WHY WE DON’T BELIEVE IN SCIENCE

[xchrom]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/brain-experiments-why-we-dont-believe-science.html



Last week, Gallup announced the results of their latest survey on Americans and evolution. The numbers were a stark blow to high-school science teachers everywhere: forty-six per cent of adults said they believed that “God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years.” Only fifteen per cent agreed with the statement that humans had evolved without the guidance of a divine power.

What’s most remarkable about these numbers is their stability: these percentages have remained virtually unchanged since Gallup began asking the question, thirty years ago. In 1982, forty-four per cent of Americans held strictly creationist views, a statistically insignificant difference from 2012. Furthermore, the percentage of Americans that believe in biological evolution has only increased by four percentage points over the last twenty years.

Such poll data raises questions: Why are some scientific ideas hard to believe in? What makes the human mind so resistant to certain kinds of facts, even when these facts are buttressed by vast amounts of evidence?

A new study in Cognition, led by Andrew Shtulman at Occidental College, helps explain the stubbornness of our ignorance. As Shtulman notes, people are not blank slates, eager to assimilate the latest experiments into their world view. Rather, we come equipped with all sorts of naïve intuitions about the world, many of which are untrue. For instance, people naturally believe that heat is a kind of substance, and that the sun revolves around the earth. And then there’s the irony of evolution: our views about our own development don’t seem to be evolving.


Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/brain-experiments-why-we-dont-believe-science.html#ixzz1xPFxojOq

[Kali]

1. explains why teapartiers exist

willful ignorance is sad

[longship]

2. I am always astounded at the stability of this data

What does this say about the state of science education in the US? I suspect that because of the stability of the numbers that it would be difficult to make substantial inroads on making things better.

Still, it's sad.

Thanks, xchrom, for the thread.
R&K

[pscot]

3. Rationality is vastly over-rated.

[rrneck]

4. No matter where you go, there you are.

Inside your own body.

Heat is a substance because you can feel it. Larger falling bodies are slowed by wind resistance. We measure everything against our own human scale, and sometimes the tools aren't up to the job.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

5. One explanation is that many rational people treat irrational and superstitious people with respect.

Instead of making fun of their ignorance and stupidity, even when it is dangerous to us, a great many of us treat them like a senile old relative that should be tolerated and whose occasional rantings should simply be disregarded.

The phrase "all people are created equal" does not mean that we should respond to dangerous nutty people without recognizing that they are nutty and dangerous.

[AtheistCrusader]

9. Not me.

I'm all over them.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

10. Thank you. A thousand thanks.

[jade3000]

14. Or is it the opposite?

That we don't treat them with respect, but we instead call them nutty and dumb.

Seems to me like respectful but strong counter arguments might be the way to go.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

15. Nope.

It only encourages them.

[Lionessa]

6. Fortunately science IS, whether we believe it or not.

That being said, I do sort of understand why people don't entirely "buy" much of what is proclaimed to be scientific data,... because it often changes as we learn more. Medically, environmentally, pretty much ever aspect of science makes assumptions, endeavors to prove those assumptions, seems to prove those assumptions, then a decade or two later, everything we thought we knew scientifically is turned on it's head because as we advance with our scientific knowledge and our testing abilities, we find we were wrong even though it seemed provable at the time. The example that comes to mind first is the example of the pros and cons of hormones for women. Granted not related to evolution, but a scientific issue nonetheless.

Most of the folks I knew who felt that there was some sort of intelligent design (whether alien or gods) would comment that some day scientists would find evidence of such, but hadn't advanced enough to see it yet. With the history of science, I can't entirely argue that possibility.

[stopbush]

16. I'm afraid your statement is a good example of the problem.

Science doesn't "often change." It gets more refined and clear.

Give three examples of science from the past 100 years that prove your assertion that "a decade or two later, everything we thought we knew scientifically is turned on it's head because as we advance with our scientific knowledge and our testing abilities, we find we were wrong even though it seemed provable at the time." Everything? You can't do it.

What you can do is find where scientific consensus has moved from one 45-yard line to the other 45-yard line. You don't see movements from the 45-yard line to the other 10-yard line.

Unfortunately, I've heard many science deniers used this tired and untrue bromide to explain why they distrust science. "Didn't they tell us wine was bad for us last year? Now, it's supposedly good for us this year?" What's lost in these easy and false ideas is the specificity that is attached to such scientific claims, along with the usual scientific disclaimers that the idea being put forth isn't written in stone, but is still open to falsification and new knowledge.

The real problem is that science isn't in the business of issuing written-in-stone theories. That's the work of religion. Since most people in this country are religious, it's easy to see how they take the written-in-stone mindset of their religion and apply it to what they THINK they're hearing from scientists, which is anything but quasi-religious dogma. They see things in black-and-white, right-or-wrong. The nuance of scientific discourse gets handcuffed by them into the simplistic right-n-wrong thinking they learned from their religion.

They then poo-poo science because it is self-correcting: what Joe Q Public imagined to be scientific holy writ (it wasn't), gets a blanket dismissal when science self-corrects, even while clinging to his religion because it refuses to self-correct, even when a correction is obviously in order.

[Lionessa]

17. Correct, science doesn't change, but our publicized understanding of it does,

and hence, some people find it questionable because they don't realize my post's title, "science IS whether we believe it or not", is unequivocally accurate. The questionable part is our full understanding of it, and that will likely always have some questions to it, as I doubt we will ever be able to fully understand everything on earth, much less the universe or beyond.

As you mention scientists cannot write in stone (though the actual science could be if we could fully grasp it as it continues as it does whether we grasp it or not), and that seems to allow many to question it (scientific findings), including other scientists by the way. Questioning in and of itself is a good thing, without it we'd have no scientists. Questioning to the point of reverting to mythology, I agree isn't.

I in no way intend to justify the foolishness, but I think I sort of understand the roots of the foolishness, the roots themselves aren't so bad, questioning what one is told, but the direction they turn for answers??, yeah not so good.

[2on2u]

7. Satan is a clever tool..... just look what he left in amber to throw us a curve.

http://news.discovery.com/animals/dinosaur-feathers-amber-photos-110915.html

Sept. 15, 2011 -- A stunning array of prehistoric feathers, including dinosaur protofeathers, has been discovered in Late Cretaceous amber from Canada.

The 78 to 79-million-year-old amber preserved the feathers in vivid detail, including some of their diverse colors. The collection, published in this week's Science, is among the first to reveal all major evolutionary stages of feather development in non-avian dinosaurs and birds.

In this slide, an isolated barb from a vaned feather is visible trapped within a tangled mass of spider's web.


"These specimens were most likely blown into the tacky resin, or were plucked from an animal as it brushed against resin on a tree trunk," lead author Ryan McKellar told Discovery News.

"The fact that we have found some specimens trapped within spider webs in the amber would suggest that wind played an important role in bringing the feathers into contact with the resin," added McKellar, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

The feather filaments shown here are similar to protofeathers that have been associated with some dinosaur skeletons.

[valerief]

8. I think they're probably only polling the Westboro crowd. nt

[RainDog]

11. k&r n/t

[MLKJrInspired]

12. Much more interesting analysis than I initially thought

Glad I stuck with that one. This quote was especially interesting:

When students learn scientific theories that conflict with earlier, naïve theories, what happens to the earlier theories? Our findings suggest that naïve theories are suppressed by scientific theories but not supplanted by them.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

13. We live in a time and place where ignorance is celebrated

And those of us that point out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes are told to be "more sensitive to those with different beliefs". I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be tolerant of stupidity or ignorance or lazy thinking. Doing so only perpetuates the myth that religion and science are equivalent mechanisms for discerning and explaining reality.

[CanSocDem]

18. Here's one reason....

http://vimeo.com/channels/sciencenewsorg/42343743

Science tells us that the mind is essentially powerless when it comes to affecting exterior events. It goes so far as to suggest that it cannot even affect interiorbodily functions that are already governed by accepted medical theory or practise. Inoculate or die they say.

But don't misunderstand me...I do have faith in a science. The only one with any validity is sociology. It explains how groups of people will believe almost anything in order to be part of the group or to be accepted socially.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see how living in this culture is dependant on accepting specific rules regardless of their validity in your personal value system. Religious 'theism' has as little relevance to me as does the marketing of disease and human fraility.

Basic or advanced education is all about learning rules. No institution will teach an individual how to subvert its' own rules. Religions don't teach spiritualism and science doesn't actually teach how things work as much as it relies on promoting acceptable explanations that fit the general principle of the impotence of the human conciousness.

You may even suggest that this compliance is justified otherwise there would be global anarchy and the inherant evil of mankind would kill us all...

This, of course is just more institutional groupthink, promoted by the most insidiuos of all institutions that deny the basic worth of humankind, the church.

.

[jtuck004]

19. Perhaps we could arrange to have their medical care provided only by doctors

and workers whose science uses that same knowledge base.

That would make this a much smaller issue within just a few years, I expect.

[Zoeisright]

20. Here it is in a nutshell:

You don't BELIEVE in science. You either understand it, or you don't. Belief is for religion.

[Archae]

21. I'm afraid the answer is the easiest one.

Understanding science, especially evolution, is HARD.

Believing in a sky god who did everything is easy.