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Return to E-mail Discussion page Previous in threadNext in thread Hi everybody, I'm Eric Weeks, my background is in experimental nonlinear dynamics, and experimental soft condensed matter. Currently I'm a postdoc and I'm starting the job search this fall for an academic job.> 1) Why is it important for the "average person" to know about > science? It's part of being "well-rounded" (although that's ill-defined). In my mind I am picturing the connections I make when I read the newspaper and see a casual reference to a classic book, or Freud, or history. I think the average person ought to be able to make similar connections when they see a casual reference to Newton, or relativity, for example. Further, it would be great if more people were capable of making those casual references themselves as part of their thinking. Also, I wish the average person were more capable of distinguishing real science from pseudo-science. It's frustrating when people distrust conventional medicine, in favor of buying healing magnets sold by advertistments containing scientific mumbojumbo. Further, those people buying magnets for health purposes don't want hear what scientists/doctors have to say about magnets. And of course this problem extends far beyond magnets...> 2) What should they know? What knowledge, skills, or attitudes are > necessary in order for someone to be classified as "science-literate?" (1) An understanding of the strength of the "scientific method". In other words, how science learns things, and why us scientists believe so strongly what we've learned. (2) 11 years after my high school psychology class, I still have some vague memory of what Freudian psychology is about. I think it'd be good for people to have similar background knowlege about some of the bigger scientific theories out there. But, I'm not sure which ones ought to be on the list. (3) Basic math skills are important. Also, an understanding of statistics is part of that, perhaps at the level of that book "How to Lie with Statistics" (I may have the title wrong). (4) Science can be really fun. Everybody should have an opportunity to dissect something squishy, mix some chemicals together, write a small computer program that does something neat (like making a fractal maybe?), etc. They should get to see some neat physics demos, some neat chemistry demos. They should have a sense of how these fun things connect with "real" science. --Eric |
