Chickens Come Home to Roost
by MikeGene
In my previous blog, I showed how someone can take good news and turn it into bad news. Scientific literacy in America has doubled in the last generation and is higher than that of Canada, Europe, and Japan. Yet some people think that scientists still need to start acting as political partisans.
But there is even more good news:
To measure public acceptance of the concept of evolution, Miller has been asking adults if "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals" since 1985. He and his colleagues purposefully avoid using the now politically charged word "evolution" in order to determine whether people accept the basics of evolutionary theory. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of Americans who reject this concept has declined (from 48% to 39%),
Okay, so scientific literacy in America has doubled in the last generation and is higher than that of Canada, Europe, and Japan. In addition, over the past 20 years, the proportion of Americans who reject human evolution has declined by almost 10%. Ah, but this time there is finally some bad news, as Miller also notes that the proportion who accept it has likewise declined from 45% to 40%. Nevertheless, the number of people who accept human evolution is more than twice the scientific literacy (17%) rate in America. So what is happening?
Confusion, on the other hand, has increased considerably, with those expressing uncertainty increasing from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005.
So what is the source of this confusion? You can't blame the creationists, as their numbers have dwindled also. It has to be something that would pull people away from belief and into the realm of not being sure. Gee. Might the chickens have come home to roost? The education system, which is the spawn of academia, has made moral, cultural, and epistemic relativism a cornerstone of education for the last few decades. I wonder why.
April 23rd, 2006 at 11:42 am
Or the Wedge has had some measure of "success"
Comment by Bilbo — April 23, 2006 @ 11:42 am
April 23rd, 2006 at 3:37 pm
[...] « Accusing PZ But whose chickens are they? MikeGene, commenting on recent polls regarding American scientific literacy and attitudes about creation/evolution, writes: [...]
Pingback by Heaven is not the sky » Blog Archive » But whose chickens are they? — April 23, 2006 @ 3:37 pm
April 23rd, 2006 at 4:27 pm
As may be Mr. Baggins sir, how ever, the last few decades noted in the post go back a minimum of 30 years (direct experience) and quite actually I think probably go back at least 50. While I do not denigrate any effect of 'The Wedge' to date, it would seem to me that this form of it has not been around long enough for its effects to manifest to that degree as yet…
Comment by carbon14atom — April 23, 2006 @ 4:27 pm
April 23rd, 2006 at 9:22 pm
Bilbo,
I don't see any evidence that the Wedge has anything to do with this. First, the Wedge has had little-to-no influence on the education curriculum. And while we may be plugged into the debate, the average person is not. In fact, a poll from 2003 found that only 18% felt "very familiar" with the concept of ID and a full 45% were "not familiar" with it. Second, the question is about human evolution and this topic receives very little attention from people like Behe and Dembski. Third, the trend is simply putting people in the "unwilling to make a judgment" category and it draws from both sides.
Comment by MikeGene — April 23, 2006 @ 9:22 pm
April 24th, 2006 at 2:56 am
interesting pingback, interesting blog, took me a while to actually find a name to attach to it. A quick first impression from not very much nosing around leaves me feeling that this person is…well, I'm not really certain what this person is, an atheist it would certainly seem to me, and thats fine I suppose, but its disturbing to me, the attempt to disguise and "gussy up" that atheism into a theistic religion.
I dunno, this guy seems less credible than I am, and I sure don't think I'm very credible….
Comment by carbon14atom — April 24, 2006 @ 2:56 am
April 24th, 2006 at 10:14 am
As I see it, the good news is that the 14% growth in uncertainty comes primarily from those who reject human evolution (9%) as opposed to those who accept it (5%). But MikeGene seems kind of confused himself. First he hails the doubling of scientific literacy in America, which presumably is at least partly due to improved scientific education, then he complains about the education system confusing people in the last paragraph. Maybe the real problem is that schools systems have been increasingly avoiding the subject of human evolution due to fundamentalist backlash, while doing a pretty good job of teaching less controversial science topics.
Comment by Aagcobb — April 24, 2006 @ 10:14 am
April 24th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Sorry…just making a guess. Um…I hate to say anything more, but for once in my life…I…I just might…Oh, gosh…this is so hard to say…I just might agree with…with…with Aagcobb…Aaaahhhhhhh!!! I can't believe I said that.
Comment by Bilbo — April 24, 2006 @ 8:20 pm
April 26th, 2006 at 3:57 am
I wasn't very surprised to find this nuanced opinion at John Hawks:
Comment by Krauze — April 26, 2006 @ 3:57 am