Book Review: Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future

Last week I got a shiny new library card for my new hometown. Well, it’s hard to call it my hometown, since it’s somewhat likely that I’ll only be here for the summer, but going three months without access to a library was unthinkable- the two and a half weeks since I got here were bad enough.

I walked the three quarters of the mile home with a cheesy smile plastered on my face (seriously, libraries make me so happy) and a few books in my bag that I was excited to try out.

One of them was Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. I was pretty excited about this book, since I’m an engineer by training but have always had one foot in the humanities world and consider parsing geekspeak into normal English among my many talents. A book about the barriers between the general public and the wonders of science and how to tear them down was terrifically appealing to me.

Unfortunately, this book sucked.

The premise the authors lay out is that the general public, and specifically religious conservatives, are mistrustful or fearful or skeptical of science, and that this is a problem which needs to be addressed.

But if these authors represent a public face for the scientific community, it’s no wonder conservatives aren’t biting. They make no effort to hide their liberal bias, scatter the pages with unnecessary jabs at religious conservatives, and seem to take particular glee in vilifying the conservative hero Ronald Reagan. Now, Reagan may well be worthy of criticism when it comes to science, but when they criticize the “Reagan Administration” for being anti-science because of media deregulation that took place during his presidency, then lament the further damage done by the 1996 Telecommunications Act without so much of a hint of the name “Bill Clinton,” it certainly raises some eyebrows. When anti-science things happen during a Republican administration, they get to make biting comments. When anti-science things happen during a Democratic administration, well, that’s just not interesting. In one instance the authors refer to proponents of intelligent design as the “forces of darkness.” I almost stopped reading. A religious discussion may be the least appropriate time to use the Lord’s name in vain, but I can’t help myself: Jesus Christ, you are writing a serious non-fiction book, not a graphic novel. Things like THIS are exactly why religious conservatives don’t like scientists!

But the truly astonishing thing about this book is not that the authors seem to take every opportunity to make comments which will alienate the audience they are most trying to reach. It is that they KNOW that this is counterproductive behavior, because a good portion of the book is dedicated to criticizing scientists for exhibiting it! They spend pages lamenting the nasty and condescending comments often directed at creationists, conservatives and the like, yet managed to name the second-to-last chapter, “Is Our Scientists Learning?” without the slightest hint of irony. Sure, mock a Republican president (again) for no real reason related to your point. That’s a great way to win over conservatives! (Let’s remember that I will be among the first to jump into the “Bush is an idiot” chorus, but I like to think that I’m mature and professional enough that I would be able to refrain from making cheap jokes about his malapropisms when I was trying to garner respect for my ideas by writing a serious text.)

Also, the proposed “solutions” are practically non-existent. An intelligent and complex discussion of the inherent differences between the fields of science and journalism is followed up with the suggestion that scientists be trained in communication skills. Well duh. That’s it- no elaboration, no explanation, just a Captain Obvious comment. The end of each chapter includes a token solution which takes up two paragraphs and isn’t fleshed out with any details at all. They seem like editorial afterthoughts, as if someone in the publishing house said, “Hey, if you include some solutions to these problems we can boast about that on the dust jacket!” They basically are: undergraduate science degrees should require communications classes (which most already do), scientists should take consulting roles in Hollywood (which they already do), and atheists should be nicer to non-atheists (which would be nice and all, but is a little on the flimsy side as solutions to scientific illiteracy go). There you go, I just saved you the trouble of reading through this entire book searching for the “broad array of initiatives” the dust jacket claims are detailed inside.

One of the dangers the authors warn against is the fragmentation of information sources. With modern media, so many options are available that it allows people to “join up with those who think just like they do, in back-scratching communities that rarely encounter anything challenging or unexpected.” It occurs to me that the editing team of this book must have been one such “back-scratching” community, because I cannot imagine any moderately intelligent, self-aware person otherwise allowing this book to go to print. It is so self-oblivious to its own abundant hypocrisy, it’s laughable. Whether the goal of this book was to encourage conservatives to embrace science more openly, or to convince scientists to reach out to conservatives with more respect, it is surely a miserable failure.