Science, Laypeople, and Opinions
Classes don't start for almost another four weeks, so I figured I'd discuss some politics in the meantime.
There is an absolutely astronomical gap between anyone studying science and laypeople. While an electrician could probably discuss their work with the majority of people without the listener getting too lost, a molecular geneticist or an astrophysicist could not. The main reason for this isn't that these topics are necessarily much more complex than what an electrician or mechanic would face (though some may require more talent, work, or determination), but it's actually due to the volume of information one has to know to deal with even a simple problem in science. Everything in nature interacts and all these interactions must be accounted for. (Something broad like psychology has to also account for neurology, physiology, evolution, ecology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics (though mathematics and physics will usually be encompassed by chemistry for practical reasons). And statistics is the life-blood of science, of course.)
By definition, a layperson is anyone who is not educated in a certain field. So I'm a layperson to physics and geology and baking, for example. People take this term as an insult, as if scientists or whomever say it to imply that the average person is stupid. But that's not at all what it's about. It's just used to express that said person is not well learned in whatever field and that their opinion is uneducated.
Believe it or not, an uneducated opinion IS WORTH LESS than an educated opinion. (There's a social construct that says all opinions are equally important, but that's crap.) If a doctor tells me my appendix is ruptured and I need to have it removed, I'm going to listen to the doctor over my landlord who thinks I just have cramps. On the other hand, being educated in one subject does NOT make someone an expert in all fields. If someone with a PhD in English literature and 40 years of teaching experience says that the closest living relative to whales is dugongs, I, as a biology undergraduate student, would be able to correct them with more authority on the subject, because I've actually studied evolution. (And if we were discussing literature, they could hand me my ass.)
Science has to account for ALL the information gathered through ALL TIME. That's why scientific theories change. Creationists like to say that science is inconsistent and that makes it unreliable. But science is NOT inconsistent; it's just constantly improving. All hypotheses and theories are designed so they can realistically be proven wrong (they make predictions, and if the predictions fail, the theory is wrong). If we test those predictions and find them to be wrong, then we have to come up with a new theory that explains ALL THE OLD RESULTS and the new ones. Afterwards, the rest of the scientific community gets to test the hell out of the new theory before it becomes accepted. And then everyone tries to prove it wrong and find its limitations until eventually they do and it's modified again or replaced by a new, better theory. (And Creationists like to say people who "believe" in science are dogmatic... =P)
Since science covers such a massive amount of material and changes so quickly, it's literally impossible to keep on top of all of it. This is why scientists specialize in tiny, little pieces of an issue, like the morphology of bivalves in the great lakes or how mitochondria communicate with a cells nucleus.
The more science progresses, the more ridiculous it is to think the average individual could hold an educated opinion on any of it. There's just too much foundation required for a basic understanding, and it's just not practical to expect anyone to know it all.
Most people are not harmed by not knowing how evolution works on a molecular or even global level. However, many, many people are harmed when these uneducated people's opinions are given equal weight as those of experts. My landlord should NOT get a vote in whether or not my appendix should be removed, and politicians and religious leaders should not have a say in what science should be taught and what research should be conducted. That is what teachers and ethics boards are for.
Uneducated intervention and regulation STOPS PROGRESS. When scientific progress stops, the rest of the world keeps going and we suffer for it. (Just look at what happened when we thought penicillin was a cure-all that would always work, so we stopped trying to find cures for many diseases! Drug-resistance, anyone?)
There is an absolutely astronomical gap between anyone studying science and laypeople. While an electrician could probably discuss their work with the majority of people without the listener getting too lost, a molecular geneticist or an astrophysicist could not. The main reason for this isn't that these topics are necessarily much more complex than what an electrician or mechanic would face (though some may require more talent, work, or determination), but it's actually due to the volume of information one has to know to deal with even a simple problem in science. Everything in nature interacts and all these interactions must be accounted for. (Something broad like psychology has to also account for neurology, physiology, evolution, ecology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics (though mathematics and physics will usually be encompassed by chemistry for practical reasons). And statistics is the life-blood of science, of course.)
By definition, a layperson is anyone who is not educated in a certain field. So I'm a layperson to physics and geology and baking, for example. People take this term as an insult, as if scientists or whomever say it to imply that the average person is stupid. But that's not at all what it's about. It's just used to express that said person is not well learned in whatever field and that their opinion is uneducated.
Believe it or not, an uneducated opinion IS WORTH LESS than an educated opinion. (There's a social construct that says all opinions are equally important, but that's crap.) If a doctor tells me my appendix is ruptured and I need to have it removed, I'm going to listen to the doctor over my landlord who thinks I just have cramps. On the other hand, being educated in one subject does NOT make someone an expert in all fields. If someone with a PhD in English literature and 40 years of teaching experience says that the closest living relative to whales is dugongs, I, as a biology undergraduate student, would be able to correct them with more authority on the subject, because I've actually studied evolution. (And if we were discussing literature, they could hand me my ass.)
Science has to account for ALL the information gathered through ALL TIME. That's why scientific theories change. Creationists like to say that science is inconsistent and that makes it unreliable. But science is NOT inconsistent; it's just constantly improving. All hypotheses and theories are designed so they can realistically be proven wrong (they make predictions, and if the predictions fail, the theory is wrong). If we test those predictions and find them to be wrong, then we have to come up with a new theory that explains ALL THE OLD RESULTS and the new ones. Afterwards, the rest of the scientific community gets to test the hell out of the new theory before it becomes accepted. And then everyone tries to prove it wrong and find its limitations until eventually they do and it's modified again or replaced by a new, better theory. (And Creationists like to say people who "believe" in science are dogmatic... =P)
Since science covers such a massive amount of material and changes so quickly, it's literally impossible to keep on top of all of it. This is why scientists specialize in tiny, little pieces of an issue, like the morphology of bivalves in the great lakes or how mitochondria communicate with a cells nucleus.
The more science progresses, the more ridiculous it is to think the average individual could hold an educated opinion on any of it. There's just too much foundation required for a basic understanding, and it's just not practical to expect anyone to know it all.
Most people are not harmed by not knowing how evolution works on a molecular or even global level. However, many, many people are harmed when these uneducated people's opinions are given equal weight as those of experts. My landlord should NOT get a vote in whether or not my appendix should be removed, and politicians and religious leaders should not have a say in what science should be taught and what research should be conducted. That is what teachers and ethics boards are for.
Uneducated intervention and regulation STOPS PROGRESS. When scientific progress stops, the rest of the world keeps going and we suffer for it. (Just look at what happened when we thought penicillin was a cure-all that would always work, so we stopped trying to find cures for many diseases! Drug-resistance, anyone?)