![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
♠
Cornelia Dean reports on America's shaky relationship with science. If this dominance falls away, then you know the decline is setting in. You would really rather lead the world in science and innovation than in religious fundamentalism.
___ ___ ___
The United States remains the world leader in scientific and technological innovation, but its dominance is threatened by economic development elsewhere, particularly in Asia, the National Science Board said Tuesday in its biennial report on science and engineering.
The United States’ position is especially delicate, the agency said, given its reliance on foreign-born workers to fill technical jobs.
The board is the oversight agency for the National Science Foundation, the leading source of money for basic research in the physical sciences.
The report, on the Web at nsf.gov/statistics/indicators, recommends increased financing for basic research and greater “intellectual interchange” between researchers in academia and industry. The board also called for better efforts to track the globalization of high-tech manufacturing and services and their implications for the American economy.
Over all, the report said, surveys of science and mathematics education are “disappointing and encouraging.” Fourth- and eighth-grade students in all ethnic groups showed improvement in math, it said, but progress in science is far less robust.
Knowledge gaps persist between demographic groups, with European- and Asian-Americans scoring higher than other groups.
Many Americans remain ignorant about much of science, the board said. Many are unable to answer correctly when asked whether Earth moves around the Sun (it does).
They are not noticeably more ignorant than people in other developed countries except on two subjects, evolution and the Big Bang. Although these ideas are organizing principles underlying modern biology and physics, many Americans do not accept them.
“These differences probably indicate that many Americans hold religious beliefs that cause them to be skeptical of established scientific ideas,” the report said, “even when they have some basic familiarity with those ideas.”
-- Cornelia Dean for The New York Times
___ ___ ___
That Huckabee is a serious contender for the presidency is suggestive of the problem:
xXx
Cornelia Dean reports on America's shaky relationship with science. If this dominance falls away, then you know the decline is setting in. You would really rather lead the world in science and innovation than in religious fundamentalism.
___ ___ ___
The United States remains the world leader in scientific and technological innovation, but its dominance is threatened by economic development elsewhere, particularly in Asia, the National Science Board said Tuesday in its biennial report on science and engineering.
The United States’ position is especially delicate, the agency said, given its reliance on foreign-born workers to fill technical jobs.
The board is the oversight agency for the National Science Foundation, the leading source of money for basic research in the physical sciences.
The report, on the Web at nsf.gov/statistics/indicators, recommends increased financing for basic research and greater “intellectual interchange” between researchers in academia and industry. The board also called for better efforts to track the globalization of high-tech manufacturing and services and their implications for the American economy.
Over all, the report said, surveys of science and mathematics education are “disappointing and encouraging.” Fourth- and eighth-grade students in all ethnic groups showed improvement in math, it said, but progress in science is far less robust.
Knowledge gaps persist between demographic groups, with European- and Asian-Americans scoring higher than other groups.
Many Americans remain ignorant about much of science, the board said. Many are unable to answer correctly when asked whether Earth moves around the Sun (it does).
They are not noticeably more ignorant than people in other developed countries except on two subjects, evolution and the Big Bang. Although these ideas are organizing principles underlying modern biology and physics, many Americans do not accept them.
“These differences probably indicate that many Americans hold religious beliefs that cause them to be skeptical of established scientific ideas,” the report said, “even when they have some basic familiarity with those ideas.”
-- Cornelia Dean for The New York Times
___ ___ ___
That Huckabee is a serious contender for the presidency is suggestive of the problem:
