According to a new Pew Research Center analysis, six-in-ten Americans (60%) say that “humans and other living things have evolved over time,” while a third (33%) reject the idea of evolution, saying that “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” CONT. […] Read more »
Welcome to the Age of Denial
… The triumph of Western science led most of my professors to believe that progress was inevitable. While the bargain between science and political culture was at times challenged — the nuclear power debate of the 1970s, for example — the battles were fought using scientific evidence. Manufacturing doubt remained […] Read more »
Living to 120 and Beyond: Americans’ Views on Aging, Medical Advances and Radical Life Extension
… The possibility that extraordinary life spans could become ordinary life spans no longer seems far-fetched. A recent issue of National Geographic magazine, for example, carried a picture of a baby on its cover with the headline: “This Baby Will Live To Be 120.” Yet many Americans do not look […] Read more »
Republicans and Democrats Treat Fracking Like It’s Global Warming
The more liberals and conservatives know about science, the more they have wildly variant views about the risks of global warming, according to research by Yale’s Dan Kahan. You might call it the “smart idiot” effect—knowledge, itself, seems to make people with diametrically opposed views more sure that they’re right, […] Read more »
From global warming to fluoride: Why do people deny science?
… Many approaches have been taken to try to convince individual citizens to take climate change seriously. These include the arguments that we have an ethical and moral obligation to the less fortunate on the planet and to future generations, that we are conducting a risky experiment with the planet, […] Read more »
The Congressional War on the Social Sciences
… The nation’s basic science policy, more or less secure for six decades, is being upended, a result of two converging congressional concerns. One is specific to the social sciences—are they real sciences? The second, and much broader, is congressional concern with impact, productivity, pay-off, performance—what justifies science’s claim on […] Read more »