Published On: August 31st, 2015|

Forbes – Chad Orzel

“Last week NPR ran a story linking to an online “science literacy” quiz based on the work of Jon Miller. Miller has been doing these surveys since 1979, but every now and again they bubble up into general awareness, prompting a flurry of news stories. And, inevitably, those news stories produce cranky reactions from scientists and science educators complaining that this doesn’t really measure “science literacy” and arguing about what “science literacy should really mean. This time around was no exception, with the usual flurry of aggrieved tweets and blog posts; I’ll link to Rhett Allain’s post because it’s a good example, and includes a plug for my book, but it’s not hard to find more of this. (I think it was Ed Yong on Twitter TWTR +3.70% who said that discussions of science communication always feel like an Entmoot, with everyone arguing about definitions and going “Hoom, hoom…” endlessly.) Let me say right up front that I agree with a lot of the criticisms people make of this survey. The questions are simplistic and fact-based, which arguably doesn’t probe what we really want to know. A few of the topics (human evolution and the Big Bang) tell us more about the political affiliation of the respondents than actual science knowledge. And the wording of the questions isn’t as precise as a scientist might like. Those are all fair statements.”(more)