New poll shows shocking lack of belief in basic scientific facts among Americans, such as the Big Bang and age of universe; higher belief in ID than climate change

cgod:

So I have doubts about the efficacy of childhood vaccinations. We have just seen people get the measles from people who were vaccinated in their youth. I think people should get their kids vaccinated but we know that vaccinations don't always work perfectly. If I were asked if I felt confident in childhood vaccination in a survey I'd say "no."

In my lifetime I've seen the age of the universe get gradually pushed back. Before new information came in that supported an older universe the age of universe was stated with certainty in the general science media. If you asked me if weather I feel certainty that the universe if 13.5 billion years old I'd say "no."

Lots of generally accepted scientific literacy things are like this. The real tragedy of the general populaces scientific literacy is that they have no idea that a CNN report that report that raisins will increase your life span by 5-10 years is just a data point that needs rigorous testing before being anything like a widely accepted report that should be acted on. Conversely the people who realize that such a raisin report is pretty bullshitty and wholly reject scientific discoveries because they don't know anything about how scientific research is conducted and are burned again and again by our medias effort to sell toothpaste and care with sensationalist headlines.

The religious wackos would look a lot more like a corner case if they had any idea about how scientific research and knowledge is conducted, contestable and ever changing. Instead science is reported as fact and people have a great deal of certainty over stuff they should generally accept but be excited to find out was wrong based on new and amazing discoveries.


posted 3652 days ago