Holt Think: Ed, Creativity, Tech, Administration

Antiscience Beliefs Jeopardize U.S. Democracy: Scientific American

Doesn’t it bother you that there seems to be not only an anti-science sentiment, but also an anti intellectual sentiment out there these days? How can we be problem solvers and raise a generation to think independently when there are so many in the political world that want people to stick to dogma? Can anyone say Ottoman Empire part 2? This is a great opinion piece that should be shared with every one you know!

From the article: 

Yet despite its history and today’s unprecedented riches from science, the U.S. has begun to slip off of its science foundation. Indeed, in this election cycle, some 236 years after Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, several major party contenders for political office took positions that can only be described as “antiscience”: against evolution, human-induced climate change, vaccines, stem cell research, and more. A former Republican governor even warned that his own political party was in danger of becoming “the antiscience party.”

Such positions could typically be dismissed as nothing more than election-year posturing except that they reflect an anti-intellectual conformity that is gaining strength in the U.S. at precisely the moment that most of the important opportunities for economic growth, and serious threats to the well-being of the nation, require a better grasp of scientific issues. By turning public opinion away from the antiauthoritarian principles of the nation’s founders, the new science denialism is creating an existential crisis like few the country has faced before.