     Deeqa (Public user) | Unrecorded Date
THIS IS A HILARIOUS APPROACH TO THE COMMON LAMENT BY SCIENTISTS. YOU'LL HAVE TO KNOW AT LEAST SOME FUNDEMENTAL CONCEPTS TO APPRECIATE THE JOKE THOUGH.
Scientific illiteracy is taking over our minds.
By Dave Barry
(Taken from the London Free Press, Friday July 5/96)
You don't realize it, but you are constantly enjoying the benefits of science. For example. when you turn on the radio; you take it for granted that music will come out: but do you ever stop to think that this miracle would not be possible without the work of scientists? That's right: There are tiny scientists inside that radio, playing instruments!
A similar principle is used in automatic bank-teller machines, which is why they frequently say: SORRY, OUT OF SERVICE." They're too embarrassed to say: "SORRY. TINY SCIENTIST GOING TO THE BATHROOM."
SURVEY SAYS: Yes, science plays a vital role in your life but when it comes to scientific knowledge, there's an excellent chance that you're a moron. I base this statement on a survey conducted by the National Science Foundation which showed the average American does not understand basic scientific principles.
We have a scientific illiteracy problem and you could be a part of it. To find out, see if you can answer these three actual questions from the National Science Foundation survey:
1. True or False: The earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs.
2. Which travels faster, light or sound?
3. Explain. in your own words: What is DNA?
All finished? Let's look at the correct answers:
1. FALSE. The truth is the dinosaurs had been dead for more than a week before the first human came along, probably in the form of Bob Dole. Yet most Americans firmly believe that humans and dinosaurs once co-existed. This misconception arose from the many absurdly inaccurate fictional depictions of caveman life, such as the TV cartoon show The Flintstones, in which the Flintstones own a pet dinosaur named Dino.
Paleontologists, who determine the age of fossils using a technique called carbon dating, have known for years that Dino is actually another character wearing a costume.
"We think it's Barney," the paleontologists announced recently, "but we can't say for sure until we get another government grant."
2. To answer the light-versus-sound question, consider what you observe when a thunderstorm is approaching and a bolt of lightning strikes. First you see the bolt; then you hear thunder. Then you hear a scream if the lightning bolt has struck a person; then you hear a cheer from bystanders if the person was George Steinbrenner.
This tells us light travels faster than sound because light goes straight down from the sky and is therefore attracted by gravity; whereas sound goes sideways and is slowed down by friction with the Earth's rotation, also known as peristalsis, or the Greenhouse Effect.
BALDNESS: 3. DNA is an abbreviation for deoxyribonucleicantidisestablishmentarianism, a complex string of syllables that is found inside your body in little genes called chromosomes.
Biologists often refer to DNA as the Body's Secret Hand-shake, because the information encoded in your DNA determines your unique biological characteristics, such as sex, eye color, age and social security number.
There is surprisingly little difference between the DNA found in humans and that found in other species. This fact has led to research that could benefit mankind, most notably a series of experiments in which biologists chemically altered the DNA in fruit flies in an effort to isolate the gene that causes baldness. The biologists reasoned that fruit flies must contain this gene, because
virtually all of them (the fruit flies) (also the biologists) are bald.
This work took nine years and cost $31 million, but the results were impressive: When a group of fruit flies with normal DNA were compared with a group with altered DNA, both groups were found to consist of little random black smears, because the only way the biologists could get them to hold still was to whack them with rolled-up copies of Scientific American.
So those are your correct answers.
If you did poorly, you're not alone; the National Science Foundation reports that only 25 per cent of the people surveyed, or one in six, passed the quiz.
So there's no question about it: Scientific illiteracy is definitely a major problem. And as the saying goes: "If you're not part of the
solution, you're a newspaper columnist." So I feel I've done my part. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to shake the radio. |
