Science illiteracy

Imagine this book written in a foreign language you don't know. You are asked to read and comment on it. So you look around to see what others who say they know they language have said, and you come up with commentary on your own. How valid is your commentary?

This is what the so-called "controversy" about global warming is about. Non-scientists who don't know science or how to read scientific data are TV "experts" getting tons of time and exposure and casting doubt on the conclusions of legitimate science.

There is no fraud. I remember when I was a math major and came up with a shorter, more elegant solution to a problem, a fellow student said, "What a neat trick!" Trick didn't mean dishonesty or conspiracy. It meant I found a better way to do it.

The news is full of such crap. Equal time to idiots is, well, no different than giving many hours a day to those who believe the earth is flat. But none of this would be happening but for the profound failure of our education system. We have a population gullible to the wildest claims because of our basic ignorance of the methodology and tenets of science.

There are legitimate conflicts in science. Indeed, this is how science progresses, by addressing data that don't fit the prevailing model. But once we know the earth isn't flat, we don't deal with it any more unless new data suggest otherwise.

Where is Jonathan Swift when we need him? Someone needs to see the dark humor in all this. Cultural tragedy is getting boring.