Economic Illiteracy More Prevalent Than Scientific

“Ignorance feeds on ignorance.” – Carl Sagan

According to this article in MIT Technology Review by David Duncan, 216 million Americans are scientifically illiterate. Unfortunately, his article seems to reveal economic and statistical illiteracy are even more prevalent:

Let’s start by focusing on the positive. In just 17 years, over 50 million people have been added to the rolls of Americans who can understand a newspaper story about science or technology, according to findings presented last weekend at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

Michigan State University political scientist Jon D. Miller, who conducted the study, attributed some of the increase in science literacy to colleges, many of which in recent years have required that students take at least one science course. Miller says people have also added to their understanding through informal learning: reading articles and watching science reports on television.

Okay, now let’s talk (dare I say rant?) about the 200 million Americans out there who cannot read a simple story in, say, Technology Review or the New York Times science section and understand even the basics of DNA or microchips or global warming.

This level of science illiteracy may explain why over 40 percent of Americans do not believe in evolution and about 20 percent, when asked if the earth orbits the sun or vice versa, say it’s the sun that does the orbiting–placing these people in the same camp as the Inquisition that punished Galileo almost 400 years ago.

One of Miller’s findings that may surprise many Americans is that Europeans and Japanese actually rate slightly lower in science literacy. To be sure, these same populations also have a much higher percentage of people who accept evolution and other basic scientific theories. America’s large population of conservative religious believers may be one reason for this discrepancy, although clearly there are hundreds of millions of people in the developed world who need education.

Let me begin by saying I used to teach mathematics as an adjunct at Valencia Community College in Orlando, FL. If I had my druthers, I agree with Duncan and wish for a world in which everyone shared my love for math and science and wish our general level of education in these areas was much higher. I have also written before about the terrible state of public education in America today.

Having said that, I have several points of contention with what Duncan wrote. First, I hate asking this question, but on what basis is not being able to read a newspaper article on science or technology such a terrible thing for the average person? (What I mean by this question is of what practical relevance is it for all Americans to be scientifically literate?) In an ideal world, I would love for all Americans to be able to have a high degree of understanding of math and science, but I have to admit I know many people who have made it through life just fine without having a glimmer of understanding about quantum mechanics or knowing anything about relativity or the Human Genome Project.

Second, what is the cost of trying to rectify this situation? In a world of limited resources, what focus should we give to this issue? Many people lack literacy in science because they simply have no interest in it. It can become very expensive to try to force people to learn material they have no interest in, particularly after they have already graduated from school. The personal benefit of increasing the scientific literacy of the average person may not be enough to them to justify what it would cost them in terms of time, effort, and/or money.

Third, I think the 28 percent figure under-reports recent improvements in scientific literacy. According to this report, approximately 2.5 million kids graduated from high school in 2000-2001 school year. Assuming this to be an approximation of graduation rates over the 17-year period Duncan is discussing, a maximum of 17*2.5 million = 42.5 million of Duncan's 50 million people could have been added from public education. (I'll have to try to hunt down more accurate numbers, but this illustrates my point.) If Duncan's statistics are correct, then the US added more scientifically literate people over that 17 year time period than graduated from high school. From any standard I can think of, that's doing pretty good.

This implies one of two things is occurring -- either every high school student in America is graduating being scientifically literate (unlikely) or else many non-students have developed scientific literacy after leaving school. (A third possibility is that the standard for scientific literacy has changed and a fourth is that numbers are wrong.) As the graph below shows, the most significant gains from increasing high school graduation rates seems to already have been made. (Increasing school quality would certainly help.)

(Source: How Many Students Really Graduate from High School? The Process of High School Attrition [PDF] by Hirshman, Pharris-Ciurej, and Willhoft)

Duncan's figure of 216 million happens to be 72% of the 300 million US population. That means this figure includes infants and children who are far too young to have had a chance to learn any science and many immigrants, working adults, and senior citizens who may have never had an opportunity to learn science and may not care to at this point.

Fourth, Duncan does not come across as respectful or fair-minded to people who disagree with evolution. To equate them with the Inquisition that punished Galileo makes about as much sense as equating all atheists with the Communists who put people into Gulags or Pol Pot and the Khemer Rouge. Neither comparison is valid or fair. To characterize people who question evolution as ignorant, irrational, or naive is exceedingly uncharitable. As Alex Tabarrok once wrote:

Thus for someone who knows, really knows, that god(s) exists (and there are many people who claim to know that god(s) exists) then some form of creationism (see the extension) follows as a rational deduction from the premises. It's no point telling these people that creationism is unscientific because given the premise that god(s) exists creationism is scientific. If god(s) exists then evolution is almost certainly false, if not in every particular then surely in the grand claims of a undesigned nature.

Evolutionists don't like this argument because they know that if the public is forced to choose between evolution and god they will choose god every time.

For people of faith to question evolution is a perfectly logical and rational act, particularly when so many people promoting evolution are so ardently atheistic. The science of evolution is far different from and less direct than the astronomical observation of Galileo. Additionally, of what practical import does the average person's opinion about evolution matter in their day-to-day life? Whichever evolutionary perspective one believes has very little practical ramifications.

The common assumption among many is that there is a strong correlation between religious belief and low levels of education. Using rates of church attendance as a proxy for strength of religious belief (a standard proxy used in social sciences), there is virtually no connection between educational levels and strength of belief as shown below:

Church Attendance by Education Level, General Social Survey 2004

	LESS HS	HS DEGREE	JR COLL	BA DEGREE	GRAD DEGRE	Missing	TOTAL
NEVER	23.4% 85	17.3% 248	12.7% 28	13.7% 69	14.6% 41	0	16.8% 471
< 1 A MNTH	30.0% 109	35.1% 503	35.3% 78	36.1% 182	33.2% 93	0	34.5% 965
< 1 A WEEK	23.1% 84	21.6% 309	23.5% 52	21.4% 108	21.8% 61	1	21.9% 614
WEEKLY +	23.4% 85	26.0% 372	28.5% 63	28.8% 145	30.4% 85	0	26.8% 750
Missing	1	3	3	3	1	0	11
TOTAL	100.0% 363	100.0% 1432	100.0% 221	100.0% 504	100.0% 280	1	2800

(Source: The ARDA)

The data shown in this table is freely available to anyone who bothers to look. Those who make proclamations about the ill effects of religion on education are the ones who remind me of the people who proclaimed Galileo to be a heretic without looking through his telescope. In both cases, the evidence to correct their false belief was easily obtainable. In both cases, it seems the harshest critics are unwilling to look.

I think Duncan is overstating the problem of scientific illiteracy in America and understating the progress that has been made. His article comes across as uncharitable towards people of faith. In his attempts to promote scientific literacy, I fear his thinking falls victim to both economic and statistical illiteracy not to mention an unscientific anti-religion bias. Perhaps we should focus more on those issues instead?

P.S. -- Here is Duncan's response to readers about religion and science and a link to his website. Also read his interview with born-again Christian, Francis Collins, who is also head of the Human Genome Project.

P.P.S. -- Here are some similar thoughts about why I don't think there is a shortage of engineers.

P.P.S. -- Christopher Mims of Scientific American weighs in:

But can we blame what have become essentially political or, to some folks, moral choices, on ignorance of science? In my experience, the folks who hold views opposed to mine on issues like teaching evolution in schools and the place of stem cells in treating human disease aren't necessarily ignorant--they just, well, have different views than I do. Which is to say--I don't think William Dembski and Michael Chrichton are stupid or even ignorant--they're just willful. They adhere to world-views that require them to believe things that I don't believe, and that's fine, as long as we get to hash it out in the public court of open scientific debate, rather than having them foist their views on me or my eventual progeny via political means (i.e. the political appointee at NASA who tried to muzzle James Hanson or the policy of ID advocates to try and take over local schoolboards).

I'm just as frightened of these things as Duncan, but I think he, and Dawkins, and so many other thinkers, err when they start to ascribe the views of folks on the other side of the culture wars to "ignorance," which, to me, sounds a little too much like a euphemism for "stupidity."

Otherwise, how would it be possible that the U.S. is more scientifically literate than Japan and Europe (as revealed by this study) but much less likely to accept evolution?

(HT Curious Cat)