Science is Hard... But Don't Turn Off your Brain!

I've learned something interesting recently.

According to the Canadian Council of Academies, out of 35 nations whose statistics were available, we rank first in the world in science literacy. Excitement! For the briefest moment, I was proud of my nation. Then I kept reading: we're first in the world, at 42%. Meaning, 42% of Canadians understand enough about science that we can properly decipher a science-related news article, and that makes us the most scientifically-literate nation on the planet.

I knew that in recent years, our conservative government has seemed to be at war with the scientific community; pulling funding and closing long-standing institutions, restricting how publicly funded scientists are allowed to talk to the public, that sort of thing. But that's too recent to affect the education of any but the youngest of us, so I figured the majority of Canadians would at least be able to understand the science section of a newspaper. Apparently not.

And yet activism on scientific issues is everywhere - GMOs, vaccines, “alternative” or “complementary” medicine, even climate change is debated as though we can simply decide it’s not happening!

Most people don't have a very long attention span when it comes to scientific issues. Start going into technical details, and most of your audience will lose interest pretty quick. Instead they want quick, flashy click-bait, a five minute fix before they move on to something else. Even better, skip over the details and tell the audience how it affects them personally. This is something that most science communicators have -  historically at least - not been so good at. They're getting better, as illustrated by the fact that names like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and Richard Dawkins are so well-known, but they've got a lot of catching up to do; unscientific ideas still dominate the media.

This point is illustrated pretty effectively by a study from the Pew Research Centre, (focused on the US) where public opinion on various issues was compared with that of scientists. The difference between the scientific community and Americans as a whole was in many cases astonishingly large. For example, on the topic of my last essay, while 88% of scientists surveyed said GMO foods are perfectly safe for human consumption, only 37% of adults in general agreed.

Why is this? Because to the average person, hard science is boring; you need to be able to put on a show to get their attention. I shared a link to an article the other day where the Science Babe was, well… critical… of a popular blogger best known as the Food Babe. Yet, despite the many problems outlined by Science Babe and many others, Vani Hari not only makes a living with her blog (and it’s traffic), but is sought out for public appearances, including mainstream TV.

Now, if it seems like I'm rambling and a little unfocused, that’s probably because it took me so long to figure out exactly where I was going with this. It would be nice to be able to simply state the truth and be believed, but that’s not really what anyone wants, not even me. So I'm not here to tell you what to think, all I ask is that you think. Be sceptical. I know, most of you are conditioned by your schools and churches to memorize a given list of facts to be regurgitated on command, but that’s only useful when you’re being quizzed - a surprisingly rare event in the real world. (Unless you really
need to know which Teletubby you are). What we really need is to know how to read science articles critically. Thankfully, there are resources out there even for that (See the image to the right for a great example from Double X Science).

I've said this before on my own Facebook profile, but here’s the message I really want to share with you now: Question everything! Nothing is beyond scrutiny. This applies to your teachers, your own assumptions, the media and so-called 'popular opinion' just as much as the big corporations that we all love to demonize.