2009-07-14 Unscientific Unscientific America Part 1

2009-07-14 Jerry Coyne Why Evolution Is True \Unscientific America\active atheism http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/unscientific-unscientific-america-part-1/ Unscientific Unscientific America. Part 1. Unscientific Unscientific America Part 1  In Unscientific America, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum (hencefore M&K) assert that America is awash in a tsunami of scientific illiteracy. They see this as a severe threat to Americans’ ability to make reasoned judgments about matters like vaccines and global warming, and to America’s preeminence in science.

Where does the problem come from? In an earlier book, The Republican War on Science, Mooney laid it largely at the door of political conservatives. But, say M&K, we now have another enemy: the scientists themselves. By our failure to reach out to the public and engage them, and by our hamhanded and ineffectual efforts when we do, we have missed the opportunity to make this a truly "scientific America." In fact, scientists themselves have supposedly spurned the public, writing off efforts to improve scientific literacy because we see the public as dumb or intractable. As M&K say on their website:

"Yes, well, this whole mindset is precisely what we wrote a book against. The blame the public mindset. The it's not our fault, we’re the smart people mindset."

A lot of the blame, say the authors, rests on atheists-scientists like Richard Dawkins and P. Z. Myers, who, by supposedly forcing people to choose between science and faith, have driven them away from accepting science. The other implicit message is that scientist-atheists should stop "troubling their own house," keeping quiet about their atheism.

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In the next few days I'll publish a three-part review of the book, dealing, respectively, with the nature of the problem, who is to blame for it, and what the solutions are. But I'll start with my overall opinion of the book, which is that it is confused, tendentious, evanescent, and preachy. It is a blog post blown up to book length. Yes, there are some useful parts, in particular the emphasis on science communication and the need to reward those who are good at it. But these solutions are hardly new; indeed, I could find little in Unscientific America that has not been said, at length, elsewhere. And what is new – the accusation that scientists, in particular atheist-scientists, are largely responsible for scientific illiteracy – is asserted without proof. Commentary:
 * 2009-07-14 Coyne on Unscientific America: "I am still endlessly amazed at how proponents of congenial communication, like Mooney and Nisbet, manage to so consistently piss off the targets of their discussions while trying to appease the people who care least about good science."

&ldquo;...I'll start with my overall opinion of the book, which is that it is confused, tendentious, evanescent, and preachy. ... Yes, there are some useful parts, in particular the emphasis on science communication and the need to reward those who are good at it. But these solutions are hardly new; indeed, I could find little in Unscientific America that has not been said, at length, elsewhere.&rdquo;   