The National Science Foundation released its annual report of scientific literacy among Americans. Not surprisingly America as a whole received a failing grade. As reported in Science News:

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 current furor isn’t over that the numbers are pitifully low – rather that this section was omitted from the final report. Why was it removed?

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.

I think Jon Miller has a quote appropriate response:

“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.”

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.”

I think this is very reflective of the current push by evangelical Christians in this country to conflate science and religion  - which is demeaning and undermining to both. The results are a populace that understand neither which is clearly reflected in this poll.

Countries and cultures that succeed and progress  are forward-looking, scientifically literate (for that time period) and able to critically think and examine issues.

When we, as a country, score this low on questions that form the foundations for almost every single scientific field in existence in which direction do you think we are headed?