The State of Science Today: Challenges and Opportunities for Public Understanding

1. The State of Science Today Colin Mayfield 2011 Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide almost without noticing back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bits (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. Carl Sagan - in “The Demon-haunted World” Carl Sagan Based on Seed Magazine August 2010

2. Researchers have concluded that fewer than one-fifth of Americans meet a minimal standard of civic scientific literacy (Miller, Pardo, and Niwa 1997). • A recent survey revealed that many judges did not possess the knowledge necessary to determine whether evidence presented as scientific was, in fact, scientific. • Neither Americans nor Europeans got high marks in a 2001 quiz designed to test their knowledge of science. • Both groups were asked 13 questions. • On average, Americans answered 8.2 questions correctly, compared with 7.8 for Europeans. • Americans scored higher than Europeans on seven of the questions Quiz results

5. It is generally getting worse!

6. Scientists Who are we? Where do we work? What do we do? Why don’t the public understand science? What are we doing wrong?

7. Who and what are scientists today? Slide 2

8. Scientists make up about 0.25% of the world’s population Where do they work? Slide 3

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10. What do they do? Slide 5

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15. The State of Science Education Slide 10

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18. The State of Science Education Canada is 2nd to Finland at 539 and +/-2.0 Standard Error Slide 13

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21. The cost of science Slide 16

22. The cost of science Slide 17

23. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released their SIPRI Yearbook 2007. In it they outline a number of world issues including annual global military expenditures. World military expenditure in 2006 is estimated to have reached $1,204 billion (US$1.204 trillion) in current dollars with 15 countries having the highest spending and accounting for 83 per cent of the world total. The top five military spenders in US$ are: United States $528.7-B United Kingdom $59.2-B France $53.1-B China $49.5-B Japan $43.7-B Total global R&D spending = $994 billion Total global military spending = $1204 billion Slide 18

24. Large variations in the costs of different types of science Slide 19

25. Commercialization of Science Slide 20

26. Size of the countries of the world in proportion to numbers of patents issued. Slide 21

27. Slide 22 Patent for BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Variant alleles of these genes have been connected to heightened susceptibility to breast and ovarian cancer. The patent was for “An isolated DNA coding for a BRCA1 polypeptide, said polypeptide having the amino acid sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:2” Upon appeal, this human gene patent application was dismissed: The court held that the composition patents were invalid, essentially because they are products of nature. To overcome this, Myriad would have had to establish that the “isolated” and “purified” DNA segments in question had markedly different characteristics, or were fundamentally distinct, from what was found in nature. Thus, mere extraction and purification of a naturally-occurring chemical element or compound would not be patentable (the process for doing this might be, but not the extracted and purified substance itself). Myriad argued that a purified substance not found in nature in pure form was patentable, but this was rejected. • As of 2010, approximately 40,000 United States patents exist that relate to an estimated 2,000 human genes, or about 20 percent of the human genome. • These patents do not cover the genes in any human body as the genes in the human body are natural products and never have been patentable. • The issued patents cover things like (i) isolated genes; (ii) methods of using the isolated genes (for instance, to manufacture protein drugs); (iii) methods to diagnose a disease based on an association between a gene and a disease.

28. Informatics in Science What are the possible roles of informatics in science? Many including: Document management Knowledge management Database management Bioinformatics, etc. Bibliographic searching, retrieval, analysis and storage Slide 23

29. Bibliographic searching, retrieval, analysis and storage Open Access and Publication Slide 24

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31. One might expect the availability of free and open access journals would enable researchers to do a more thorough and comprehensive search of the literature. In fact, the reverse is happening ! Slide 26

32. Fewer individual articles were cited and the average age of cited articles decreased. A smaller and smaller pool of more recent articles received the majority of citations Slide 27

33. Slide 28 Bibliographic Analysis

34. Informatics Relationships between 2 authors in PubMed Slide 29

35. Innovations in Science Publishing Slide 30

36. Other innovations in publishing: • Open Access publication • On-line commentary and revisions • Lists of publications the authors “could have” or “should have” used. • On-line analysis of the derivation of the ideas in the papers. • On-line analysis of author linkages, relationships and conflicts of interest. • On-line analysis of citations in other papers (updated as they occur). • On-line presentation of contrary and similar ideas in other papers. • On-line analysis of the “time-line” of ideas and concepts in papers. • and many others………………. Slide 31

37. Public Opinion of Science Slide 32

38. Science Knowledge Slide 33

39. What do people think of scientists? Slide 34

40. Do people trust scientists? Slide 35

41. A survey carried out by Scientific American and Nature looks for an answer to the question "how much do people trust scientists and their opinions?" • The survey was offered through the two publications' websites to visitors from around the globe. It revealed the attitudes the 21,000 respondents had towards scientists and their opinions on a variety of topics. • Turns out, scientists are very trusted, at least among the scientifically literate that read those publications.  • The survey found that scientists represent a very trusted source of information, ranking 3.98 out of 5 on its scale. When broken down by specific topic, three topics garnered a higher response than the overall score: evolution (4.3), renewable energy (4.08), and the origin of the Universe (4.0). Slide 36

42. A Nature article points out that surveys of the American public at large find that a scant 26 percent believe evolution can explain the variety of life seen on the planet, whereas 87 percent of Scientific American readers (a surprisingly low number?) believe that "all the evidence supports evolution." Slide 37

43. More Americans believe in God than in angels, miracles, and even heaven. And while half attend worship services on a regular basis, a majority thinks religion plays too small a role in people’s lives today. Fully 92 percent of Americans say they believe in God, 85 percent in heaven and 82 percent in miracles, according to the latest FOX News poll. Though belief in God has remained at about the same level, belief in the devil has increased slightly over the last few years — from 63 percent in 1997 to 71 percent today. Slide 38

44. But ………. A national poll, conducted by Opinion Dynamics Corporation, shows that: about a third of Americans believe in ghosts (34 percent) in UFOs (34 percent), in astrology  (29 percent),  in reincarnation (25 percent) and witches (24 percent). http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,99945,00.html Slide 39

45. What can be done about the state of public science education? Obvious things: Better science education in primary and secondary schools Better science education in universities and colleges What does “better” mean? More relevant More interesting More imaginative Less memorization More hands-on learning More application teaching Better mathematics education Experiential learning etc? This approach may be too late? Pay scientists the same as MBAs?

46. The End Or No, really, The End Or: A 2002 Time/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Slide 40