More science please!
Our lives and sanity depend on it
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. ― Philip K. Dick
SCIENCE is a way of testing whether what we BELIEVE to be true is REALLY true. This is why science is very unpopular and controversial.
People would rather believe than know. — E.O. Wilson
It’s easy to believe something. And it’s pretty easy to convince other people to believe something (just repeat and repeat and …).
Requiring a seller of a product or idea to PROVE that their claims (Cure cancer! Lose weight! Grow hair! Get rich!) are TRUE is an existential threat to most businesses because most of their claims are NOT true. So in a capitalist system, there is a lot of hostility toward the scientific enterprise itself.
Case Study
The purpose of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is to protect the public from false claims about the safety of food and the safety/effectiveness of medical treatments by demanding evidence/proof of same before going to market. The corporate business interests have fought against the FDA’s mission since its founding in 1906.
Medical devices and vitamins/supplements were removed from the oversight power of the FDA from the start by intensive lobbying by those industries. There has been a constant and successful corporate campaign since the 1980's to weaken the FDA. This has resulted in many drugs and tests with minimal scientific PROOF of efficacy now receiving FDA approval (and very little post-approval scrutiny of the actual safety and performance of those treatments in the general population).
Making science boring
Only 9% of American 15 year olds are scientifically “literate” compared to 32% of Chinese students of the same age. This has economic and national security implications worthy of attention.
Fun Fact: contrary to many unscientific (i.e. WRONG!) claims, there are NO gender difference in science ability/aptitude in most countries, and where a difference exists, it (slightly) favors girls/young women!
There are a number of reasons (cultural, political, economic) for this international disparity. But the fact that an average of only 7% of students in the nations studied above achieve a high level of science literacy is largely due to HOW SCIENCE IS TAUGHT (pedagogy).
Science … is a commitment to a systematic way of thinking, an allegiance to a way of building knowledge and explaining the universe through testing and factual observation. — Atul Gawande
Science is generally taught as a collection of “facts” to be memorized for a test. BORING (except to a very small percentage of students)! Science is actually a METHOD for discovering the TRUTH, and it can be taught as an exciting game that taps into the natural talents and interests of children at each stage of their development through the K-12 years:
Buyer beware!
If you have no data, you’re just another person with an opinion. — W. Edward Deming
There are many people out there who want to take advantage of our ignorance about what is really true to get what they want from us (money, power, status etc.).
We can protect ourselves from making the sucker’s bet by listening to what the scientists have learned (mostly about what is NOT true!) and by advocating for the next generation to learn more about REAL science than we did. Our health and survival and sanity will depend on it.
