Section About American Ignorance of Science Removed From NSF Report

Americans do not have good knowledge of science and mathematics, compared to the rest of the world. Our educational system has never been as rigorous as those in Asia and Europe, and where we typically see education as a way for underprivileged people to pull themselves up, we tend not to appreciate the actual value of higher education. Look for instance at politically motivated pundits assuming that they can address complex issues in climate science and biology, criticizing findings by highly educated scientists who have devoted their lives to detailed research within a narrow scientific domain.

The National Science Board, under the National Science Foundation, is charged with assessing the public's science literacy every couple of years. Something weird happened this year, though. The Science and Engineering Indicators survey discussed Americans' understanding of evolution and the origins of the universe, and then at the last minute the NSB decided not to publish that section.

ScienceInsider has the story. They say:

In an unusual last-minute edit that has drawn flak from the White House and science educators, a federal advisory committee omitted data on Americans' knowledge of evolution and the big bang from a key report. The data shows that Americans are far less likely than the rest of the world to accept that humans evolved from earlier species and that the universe began with a big bang.

They're not surprising findings, but the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF), says it chose to leave the section out of the 2010 edition of the biennial Science and Engineering Indicators because the survey questions used to measure knowledge of the two topics force respondents to choose between factual knowledge and religious beliefs.

"Discussing American science literacy without mentioning evolution is intellectual malpractice" that "downplays the controversy" over teaching evolution in schools, says Joshua Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit that has fought to keep creationism out of the science classroom. The story appears in this week's issue of Science.

Board members say the decision to drop the text was driven by a desire for scientific accuracy. The survey questions that NSF has used for 25 years to measure knowledge of evolution and the big bang were "flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because responses conflated knowledge and beliefs," says Louis Lanzerotti, an astrophysicist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who chairs NSB's Science and Engineering Indicators Committee.

The explanation doesn't appear to have soothed White House officials, who say that the edit—made after the White House had reviewed a draft—left them surprised and dismayed. "The Administration counts on the National Science Board to provide the fairest and most complete reporting of the facts they track," says Rick Weiss, a spokesperson and analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The deleted text, obtained by ScienceInsider, does not differ radically from what has appeared in previous Indicators. The section, which was part of the unedited chapter on public attitudes toward science and technology, notes that 45% of Americans in 2008 answered true to the statement, "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." The figure is similar to previous years and much lower than in Japan (78%), Europe (70%), China (69%), and South Korea (64%). The same gap exists for the response to a second statement, "The universe began with a big explosion," with which only 33% of Americans agreed.

The board member who took the lead in removing the text was John Bruer, a philosopher who heads the St. Louis, Missouri-based James S. McDonnell Foundation. He told Science that his reservations about the two survey questions dated back to 2007, when he was the lead reviewer for the same chapter in the 2008 Indicators. He calls the survey questions "very blunt instruments not designed to capture public understanding" of the two topics. Evolution, Big Bang Polls Omitted From NSF Report

Respondents were asked whether they agreed with these two questions:

“Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.”
“The universe began with a huge explosion.”

This article says the whole section was deleted, after the White House had had a chance to review the report. It is interesting to see what else the section said:

In the United States, 45% of GSS respondents answered true to the first question in 2008, similar to other years when the question was asked. In other countries and in Europe, the comparable figures were higher: 78% in Japan, 70% in Europe, 69% in China, and 64% in South Korea. Russia and Turkey were the only countries where less than half of respondents responded correctly (44% and 27% respectively) (Gokhberg and Shuvalova, 2004; EC 2005). Similarly, Americans were less likely than survey respondents in South Korea and Japan to answer the big bang question correctly: one third of Americans answered this question correctly compared with 67% of South Korean and 63% of Japanese respondents (figure 7-11).

Americans’ responses to questions about evolution and the big bang appear to reflect factors beyond familiarity with basic elements of science. An experiment conducted in the 2004 Michigan Survey of Consumer Attitudes showed that respondents were more likely to answer these two questions correctly when the questions were prefaced by “according to the theory of evolution” or “according to astronomers.” These differences probably indicate that many Americans hold religious beliefs that cause them to be skeptical of established scientific ideas, even when they have some basic familiarity with those ideas (for additional details see NSB 2008).

Recent surveys conducted by the Gallup Organization provide similar evidence. A 2009 survey showed that more than half (55%) of Americans could correctly name evolution or another closely associated term, such as natural selection, when asked which scientific theory they associate with Charles Darwin. However, in a follow-up question, only 39% of Americans say they believe in the theory of evolution, 25% say they do not believe in this theory, and 36% do not have an opinion on this subject either way (Newport 2009).

In response to another group of questions on evolution asked by Gallup in 2008, 43% of Americans agreed with the statement that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so,” while the 52% agreed with either of two statements compatible with the theory of evolution: that human beings developed 1 over millions of years either with or without God’s guidance in the process (figure 7-12). These views on the origin of human beings have remained virtually unchanged in nine surveys since the questions were first asked in 1982 (The Gallup Organization 2008c).

For almost a century, whether and how evolution should be taught in U.S. public school classrooms has been a frequent source of controversy. The role of alternative perspectives on human origins, including creationism and intelligent design, and their relevance to the teaching of science, has likewise been contentious (The National Academies 2008a). A recent national survey of high school biology teachers in public schools shows that there is a large variation in how teachers approach the topic of evolution. How they teach evolution, in turn, affects public knowledge (see sidebar, How Schools Teach Evolution).

In other developed countries, controversies about evolution in the schools have occurred more rarely. However, signs of opposition to the theory of evolution are emerging in Europe (Clery 2008, Nature 2006). [From the Insider excerpt linked above]

There is also a sidebar about how American schools teach evolution.

The authors don't give us numbers, but we learn that Americans understand that scientists believe that human beings developed from earlier species of animals, they just don't believe it themselves. These polls numbers then reflect a fundamental disrespect for science and education, a feeling among the public that a bunch of brainy guys with PhD's might have a bunch of theories but they're wrong.

Why was this section removed from the report? Maybe because of the numbers themselves, revealing Americans to be largely ignorant about science and far behind the rest of the developed world -- but these percentages are similar to previous reports, and no surprise. Maybe it was because the questions were not well worded, I could accept that for the big bang question but the evolution question is perfectly clear.

Regarding Bruer's assertion that the section was removed because the questions were "very blunt instruments not designed to capture public understanding," ScienceInsider has this:

"I think that is a nonsensical response" that reflects "the religious right's point of view," says Jon Miller, a science literacy researcher at Michigan State University in East Lansing who authored the survey 3 decades ago and conducted it for NSF until 2001. "Evolution and the big bang are not a matter of opinion. If a person says that the earth really is at the center of the universe, even if scientists think it is not, how in the world would you call that person scientifically literate? Part of being literate is to both understand and accept scientific constructs."

When Science asked Bruer if individuals who did not accept evolution or the big bang to be true could be described as scientifically literate, he said: "There are many biologists and philosophers of science who are highly scientifically literate who question certain aspects of the theory of evolution," adding that such questioning has led to improved understanding of evolutionary theory. When asked if he expected those academics to answer "false" to the statement about humans having evolved from earlier species, Bruer said: "On that particular point, no."

It is revealing how Bruer chose to answer that question. Of course there are details in evolutionary theory to work out, that's not what he was asked. The survey asked people whether they agreed with the statement “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” which is not under question by any biologist or anthropologist. If there is a scientific fact, this is it. This doesn't ask about any subtle detail of the theory of evolution, people were simply asked whether they agree that we are descended from other species, and the correct answer, the scientifically literate answer, is yes.

Miller, the scientific literacy researcher, believes that removing the entire section was a clumsy attempt to hide a national embarrassment. "Nobody likes our infant death rate," he says by way of comparison, "but it doesn't go away if you quit talking about it."