Statistical evidence indicates that the distribution of condoms is the most successful strategy for preventing the transmission of AIDS in Africa. The recent Bush administration, however, persisted in touting and funding programs encouraging abstinence.
Fifty years ago, a president of the United States couldn’t have gotten away with the imperial ignorance of a George W. Bush or a Rick Perry about science. Now it seems that whether the issue is the climate, disease prevention, forest preservation, salmon restoration, lead-poisoned water or air pollution, belief trumps evidence about what actually is the case. Despite the fact that in the past forty years we have created more scientific knowledge than in the previous 5,000 years, it looks like we are no longer a society guided by science.
As a consequence, Americans are easy prey for nonsense. Joe Garreau, in The Washington Post (July 23, 2001), concluded that at no time in human history has scientific rationality so thoroughly underpinned society and the world’s economy. Nevertheless, rather than a decline in superstition, magic, and madness, we are witnessing increased reliance on gurus, crystals and channeling, Tarot cards, astrological charts, and faddish but untested opinions about health remedies, crop circles, Sasquatch and aliens.
Part of that paradox comes about from the very successes of science. Take the case of medicine. Thanks to two hundred years of scientific medicine, we don’t see school children who have lost companions from tuberculosis, mastoid infection, diphtheria, or scarlet fever, or who play with friends crippled by polio, or for whom deformity, pain, and disability are familiar experiences. But as we enjoy improved health, we seldom think of how it came about. We take antiobiotics and vaccines and surgical procedures for granted.
Our collective ignorance goes well beyond medicine. Few of us understand the science and technology underlying every aspect of the quality of life that we take for granted. More ominous, few appreciate the method that is at the heart of scientific discoveries. As a consequence, noted Garreau, one person’s beliefs about what is real are held to be as valid as another’s, and reality has become a matter of taste.
Before he died some years ago, America’s leading popularizer of science, Carl Sagan, offered people a “Baloney Detection Kit.” Among the tools in the kit are the principles of verifiability—any scientific idea must be empirically testable—and falsifiability—an idea is reality-based if only if there is some fact, test, or evidence that could prove it false.
The net of the scientific method is too small, however, to catch most of reality. Sagan’s tools can’t disclose the meaning of history, of love, of life itself. They can’t inculcate integrity and citizenship and compassion—all the matters examined in the liberal arts.
Yes, schools must teach scientific method. But, lest students get the impression that disciplined thinking is useful only in the science classroom, we need to help young people understand what they are doing when they make judgments that something is correct or true and right or valuable. So often, when asking kids their reasons for saying that something is true or worthwhile, the response I get is a shrug and a mumbled “it just is.” No, the reason that we are willing to take responsibility for a judgment about what is so or about what is valuable is that we have 1) paid careful attention to all the relevant data, 2) asked questions and come up with insight into those data, and 3) weighed the evidence for our insights.
Every statement that we make puts us on trial. Have we paid close attention to the data, something that is very difficult to do for young people in this nation of ADD? Have we given scope to curiosity about the data, asked questions, come to some insight that we can explain, again something that is difficult to do when TV and instant messaging and cell phones leave us little time for wonder, supposition, and playing with ideas? Have we lined up and weighed the evidence for our insights and tested our ideas, still again difficult in a world of sound bytes and hidden persuaders and massive peer pressure.
These imperatives—pay attention to data; question and seek insight into data; weigh the evidence for insights so that you can take responsibility for your statements—should be the stuff of every education. Are they strong enough antidote to the culture that allows a president to get away with non-verifiable and shamelessly political opinions about scientific questions? I don’t know. But I am sure that without a much more critical culture, we will continue, as Sagan warned, to slip into superstition and darkness.
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