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November 25, 2006
Where Did You Learn Your Errors?
Pew Research has just published a new study entitled "The Internet as a Resource for News and Information about Science." It has a lot of information and Coturnix at Blog Around the Clock has some abnormally interesting comments on the relevance of the report to science bloggers, of which I am clearly not one. And David Warlick at 2¢ Worth discusses the study from a pedagogical perspective. Please read the study as well as Coturnix and Warlick's remarks.
Two tables in the study struck my eye.
Look at the numbers in each chart for the Bible/Church as a source of information about the origins of life. Notice that only 8% of those sampled claimed they got information on the origins of life from the Bible or the church but 11% said they would go to the Bible or church first for more information. With the understanding that these numbers are near the margin of error of the survey (95% confidence of an error of no more than ±3%) and are based on a sub sample of 571 persons which may have a larger margin of error, I still find them interesting.
Before I comment of this lets look at the results of another question,
"In general, do you think that…?" / "And do you think that…?"
"60% - Humans and other living things have evolved over time
28% - Humans and other living things have evolved due to natural
processes such as natural selection
25% - A supreme being guided the evolution of living things for
the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists
today
6% - Don’t know/Refused
30% - Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since
the beginning of time
10% - Don’t know/Refused"
So 55% (25% plus 30%) gave a clearly unscientific answer, a wrong answer, to this question but only 8% report getting this information from the Bible or church. Something is wrong. Note that only 28% gave a scientifically supportable answer. Sure, knowledge of the evolution of life and knowledge of the origins of life are two different things but I'll bet that difference was not apparent to most of those who took the survey. It is also possible that the respondents had a very small understanding of the origins of life and only reported what they thought was the case rather than what they knew to be the case. After all what they thought was the question. This could account for some of the difference between the nature of their answers and the source of their information. I think the real answer is that family and friends is the most important source of such information for many people. But they didn't answer that way. Otherwise, "other" would have been much bigger or "family and friends" would have developed as its own category. I'm not accusing anyone of lying. But, I do think that many reported perceptions of the source of information were wrong. It is hard to get from 8% to 55% by distributing the difference among occasions of erroneous information in the other named sources of information and assuming that some merely guessed at the answer to the question of what they thought. My own guess is that many of the respondents got MOST of their information from the zeitgeist of our culture (family, peers, etc) and that information originally came from the Bible but many felt too uncomfortable in saying so. They simply didn't get their information from "normal" sources at all. The 8% that reported getting most of the information from the Bible or Church is likely made up of that part of the population that feels no embarrassment in saying they get their scientific information on this topic there.
If the data is taken at face value, the number of those who said they would first go to the Bible or Church for "more" information is 11% as opposed to the 8% that reported getting "most" of their current information on this subject from those sources. The order of question may hold part of the reason for the difference. The question about beliefs was asked first. This was followed by three general questions having to do with the use of the internet when seeking information on the origins of life. Then came the question on where they got most of their knowledge. Then there was a question on ease of use of the internet with regard to the origins of life. After that was the question of where they would go first for more information. Is it possible that after reflecting on their answer to the question about where they got most of their information an additional 3% felt they had slighted the Bible or church and sought to make up for it?
If I am correct, the divergence between where at least one group of respondents actually got their information and where they report getting their information is part of the problem. My guess is that a significant group of people want to have scientific information but do not like the answer science provides. Until, this rather large group of people, somewhere between 55% and 72% of the surveyed population, realize that they lack a scientific understanding of the issue of the origin of life (and here I think they thought they were answering the question of the origin of the diversity of life) it will be hard to assist them in understanding what science is saying and why it is important.
Posted by Duane Smith at November 25, 2006 10:22 AM | Read more on Religion |
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Comments
I have a Hindu friend in engineering who also rejects Darwinism. No matter the rhetorical packaging, a set of reasonable people will always find spontaneous generation unacceptable.
Posted by: Looney at November 25, 2006 8:05 PM
Looney,
No one, no scientist, absolutely no one (except those like yourself who hope otherwise), is thinking of "spontaneous generation" in any real way and that includes those first chemical steps toward life whatever they may have been. And, of course, "spontaneous generation" has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of life in all its diversity. Only those with a theological agenda, like religious fundamentalists of most strips, or who are just plan ignorant have any interest in ideas of "spontaneous generation."
Posted by: Duane at November 25, 2006 8:55 PM
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.
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