Scientific Literacy

Scientific literacy is an essential trait that is needed by all students in this day and age. As a result of the increasing amount of information we are made aware of on a regular basis, it’s extremely important that people realize how it integrates into our daily lives. Science is no longer something very distant, performed in labs by men in coats using big words, it’s something that affects people every day and as a result, it’s increasingly obvious how much we should pay attention to it. Scientific literacy is needed in every major, in every campus and is useful in any field of work. Every working field as some amount of science and innovative technologies behind it and as a result it requires some amount of understanding of how science functions. Alongside our immediate lives, the life of our planet, family members, and our own wellbeing we rely on understanding what goes on scientifically around us. In this case, no one has to go and understand quantum mechanics and string theory of how this universe is held together, but understand biological concepts that we hold as permanent theories, such as the theory of evolution are really important. This also doesn’t require anyone to open a textbook and start to take notes on biochemistry, understanding what is in the news and seeing minor inconsistencies when skewed stories come out is enough. More than actual knowledge this comes down to people looking up what they don’t know, and not relying on just one source for this information. A key premise of this class is to ask questions and, furthermore, to understand what people need to immediately known in regards to scientific knowledge today. The biggest stories that can cause people are harm are things like, not vaccinating your kids, not believing in evolution, not believing in climate change, or simply even not understanding basic nutrition. This class goes to touch on all these topics and does an extremely good job on allowing people to get whole stories before they publish them. However, it falls short in some aspects such as drawing the mistakes I’ve seen in science writing into question. The depth of explanation sometimes is too shallow and people oversimplify topics to an egregious extent and the readers become misinformed and they don’t believe experts to the depth they should. The best thing is to actually explain the science in words people can understand but not oversimplify them to the point where it gets lost. We also need to analyze more scientific articles, such as primary sources, and turn them into news stories more often. This comes from much of my time spent seeing how to do this from other journalists, but I genuinely believe this practice from going to the “crude,” product to the refined article is essential to progress in this field.