Science Literacy, CrossRef Annual Member Meeting, Cambridge, MA, November, 2008, Natalie Angier

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    Notes on slide 1

    I want to begin with a brief look at a parallel universe that in no way resembles our own. This is a picture taken from an article in what for me is an essential source of news -- The Onion. The caption reads, Physicist Richard Kinder is mobbed by paparazzi outside his University of Chicago office, and it’s used to illustrate an article in which scientists complain about "the reckless throngs of photographers that relentlessly hound America's top scientists." "Just because I'm a scientist doesn't mean I have to completely surrender my privacy,” one string theorist said. “The public doesn't have the right to know everything I do every second of the day.” Members of the paparazzi say they are merely responding to public demand, providing a service to the millions of Americans who closely follow the careers of the world's top physicists, mathematicians, and botanists, because, after all, one photographer said, "In this country, people want to know about scientific discoveries the minute they happen."

    The scientists also gripe about the science tabloids that print racy, unsubstantiated stories like this shocker from Stephen Hawking: “Supernovas suggest universe has small cosmological constant!” and “Six sizzling hot John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur pics!” But other scientists are quoted as supporting the aggressive tactics of the paparazzi. "If it weren't for all this publicity, it's possible that far fewer people would support our work," one Nobel laureate in Chemistry said. "We scientists could actually be in the position of needing to scrape pennies together to complete our vitally important research." Diehard science fan Jill Krause agreed. "These scientists are the most important people in America," Krause said. "Our very future depends on them. They are enabling us to live longer and better, discovering the history of the planet we live on, and unraveling the mysteries of the universe. There's no way we'd ever let them work in obscurity. It's laughable."

    Watson & Crick

    Jane Goodall

    E.O. Wilson

    Harold Varmus

    James Hansen

    Neil deGrasse Tyson

    Steven Weinberg

    Sally Ride

    Gil Grissom

    Back in our universe, the reality is much closer to another brilliant piece from The Onion [read].

    Scientists make sure on/off button switched to on. Parts of the machine begin to move, at first slowly, and then rapidly A lot of science begins to generate Many things light up and sounds of thunder happen Science ends. My suggestion: Get the Onion to do a science book.

    So where does this leave us?

    So how do we do? Well, it’s a glass half-full, half-empty state of affairs. We’re pretty good with our Earth science. Something like three-quarters of Americans are aware that the center of the earth is very hot, that the continents move, that there’s natural radioactivity, and that the Earth goes around the sun rather than vice versa (although a smaller percentage know it takes a year to do that). We’re lousier when it comes to physics. A clear majority of adults don’t know that electrons are smaller than atoms, or that lasers have nothing to do with sound waves.

    And because it’s fun to see things through the lens of the battle of the sexes, here’s the breakdown on male vs. female scores, the men being the black bars, women the blue. You can see that men do better than women on most of the questions, with a couple of exceptions -- about the value of antibiotics against viruses, and, amusingly, about whose genes determine the baby’s sex. While three quarters of women know it’s Dad, only half of the potential Dads are aware of their fundamental role in determining the color scheme of the baby’s layette.

    Lest you think that science illiteracy is largely an American phenomenon

    The same decline is seen with television news, which according to surveys remains the public’s major source of science news. Fewer science and medical reporters.

    Over 120,000 people attended the 2008 World Science Festival with sell-out crowds at the Festival’s 44 events

    Second law of thermodynamics It says that heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one or, equivalently, that total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease.

    They are part of the "Eagle Nebula" (also called M16 - the 16th object in Charles Messier's 18th century catalog of "fuzzy" objects that aren't comets), a nearby star-forming region 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Serpens.

    Favorites, Groups & Events

    Science Literacy, CrossRef Annual Member Meeting, Cambridge, MA, November, 2008, Natalie Angier - Presentation Transcript

    1. Wouldn’t it be nice… Physicist Dr. Richard Kinder is mobbed by paparazzi outside his University of Chicago office.
    2.  
    3. Back in the real world…
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    15. Scientists Ask Congress To Fund $50 Billion Science Thing
    16.  
    17. The 10 Questions
      • The center of the earth is very hot
      • All radioactivity is man-made
      • Lasers work by focusing sound waves
      • Electrons are smaller than atoms
      • The universe began with a huge explosion
      • The continents have been moving their location for millions of years
      • Does the Earth go around the Sun or vice versa, and how long does the journey take?
      • Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria
      • It is the father’s gene that determines a baby’s sex
      • Human beings developed from earlier species of animals
    18. So how do we do?
    19. Men vs. Women
    20. Percentage of Europeans who agreed that only genetically modified tomatoes have genes
      • 1996: 40%
      • 1999: 46%
    21. Newspapers with Science Sections
      • 1984: 19
      • 1986: 66
      • 1989: 95
      • Today: 34 and dropping
    22. Newspapers with Horoscopes
      • More than 1,000
    23. Better times ahead? The new administration wants to…
      • Double the budgets of the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and the Office of Science at DOE over ten years
      • Restore autonomy and data supremacy to science agencies
      • Raise Science Advisor to a cabinet-level position
      ?
    24. Promise in the pipeline
      • Enrollment in high school physics classes at an all-time high
      • Number of science & math magnet programs doubled in the past ten years
      • Number of bachelor’s degrees in physics up 31 percent since 2000
      • Doctorates awarded in science and engineering rising ~ 6 percent a year
    25. Even No Child Left Behind is Catching up
      • For students in 4th, 8th and 12th grades, standardized science tests have been added to the mix
    26. Prestige of various occupations 2006
      • Doctor: 58%
      • Scientist: 54%
      • Teacher: 52%
      • Member of congress: 28%
      • Entertainer: 18%
      • Journalist: 16%
      • Business executive: 11%
    27. Everybody loves a crossdresser
    28. Especially if it’s a paying customer
    29. Percentage of Americans who say they know what it means to solve a problem scientifically:
        • 21%
    30. Percentage of scientists we interviewed who said they wished people understood what it means to solve a problem scientifically: 100%
    31. What science is not:
      • A body of facts
      • A matter of opinion
      • A belief system
      • Fixed and unerring
      • A paparazzi magnet
    32. What science is
      • An approach to understanding the world that:
        • Starts with a hypothesis
        • Gathers evidence through observation and/or experimentation
        • Generates answers that are never the last word
    33. A Burning Question
    34. What are the odds?
    35. Clumps Happen
    36. For Whom the Bell Curves
    37. Jinxed!
    38. How long is it, sir?
    39. Physics
    40. “ If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on … what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?”
    41. “ I believe it is the atomic hypothesis, or the atomic fact…that all things are made of atoms, little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when a little distance apart but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.” -Richard Feynman
    42. Hot Work Peter is working on repairs to an old house. He has left a bottle of water, some metal nails, and a piece of timber inside the trunk of his car. After the car has been out in the sun for three hours, the temperature inside the car reaches about 104 degrees F .
    43. What happens to the objects in the car? Answer Yes or No
      • They all have the same temperature.
      • After some time the water begins to boil.
      • After some time the metal nails begin to glow red.
    44. Oy, was I thoisty
      • For drinks during the day, Peter has a cup of hot coffee, at a temperature of about 190 °F , and a cup of cold mineral water, with a temperature of about 40 °F .
      • The cups are of identical type and size and the volume of each drink is the same. Peter leaves the cups sitting in a room where the temperature is about 70 °F .
    45. What are the temperatures of the coffee ( starting 190 º ) and the mineral water (40 º) likely to be after 10 minutes (at 70 º ) ?
      • 160 º F and 50 º F
      • 190 º F and 40º F
      • 160º F and 80º F
      • 70º F and 70 º F
    46. Chemistry
    47. The name is Bond …
    48. Bondage Galore!
    49. Diamonds are forever
              • But graphite bonds
              • are easy to sever…
    50. The Ultimate Ingredients List
    51. Biology
    52. Storming the pearly gates
      • Colonies of 600 types of bacteria -- as different from one another as “humans are from Martians” -- cooperate to feast on your teeth
    53. You can brush every night…
    54. But every morning…the plaque comes back!
    55. Bacteria exemplify the power of the cell
    56. A climate-controlled limousine riding through a storm
    57. All life arises through the splitting of cells…
    58. Geology
    59. Earth looks cool…
    60. But inside that cool exterior…
    61. Earth’s Changing Tapestry
    62. Movers and Shakers
    63. Our burnt out neighbor…
    64. Anybody home?

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