Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Belief in Evolution No Longer a Metric for Science Literacy at NSB-NSF. YAY!

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

There are many biologists and philosophers of science who are highly scientifically literate who question certain aspects of the theory of evolution

John Bruer
National Science Board, National Science Foundation
Lead Reviewer
What Happened to Evolution at NSB

Way to go National Science Foundation. Say it again!, “There are many biologists and philosophers of science who are highly scientifically literate who question certain aspects of the theory of evolution.”

The NCSE of course whines over these developments:

A section describing survey results about the American public’s beliefs about evolution and the Big Bang was removed from the 2010 edition of Science and Engineering Indicators. According to a post on the AAAS’s Science Insider blog (April 8, 2010) and a subsequent report in Science (April 9, 2010; subscription required), although survey results about evolution and the Big Bang have regularly appeared in the National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators, its biennial compilation of global data about science, engineering, and technology, they were absent from the 2010 edition.

NCSE’s Joshua Rosenau decried the decision, saying, “Discussing American science literacy without mentioning evolution is intellectual malpractice ….”

What Happened to Evolution at the NSB

the response

Officials at the National Science Board defended the decision. Louis Lanzerrotti, chair of the board’s Science and Engineering Indicators committee, told Science that the questions were “flawed indicators of science knowledge because the responses conflated knowledge and beliefs.” George Bishop, a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati who is familiar with the difficulties of polling about evolution, regarded that position as defensible, explaining, “Because of biblical traditions in American culture, that question is really a measure of belief, not knowledge.”

HT: www.NCSEweb.org

Comments
With regard to "literacy" knowing the consensus is a whole lot different than accepting the consensus. And the giants of science never accept the consensus :-)tribune7
April 12, 2010
April
04
Apr
12
12
2010
01:19 PM
1
01
19
PM
PDT
bornagain77,
Maybe he, being scientifically literate and all, can explain to me why the earth is not central in the universe even though it is clearly shown to be central in the universe.
In order to claim that something is in the center, doesn't it require knowledge of the boundaries? How do we know if something is physically central without a concept of boundaries in space, given that space is three dimensional (at least), and anything three dimensional as a space cannot have boundaries without there being something else outside of it? I can see how something can be centrally located in a room, but that's because it has walls, so how is something known to be the center of the universe in the same way?Clive Hayden
April 12, 2010
April
04
Apr
12
12
2010
01:06 PM
1
01
06
PM
PDT
Hans from the link you posted: Adults in different countries and regions have been asked identical or 11 substantially similar questions to test their factual knowledge of science. Knowledge 12 scores for individual items vary from country to country, and no country consistently 13 outperforms the others.tragic mishap
April 12, 2010
April
04
Apr
12
12
2010
01:05 PM
1
01
05
PM
PDT
I always thought it was self-evident that the earth would at least be the center of the observable universe. But I'm no physicist so.tragic mishap
April 12, 2010
April
04
Apr
12
12
2010
01:03 PM
1
01
03
PM
PDT
Great news Sal,,, But Maybe I ought to write this guy from the article: "Jon Miller, a science literacy researcher at Michigan State University who originally devised the question about evolution, disagreed, however, asking, "If a person says that the earth really is at the center of the universe, even if scientists think it is not, how in the world would you call that person scientifically literate?" ,,, and ask him to explain in detail why the Earth is at the center of the universe in this video: The Known Universe by AMNH http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U Maybe he, being scientifically literate and all, can explain to me why the earth is not central in the universe even though it is clearly shown to be central in the universe.bornagain77
April 12, 2010
April
04
Apr
12
12
2010
12:52 PM
12
12
52
PM
PDT
The PDF report also contains this:
Similarly, Americans were less likely than survey respondents in South Korea and Japan to answer the big bang question correctly: one third of Americans answered this question correctly compared with 67% of South Korean and 63% of Japanese respondents.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/assets/2010/04/08/chapter7_insider_excerpt.pdf It would have been nicer if a selection of options had been given! Rather then just "right" and "wrong"!Hans Fritzsche
April 12, 2010
April
04
Apr
12
12
2010
12:38 PM
12
12
38
PM
PDT
Wow. NSF controls a large portion of government science grants. This is very good news.tragic mishap
April 12, 2010
April
04
Apr
12
12
2010
12:18 PM
12
12
18
PM
PDT
1 2 3 4

Leave a Reply