Comment Re:Is The U.S. Becoming Anti-Science? (Score 2, Insightful) 1722
It goes a little deeper than just yes and no.
The current climate of the US is shifting away from valuing science and logic. And it is not solely because of the religious right. Look at the dwindling numbers of US-born science majors in universities. Science is just not that popular. (But was it ever really cool?) Look at the reaction to Dr. Summers of Harvard when he put forth a HYPOTHESIS about the small percentage of women in science. He got butchered.
When you look at our society, you can see that people have very bad reactions to ideas that don't fit into their own framework of how the world works. This shouldn't be surprising; humans have been this way for long time. What has changed, however, is that now, people start responding to these challenging ideas, not with logic or reason, but emotional arguments. This happens on both sides. The only difference is that the religous are easy targets.
The current climate of the US is shifting away from valuing science and logic. And it is not solely because of the religious right. Look at the dwindling numbers of US-born science majors in universities. Science is just not that popular. (But was it ever really cool?) Look at the reaction to Dr. Summers of Harvard when he put forth a HYPOTHESIS about the small percentage of women in science. He got butchered.
When you look at our society, you can see that people have very bad reactions to ideas that don't fit into their own framework of how the world works. This shouldn't be surprising; humans have been this way for long time. What has changed, however, is that now, people start responding to these challenging ideas, not with logic or reason, but emotional arguments. This happens on both sides. The only difference is that the religous are easy targets.