For years, the National Science Foundation has conducted surveys on a range of questions regarding scientific theories, and has concluded that Americans are scientifically illiterate (to the chagrin of scientists) which has been widely reported in the world’s press. As such, scientists have been clamouring for more and better science education and communication.
There is more below the orange weathervane.
http://www.motherjones.com/...
For example, for many years the NSF has asked the question "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals," and less than half the respondents got it right (true). This time around, they added the phrase, “according to the theory of evolution,” and the number shot up to 72 percent, on par with the rest of the First World. It seemed the original question challenged the identity of creationists, as they do not believe the original question to be true, but when rephrased they can answer it correctly.
This time around, a Yale law professor reworded a range of questions to parse conservatives from liberals on climate science.
As it turns out (the Mother Jones article includes the Yale professor’s questions and charts of results) the problem is not that conservatives do not know climate science. They do not believe climate science, like creationists on the evolution question. Liberals were significantly more likely to pick the correct answers (except the trick questions), and the more scientific knowledge conservatives and liberals have, the greater disparity between them. In other words, politics interferes with a person’s ability to answer correctly questions about climate science theories in the USA.
He threw in some trick questions that the NSF expected nearly everyone would get wrong (such as the melting of the North Pole ice cap would cause significant sea level rise, which is false).
The tables’ axes on the evolution and climate science questions measure a) percentage of correct answers on a question and b) scientific intelligence. The stronger one’s scientific intellect as a conservative, the less likely one believes scientific theories on climate science, and the more likely a liberal will.
Scientific intelligence is a tool to measure how good a person is at mathematical and scientific reasoning.
The author answers this issue about his study this way:
“The problem is not that members of the public do not know enough, either about climate science or the weight of scientific opinion, to contribute intelligently as citizens to the challenges posed by climate change. It's that the questions posed to them by those communicating information on global warming in the political realm have nothing to do with—are not measuring—what ordinary citizens know.”
The article is a fascinating look at how political ideology shapes what one believes about science, rather than what is true.
James, in Wyobraska.
"Science is amazing, but witchcraft is out-of-sight." - Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch Animated Series
(edited to remove a redundant sentence which was redundant)