A subject of some considerable importance
So, I'm aware that I don't post here, really, and don't have a ton of friends. But! But. I'm posting a link to an article, because I think that the information contained therein deserves to be widely disseminated.
I am a scientist, and so it crushes me a little when people don't understand evolution or, in the case of my particular field, comment that they didn't even know bees had brains. This hurts me deeply.
Thus, an article dedicated to dispelling at least a little of the ignorance.
Can you distinguish molecules from atoms? Genes from genomes? Do you know what makes an experiment statistically significant? If not, do you care? Are you embarrassed by your scientific ignorance - or almost proud of it?
Scientists have been complaining for decades that, while they would be ashamed to admit knowing nothing about Jane Austen’s novels, literary colleagues can get away with total ignorance of relativity and quantum theory. As Larry Summers noted on his installation as Harvard University president in 2001, students rarely admit to never having read a Shakespeare play but find it “acceptable not to know a gene from a chromosome or the meaning of exponential growth”.
I am a scientist, and so it crushes me a little when people don't understand evolution or, in the case of my particular field, comment that they didn't even know bees had brains. This hurts me deeply.
Thus, an article dedicated to dispelling at least a little of the ignorance.
Can you distinguish molecules from atoms? Genes from genomes? Do you know what makes an experiment statistically significant? If not, do you care? Are you embarrassed by your scientific ignorance - or almost proud of it?
Scientists have been complaining for decades that, while they would be ashamed to admit knowing nothing about Jane Austen’s novels, literary colleagues can get away with total ignorance of relativity and quantum theory. As Larry Summers noted on his installation as Harvard University president in 2001, students rarely admit to never having read a Shakespeare play but find it “acceptable not to know a gene from a chromosome or the meaning of exponential growth”.