Re: the question: "Is the fact that a "huge percentage of our population don't understand (or at least can't articulate) the basic mechanisms of evolution" their fault or the fault of the scientific establishment?" I would say neither. As was pointed out earlier in the thread, in the U.S., over half the population does not believe there ARE mechanisms of evolution. I would say this is due mostly to the fact that certain faith-based agendas actually get a hearing in school boards, so that religious dogmas dressed up as science get presented as though they were actual science. Children in those school districts are thus preconditioned to hear the pseudoscience and accept it as fact. And because actual science disagrees with said religious dogmas, the people who believe in them are turned off to listening to actual science, which they already see as godless and the enemy of their deeply-held faith. The scientific establishment does its best to break through this wall of dogma, but if people are brought up from childhood not to accept science, the best efforts of the scientific community are bound to meet with limited success at best.
Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 21:21:22 -0700 From: Wayne Tyson <[email protected]> Subject: Science Communication to the nonscience population Re: [ECOLOG-L] Plant roots matter Re: [ECOLOG-L] Communication Science to Public Plant Roots PS: Is the fact that a "huge percentage of our population don't = understand (or at least can't articulate) the basic mechanisms of = evolution" their fault or the fault of the scientific establishment?=20
