昨天在公民报上就看到了加拿大科学家的评论。
其中一位科学家的评论大意是：
类似好莱坞电影明星之类发表的反科学的言论，在误导公众对科学的认识方面起到了很坏的作用。很多人倾向于更相信电影明星而不是科学家。
科学走在认识世界的最前沿，而公众的接受总是需要时间。公众先是从新闻上读到科学的发现，然后我们的孩子们才在教科书上读到。这就需要时间。
但是，在一些重大问题上，比如转基因和气候变化，在这些重大问题上我们可能没有那么多时间去等待公众慢慢接受科学发现。科学家和政策制定者们必须考虑适当的对策来缩小这个认识上的差距。
http://ottawacitizen.com/technology...e-inescapable-lag-time-laid-bare-by-u-s-study
Science, public belief — and the inescapable lag time laid bare by U.S. study
Students have told University of Ottawa biologist Rees Kassen they will memorize material on evolution for his course’s exam but that they don’t believe any of it.
Bryan Neff at Western University has just studied how climate change will make chinook salmon have heart attacks, but he knows for a scientific fact that predicting bad consequences of climate change brings a backlash.
There’s a divide in our society, these and other experts say: We pay scientists to study our world, but we often refuse to believe what they find out.
A major survey published Thursday by Science magazine illustrates how big that gap can be. It looked only at beliefs in the United States, but science veterans in this country say the picture really isn’t so different.
The new survey of 3,748 scientists and 2,002 adults in the general public, conducted by the Pew Research Center, found:
• Asked whether genetically modified food is safe, 88 per cent of the scientists say Yes, but only 37 per cent of the public agreed. That’s a gap of 51 percentage points;
• Should animals be used in research? The scientists were 89 per cent in favour, while 47 per cent of the public said Yes, a split of 42 percentage points;
• On evolution, 98 per cent of scientists and 65 per cent of the public believe humans evolved over time;
• The idea that humans are changing the climate got support from 87 per cent of the scientists and 50 per cent of the public in the U.S.;
• Finally, 68 per cent of the scientists, but only 28 per cent of the public, said it’s safe to eat foods grown with pesticides.
The margin of sampling error for results from all adults is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
“I think the Canadian public is pretty close to being as diverse as the American public, (though) perhaps not as extreme its its views,” said the U of O’s Kassen.
“These are really deep-seated belief systems. As we know from discussions of climate change that have gone on in the past few years . . . strong attachments to belief systems are really hard to change no matter what the evidence is. And I think Canadians have equally strong attachments to their diversity of belief systems.”
“There’s a lot of discussion about the knowledge gap, often centred around our leaders” and political decisions, he said.
U of O’s Howard Alper, a chemist who was chosen as Canada’s top scientist of 2000, agreed: “My intuitive hunch is that, with the exception of GMOs where the Canadian public may be appreciably more supportive than in the U.S., (the) Canadian and U.S. public positions may well be quite similar.”
Western University’s Colin Baird has spent a career explaining chemistry to non-scientists.
He doesn’t think the gap between scientists and the public is as big in Canada as in the United States. But he sees a threat through the Internet.
“You can find just about anything (online) that supports any case about anything,” he said. And it’s worse when a Hollywood celebrity supports a far-out position, like Jenny McCarthy’s public support of discredited vaccine research.
“A lot of people are more prone to believing that than they are to believing scientists.
“Particularly on the climate-change thing, the fact that we’ve got 99 per cent of the climate scientists on one side doesn’t seem to affect people’s beliefs that much.”
Bryan Neff, the fish researcher who is associate dean of science at Western, argues the split isn’t that bad as long as we recognize that new knowledge takes time to spread.
“Science is grappling with issues at the forefront of our understanding. It’s going to take a while for that to penetrate to non-scientists,” he said.
The public “are going to read it in newspapers, and eventually our kids are going to read it in a textbook. There’s a lag.”
Still, he said, “on important issues, like GMOs, like climate change, where we might not have 100 years for the public to get up to speed, (then) scientists and policymakers need to think of strategies to reduce this lag.”
Neff’s work is the cover story in this week’s issue of Nature Climate Change. He showed that chinook salmon need more energy in warmer water, and water that is four degrees too warm causes fatal heart attacks.
