19 August 2006

Monkeys

This too is demoralizing.

Religious fundamentalism, bitter partisan politics and poor science education have all contributed to this denial of evolution in the US, says Jon Miller of Michigan State University in East Lansing, who conducted the survey with his colleagues. "The US is the only country in which [the teaching of evolution] has been politicised," he says. "Republicans have clearly adopted this as one of their wedge issues. In most of the world, this is a non-issue."

I've recently had direct contact with otherwise educated individuals (hey, I'm in the tech industry) who doubt some of the most basic tenets of modern science without ever having made the effort to study them. Does the free information that's been made available on the internet devalue knowledge in some way?

[ posted by sstrader on 19 August 2006 at 5:20:59 PM in Science & Technology ]