More disturbingly, in 2012 a majority of Democrats (51 percent) could not correctly answer both that the Earth goes around the Sun and that this takes a year.
The two divergences are treated as if they are exactly the same, of course, and guess which gets the more publicity?
Here’s the part you have to dig for:
Overall, 71 percent of people agree that the theory of evolution involves humans evolving from earlier species, compared to only 48 percent believing in it. For Republicans the reversal is dramatic: on evolution only 32 percent of Republicans are believers, well below Independents (53 percent) and Democrats (53 percent). But in understanding the gist of evolution, Republicans (76 percent) are insignificantly ahead of Independents (71 percent) and slightly, but significantly ahead of Democrats (68 percent).
What this NSF experiment suggests to me (though other interpretations are possible) is that some standard scientific knowledge questions do not actually measure what one knows, but rather what one chooses to endorse. For this reason, in its report the NSF did not include the evolution and Big Bang questions in its index of scientific knowledge.
In short, many of the self-identified Republicans are probably just people who know more about the current evolution scambos than other people. So belief drops off.
And knowledge may well increase, if people are annoyed by or concerned about the misrepresentations.
But the buried take-home point is that NSF decided not to trip over its own bucket on the issue.
– O’Leary for News
News: shades of Ham’s quite correct point to Nye, that operational science is quite different from origins or “historical” science. Where, FWIW, the orbiting of earth around the sun (which, together with axial tilt gives us seasons) is effectively directly observed as reflected in stellar parallax, and of course is the basis of the launching of inter-stellar space probes. I think a basic course module on fundamental astronomy should be a part of everyone’s education. Every northern hemisphere High school student should know enough to at least crudely estimate latitude and longitude from elevation of Polaris (as in can you find it in the night sky?) and the gap between local position of stars (including Sol) and the Greenwich meridian position. No need to go for full bore spherical trigs, haversines and all that, just basic crude insights including sidereal vs solar day etc. BTW, they do that, I am told, in Cuba. It seems to me a little less time on agit prop in a lab coat and a little more time on things like this would pay dividends. KF
Its all about a general knowledge(or intelligence) and this greatly follows idenity.
So Democrats having Africans , Mexicans, etc etc would lower their knowledge numbers and Republicans having rural Southerners or Cubans or a general middle class affects their numbers. Democrats surely have the upper classes or ethnic groups up there and urban people and so on.
its about identity and not poltical party. measure that and it will make more sense.
Why is it that Big Science supports leftist politics?
What does science have to do with politics anyway?
To read more, check out the article:
http://crev.info/2014/02/big-s.....VQPIm.dpuf