Science and Society: Scientific Literacy in America

How scientifically literate are you?

That could depend on your politics, according to a recent analysis conducted by the Yale Law School and Psychology Professor Dan M. Kahan ’86.

John Bohannon published an article in Science Insider last Wednesday, Oct. 23 about a controversy ignited by a recent blog post Kahan wrote for the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School. According to Bohannan, Kahan conducted “an informal analysis of survey data that compares people’s comprehension of scientific concepts and their political outlook,” and found that “those who identified themselves as ‘liberal’ tended to have greater scientific comprehension than those who self-identified as ‘conservative’,” but “the effect was small — a correlation coefficient of r = 0.05 — and only weakly significant, with a probability of p = 0.03.”

However, Bohannan noted that, “many studies of people’s ideological leanings and ability to parse scientific information have found similar correlations … [leading] to the widespread perception that politically conservative beliefs go hand in hand with poor scientific understanding.”

Kahan was more reserved in his blog post entitled “Some data on education, religiosity, ideology, and science comprehension,” and less eager to draw conclusions from his analysis. He mused, “there is a small correlation (r = -0.05, p = 0.03) between the science comprehension measure and a left-right political outlook measure … which aggregates liberal-conservative ideology and party self-identification. The sign of the correlation indicates that science comprehension decreases as political outlooks move in the rightward direction — i.e., the more “liberal” and “Democrat,” the more science comprehending.”

However, he notes that in another analysis, he found that there was a positive correlation between scientific comprehension and Tea Party members.

It’s not surprising that Kahan’s findings sparked a firestorm in the blogosphere in which his words were twisted and misinterpreted. Liberals and Tea Partiers alike crowed over their superior scientific understanding (Glen Beck’s website was part of the ensuing “dialogue”), while Kahan sat back and shook his head in disbelief.

Eventually, he felt obliged to respond to the fervent commentary his initial post had inspired in a blog post entitled “Congratulations, tea party members: You are just as vulnerable to politically biased misinterpretation of science as everyone else! Is fixing this threat to our Republic part of your program?”

He noted that it is ironic and depressing that both liberals and Tea Partiers would triumphantly claim superior scientific comprehension based on the results of his analyses, which indicate such weak correlations as to be practically un-noteworthy in the scientific community.

“This association was far too trivial to be afforded any practical significance whatsoever … ” he wrote, “Anyone who might be tempted to beat his or her chest in a triumphal tribal howl over the practically meaningless correlation between right-left political outlooks & science comprehension could thus expect to find him- or herself fatally impaled the very next instant on the sharp spear tip of simple, unassailable logic.”

The controversy highlights an unfortunate truth: in the United States (though really, the world round) the public neither thinks nor functions in a manner befitting a scientifically literate society.  Shocking, given the information and technological revolutions of the past century.
But why does it matter that we strive for this scientific literacy? Kahan eloquently outlined the answer.

“The best available evidence doesn’t tell anyone what policy is best.,” said Kahan. “That depends on judgments of value, which will vary — inevitably and approximately — among free and reasoning people … We will [still] have plenty to disagree about in the democratic process even when we agree about the facts. But without a reliable apprehension of the best available evidence, neither I nor they nor anyone else will be able to confidently identify which policies can be expected to advance our respective values.”

In other words, scientific literacy is fundamental in the pursuit of a stronger, healthier democracy because political dialogue based on a strong understanding of the scientific facts will result in more enlightened governance by our democratic governing body.

The question we should all ask ourselves then, as young and empowered citizens, is: how do we cultivate scientific literacy? And better yet, how can we take advantage of our time at Middlebury to aid us in this cultivation?