Kansas State School Board At It Once Again

I saw this to on the abcnews website. It is particularly worrying because by trying to change the definition of science in the classroom to suggest irrelevant speculation, mythology, and the supernatural are equivalent to methodological naturalism they will undermine the education in all sciences not just biology. This will definitely stratify the US even further into the tiny tiny minority of people who actually understand how science works and what the benefits of science are and the vast majority who think that because they think Star Wars, God, and pink unicorns are cool, they must exist and scientists are conspiring to prevent their existence. Interestingly, the entire decision in Kansas is being made by elected officials with no scientific background...it is about as stupid as having athiests dictate what is taught in Sunday school.If the trend spreads from Kansas, the US will have to become an even greater importer of foreign educated scientists because the homegrown science students will be to poorly educated to be able to compete. The trend already exists and will continue to accelerate.

Actually it will be great. Instead of going to the trouble of testing my hypotheses or actually doing any work whatsoever, I can just say the answer is that mammoths are not extinct, they are just hiding behind my refrigerator with all the other extince animals and everyone else is just too dumb to see them... and since according to the ID crowd my just saying so is a superior method for determining the "truth" I save myself a crap load of time and effort that I can better spend drinking beer.

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Are you aware of any politicians that *do* have scientific background?
I mean even federally, outside of Kansas ?
Maybe some former medical practitioners (Bill Frist comes to mind ), but what about real researchers ?

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I don't know that this is the limitation. Under the Clinton administration there were not more scientist politicians either. There was just more of a recognition that science brings direct economic and health benefits for everyone and more if it is done in country i.e. spawning industry. The current administration has taken a much more anti-science stance. I also don't know that having a lot of researchers in congress would necessarily make things better. Many would then tend to use the position to fund their own areas at the expense of others. The key problem is that scientists are not convincing either congress or the American public that science education and funding is a direct benefit to the country.

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OK. Some of us might say we are seeing this already. I know I have already thrown out one non-rhetorical question above, but I now have another.
Why it is, in the USA, we seem to have such a paucity of students *interested* in a science education ? I mean, forget about students that excel in science (we certainly do have some of those), but the majority of American students with opportunity for higher education seem to choose a course of study other than science. Why ?

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I can use Germany as a contrast to the US. If you turn on the tv, every single day there are probably four or 5 science shows on tv. People talk about science and read about it. There is a large investment in communicating science to the public. It is much harder to have a career in science here than in the US because of a really corrupt system of patronage that only allows promotion to professor of pre-arranged candidates...but still, the science programs are full. These highly trained students fill the ranks of American and european universities as faculty and postdocs. But even on the subway, you have a good chance of finding people that are somewhat familiar with current scientific issues. This was completely different from my experiences in the US where the tv science programs were mostly crap and there was little general interest in science and not much respect shown for people who are eager to learn. This is a broad generalization and there are pockets in the US where science is heavily emphasized and well communicated. But it is not as pervasive as in many parts of Europe.As to why this may be so (in my opinion), I will address this below in my response to paisano.

I think the 50's would be a poor metric since there was a huge displacement of foreign scientists to the US as a consequence of WWII. It would probably be better to compare the 70's or 80's to the current trends. However, the trend has been a decreasing enrollment of Americans in science programs and the gap has been filled by foreigners.

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1) Other closely related fields (e.g engineering, computing, medicine) are perceived as more lucrative or interesting.

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I don't know that engineering is perceived as more interesting than say biology, but it is definitely perceived as being more lucrative. There is usually a much shorter period between training and the first "real" job which is a real sticking point.

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2) Academia is perceived as an unattractive career choice (low pay and benefits, revolving series of one year postdocs, excessive politics)

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The security of tenure is attractive but the endless postdoc series is really miserable as I can confirm as one personally in that loop. There is also the dependency on one's supervisor for advancement that can lead to abuse and the rather poor metric of performance as measured by number of publications and impact factors. This is probably for me, the biggest turnoff to the entire field. It is often politically influenced and often based on pure luck whether you get "the big" publication. There are just too many issues of patronage and luck for people to invest a longer than average time in training for a relatively low salary and a long period without benefits or a stable location (moving every 3 years is a burden). I personally would also not generally recommend a scientific career unless things are restructured in the future.

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3) Students who might be interested in science are turned off at the secondary level due to the way science is taught. It seems to be perceived , especially in the physical sciences, as something only for the elite students.

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This is the baffling part..almost all really young kids are drawn to science. Almost everyone knows the names of dinosaurs as a kid and becomes fascinated with the idea of exploration. But some time during high school this gets killed off. And it seems to be US specific as the steep dropoff does not happen in Europe at the same time...the winnowing is usually at the college level as kids start to choose their professions and get selected out by exam scores and not interest. Something in the US system seems to work against teenagers maintaining an interest in science.

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On the Kansas topic, I have to wonder if the mainstream science community tactic of largely avoiding the hearings was the best choice.

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I think it was a mistake. They should have come in with dozens of scientists from different disciplines explaining what science is, why the ToE is science and is supported, why ID is ridiculous and show that the scientific community takes science seriously at every level. What they did was make it look like they did not want to show up to a race they think they can't win.

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As to the culture, I can't be quite so negative as Holmes, although the "inventor-entrepeneur" (Edison, Ford, Gates, Rutan) seems to capture the public imagination as the archetypal American technologist much more than the science professor.

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I did not have such negative experiences as holmes either. But I grew up in an Ivy League university town where almost all of my science classmates were faculty brats (including myself). So I doubt my experiences are representative.I think the problem with the archetype American technologist is that it is an outdate perception, at least in the biological sciences. Biotech feeds off of academic research. It is not the home tinkerer, inventor who drive the discoveries that lead to medicines etc. but usually science professors (or more often their students in the lab). The professor usually provides the funds, the general research direction and (hopefully) the atmosphere were the discoveries can be made and the students at all levels from undergrad to postdoc work their asses off to generate and interpret the data. Many scientists are also entrepreneurs and start up their own companies or move into companies based on their research...but it usually starts from an academic setting and flows to industry. The discoveries made in academia are then often the basis for new treatments, diagnostics or industries. This structure does not seem to be as necessary in fields like engineering.

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Female undergrads seem to do well, but once they get into grad school and post-graduate work some have reported problems with discrimination.

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I don't know that the main problem is direct discrimination but rather indirect. The glass ceiling is hit at the assistant professor level. Basically since the metric used in most places to determine advancement is the number of publications you have and their impact factors, and your most productive period coincides with the time most people want to have children, women are punished for starting families. More specifically, women are forced to choose between a career and a family as academics in the biological sciences. It is particularly accute in Germany where 60% of women in academics forgoe having children in order to advance since in Germany, one typically does not reach the position of professor until the early to mid 40's which is getting kind of late for having children.

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They wish to change the cultural understanding of what science is and so what its mechanisms and methodologies are such that lawyers and theologians and metaphysicians can compete on even ground with physical scientists regarding natural phenomena.

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I am a bit more pessimistic. I don't think they want to change the US cultural understanding of what science is but rather to claim that the almost universal misunderstanding/ignorance of the general public "is" correct. They can cherry pick fields like physical chemistry and say that the determination of the structure of DNA is supported in the same way as the existence of ghosts or mythological beings without supporting it. Most people on the street would probably agree with this given the dismal general public science knowledge in the US. The ID movement is working to redefine science to fit this ignorance to foist their ridiculous musings on the education system in the name of "improving" science. All it will do is create an even larger gap between the fewer and fewer people who understand and can apply scientific discoveries and those who just blindly pop pills and hope that it relieves their pain and does not kill them...it will be a great time to go into the snake oil sales business.

Ok, I agree. It would be a bit odd for most people to accept that their chemistry professor is a hula hoop maker. Though in the evolution debate, many seem to think that the uninformed opinions of engineers and a smattering of people who skimmed the Discovery Institute website are as well versed in biology as biologists...just look at this websites creationist contingent.Though a bit off topic, the movie industry while not anti-science is rather poor in accuracy (not to mention scientists are generally depicted as evil). One movie (cant remember the title but had Val Kilmer on Mars...where his career seems to have been left behind) referred to the four bases in DNA as A, C, G, and P....P???If you need a partner for your witchsmeller pursuyevent industry maybe we can combine forces and I will sell pet rocks with magica healing properties.