A look at some of the issues impacting science today.
Dearth of Lab Geeks Brews Trouble for Innovation
Some of the world's biggest names in commerce seek to do to space what entrepreneurial mariners long ago did to Earth's oceans - privatize the place.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Britain's Virgin Group honcho Sir Richard Branson, and Elon Musk, who made billions when he sold PayPal to eBay, are in a new space race, each building vehicles to take consumers to the cosmos. To launch homegrown rockets you need, well, rocket scientists. So to fuel this type of ambitious innovation, math and sciences education are a must.
Yet in the United States, science is facing threats in the form of flat academic test scores, as well as from religious and political ideologies, some of America's top thinkers argue. With school season approaching, Inventors Digest set out to explore the topic of science and math education, and its intersection with innovation.
Global problems are multiplying and manifesting at faster clips than at any time in history, adding urgency to find solutions. The United States needs math and science proficiency to innovate and invent in the areas of space exploration, global climate change, overpopulation, and a variety of other fields. Inventors looking to make a difference could find fertile ground in fixing the planet or shooting for the stars.
Indeed, NASA is looking to backyard inventors to help improve outer space technologies, from lunar landers to gloves. One of the danger signs, however, that could impede national progress: American math and science test scores are flat-lining compared to those in other developed countries.
"It's important to have a scientifically literate population in the pipeline," says Dr. Gary Phillips, chief scientist at the American Institutes for Research. This year he completed an analysis of test scores among eighth-graders worldwide. His study showed U.S. students lag behind their counterparts in key Asian and European countries.
Life is getting more complicated, Phillips argues, ticking off overpopulation, global warming, pandemic flues, and space-exploration priorities - not to mention thorny bioethical issues surrounding stem-cell research and cloning.
"We can't rely on The Great Man, the next Einstein," he says, "to figure these things out."
ARE SCIENTISTS ANTI-HEROES?
Alvin Toffler, author of "Future Shock," "The Third Wave" and other seminal books that have shaped our way of looking at ourselves and our destiny, sees the problem as a cultural phenomenon.
Hollywood demonizes scientists as mad-lab freaks intent on building weapons of mass destruction, he says. Politicians embrace theology to court votes - three of those this summer running for president raised their hands during a debate, saying they don't believe in evolution. And even those in key positions of government favor the national discourse with scientifically dismissive rhetoric.
Consider comments this year from NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.
As head of the planet's gold-standard space agency, Griffin told National Public Radio: "I have no doubt that ... a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.
"I guess I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings."
(Well, for starters, those at NASA. The agency's own Web site notes: "NASA has a mission to help us all better understand and protect our planet. Learn how we are contributing to make our home a better place for all of us."
"I think there's an attack of science going on," Toffler told Inventors Digest. "When I grew up, scientists were heroes. We see them more as the villains now. There's been a shift in the general attitude that scientists bring upon us danger, in the form of weapons and what have you. I think this will intensify as we move into more controversial realms."
SCIENCE AND THE PSALMS
This summer, President Bush renewed his long-standing opposition to stem-cell research on the grounds it was an assault on the unborn, a position rooted in religious ethics. Religion and science battled it out in other fronts in June. Two creationism museums opened in North America - one in Canada, the other in Hebron, Ky., just outside of Cincinnati. The latter is the site of the multimillion dollar Creation Museum, a product of Answers in Genesis.
The Creation Museum features dioramas depicting dinosaurs mingling peacefully with humans. The museum takes the position that the Bible's Book of Genesis is a literal historical text, describing how God created the universe and our planet in six days about 6,000 years ago. Most archeologist, paleontologists, geologists and scientists of all stripes believe the Earth to be billions of years old and that evolution developed the plant and animals species we have today.
Ken Ham, the CEO of Answers in Genesis, tells Inventors Digest that it's the mainstream scientific community that has failed to apply rigorous scientific principles to evolution. Too many scientists trust fossil records, layered in different epochs of Earth's soil, and too many have a misplaced confidence in carbon dating and other dating tools, he says. These tools indicate life existed millions of years ago. Not so, says Ham, a former high school biology teacher from Australia.
"There is deliberate design (in the Bible), and we can trust that," he says. "Philosophically, that gave rise to science that put a man on the moon. The more we move to random chance, the more we will decrease the inventive process. Eventually you could have less innovation without a biblical foundation." As for critics who liken his museum's dioramas to Fred Flintstone cartoons, Ham offers the humble coelacanth, a large ocean fish scientists believed had gone extinct with the dinosaurs.
"Here it is, living in the present," Ham says. "There are many examples like that - crocodiles are living 'fossils.' So why is it remarkable to think that dinosaurs and humans didn't live together?"
BREAK OUT THE SLIDE RULERS
"The difference between science and religion," says Toffler, "is that in religion, you're asked to accept previous learning. In science, you get a Nobel Prize for challenging the past."
Science is about this: Will something work and will it work every time?
And here's where the nexus of science ed and innovation occurs.
"If the popular culture puts down the efforts of scientists, then don't come knocking on the door for the next medication you need," Toffler says. "Don't come knocking on the door for the next breakthrough product.
"It's no accident that countries that have invested a lot in science and engineering are better off than countries that haven't," he adds.
Science, at its core, is about testing and retesting, about challenging assumptions. All this leads to better predictions and better outcomes. In the world of economics, that translates to higher productivity.
Science can take the guesswork out of what technologies to invest in, Toffler says - this coming from someone who admits to being a "mathematical ignoramus."
"You need to do what scientists do, and that is to validate," he says. "Any attempt to reduce commitments to R-and-D, in industry or government, has always been questionable and wrong to do."
"It's important to have a scientifically literate population in the pipeline," says Dr. Gary Phillips, chief scientist at the American Institutes for Research. This year he completed an analysis of test scores among eighth-graders worldwide. His study showed U.S. students lag behind their counterparts in key Asian and European countries.
Alvin Toffler, author of "Future Shock," "The Third Wave" and other seminal books that have shaped our way of looking at ourselves and our destiny, sees the problem as a cultural phenomenon.
