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Is KNOWLEDGE of SCIENCE Associated with Higher Skepticism of Pseudoscientific Claims?

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Is KNOWLEDGE of SCIENCE Associated with Higher Skepticism of Pseudoscientific Claims? Is KNOWLEDGE of SCIENCE Associated with Higher Skepticism of Pseudoscientific Claims? MATTHEW JOHNSON MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI e live in a world that is increasingly people with some college experience (51%), although shapedW by and bathed in science, with most scientific post-graduate education is associated with more skepti- progress occurring in the past century, and much of it cism (but still numbers 39% believers). Indeed, a study in the past few decades. Yet, several authors have puz- by Walker et al. (2002) conducted at three undergradu- zled over the observation that modern societies are also ate universities in the U.S. has shown no correlation at characterized by a high degree of belief in a variety of all between knowledge of science and belief in an array pseudoscientific claims that have been thoroughly of pseudoscientific claims. debunked or otherwise discarded by scientists A partial explanation for this state of affairs may be (Anonymous, 2001; Ede, 2000). that scientific factual knowledge has little bearing on Some people argue that belief in pseudoscientific people’s understanding the evidence in favor or against claims is the result of insufficient science education (ref- pseudoscientific claims (Walker et al., 2002). It is well erences in Goode, 2002; Walker et al., 2002). However, known that science education, especially (but not exclu- several polls have shown that, at least for some areas of sively) at the pre-college level, focuses on the teaching of pseudoscience, education does not seem to correlate facts at the detriment of explicit treatment of method- with skepticism (Goode, 2002). For example, in the ological and conceptual issues surrounding the practice United States, the education category with the highest of science (Walker et al., 2002). It is not at all clear why belief in extraterrestrial visits aboard UFOs is that of educators expect that massive factual knowledge of sci- ence should translate into conceptual understanding of the nature of science and into improved critical thinking skills, allegedly the true targets of science education. MATTHEW JOHNSON is in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-1100. MASSIMO This study addresses issues associated with the rela- PIGLIUCCI is Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at State tionships among science factual knowledge, conceptual University of New York, Stony Brook, NY, as well as Executive understanding of science, and belief in pseudoscience Vice-President of the Society for the Study of Evolution; e-mail: by means of a 30-question survey. The survey consists of [email protected]. three types of questions asked of students enrolled in a 536 THE AMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER,VOLUME 66, NO.8, OCTOBER 2004 science major (mostly biology) and compares the ical thinking), or the two (science knowledge and responses to those obtained by groups of non-science critical thinking skills) are unrelated to each majors (business students taking a philosophy class). other. One would not expect the third outcome, The first set of questions consists of 10 multiple-choice that of a positive relationship between conceptu- (five choices) questions intended to assess the students’ al understanding of science and pseudoscientific general knowledge of science (periodic table, the nature belief. of photons, etc.). The second set includes 10 true/false • There is either a negative or no relationship questions testing a respondent’s understanding of between understanding of science concepts and important scientific concepts, such as the difference pseudoscientific belief (because conceptual between theories and laws. The third set of questions understanding of science increases critical think- quantifies the respondents’ degree of belief (on a scale ing, which leads to reduced belief in pseudo- of one to five, with five signifying highest belief) in para- science). Alternatively, conceptual understand- normal phenomena, such as telepathy, astrology, or the ing of science does not translate into critical existence of the Loch Ness monster. thinking skills, and hence the two are uncorre- By surveying science and non-science majors, we lated. The third option, of a negative relationship wished to test the following hypotheses of association between science concepts and pseudoscience among our measures of scientific knowledge, under- beliefs, is not expected under any scenario. standing, and paranormal belief: • Science majors have more factual knowledge of Materials & Methods science than non-science majors (since that is what they are primarily taught). We assembled our 30-question set by examining two previously published surveys. The first one (Walker • Science majors have more understanding of con- et al., 2002) compared knowledge of scientific facts to ceptual issues in science (possibly because they pseudoscientific beliefs. Nine of the ten science fact are able to somehow derive it from factual knowl- multiple-choice questions used by those authors were edge to which they are mostly exposed). kept, and we wrote an additional question to replace the • Science majors express lower degrees of pseudo- one removed. The one question was removed because it scientific belief than non-science majors (pre- required specific knowledge of genetics, immunology, sumably because their knowledge of science and reproduction, which we felt went beyond what makes them more skeptical of such claims). could reasonably be expected at the level of introducto- • There are no differences between genders for ry classes. The question we added tests a student’s belief in pseudoscience, knowledge of science knowledge of the properties of a photon. We picked ten facts, or understanding of conceptual issues in pseudoscientific questions out of the original 14 to science. (Note: Recent surveys have found a high- place in the survey. We reduced the number of ques- er degree of pseudoscientific belief in women tions to eliminate overlapping topics (e.g., in the origi- than men, though the trend is reversed for spe- nal questionnaire there were two questions about cific pseudoscientific claims, such as UFOs and ghosts) and to focus on pseudoscientific beliefs that are unusual life forms like the Loch Ness monster. most common. We also reduced the range of the belief [Anonymous, 2001]). scale from the original 1-7 to 1-5, with five indicating the highest level of belief. We also tested the following expectations concern- ing the pair-wise relationships between the different For the scientific concepts portion of our survey, we types of questions we administered: selected ten true/false questions from Richard Carrier’s (2001) Test of Scientific Literacy. Again, as in the previ- • There is either a positive or no correlation ous case, we eliminated questions due to overlapping between knowledge of science facts and under- topics. We also eliminated questions that seemed high- standing of science concepts (because factual ly technical or could be easily misinterpreted by the stu- knowledge somehow translates into conceptual dents. understanding, or because the two are in fact uncorrelated). The only option that is not expect- We randomized the order of the 30 questions in ed under any educational theory is that of a neg- our survey, so that students would be less likely to try to ative correlation between the two. second-guess the answers, which might be the case if a series of pseudoscientific questions was presented after • There is either a negative or no correlation a series of fact- or concept-based questions. between knowledge of science facts and degree of pseudoscientific belief (because factual knowl- We presented our survey to four classes: two second- edge of science does, in fact, indirectly foster crit- year biology and two second-year philosophy classes 538 THE AMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER,VOLUME 66, NO.8, OCTOBER 2004 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. We of the three sets. We then ran an analysis of variance on assumed in our original experimental design that phi- each of the three summary indices with major, gender, losophy majors would attend the philosophy classes, and the major-by-gender interaction as factors. This pro- however due to class scheduling, the only philosophy vided us with an overview of the association between classes we had access to were, in fact, ethics classes major or gender and science literacy (both factual and attended by business majors. Overall, there were 170 conceptual) or pseudoscientific belief. Similar results respondents. were also obtained by running one-way non-parametric Kruskall-Wallis* analyses of variance. Students were asked during class to volunteer to take the survey. The survey administrator had no relationship In order to obtain a more in-depth view of the same with the class. Instructors were asked to offer no extra relationships, we also ran a series of contingency analy- credit to students taking the survey. Students who ses relating major and gender to the responses to each responded to the survey were asked to provide only four question within each set. We noted both the overall sta- pieces of personal information: age, gender, school year, tistical significance of major and gender effects for each and major. After instructions were given to the class, the question, and the percentage of correct responses (in administrator left the room for 15 minutes to ensure stu- the case of science fact or concept questions) or the dents did not feel pressured to take the survey. Students degree of pseudoscientific belief relative to the total. placed the surveys in a box left at the front of the room We then considered the possible relationships for the administrator to pick up after 15 minutes. among the three sets of measures, which were the major After we collected responses from all classes, we goal of this study. In order to quantify them, we calcu- entered the results onto a spreadsheet that was import- lated both non-parametric correlation coefficients ed into the statistical software Jump (SAS for Macintosh, (Spearman’s and Kendall’s*) as well as parametric v.5.01).
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