UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA 7.) HOW SCIENTIFIC _ ILLITERACY THREATENS OUR FUTURE CHRIS MOONEY SHERIL KIRSHENBAUMUNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future CHRIS MOONEY AND SHERIL KIRSHENBAUMCopyright © 2009 by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810. Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected]. Designed by Brent Wilcox Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mooney, Chris. Unscientific America : how scientific illiteracy threatens our future / Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-465-01305-0 (alk. paper) 1. Science—Study and teaching—United States. 2. Communication in science—United States. 3. Science in popular culrure—United States. I. Kirshenbaum, Sheril. II. Title. Q149.U5M66 2009 509.73—dc22 2009015482 10987654321Of course we're intimidated by science! Science holds itself above everybody else—above God, evidently. You guys have been kicking ass since the Enlightenment. —STEPHEN COLBERT Instead of being derided as geeks or nerds, scientists should be seen as courageous realists and the last great heroic explorers of the unknown. They should get more money, more publicity, better clothes, more sex and free rehab when the fame goes to their heads. —MATTHEW CHAPMAN, screenwriter and cofounder, ScienceDehate2008CONTENTS From a Scientist and a Writer ix 1 Why Pluto Matters 1 2 Rethinking the Problem of Scientific Illiteracy 13 PART | THE RISE AND CULTURAL DECLINE OF AMERICAN SCIENCE 3 From Sputnik to Sagan 25 4 Third Culture, or Nerd Culture? 4l PART II — Co. NK DIFFERENT RIFTS, STILL DIVIDED Science Escape 2008 53 Unpopular Science 67 Hollywood and the Mad Scientists 81 Bruising Their Religion 95 viivii = CONTENTS PART III 10 Notes Index THE FUTURE IN OUR BONES The Bloggers Cannot Save Us Is Our Scientists Learning? Conclusion: A New Mission for American Science 109 117 127 133 199FROM A SCIENTIST AND A WRITER If we're successful, this book will seamlessly merge form and content. For it is the collaborative work of a writer and a scientist, and it argues that we need many more such “two cultures” partnerships if we're to forge the connections between American science and American society that will guide us through the twenty-first century. Chris is a journalist who learned to value science’s humbling lessons and penetrating way of thinking at a young age. His biologist grand- father, Gerald Cole, had a powerful influence: “Paw” liked to refer to Charles Darwin as “Chuck” and pretend he was sitting right there at the dinner table. Chris's first book, The Republican War on Science, took up the family tradition and helped feed a growing awareness of the ways in which science has been abused in the political realm, thereby jeopardizing our ability to address pressing issues such as global warm- ing. But over time, Chris came to see that the problematic status of sci- ence in our society sprang from causes far more diverse than the most immediate one (conservative ideologues attacking well-established knowledge) and that the solution required far more than throwing George W. Bush out of the White House. In particular, he began to write and lecture about the need for scientists to communicate their knowledge in ways that non-scientists can relate to and understand. Sheril took a very different trajectory, yet converged on a similar place. Currently an associate at Duke University, she holds two master of science degrees in marine biology and marine policy from the Uni- versity of Maine, where she studied the population dynamics and lifex FROM A SCIENTIST AND A WRITER history of Cucumaria frondosa—the ever-charismatic sea cucumber— and worked with the fishing community to preserve and manage the species. Sheril continues to publish in scientific journals, but instead of pursuing a Ph.D. she accepted a position on Capitol Hill working with Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) on energy, climate, and ocean policy. Far from the ivory tower, Sheril soon saw how difficult it can be to inte- grate science into the public policy process and how often scientists fail to connect with top decision makers. A stint working in pop radio as a “Top 40” DJ, meanwhile, showed her how jocks engage the public using basic social-marketing techniques and convinced her that the world of science might get a shot in the arm from employing similar strategies on occasion. Both of our careers, then, have drawn upon the creative energy gen- erated at the intersection between science and other disciplines or ap- proaches. The central inspiration for this book was precisely such a culture-crossing case study: ScienceDebate2008, an initiative in which we joined up with two Hollywood screenwriters, a physicist, a lawyer, and a philosopher to try something unheard of—mobilizing the Ameri- can scientific community to demand that politicians address crucial matters of science policy on the campaign trail. Within months we had dozens of Nobel laureates, scores of scientific luminaries, over 100 uni- versity presidents, a wide range of scientific institutions and societies, and 38,000 individuals supporting us, an unprecedented response from the traditionally staid science world. But although the initiative had many positive repercussions, politicians from both parties largely man- aged to ignore us during the campaign. So did the mass media. It was quite a wake-up call, and demonstrates just how far we—and they—still have to go. Yet through countless discussions about the place of science in our politics and our culture, we've developed the conviction that a better future is possible and that we can build on undertakings like Sci- enceDebate2008 to help ensure it. If we're to meet the science-based challenges that will dominate this century, we have no other choice.FROM A SCIENTIST AND A WRITER xi The good news is that President Barack Obama's administration, with a Nobel laureate as secretary of energy, a restored White House science adviser, and many other distinguished researchers in positions of major influence, represents a dramatic step forward for science and its role in public life. The “reality-based community” has been rein- stated in Washington; after the Bush administration and its “war on sci- ence,” it feels like a sunrise. Yet we can’t expect the long-standing gap between scientists and the broader American public to disappear overnight, meaning this is no time for satisfaction or complacency. If the metaphorical “war” on science is over, now’s the time for the long and difficult process of “nation building’—for laying sounder founda- tions to ensure it doesn’t come raging back. And not a moment too soon: Even as science is crucial to the fate of twenty-first-century America, it’s under assault from new forces that not even the science-friendly Obama administration can fully address, because they’re as much cultural and economic as directly political in nature. This book details what we consider the main challenges, centering on the immense difficulty of bringing useful and accurate information about science to our political and cultural leaders and to the broader American public, a long-standing com- munication problem that only appears to be growing more grave and urgent. Yet we find hope in perhaps the most unexpected of places: The army of young researchers on campuses across the country who do not want to be just scientists, but instead nourish a powerful de- sire to reach out to the society in which they live, and to which they owe so much. Our deepest aspiration is that this book will push these young sci- entists, and those who share their enthusiasm and sense of mission, along that path. They are the future, and we need their help to break down the walls that have for too long separated the “experts” from everybody else. If we can combine the restoration of science in Washington with a renewed effort, partly grassroots in nature, to re- connect it with our broader society, perhaps we can finally create axii = FROM A SCIENTIST AND A WRITER stronger rapport between American science and mainstream Ameri- can culture. Right now the public needs that very badly, but so too do the scientists. Writing a book is a long and yet at times frantic process, and we couldn't have gotten through it alone. For helpful readings, feedback, and copious useful information and advice, we'd like to thank Glenn Branch, D. Graham Burnett, Darlene Cavalier, Matthew Chapman, Jonathan M. Gitlin, Kei Koizumi, Sriram Kosuri, David Lowry, Molly McGrath, Sally Mooney, Shawn Lawrence Otto, Robert Pennock, Stu- art Pimm, Phil Plait, Andrew Plemmons Pratt, Eric Roston, Reece Rushing, Paul Starr, and Al Teich. For putting us on a work schedule, we're indebted to Michelle Foncannon; and for helping us see how to unlock our ideas, to Sydelle Kramer and Bill Frucht, and to Lara Heimert, whose judicious edits were a revelation and who made us re- alize that we could say far more with vastly fewer words. Chris also wishes to thank the Center for Inquiry West, in Holly- wood, for allowing him to use its work space, and the Center for Ameri- can Progress’s Science Progress Web site (http://www.scienceprogress.org) for the opportunity to test-drive many of the ideas that eventually fused into this book. And he wants to specially thank Matthew Nisbet, who opened his eyes to a revealing body of research on the communication of science that has informed and enriched this project. A series of na- tionwide lectures they gave together in 2007 and 2008 served as an oc- casion for thinking through some of the arguments advanced here, and although they do not always agree—especially about ScienceDebate 2008—Chris is indebted to Nisbet for many enlightening conversa- tions and dialogues, as well as for his comments on an early draft of this book. Additional thanks go to filmmaker Randy Olson, whose films about science communication (Flock of Dodos and Sizzle!) have been deeply thought-provoking, who read and commented on our Holly- wood chapter, and whose forthcoming book, Don’t Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style, resonates with our own project. Finally, on a personal note, Chris wants to thank his fiancée, MollyFROM A SCIENTIST AND A WRITER Xiii McGrath, for her faith, support, and refusal to let him work and be se- rious all the time; and his Boston terrier, Sydney, for understanding that Daddy couldn’t go on as many walks as usual when the book dead- lines came up. Sheril would like to thank the Pimm group and members of the Duke community for work space and stimulating conversations that enriched the pages that follow. She wishes to thank David Lowry for constant encouragement, inspiration, and excellent cooking through- out composition of this book, Vanessa Woods for endless advice, Re- becca Katof for unconditional support, Megan Dawson for holding the band together in her absence, and Nicolas Devos for his ever-optimistic outlook. Thanks finally to Mom, Dad, Seth and Rose Kirshenbaum, Jen Kiok, Sea Grant Fellows past and present, and everyone who has motivated her along the journey. Last but hardly least: We want to dedicate this book to the core ScienceDebate2008 crew—Erik Beeler, Darlene Cavalier, Matthew Chapman, Austin Dacey, Lawrence Krauss, and Shawn Lawrence Otto— who constantly inspire us and who prove, to a very high degree of cer- tainty, that any initiative can succeed if only it has the right people behind it. Granted, a little funding also helps, and we're pleased to an- nounce that we'll be devoting a fixed percentage of royalties from sales of this book to ScienceDebate. Here’s to 2012! Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, May 2009CHAPTER 1 Why Pluto Matters “Viva Pluto!” “Stop Planetary Discrimination!” “Pluto Was Framed!” “Dear Earth: You Suck. Love, Pluto” “Pluto is still a planet. Bitches’ T" READ A SMALL SAMPLING OF DEFIANT T-SHIRT AND BUMPER STICKER slogans after the general assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), meeting in Prague in late 2006, voted to excommunicate the ninth planet from the solar system. The union’s action abruptly stripped Pluto of a status as much cultural, historical, and even mytho- logical as scientific. In the astronomers’ defense, it had become increasingly difficult to justify calling Pluto a planet without doing the same for several other more recently discovered heavenly objects, one of which, the distant freezing rock now known as Eris (formerly “Xena”), turns out to be larger. But that didn’t mean the experts had to fire Pluto from its previ- ous place in the firmament. In defining the word planet, they were ar- guably engaged not so much in science as in semantic exercise. Instead of ruling Pluto out, they could just as easily have ruled a few new plan- ets in, as a group of scientists, historians, and journalists had in fact proposed. But the IAU rejected that compromise for a variety of tech- nical reasons: Pluto is much smaller than the other eight planets; it or- bits the sun in a far more elliptical manner; its gravitational pull is not2 “UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA strong enough to have “cleared the neighborhood around its orbit” of other significant objects and debris; and so forth. People were aghast. Not only did they recoil at having to unlearn a childhood science lesson, perhaps the chief thing they remembered about astronomy. On some fundamental level their sense of fair play had been violated, their love of the underdog provoked. Why suddenly kick Pluto out of the planet fraternity after letting it stay in for nearly a cen- tury, ever since its 1930 discovery? “No do-overs,” wrote one cartoonist. Soon, newly launched Web sites began encouraging people to vote on Pluto’s status and override the experts. A Facebook group entitled “When I was your age, Pluto was a planet” drew in 1.5 million mem- bers. New Mexico, the state where Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, had built an astronomy program, took particular offense. Its House of Representatives voted unanimously to preserve Pluto's planethood and named March 13, 2007, “Pluto Planet Day.” Surveying it all, the American Dialect Society selected “plutoed” as its 2006 word of the year—as in, “You plutoed me.” The society offered this definition: “to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astro- nomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet.” Even many scientists were upset. “I’m embarrassed for astronomy,” re- marked Alan Stern, the chief scientist on NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond. Stern questioned the legitimacy of the Pluto demo- tion process: “Less than 5 percent of the world’s astronomers voted,” he charged. Other experts also dissented, even as some wags dubbed the [AU the “Irrelevant Astronomical Union.” Comedians had a field day. Science had opted to “cut and run” on Pluto, quipped Bill Maher. The onetime planet had been forced to join its “own kind” in the outer solar system, “separate but equal,” added Stephen Colbert. There were countless other jokes, many of which made the scientific community, supposedly calm and hyperrational, sound more than a little capricious in this instance. Ultimately, the Pluto decision pleased almost no one; it may even be redebated at the next IAU meeting, slated for August 2009 in Rio de Janeiro. But if that’s the case, how could this planetary crack-up happenWHY PLUTO MATTERS 3 in the first place? Didn’t the scientists involved foresee such a public outcry? Did they simply not care? Was the Pluto decision really scien- tifically necessary? Such questions implicate far more than our current conception of the solar system, or which planets babies will see in the mobiles overhang- ing their cribs. The furor over Pluto is just one particularly colorful ex- ample of the rift today between the world of science and the rest of society. This divide is especially pronounced in the United States, which is simultaneously the world’s scientific leader—at least for the moment—and home to an overarching culture that often barely seems to know or care. (Unless scientists mess with Pluto, that is.) It’s a stunning contradiction, when you think about it. The United States features a massive infrastructure for science, supported by well over $100 billion annually in federal funding and sporting a vast net- work of government laboratories and agencies, the finest universities in the world, and innovative corporations that conduct extensive research. Thanks to such investments, Americans built the bomb, reached the moon, decoded the genome, and created the Internet. And yet today this country is also home to a populace that, to an alarming extent, ig- nores scientific advances or outright rejects scientific principles. A dis- tressingly large number of Americans refuse to accept either the fact or the theory of evolution, the scientifically undisputed explanation of the origin of our species and the diversity of life on Earth. An influential sector of the populace is in dangerous retreat from the standard use of childhood vaccinations, one of medicine’s greatest and most successful advances: By the end of the twentieth century, they were responsible for saving a million lives per year. The nation itself has become politically divided over the nature of reality, such that college-educated Democrats are now more than twice as likely as college-educated Republicans to believe that global warming is real and is caused by human activities. Meanwhile, the United States stands on the verge of falling behind other nations such as India and China in the race to lead the world in scientific endeavor in the twenty-first century.4 UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA If we allow that final lapse to occur, surely part of the reason will be that most of our citizens have had only fleeting encounters with a world of science that can appear baffling, intimidating, and even downright unfriendly. Just 18 percent of Americans know a scientist personally, according to survey data, and even fewer can name the gov- ernment’s top scientific agencies: the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). When polled in late 2007 and asked to name scientific role models, 44 percent of the respondents didn’t have a clue. They simply couldn’t give an answer. And among those polled who did respond, the top selections were Bill Gates, Al Gore, and Albert Einstein, people who are either not scien- tists or not alive. It’s no wonder, then, that even as our scientists get up each morning and resume the task of remaking the world, the American public all too rarely follows along. This alienation leads to recurrent flare-ups like the Pluto episode, in which people suddenly catch wind of what scientists have been doing and react with anger, alarm, or worse. The snubbing of Pluto won't have dire consequences back here on Earth, but other consequences of the science-society divide may prove far more damaging. We live in a time of climatic change and energy cri- sis, of widespread ecological despoilment and controversial biomedical research. We have great cause to fear global pandemics, nuclear prolif- eration, and attacks by tech-savvy terrorists. We stand on the verge of pathbreaking discoveries in genetics and neuroscience (to name just a few fields) that could redefine who we are and even upend our society. This is a time when science is pivotal to our political lives, our prosper- ity, and even our lifestyles and habits. And yet again and again, we encounter disturbing disconnects between the state of scientific under- standing and the way we live our lives, set our policies, define our iden- tities, and inform and entertain ourselves. The problem isn’t merely the dramatic cultural gap between scien- tists and the broader American public. It’s the way this disconnect be- comes self-reinforcing, even magnified, when it resurfaces in key sectors of society that powerfully shape the way we think, and where scienceWHY PLUTO MATTERS 5 ought to have far more influence than it actually does—in politics, the news media, the entertainment industry, and the religious community. In the political arena from 2001 through 2008, the United States was governed by an administration widely denounced for a disdain of science unprecedented in modern American history. Judged next to this stagger- ing low, President Barack Obama's administration gives us great reason for hope. But science remains marginalized in the political arena, and few elected officials really understand or appreciate its centrality to decision making and governance. Too many politicians, Democrats and Republi- cans alike, fail to see the underlying role of science in most of the issues they address, even though it is nearly always present. In fact, politicians tend to be leery of seeming too scientifically savvy: There’s the danger of being seen as an Adlai Stevenson egghead. We're still struggling with the problem that historian Richard Hof- stadter outlined in his classic 1962 work, Anti-Intellectualism in Ameri- can Life, which documented how the disdain of intellect became such a powerful fixture of American culture. The problem is particularly acute when it comes to scientists, and this has been the case to varying de- grees since our nation’s inception. We've even rewritten the biography of one of our most cherished founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, re- casting him as a tinkering everyman when in fact he was a deep-thinking scientist of the first rank. After visiting the country in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville similarly remarked upon Americans’ interest in the prac- tical rather than the theoretical side of science, observing a people more intrigued with the goods delivered at the end of the process than the intellectual challenges and questioning encountered along the way. For a very long time, American scientists have found themselves pitted against both our businesslike, can-do attitudes and our piety. When John McCain and Sarah Palin ridiculed research on fruit flies and grizzly bears on the 2008 campaign trail, they were appealing to precisely this anti- intellectual strand in the American character. They thought they'd score points that way, and they probably did. And if you think politicians are bad, let’s turn to the traditional news media, where attention to science is in steep decline. A 2008 analysis by6 UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that if you tune in for five hours’ worth of cable news, you will probably catch only one minute’s coverage of science and technology—compared with ten min- utes of “celebrity and entertainment,” twelve minutes of “accidents and disasters,” and “26 minutes or more of crime.” As for newspapers, from 1989 to 2005 the number featuring weekly science or science-related sections shrank by nearly two-thirds, from ninety-five to thirty-four. These trends in both types of media have continued and perhaps even accelerated: In 2008, CNN shut down its science, space, technology, and environment unit, and in 2009, the Boston Globe killed its es- teemed science section. As a result of this upheaval, what we might broadly call science communication—the always problematic bridge between the experts and everybody else—is in a state of crisis. The business-driven cutbacks on science content by the “old” media are bad enough, but the “new” media are probably hurting science as much as helping it. The Internet has simultaneously become the best and the worst source of informa- tion on science. Yes, you can find great science content on the Web, but you can also find the most stunning misrepresentations and distortions. Without the Internet, the modern vaccine-skeptic movement probably wouldnt exist, at least not in its current form. Jenny McCarthy, celebrity vaccine critic extraordinaire, is proud of her degree from the “Univer- sity of Google.” More generally, thanks to the Internet and ongoing changes in the traditional news industry, we increasingly live in an oversaturated media environment in which citizens happily try on information sources to see which fit them best. This means they can simply avoid science content altogether unless it seems a good personal match. And they can shop online for scientific “expertise” as easily as they can for Christmas gifts. When we shift our attention to another extremely powerful source of information about science—the entertainment media—we find the situation more complex but still dismaying. From Greys Anatomy to CSI to The Day the Earth Stood Still (the Keanu Reeves version), scienceWHY PLUTO MATTERS 7 and technology provide fodder for many popular television and film plotlines. In fact, there appears to be a growing trend of basing stories on scientific themes, especially in the case of prime-time medical dra- mas. But whether such entertainment depictions contribute to a science- friendly culture is less clear. Often we see little effort devoted to achieving basic scientific plausibility or getting the details right; and we simultaneously find Hollywood obsessed with paranormalist UFO and “fringe science” narratives and recurrent stories of “mad scientists” play- ing God. Scientists in film and television tend to be depicted as villains, geeks, or jerks. Rare indeed is the Hollywood film or scripted drama that tells a story about science that’s both serious and entertaining. That strongly affects how we think. And then there’s religion, the source of the deepest fissure in the science-society relationship. Surveys overwhelmingly show that Ameri- cans care a great deal about faith; many scientists, by contrast, couldn't care less. There’s nothing wrong with that, except that some scientists and science supporters have been driven to the point of outright com- bativeness by the so-called New Atheist movement, led by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and others. Meanwhile, many U.S. religious believers are just as extreme: They reject bedrock scientific findings—including an entire field, evolutionary biology—because they wrongly consider such knowledge incompatible with faith. The zealots on both sides gen- erate unending polarization, squeeze out the middle ground, and leave all too many Americans convinced that science poses a threat to their values and the upbringing of their children. For all these reasons, the rift between science and mainstream Amer- ican culture is growing ever wider. Nearly a decade into the twenty-first century, we have strong reason to worry that the serious appreciation of science could become confined to a small group of already dedicated elites, when it should be a value we all share. Oddly, however, American scientists seem to be feeling pretty optimistic right now. They certainly feel much better than they did five years ago, when they began rallying in a fairly extraordinary fashion—especially8 UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA for scientists, many of whom tend to view politics as something rather distasteful—to oppose the administration of George W. Bush. The Bush administration featured unending scandals over political in- terference with science and scientists. The president himself misstated the facts about the number of embryonic stem cell lines that would be avail- able for federally supported researchers, exaggerated scientific uncertainty about global warming, and kowtowed to anti-evolutionists. His political underlings, meanwhile, regularly gagged government scientists and rewrote their reports. In response to this incredible abuse, American sci- entists became strongly energized, denouncing the Bush “war on science” and eventually organizing into initiatives such as ScienceDebate2008, hoping to reform the way the political system treats scientific knowledge. In this context, it’s no wonder the Obama administration feels like salvation. Having a president who values science, who surrounds him- self with experts and shows every indication of respecting what they tell him, who pledged in his inaugural address to restore science to its “rightful place” in our government—all this changes the cultural cli- mate dramatically. It’s reason to celebrate. Yet we are deluding ourselves if we think all the problems surround- ing science have suddenly been solved. If the Bush administration could become so outrageously anti-science, surely there must be some- thing about our society that makes such behavior politically viable or advantageous—and easy to get away with. A change in administration doesn’t automatically fix the underlying problems, which include the corporate media's marginalizing of science, ongoing divides over science and religion, and an American culture that all too often questions the value of intellect and even glorifies dumbness. In fact, many observers of science policy fear that despite the best of intentions, the Obama administration could find its hands tied when it comes to advancing science in the long run. It will probably take most of the president's first term just to resolve some of the massive problems caused directly by our failure to take science seriously in recent years. Consider the intertwined climate and energy issues. Scientific warn- ings about global warming go back decades, yet our political system hasWHY PLUTO MATTERS 99 repeatedly failed to take action. We now find ourselves in a harsh predicament: Even if we move quickly to address the problem, some ef- fects of global warming could still be devastating and irreversible. The only solution is to remake our energy economy, shifting fairly rapidly away from fossil fuels; but here again, our leaders have failed to ade- quately recognize the need for change, at least until relatively recently. U.S. research funding for energy innovation was in steep decline from 1980 to 2000 in both the corporate and government sectors, a stagger- ing lack of foresight by both our representatives and the society that elects them. It will require an unprecedented effort, but just maybe the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress can turn all of this around. In the process, we hope the president will continue to use the bully pulpit, as only he can, to explain to Americans the centrality of science to the solutions we must develop. But what of the next set of science-related issues, already visible ahead of us? They extend far be- yond our admittedly massive climate and energy problem. At a time of dramatic economic disruption, when scientific research has been a core driver of the nation’s growth over the past century, U.S. government funding of research and development stunningly failed to keep pace with inflation for five years running between 2004 and 2008. Meanwhile, we watched other nations surge in scientific productivity and enthusiastically embrace science as the key to their futures. The American scientific community has been sounding the alarm about this competitiveness challenge, but the political sector has barely begun to respond. Thankfully, the economic stimulus package crafted by Con- gress and signed into law by President Obama in early 2009 was en- couragingly generous to science and finally reversed the disturbing trend of funding declines. Yet we're not overly optimistic about longer- term funding prospects in a climate of trillion-dollar deficits. Fiscal pri- orities have a habit of shifting to immediate needs, and with our government trying to extinguish multiple fires at once, even the best- intentioned and most science-minded of administrations may have a hard time making truly visionary investments anytime soon.10 UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA Looking even further into the future, we can anticipate the coming controversies that new research, particularly in the brain sciences and genetics, could unleash. These days, science fiction is sounding a lot less fictive. Of course we can’t fully predict the future, but it is already pos- sible to anticipate some of what may be on the way: the creation of syn- thetic microbes in the laboratory; the artificial retardation of human aging; the birth of a generation of “designer babies”; the tailoring of medical treatments to our personal genotypes; the increasingly physical understanding of the workings of the brain and its role in individual ac- tions, leading to all kinds of potentially troubling applications, such as the determination of guilt or innocence in the courtroom; and much more. We'll soon be discovering many new levers that could allow us to alter the nature of human identity and existence, and that is not the only kind of possible intervention the future may hold. We're also mov- ing ever closer to the knowledge and techniques that will let us actively manipulate the planet’s climate and weather—so-called geoengineering. Once we have this ability, and in truth we may already be there, won't we be sorely tempted to use it? Having a scientifically attuned public and a scientifically infused culture will matter more than ever as divisive debates emerge about the propriety of such interferences with “nature.” We ought already to be anticipating them and preparing for them as a society. But for the most part, we are not. Scientists know what advances are under way and de- bate them regularly at their conferences, but they're talking far too much among themselves and far too little to everybody else. This isn’t a gap the president or his administration can bridge, and certainly not alone. We need the experts themselves to launch new initiatives to bring these topics into the spotlight, before it’s too late to have a serious dialogue about them. Let’s not forget that even though the scientific community’s old foes (anti-evolutionists, global warming deniers, and so on) may have fallen out of political power, they are no less determined. Moreover, they tend to be much more invested in cutting-edge communication and persua- sion techniques than the defenders of science and reason. And they pullWHY PLUTO MATTERS = 11 out all the stops when it comes to lobbying, argument framing, jour- nalist arm-twisting, and just generally getting their views across, seizing upon a diverse array of media opportunities to do so. If scientists don’t find new ways of reaching out to the broader soci- ety in which they work, they should know all too well by now who will win the attention of the public, the media, and the politicians over the coming years. It’s not hard to understand why many scientists have been so reluctant to engage in such a battle. They still remember a time when keeping America focused on science seemed much easier. In the heady years fol- lowing the Allied victory in World War II, American scientists enjoyed great cultural authority and access to the corridors of power, the invita- tion to rewrite the nation’s educational curriculum, and much more. Many leaders of science still remember that era, yet often at their peril if they believe it reflects the natural or normal relationship between sci- ence and American society. Instead, this rapport requires tremendous effort to forge and maintain. Our culture has changed vastly since the mid-twentieth century. Sci- ence has become much less cool, scientists have ceased to be role mod- els, and kids aren’t rushing home anymore to fire rockets from their backyards. It would be unproductive and also unfair to blame scientists alone for this sad state of affairs. For every scientist who shuns or mis- understands the broad public, there’s another who deeply wants to find better ways to connect and who may exert considerable energy and in- genuity to that end. And we've already seen how other crucial sectors of society fail to give science its due. Still, it is undeniable that the troubling disconnect between the sci- entific community and society stems partly from the nature of scientific training today, and from scientific culture generally. In some ways sci- ence has become self-isolating. The habits of specialization that have ensured so many research successes have also made it harder to connect outside the laboratory and the ivory tower. As a result, the scientific community simultaneously generates ever more valuable knowledge12. UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA and yet also suffers declining influence and growing alienation. Too many smart, talented, influential people throughout our society don’t see the centrality of science in their lives; and too many scientists don’t know how to explain it to them. We are not the first to diagnose the problem this way: Our argu- ment has, as its patron saint, a scientifically trained British novelist named C. P. Snow. Fifty years ago, on May 7, 1959, Snow delivered a famous speech entitled “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolu- tion.” The scientists and humanists of his day, Snow lamented, not only failed to communicate; often they disdained one another. They stood separated by a “gulf of mutual incomprehension.” And this wasn’t a mere oddity of mid-century British intellectual life—it was a global phenomenon with grave consequences. “This polarization is sheer loss to us all,” Snow stated. “To us as a people, and to our society.” Snow has often been accused of oversimplification with his “two cul- tures” thesis; as he himself admitted, “The number 2 is a very danger- ous number.” Yet Snow grasped one overarching truth: The rift between science and culture had to be mended. There were walls to knock down, gulfs to bridge, people to unite, and the future depended on it. Snow knew what really mattered, and you might say our book is merely here to provide half a century of transatlantic updating. And to save Pluto, of course.CHAPTER 2 Rethinking the Problem of scientific Illiteracy | SCIENCE AND OUR CULTURE HAVE COME UNSTUCK, OR IF THEY NEVER properly adhered, we have a serious problem. But it’s also one we need to think about in new ways. In this book we aim to show how science and American society have diverged sharply in the modern era, to de- scribe the present state and consequences of this disconnect, and finally, to propose solutions. First, however, we must dispel some prevalent misconceptions about the real nature of the problem and who is re- sponsible for its existence. Among many scientists, there have long been groans about the pub- lic’s “scientific illiteracy.” The evidence usually consists of various em- barrassing survey findings, revealing disastrously poor citizen responses to questions about scientific topics they presumably studied in elemen- tary or high school. (For instance: “Electrons are smaller than atoms, true or false” or “The universe began with a huge explosion, true or false.”) One prominent researcher on the public understanding of sci- ence has even found that due to their failure to understand basic scien- tific terms or the nature of the scientific process, 80 percent of Americans can’t read the New York Times science section. Perhaps the most shocking and oft-cited scientific illiteracy result: Only half of the adult populace knows the earth orbits the sun once per year. 1314 UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA Such dismal findings have given rise to a standard complaint about where the problem lies whenever scientists and our society, or our po- litical system, come into conflict. The blame is said to lie with “the public,” which needs to be more educated, more knowledgeable, better informed. Yet even a cursory examination reveals serious problems with this line of thinking. To begin with, citizens of other nations don’t fare much better on scientific literacy surveys, and in many cases fare worse. Residents of the European Union, for instance, are less scientifically literate overall than Americans, at least according to one metric for measuring “civic science literacy” across countries. And yet they also appear much more convinced of the reality of global warming and human evolution. Such complexities call into question whether quizzes about a few canonical “facts” or the nature of the scientific process really tell us much about a society's outlook on the science issues that matter most. Indeed, it’s doubtful that a baseline level of scientific literacy is remotely adequate for engaging with the science-centered debates that play out regularly in the news media and the political arena. Is the goal to have a public that can dig into complicated scientific disputes and deter- mine who is right or wrong? If so, then let’s remember that many anti- evolutionists and global warming deniers are scientists themselves, couching their claims in sophisticated scientific language and regularly citing published articles in the peer-reviewed literature. To refute their arguments, one often needs Ph.D.-level knowledge. And even then, the task requires considerable research and intellectual labor well beyond the resources or interest of most people. And the problem grows even more complicated, because sometimes those citizens who put in the most work to understand scientific topics come out the very worst in the end—more severely misinformed than if they were merely ignorant. As Mark Twain put it, “The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, it’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so.” Take the army of aggrieved parents nation- wide who swear vaccines are the reason their children developed autismRETHINKING THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC ILLITERACY 15 and who seem impossible to convince otherwise. Scientific research has soundly refuted this contention, but every time a new study comes out on the subject, the parents and their supporters have a “scientific” an- swer that allows them to retain their beliefs. Where do they get their “science” from? From the Internet, celebrities, other parents, and a few non-mainstream researchers and doctors who continue to challenge the scientific consensus, all of which forms a self-reinforcing echo chamber of misinformation. The vacine-autism advocates are scientifically incorrect; there’s little doubt of that at this point. But whether they could be called “ignorant” or “scientifically illiterate” is less clear. After all, they've probably done far more independent research about a scientific topic that interests and affects them than most Americans have. The same goes for other highly informed, and deeply wrong, groups—the global warming deniers, anti-evolutionists, UFO obses- sives, and so on. Ignorance isn’t their problem, and neither is a lack of intellectual engagement or motivation. Anyone who has ever discussed global warming on national radio—as Chris has done countless times— can expect to be besieged by callers who don’t accept the prevailing sci- entific consensus and have obviously done a great deal of research to back up their prejudices. If anything, such individuals want to make a show of their erudition and proceed to rattle off a mind-boggling string of scientific-sounding claims: Global warming isn’t happening on other planets; urban heat islands (cities) thwart global thermometer readings; the atmosphere’s lowest layer, the troposphere, isn’t warming at the rate predicted by climate models; and the like. Or consider the late Michael Crichton. He was a brilliant science- fiction novelist, screenwriter, and movie producer who backed up his best-selling narratives with considerable scientific research. Yet in his late-life novel State of Fear, he penned a wholly misleading and revi- sionist attack on the science of global warming. Faced with such peo- ple, intellectually driven and empowered as never before by the profusion of “science’—good, bad, and awful—on the Internet, one16 UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA soon recognizes that the lack of scientific knowledge probably isn’t our main problem. Almost inevitably, improvements to our educational system are put for- ward as the primary solution to the problem of scientific illiteracy. It is a lofty goal, of course, and nobody is against improving K-12 science education. But to look to education alone as the silver bullet is to write off as unreachable anyone who has already graduated from the formal educational system. That includes vast stretches of the population, in- cluding most voters, our political and cultural leaders, and the gate- keepers of the media. The most troubling problem with the standard “scientific illiteracy” argument, however, is this: It has the effect, intended or otherwise, of exempting the smart people—the scientists—from any responsibility for ensuring that our society really does take their knowledge seriously and uses it wisely. It’s an educational problem, they can say, or a prob- lem with the media (which doesn’t cover science accurately or pay it enough attention), and then go back to their labs. The Pluto saga, which captured vastly more attention than most sci- ence news stories ever do and deeply engaged many members of the public, utterly explodes this conceit. There isn’t any obvious “true” or “false” answer to the question of whether Pluto is a planet, and people certainly weren't ignorant about it. Rather, they were outraged by the sudden, top-down, seemingly arbitrary change by the science world, and they weren't necessarily wrong to have that reaction. For all these reasons, scholars working in the field of science and technology studies (STS) have largely discarded the idea that our prob- lems at the science-society interface reduce to a simple matter of scien- tific illiteracy, traditionally defined. Instead, these thinkers have grown skeptical of what they sometimes call the “deficit model” that has come to dominate many scientists’ and intellectuals’ views of the public—the idea that there’s something lacking in people’s understanding or appre- ciation of science, and that this in turn explains our predicament.