THE POLITICS OF IGNORANCE

Most of the buzz generated over the last few days by the latest National Science Foundation study of the state of science understanding in America has, predictably and regrettably, split along party lines.

One side is breathlessly letting everyone know that a sizable percentage of the other side (from their perspective) doesn't know that the earth revolves around the sun.

The other side has been pretty silent about this new study, although there continues to be plenty of rattling on, as there has been for a long while, about how large a portion of the other side (from their perspective) doesn't believe in evolution.

The sheer vindictive, triumphant glee expressed in pointing out just how stupid the other side is, how ignorant, how ill-informed, threatens to drown out the vastly more important point.

But if you listen carefully, that sound you hear is the sound of both sides missing the point.

It's the sound of American Crazy! and it can be heard over the cant and invective and  name-calling, but you have to work at it.

Neither side, as nearly as I can tell, is talking about what's really going on here. Which is, simply, that far too many Americans aren't in possession of some of the most basic knowledge of science our species possesses. There's no excuse for this, and plenty of blame to cover both sides of the political divide.

Just goes to show that American Crazy! has no respect for party lines.

Nor should it. Foolish is foolish, whatever lever gets pulled in the voting booth.

But in a country where a noticeable portion of what passes for major network news broadcasts have focused on the Academy Awards the last few days, we probably shouldn't be surprised.

It would be nice to see a spot survey take right now, posing the same questions about science, but adding an equal number of questions about the Oscars. Bet you can guess which half of the survey would have the higher percentage of correct answers.

Even better:  Let's have the NSF present the same survey to members of Congress, as well as the Judicial and Executive branches of the government! (Then again, maybe not -- those results might well be even worse!)

To be fair, the study, taken in 2012, points out that the levels of incorrect answers about basic science have remained fairly constant over the past quarter century.  

(The article linked to immediate above also points out that the survey posed very general questions about beliefs rather than knowledge, something I'll have much more to say about in upcoming posts.)

Not that any of this should offer any comfort, and it doesn't.

But American crazy! is about a lot of things. Among them the unwillingness to give up confidence in the power of reason, the benefits of education, the virtues of realism, and the eventual ability of all of the above, along with a healthy leavening of skepticism and commonsense, to overcome foolishness and ignorance, not to mention blinders (whatever party is wearing them).

So: The sun will come up tomorrow (as a result, believe it or not, of one more day's worth of distance traveled around around it) and we have evolved (no matter what some people think) to the point where we can start rectifying the gaps and the levels of, to be blunt, if self-promoting, American Crazy! that this survey puts on display.

Can't we?