US Science Literacy Issues Swept Under the Rug

For a country founded on the idea of religious freedom, it seems counter intuitive that Americans are some of the least likely in the world to believe that humans evolved from earlier species or that the universe began with a big bang.

Anyone who considers themselves a scientist would assume that these basic scientific principles should be considered matters of scientific literacy. The National Science Foundation (NSF) agreed too, publishing the findings of repeated surveys of scientific literacy in their biennial report on the state of global science… until this year.

In a last minute and highly controversial decision, the NSF board decided to omit these key issues from the 2010 edition of Science and Engineering Indicators’ chapter on public attitudes toward science and technology. The section describing the survey results was edited out of the massive report by the National Science Board (NSB). The board is receiving flak from the White House and the nation’s science educators for its decision.

The NSB argued that the survey was misleading and didn’t properly reflect what Americans know about science. Survey authors vehemently disagree, stating that excluding the topics “downplays the controversy.” Joshua Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education stated that “discussing American science literacy without mentioning evolution is an intellectual malpractice.”

NSB officials insist that their decision to drop the survey questions on evolution and the big bang from the 2010 report was based on concerns over the nonpartisan nature of the survey questions. According to John Bruer, a philosopher and the lead reviewer for the chapter, he recommended removing the text because the questions “seemed to be very blunt instruments, not designed to capture public understanding.” Astrophysicist Louis Lanzerotti called the questions “flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because the responses conflated knowledge and beliefs.”

White House officials, to whom the board officially submits the Indicators report, were extremely surprised by the NSB’s action. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) have asked for and were given the board’s explanation for the removal of the text. The authors of the survey disagree with the decision, and those struggling to keep evolution education in the classroom say the subject’s omission could hurt their efforts.

Science obtained a copy of the deleted text, which they say does not differ substantially from what appeared in previous editions of Indicators. The two questions have been part of a NSF funded survey on scientific understand and attitudes toward science since 1983.

The deleted section notes that the percentage of Americans who answered “true” to the statement “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals” is similar to the survey results of other years (45%). This percentage shows that the public belief for human evolution is much lower in the US than in Japan, Europe, China, or South Korea, where 78%, 70%, 69%, and 64% of the public answered “true,” respectively. A similar international separation exists in response to the statement “The universe began with a big explosion,” to which only 33% of Americans agreed.

Bruer stated that by removing these sections, indicators could be developed that “were not as value-charged as evolution.” When Bruer proposed the deletes from Indicators last summer, he also recommended that the board drop the sentence noting that “the only circumstance in which the US scores below other countries on science knowledge is when many Americans experience a conflict between accepted scientific knowledge and their religious beliefs,” which, ironically, was a qualifier the NSB added to the report at his request that the offending sections be removed from the 2008 Indicators.

To support his claim, Bruer notes that a 2004 study found that 72% of Americans answered correctly when the statement about human evolution was prefaced with the phrase “according to the theory of evolution.”

George Bishop, a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati who has studied American’s attitudes towards evolution, believes that the board’s argument has merit. He is quoted as saying “Because of biblical traditions in American culture, that question is a measure of belief, not knowledge,” whereas in Europe and other societies, “it may be more a measure of knowledge.”

Tom Smith of the National Opinion Research Center, which conducts the science knowledge survey for Indicators disagrees with the idea that the questions are flawed. In fact, he believes that prefacing the questions with qualifiers might lead to flawed results since “that could have the effect of tipping respondents off about the right answer.” Smith says that NSF has yet to ask him to make any changes to the survey, which is slated to be used in the 2012 Indicators. NSF hasn’t asked for any changes… not yet, at least. Lanzerotti, as well as the director of the NSF’s statistical office say that it is time to take a fresh look at the survey questions.

John Miller, a science literacy researcher at Michigan State University says that “Evolution and the big bang are not a matter of opinion.” He argues that, “if a person says that the earth really is at the center of the universe… how in the world would you call that person scientifically literate?”

Miller believes, as do many educators who believe that evolution should be taught in the classroom, that removing the entire section from the Indicators report was a clumsy attempt to hide a national embarrassment.

As a comparison he says, “Nobody likes our infant death rate, but it doesn't go away if you quit talking about it.”