people to more of a depolarized middle ground.

In other words, in this context, we argue that the confrontational New Atheism movement, epitomized by folks like Myers, is counterproductive.

Myers criticized the book back on his blog, and then we replied to him, and so on and so on and so on. Googling will find it all quite easily. The upshot is that, although it is only one part of the book, Chapter 8 is very controversial with the so-called “New Atheists.”

That figure, that 82% of those polled say they don’t know a scientist personally, surprised me when I first saw it.

But then I asked myself how many of the people I know from outside work know what it is I do. (They probably mostly know that I teach; fewer of them know that I teach at a university; fewer still know what I teach.) So maybe people know scientists but don’t realize that they do, because in the context of neighborly interactions, or PTA bake sales, or soccer practices, or whatever, it just doesn’t come up.

(Why doesn’t it come up? Maybe because scientists worry that the baseline anti-intellectualism is high enough that they’re better off keeping their scientific occupation and/or training on the down low.)

As we have seen in economics, peer reviewed journals can actually perpetuate poor ideas. I saw an article recently where one economics review had a backlog of a couple of years so that many of its articles in future issues were going to be about how great the economic mechanisms were that created the meltdown. These were written before the meltdown but the peer review process kept them in the pipeline. And when given the chance to withdraw and resubmit, essentially all the authors declined preferring to keep the publication on their résumés for tenure even though they were ludicrously wrong.

In medicine, industry funding and spinning of studies have been scandals for years.

Hugh,
Great point. In the book, we chart how a loss of interest with the space program after we had achieved the key goal–landing on the moon–set in in the 1970s. It was, in fact, this loss of interest and engagement that spurred Carl Sagan into his most high profile science communication endeavors. He felt that if journalists weren’t going to cover space, then he would have to step up and do it.

And of course his success was absolutely dramatic–but there is no one like him today, or at least, no one capable of reaching the audiences he reached back then.

I think that space is one area that is continually fascinating–especially to kids–and that some new breakthrough in exploration could definitely rekindle massive interest. However, our original breakthroughs in space exploration were impelled by our Cold War competition with the soviets, and we have no external impetus now as we did then. That is a major complicating factor.

The back and forth over chapter 8 seems to suggest that there is more to deal with here than just a cultural rift between the tribe of science and the rest of the public. Rather, there are also rifts within the tribe of science, at least one of which involves the question of whether religion in public life is a constant threat to science (and to other things that scientists value), or whether there is room in a pluralistic society for science and religion, and for people who embrace both.

Any thoughts on what might be involved in dealing with the rifts within the tribe of science? Presumably, dealing with these rifts (if not mending them) is important if we want scientists to coordinate their efforts to reach out to the public.

I think many scientists are afraid to try to explain what they do to non-scientists, and so may avoid that topic in interpersonal conversations.

However, to me the 18/82 percent figure for knowing/not knowing a scientist says something about how walled off academia is from the rest of America.

The funding problem is one where the stakes of getting more public engagement with and enthusiasm for science might be especially apparent to scientists.

Generally, it takes time and money (and hard work and luck) to build scientific knowledge. The money has to come from somewhere — if not from industry (which is trying to sell something) or universities (which are hurting badly financially at the moment), then from someplace else. The big “someplace else” at present is the federal government, through funding agencies like NSF and NIH. If the public believes that scientific knowledge is valuable, it ought to be easier to sell them on the idea of supporting it with tax dollars. If not, not so much.

Then, of course, there’s the perennial problem of selling the public on the value of basic research …

Another example is the Discovery Channel’s popular show Mythbusters. The hosts of the show are special effects people who are also pretty good scientists — and who bring in specialists as needed.

For those not familiar with the show, each episode takes a couple of myths and tries to test them to see if they are true. In scientific terms, the myth is the hypothesis they wish to test, and the crew breaks it down into its various parts to see if they can confirm it as true or expose it as false. They design and carry out experiments to try to test the myth, complete with as much measurement and specific data as possible, in order to compare their results with those put forward by the myth. Viewers often will conduct peer-review, criticizing the initial episode’s handling of a given test, and those criticisms with merit sometimes result in additional experiments on the same myth.

My seven year old has a very strong grasp of the scientific method of testing hypotheses, the need for data, and peer review thanks to a couple of guys who love to blow stuff up and otherwise make lots of messes.

Their very important tag line: Don’t Try This At Home!

But getting to play with fire is one of the ways to cultivate a love for science! Having grown-ups who can supervise some amount of “dangerous” (but well-understood) play is important.

Janet,
these rifts are huge, divisive, and to me, trigger vast amounts of counterproductive inward firing.

There is of course a history here–the divide between how Darwin approached religion, and how Huxley did, is a precursor to what we’re seeing now. Similarly, in skeptic/humanist circles there have long been rifts about just how strongly people ought to be criticizing religion, as opposed to just promoting science and debunking psuedoscience.

However, I think things have become massively more fraught in the last 5 years or so due to the advent of the New Atheist movement. Remember, Richard Dawkins says that those folks who want merely to defend science, but not to criticize religion, are the “Neville Chamberlain school of evolutionists.” Presumably Darwin was also a member. And so are most of the folks that are the reason we won the Dover evolution trial, I might add.

Science requires critical thinking and detailed questioning. It includes questioning of the current authorities in any subject.

Science does not fit in an authoritarian, kiss up, culture.

Science in the US is doomed.

Thanks Peterrr. I’ve been convinced by one reviewer that we really should have included praise for Mythbusters in the book, for precisely the reason you outline.

I think PZ Meyers represents an expectable pushback from some within the scientific community to a lot of the egregious attacks on scientific ideas by the fundie right. I know I was more tolerant before the religious right started pushing its ideology into the public sphere. Of course, their view point is that they were the ones reacting to the invasion of the secular humanists. As a secular humanist, I would point to the Constitution and its Establishment Clause banning the favoring of any particular religion. This results in the weird charge by the right that secular humanism is a religion. That is a real slippery slope because from there it is easy to take on the scientific method in general.

I have not written much on this, no, but if you’re talking about late 21st century catastrophism, I hope you’re mentioning climate change!

I don’t follow Myers but I have to say that I disagree with you on this particular topic Chris.

“we need to get out of a culture war footing between science and religion”
?!?

I wouldn’t think that attitude would be any more effective than had Poland tried to get out of a war footing with Nazi Germany in 1939. The Creationists and their allies relish in the thought of cultural war, and profit by it. It empowers them. Any unilateral disarmament is mere surrender.

IMnsHO, of course.

If there’s one key message to our book, it is don’t give up hope–especially when not everything has yet been tried!

Remember, this country was founded by scientists and freethinkers, and it has rallied around science in the past–and it just elected a pro-science administration. There is much to be hopeful about.

There’s a way in which I think the diversity of strong views among scientists might actually work to help public engagement with science rather than hurt it (although let me be clear that this is a hypothesis that I have not tested in any systematic way):

If all scientists maintained absolute “message discipline” in all their interactions with the public, it might only reinforce the public hunch that scientists are weird, Borg-like, lacking in individuality. Alternatively, the public might view the message discipline as part of a concerted effort to sell them something, to achieve some PR end that might be great for science but potentially not in the interests of the public.

Seeming Spock-like, or cult-like, or industry-flak-like, in other words, might undercut the message that science is a human endeavor conducted by real live, diverse *humans*. Humans who disagree with each other about all sorts of stuff, just like normal folks, while still agreeing on a basic strategy for tackling questions and assessing the success of answers. It might even help non-scientist embrace the idea that they *could* be scientists too (given the proper training and so forth).

Am I wrong in thinking this would be a significant step forward in addressing public alienation from science and scientists?

This is from a project I did, a Bush scandals list, and describes government funding in constant dollars up to 2006 when Republicans lost control of the Congress:

Non-defense R&D initially increased due to a 5 year initiative 1998-2003 (begun during the Clinton years) to double funding for the NIH from approx. $14 billion to $28 billion. After this point NIH funding (which accounts for half of non-defense R&D) stagnated. Non-defense non-NIH funding has remained essentially unchanged since 1992 (or for about 15 years).

Hugh,
I think many people in the science world, and especially the evolutionary biology world, are very very angry. They’ve spent their whole careers establishing this powerful body of knowledge, it is extremely robust, and then people who don’t even seem to understand it attack it and undermine it.

But if anger is justified, we still have to be smart about how we respond. There are good responses, and bad. The single most effective response of the last decade was the resounding victory in the Dover evolution trial, in which defenders of science brought a very strong legal case, prosecuted an incredibly effective legal strategy, and achieved a landmark victory.

That was a fight worth having, and worth winning.

A different fight is whether we can effectively crusade directly at American religion, from the world of science, and expect to somehow weaken it. I am very skeptical that this is possible. I don’t think people change their minds very often (if at all) when under attack, especially when under attack from someone firing missiles from the other side of a culture war, or from a blue state to a red state.

Climate change is part of environmental degradation along with pollution and species extinction.

“The Creationists and their allies relish in the thought of cultural war, and profit by it. It empowers them.”

I agree with this. So your logic is to then go along with them and keep the culture war going?

That’s where I totally lose you. I think we need an Obama style unifying approach. We can never agree on religion, but science is the shared ground we can all stand on. In a diverse society, we need a body of shared facts. and so on…

I’m not sure it’s doomed but freedom of thought is key to the growth of scientific understanding and knowledge. We do need a Science Revolution — starting in grade schools across the land.

I think Dawkins is a polemic. Science doesn’t have to be at WAR with religion BUT scientific truths need to be acknowledged, and breakthroughs need to be celebrated -without the constraints of religious beliefs.

So far we’ve focused a lot on the current situation and the challenges to improving it. Before we run out of time, I wanted to ask about the goal we’re trying to achieve:

What would success look like here? Can you describe the scientific America you think scientists might help get us to through better outreach to and communication with the broader public? How would such a scientific America benefit scientists? How would it benefit the broader public?

Perhaps that’s the first change, then? A sea-change in accepting such communication? I wonder.

A question, if I may: do you think it would be more valuable for us to remove some of our cultural love of freedom to accept science? Should science become a sort of “check” on complete autonomy of decision? We have a system of checks and balances for government, why not on some of the deciding forces?

That is a very interesting way to put it. But I’m not sure I agree.

I agree with you that the battle within science over how to handle religion does show a very human side to the whole endeavor. This is a battle fraught with passion, with anger, with pain. (And not a lot of objectivity!)

But whether “the public” sees that, I’m not so sure. The public would see it if, say, Oprah had a new atheist and an “accommodationist” on, but that would never happen.

A smaller slice of the public would see it if, say, the New York Times ran a story about the growing rift between these two camps within science. That is indeed conceivable.

Anyway you can see where this logic leads.

I don’t think it’s possible or desirable to enforce message discipline on the world of science. However, I hope it can be productive to have discussions about how what we say will be received by other Americans.

One of the interesting problems, when we talk about the public impact of Dawkins et al., is whether they are taken to be speaking AS SCIENTISTS when they opine on religious matters, or rather whether they are seen as people with views on religion who just happen to be scientists. (The related question is whether Dawkins et al. are intentionally trading on their authority as scientists to try to further their views on religion.)

If the public cannot tell what *necessarily* goes with embracing science or scientific patterns of thought, they have a really hard time working out just what they must buy into when they buy into science.

Well said.

ahh
-a most eXcellent point.

I’m not sure what you’re suggesting. If the idea is that technocrats ought to have some sort of veto power over democrats (elected officials), then I disagree.

Rather we need elected officials to consult more with scientists, for Congress to restore science advice, for each member to have a scientist in his/her office, and to elect more scientists to public office!

There is more on this in a long endnote to the book where we discuss the idea of a pro-science Political Action Committee.

I have one suggestion for All Americans read Scientific American on a regular basis and you will get an education in science from many different disciplines. I have been reading the magazine for over 20 years and eagerly look forward to each and every edition. The articles are written so that most lay persons can learn and understand about so many things that are important to the future of the Human race. Pull your head out of the sand, throw away your religious biases and learn from peer reviewed, repeatable experiments and knowledge. To do less is to truly bury your head in the sand and live in the fantasy world of what some other zealot wrote to tell you WHAT to believe. God didn’t give us curiosity just cause but because it teaches us all to learn.

Well, it would help if everyone understood that, in the end, we can’t know. If God exists, then He’s, well, God; there’s not anything you can do to prove or disprove entities at that level of existence. It’s belief.

Science is about physical facts. When those conflict with someone’s religion, than, yeah, that religion should fall by the wayside, because what we *can* know intrudes- thus, why those who believe, religiously, that the Earth is flat, would be wrong. Thus, creationism goes bye-bye.

But there’s a lot of religion that really ain’t subject to science. Does God exist? Hell, we don’t know. Can’t prove He exists, or doesn’t.

So really, it’s not a battle anyone can win with! I suggest that this be put out. Once people understand that religion and science aren’t even involved in the same things, we’ll all have a much better time.

The consultation was kind of what I was going for.

Janet,
It would be good to have some data on that, but my sense is that most people do not see anywhere near the number of nuances we do. For much of religious America, science and atheism are already pretty much synonymous–after all, this is why so many people reject evolution. If you have the most prominent public scientists (like Dawkins) making their cause atheism, and the most prominent science blogs (like Pharyngula) making their cause atheism, then you are certainly helping to reinforce that perception.

You make a critical distinction here. In the religious community, most of the more fundamentalist folks that I am familiar with see Dawkins as an atheist first, and secondarily as a scientist.

Of course, as you note, *imposing* “message discipline” on the scientific community ain’t gonna happen.

But even trying to *persuade* scientists to work together to reach the public better is hard — partly because different scientists have very different ideas about what engaging the public ought to accomplish. Is it to get more people who enjoy thinking about science? More who will accept the expert testimony of scientists as decisive in public policy debates? (Which debates? Which scientists?) More who will argue to their Congresscritters that a larger proportion of their tax dollars ought to support scientific research and training? More who will go to school to become scientists?

Meanwhile, of course, scientists have other interests and ends that they pursue — including, perhaps, achieving a more secular society, more public acceptance of atheism as an exercise of religious freedom, etc. For some scientists, these goals may be at the top of their lists, and they may be pretty peeved if they feel like they’re being asked to take one for Team Science by demoting these goals.

It’s the problem of coalition-building, of course. But I think we need to find better strategies to face it.

So Janet has asked the “goal” question. Let me start tackling it.

“What would success look like here?” It would be detectable in all sectors of society. You would see a very different climate in Congress for the treatment of science–more respect, less politicization.

You would see a news media that behaved as though the public actually wanted information about science, and an entertainment media that reveled in scientific plots and scientific hero characters (this last may actually be happening).

You would see, at the level of national policy, massive reinvestment (and no, we are nowhere near it now) in science education, in research, and in key programs to bring the public and the science worlds closer together.

You would see, in churches, a thawing of relations with the science world, perhaps the beginnings of an embrace.

All of this would show up, in various ways, in polling data about public opinion. It would certainly take many years to register there.

Good then. we’re on the same page.

And then we can discuss stem cells.

Don’t I know it.

As someone who has come out of the atheism/humanism movement, I deeply perceive these differences in goals.

Maybe you can agree that there ought to be some kind of depolarizing leadership summit to get the different camps at least talking together within science? Right now it isn’t even a civil dialogue, as far as I can tell.

As we come to the end of this interesting Book Salon,

Chris, Thank you for stopping by the Lake and spending the afternoon discussing your new book.

Janet, Thank you very much for Hosting this great Book Salon.

Everyone, if you haven’t bought Chris’ book yet, here is a link.

Thanks all.

Where we disagree Chris is that I don’t believe it’s possible to get out of a war when the other side is going to attack you whether you want to fight back or not. I would think the current activities of the deathers, birthers, tea-baggers et. al. would be convincing evidence of that.

Here’s a quote from a recent Wall Street Journal article The Culture Wars’ New Front: U.S. History Classes in Texas.

“We’re in an all-out moral and spiritual civil war for the soul of America, and the record of American history is right at the heart of it,” said Rev. Peter Marshall, a Christian minister and one of the reviewers appointed by the conservative camp.”

You can try to disengage, withdraw, turn your back, or just ignore them, but these people are not going to go away. As they take over the curricula in more public and high schools the better-off parents will be able to transfer their kids out to more progressive private schools. But what about everybody else?

I’m one of those people who thinks that better understanding is generally a good thing for everyone, but …

If there are forces making a concerted effort to keep Americans alienated from science and scientifically illiterate, who will the losers be in the scientific America you see us working toward?

Given that the interests that benefit from a disengaged public will do what they can not to lose ground, what kind of challenges does this create for scientists and other members of Team Science trying to push the public in the direction of greater engagement?

“How would such a scientific America benefit scientists? How would it benefit the broader public?”

Answering these questions is easier than the last ones from Janet!

Scientists would benefit because they wouldn’t have to be angry at the media and politicians all the time! They would benefit by the satisfaction that their knowledge is really being used, valued, and having the real world ramifications that it deserves.

Citizens would benefit from better public policy with respect to science. They would also be personally enriched, knowledge-wise, through a higher level of science engagement. Finally, some would make life turns towards science that they otherwise would not have, and who knows what could result from that?

It’s win-win, and then some.

“Depolarizing leadership summit” has a nice ring to it.

I think such a thing (or many smaller such things) would be of great value — especially to help scientists recognize the diversity of views and goals held by their own colleagues.

Of course, it could turn into the mother of all committee meetings!

Thanks everybody! It was a pleasure

Cynthia Kouril is upstairs!
Dick Army’s Manufactured Astroturf Venom is Losing its Potency; Ordinary Citizens Want Real Reform, Not Partisan Bickering

Thank you both so much for coming,
a wonderful discussion — bookmarked!

and as always, thank you Bev.

Thanks Bev, Chris, discussion participants, and lurkers!

Once again, our list of things we need to do to achieve a healthier democracy gets longer. But maybe some progress here will help us make progress with other items on the to-do list!

Chris, thanks for coming, and for this thought-provoking book. I’ve added your blog to my bookmarks, and look forward to more from you!

a relevant lolcat

Actually there is evidence that those on the “other” side are engaged in what they perceive to be a genuine war with us as the enemies.

Carl Schmitt, the German philosopher who was a great admirer of Hitler and who was Leo Strauss’s inspiration, would view the two sides today as he viewed them before World War II when he was providing intellectual grounding for the Nazis. People who disagree with you and who you view as a threat to your way of life qualify as the enemy and anything is justified in dealing with the enemy. Compromise is viewed as weakness and the ideas of legitimacy and legality are mutually exclusive giving a ruler the right to do whatever he deemed necessary to eliminate the enemy.

This is the background of what we’ve been faced with the past thirty years. It’s interesting that Schmitt’s works weren’t available in English until MIT Press made them available in the mid-80s at the height of the Thatcher/Reagan “revolutions” in their respective countries.

Leo Strauss is the mentor of the neocons who believed that Schmitt didn’t go far enough in vilifying liberals. These are the intellectual icons who are worshipped by the lunatic right wing and its wholly-owned representatives in congress. The revelations coming out about Eric Prince and Blackwater/Xe fit in nicely with this philosophy.