One of the main reason that made me stop watching TV is here but what made me to totally eschew mass media is fact that the genesis of cognitive dissonance evolves from them. The dissonance is chronicled precisely in the book Unscientific America : How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kishenbaum. A great review of the book here:
"Many readers have had a hard time understanding what the main point of Unscientific America is in relation to science communication, suggesting that Mooney and Kirshenbaum don't really know what the point is themselves. I think this is not a lacking on the part of the authors, but rather, it is because the situation is itself undefined and vague, like a battlefield with very few troops spread across a great deal of terrain. Science and society touch in many places but they tend to be discontinuous places. Cable TV shows, but only a couple, are science-oriented (and they all suck). Prime Time TV currently sports forensic science (in a totally unrealistic way) but the presence or absence of science in this venue is capricious and unpredictable. Science is required in high school and college. But so are a lot of other things. Science may or may not be part of a person's weekly media intake. Many Americans probably don't even know when they are looking at science, or when science is in fact making a difference in their lives. Most people probably read, see or hear most of what they consciously encounter from the scientific world in the from of snarky remarks by TV pundits or anchors or sensationalized but uncontextualized "wow" reports about whales or killer bacteria or NASA scientists doing something esoteric but loud and expensive.
Most people do not develop positions on science policy. Most people receive their positions from wherever they receive all of their political views. From Rush Limbauch or Keith Olbermann, or someone. To combine my own personal view (which I have drifted into here, sorry...) with that of Unscientific America: Regular citizens and scientists are separated by a very narrow but very deep canyon, resting comfortably on either side of this canyon and vaguely aware of the others across the way. When science policy issues arise among the citizenry, the scientists don't really play a role. When scientists lobby for their funding from the big agencies and other sources, they don't really account for the people over on the other side of the canyon. This has been the case for years, and over this time, the social and cultural relevance of actual science has pretty much vanished among the populous, and the ability to understand what motivates or interests the general public... or just even how to talk to them ... has disappeared from the culture of science. Not that it was ever there. Looking back, it is clear that the bridges that did exist across this canyon were built by regular people inspired by the occasional super-communicator, such as Carl Sagan. Those bridges were not, in any systematic way, built by the scientists.
Read the book. Respond to it. Help do something to make Unscientific America obsolete. In other words, try to be a good citizen."
I am not sure if I have the heart to read this book. It will make me very sad seeing this great county with so much promise and hope going downhill. I will never be ready to see that happen. The world needs a brilliant and rational America now more than ever.
What the great Indian poet nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote, applies to all denizens of this planet
"Where the mind is without fear
And the head is held high,
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out of the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection,
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary sands of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward into ever-widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom,
My Father,
Let my country awake. "
"Many readers have had a hard time understanding what the main point of Unscientific America is in relation to science communication, suggesting that Mooney and Kirshenbaum don't really know what the point is themselves. I think this is not a lacking on the part of the authors, but rather, it is because the situation is itself undefined and vague, like a battlefield with very few troops spread across a great deal of terrain. Science and society touch in many places but they tend to be discontinuous places. Cable TV shows, but only a couple, are science-oriented (and they all suck). Prime Time TV currently sports forensic science (in a totally unrealistic way) but the presence or absence of science in this venue is capricious and unpredictable. Science is required in high school and college. But so are a lot of other things. Science may or may not be part of a person's weekly media intake. Many Americans probably don't even know when they are looking at science, or when science is in fact making a difference in their lives. Most people probably read, see or hear most of what they consciously encounter from the scientific world in the from of snarky remarks by TV pundits or anchors or sensationalized but uncontextualized "wow" reports about whales or killer bacteria or NASA scientists doing something esoteric but loud and expensive.
Most people do not develop positions on science policy. Most people receive their positions from wherever they receive all of their political views. From Rush Limbauch or Keith Olbermann, or someone. To combine my own personal view (which I have drifted into here, sorry...) with that of Unscientific America: Regular citizens and scientists are separated by a very narrow but very deep canyon, resting comfortably on either side of this canyon and vaguely aware of the others across the way. When science policy issues arise among the citizenry, the scientists don't really play a role. When scientists lobby for their funding from the big agencies and other sources, they don't really account for the people over on the other side of the canyon. This has been the case for years, and over this time, the social and cultural relevance of actual science has pretty much vanished among the populous, and the ability to understand what motivates or interests the general public... or just even how to talk to them ... has disappeared from the culture of science. Not that it was ever there. Looking back, it is clear that the bridges that did exist across this canyon were built by regular people inspired by the occasional super-communicator, such as Carl Sagan. Those bridges were not, in any systematic way, built by the scientists.
Read the book. Respond to it. Help do something to make Unscientific America obsolete. In other words, try to be a good citizen."
I am not sure if I have the heart to read this book. It will make me very sad seeing this great county with so much promise and hope going downhill. I will never be ready to see that happen. The world needs a brilliant and rational America now more than ever.
What the great Indian poet nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote, applies to all denizens of this planet
"Where the mind is without fear
And the head is held high,
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out of the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection,
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary sands of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward into ever-widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom,
My Father,
Let my country awake. "
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