Scientific Literacy: Its desperate need

In the recent years where the steadfast accessibility of the internet has caused a large spike in information circulation, more and more people have started to gain some amount of scientific literacy. The source of this scientific literacy can be from published articles to YouTube videos and online lectures, but nevertheless the attempt has been made for citizens to become educated in matters of scientific work. The flint water crisis has shown us how necessary knowledge is when it comes to aspect of scientific literacy that go above the elementary teachings in schools during adolescence. The citizens who took the blunt of the crisis only saw the result in a very superficial way, commenting on the outcome of the problem but they had no way to actually determine the cause. The deadly results included microbes and heavy metals (Lead in this case) as well as the intense color change of the water and it was left up to a team of researchers from Virginia Tech to discover why all of this was happening. The formally trained scientists were able to get this highlighted in the way it did, while the citizens suffered at the hands of a corrupt government. The amount of scientific literacy in this case was necessary more than ever, because without citizens understanding what the researchers were telling them, there would not have been such a cohesive effort to change. However in this day and age with a new administration coming up to power, there should be a movement to become more literate than before. Not in the sense of relying on social media and the government for every last detail, but to go become pseudo academically trained in these matters. If someone hears a lot about climate change, I would encourage them to read academic literature and textbooks on environmental science. In the modern day there is no excuse for the lack of scientific knowledge when resources are extremely prevalent and in the largest cases now we have to make sure citizens are scientifically educated. Without being versed in common science and the issues that are on everyone’s mind its really quite difficult to understand how people are going to get past information blocks that Trump has on certain government bodies. This can happen to any branch funded by the federal government, which doesn’t limit it down to just the EPA but many other organizations as well, from the scientific grants we receive to the information given out in public schools. It’s vital that people understand what they are being told and when to spot the inaccuracies, because now is the time where the majority needs to band together and show the administration who it’s dealing with in regards to its receiving population.