Scientific Literacy Science and Pseudoscience S M Tabatabaee

Scientific Literacy Science and Pseudoscience S. M. Tabatabaee ? ? ? University of medical science

Outline • • Introduction Statistics Solutions Definition Tests Scientific method Pseudoscience Ethics

Scientific issues are the subject of many debates • We live in an age of scientific discovery • headlines about global warming, cloning, fossils in meteorites, or genetically engineered food • exotic materials • medical advances • DNA evidence • new drugs • As a consumer, as a business professional, and as a citizen

Some scientists are so focused in one area that they lack scientific literacy • a group of twenty-four Ph. D. physicists and geologists to explain the difference between DNA and RNA • scientists are just as likely to be ignorant of scientific matters outside their own specialty as anyone else

The scope of the problem • College graduates, as well, fall short on science basics. • fewer than ten percent of graduating seniors could explain why it’s hotter in summer than in winter. • Fully half of the seniors who filled out a scientific literacy survey could not correctly identify the difference between an atom and a molecule. 2

• • The average American fails the grade, too. fewer than 7% of adults 22% of college graduates 26% of those with graduate degree

• According to the national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences: • Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun • Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time • Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth’s surface that is covered with water * Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly

• Americans score poorly on tests of basic science knowledge. This is confirmed by an independent investigation of American scientific literacy, reported here, which shows that: – Most Americans (53%) don't know that the Earth goes around the Sun once a year – Nearly half (48%) don't know what percentage of the Earth's surface is covered by water – 42% don't know that no humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs Nearly 1 in 5 people (19%) couldn't answer any of these questions correctly. *Most Americans (67%) do not have an understanding of the scientific process

So what to do? • K-12 Education • Higher Education • The General Public

Project 2061 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science • The task was ". . . setting out for the nation the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind that all citizens need to live interesting, responsible, and productive lives in a culture shaped by science and technology

Science for All Americans • The result of that project was Science for All Americans, published by Project 2061 in 1989. " * • "What should a science-literate adult know and be able to do in science, mathematics, and technology?

Benchmarks for Science Literacy • Benchmarks for Science Literacy is a companion report to Science for All Americans • Benchmarks suggests how students might progress toward that goal • This document is a tool to be used in designing a curriculum, not a particular curriculum design itself.

The National Science Education Standards • the eight categories of content standards are – Unifying concepts and processes in science – Science as inquiry – Physical science – Life science – Earth and space science – Science and technology – Science in personal and social perspectives – History and nature of science

• According to the United States National Center for Education Statistics, "scientific literacy is the knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts and processes required for personal decision making, participation in civic and cultural affairs, and economic productivity".

• "the capacity to use scientific knowledge, to identify questions and to draw evidencebased conclusions in order to understand help make decisions about the natural world and the changes made to it through human activity. " •

• Scientific literacy means that a person can ask, find, or determine answers to questions derived from curiosity about everyday experiences. It means that a person has the ability to describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena. Scientific literacy entails being able to read with understanding articles about science in the popular press and to engage in social conversation about the validity of the conclusions. • Scientific literacy implies that a person can identify scientific issues underlying national and local decisions and express positions that are scientifically and technologically informed

Persons who are scientifically literate: • Know and understand the scientific concepts and processes required for participation in society • Ask, find, or determine answers to questions derived from curiosity about their world • Describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena • Read with understanding science articles in the popular press and engage in social conversation about the validity of the conclusions • Identify scientific issues underlying national and local decisions • Express positions that are scientifically and technologically informed • Evaluate the quality of scientific information on the basis of its source and the methods used to generate it • Pose and evaluate arguments based on evidence and apply conclusions from such arguments appropriately

Tests

The Science process • • Planning Conducting Processing Evaluating

• The scientific method is a way to ask and answer scientific questions by making observations and doing experiments. • The steps of the scientific method are to: – Ask a Question – Do Background Research – Construct a Hypothesis – Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment – Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion – Communicate Your Results

Science Literacy and Pseudoscience • “People in the U. S. know more about basic science today than they did two decades ago, good news that researchers say is tempered by an unsettling growth in the belief in pseudoscience such as astrology and visits by extraterrestrial aliens. ” • So, science literacy is clearly increasing (from 10 to 28% according to one measure) but at the same time pseudoscientific beliefs are also increasing. It strikes me that this may be a problem for us as educators in that we might be teaching students (and thus the public) scientific facts but not teaching them how to think scientifically.

Pseudoscience • Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status. Pseudoscience is often characterized by the use of vague, contradictory, exaggerated or improvable claims, an over-reliance on confirmation rather than rigorous attempts at refutation, a lack of openness to evaluation by other experts, and a general absence of systematic processes to rationally develop theories.

Does Scientific Literacy Make People More Ethical? • Thinking about science leads individuals to endorse more stringent moral norms • In one of the four supporting experiments, undergraduates considered an account of a date rape and were asked to judge behavior on a scale of 1 to 100. Science types, perhaps not surprisingly, proved to have a better grasp of reality, including the moral kind. “

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