Uncle Philly

On the down side, Uncle Philly's crotchety; but, on the up side, he's worth knowing.

Copyright: Bring It, Teacher Boy, or Shut Up. (Girls too.)

I've been, more or less, mandated to take an online, busy-work type course in instruction from my sponsoring institution. (This despite the fact that I've written and taught many online courses.) One of this week's objectives was to "Understand U.S. intellectual property and our institutional policy." First off, a policy is far easier to understand than the very concept of intellectual property, since the latter is understood only by squishy social convention; and, second, since society itself is still unclear on the status of information as "property." (Hmm--maybe those two reasons are equivalent.)

Generally, if you're making money off of it, or you're losing money from it being given away, that's what society (actually, those who want compensation for creation) really care about. It's not the "property" aspect, but the profit that is made or lost on that property (including legal penalties, which, again, would be for a loss of profit) which is at issue.

As a professor, the safest practical policy seems to be that one makes sure there is a protected gateway where only verified students of one's sponsoring university can get to the material.

Also, it's probably important to note that God (or his tool of wrath, The State) will not instantly strike you dead if you've violated copyright. Copyright holders will send a cease and desist letter asserting themselves as copyright holders, and with an explicit deadline for compliance. Yet even THIS is not so clear, as some kinds of copyright might only hold for a predetermined period, such as on news sources:

"FACTS, ruled America’s Supreme Court in 1918 in the 'hot news doctrine', cannot be copyrighted. But a news agency can retain exclusive use of its product so long as it has a commercial value."[1]

Note the magic value phrase for profit again:"so long as it has commercial value." Happily, TITLE 17 > CHAPTER 1 > § 107 "Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use", give us academic types quite a bit of cover:

"the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."[2]

I love legalese. And I think that's my favorite passage in all U.S code too, since it mentions these primitive things called “phonorecords.” (Actually, the term is redefined.)

Overall, it seems to me the issue is this: if somebody has an attorney tell you to quit it, are you going to seek attorney advice and fight back; or, are you going to stop short, take whatever down, and recall that commerce rights will trump education everytime when they come into real conflict? Seems pretty clear to me: if you're not rich enough to parley--fall in line and shut up.


O.

REFERENCES

[image] used w/o permission both as a form of civil disobedience and for educational purposes.

[1] "Owning the news: Copyrighting facts as well as words" The Economist June 24th, 2010. [Actually, this is just linked to the comments.  I don't own the copyright to this article, but the comments are way better than the article anyway.]

[2] "United States Code: Title 17" Cornell University Law School Legal information Institute (Accessed 1/23/2001)

On whether a Ph.D. or Masters degree is worth it

A rethinking of what to do with your life in regards to graduate education is clearly in order.

I have heard it tell that great rises in the supply of something means there will be some corresponding lessening of demand for that something.  The seems intuitively correct.  Sadly, it also seems empirically accurate for the value of obtaining a graduate degree.  A confluence of events have brought some droll thoughts about higher education to mind.   First, I recently sat in a commencement and watched hordes of debt-loaded students accept their degrees.  A large percentage of these were students who were planning to go on and get graduate degrees, or who actually had some first-level graduate degree, such as a MS or MA.  Second, it's that time of year where I am called-upon to write recommendations for bright-eyed optimists--i.e., those who want to go on to graduate school in hopes of becoming academics.  Finally, I've read several articles lately about unfriendly and even grave changes concerning the value and pay-off of pursuing graduate education.  Moreover, I also seem to be sensitive to anecdotal accounts of what have been people's job and life prospects after education.  I'll scatter-shot a few of my ideas here, since I don't have one deep thesis or analysis about what seems to be broadly bad news for graduate education.

It's always been the case that the journey from a High School diploma to a terminal graduate degree has been a tough haul. In some ways, that's to be expected, since all real learning is painful, and since the institutional filters against undisciplined character are (ideally) there to make the journey pay-off only for those with both some level of natural talent and focused commitment.   (I mention the painful aspect of education, since anything else is simply infotainment.  These two are easily confused, as when watching a free online college lecture on YouTube fools somebody into thinking they've somehow become properly informed on a topic in question. )  There are always sad stories about people who get graduate degrees and end up working at McDonalds or sacking groceries.  Sometimes, unfriendly people gleefully point out that by pursing a highly impractical degree, such as an MA in 5th century BC Attic Greek, such a graduate has gotten what s/he deserved for not making prudent decisions for greater life.  Admittedly, I think there is some force in this unfriendly charge.

However, suppose someone accurately assesses what is practical and valuable in modern society, perhaps noting some hot new, well-attested developing area of science.  Even here, the supply and demand worry is grave. Consider an empirically based case scenario:

Dr. Ence is now in his late 30s. He has finished 7 years of graduate school and 9 years of post-doctoral training. He has published great articles, attended conferences and given talks. He's putting together his curriculum vitae (CV), so he can start applying for jobs as an assistant professor. What are his chances? According to a forum convened by the National Academies, the chances of a life scientist under the age of 35 getting a tenure-track position fell from 10% in 1993 to 7% in 2003; as the number of life sciences PhD graduates went from 11,000 to 16,000 and tenure-track positions held steady at about 1,200 positions. That means that Dr. Ence has to be one of the top 7 out of every 100 life science PhDs applying for a job as an independent researcher to get the position.[1]

Not good news for Dr. Ence, and there's no controversy that the life science are valuable to modern society.   The bleak prospect for other less pragmatic doctoral positions would be even further amplified.

In fact, the general trends of academic slots are not friendly, as the chart below indicates, and this does not even show the most recent data for that last couple of years of The Great Recession:

One of the staple strategies of riding-out a recession is to take time-out for more schooling, and many people are pursuing graduate degrees as a way putting this traditional maxim to action, such as aiming toward top-level degrees like Ph.D's.   However, where are these people going to be slotted into the system? The U.S. now puts-out about 64,000 Ph.D.s a year, and has put about 100,000 thousand of them into circulation between 2005 and 2009.  But there are only about 16,000 new professorship slots at best, and there have been unprecedented cut-backs even over the last year.  If you pick an arbitrary student who begins a doctoral program, 10 years later, s/he will have only a 57% chance of having a Ph.D. after s/he begins. [2] So there are two problems here--the time it takes and the chance of actually getting relevant employment.  Normally, one puts in lots of time as a trade-off for securing an advantage later.  But the situation for graduate study does not make that rule of thumb a reasonable course of action.  Furthermore, for the highest degree, the Ph.D., when compared across all subjects with salaries for Master's degrees, the Ph.D. commands only a 3% premium in salary,[2] definitely not a reasonable pay-off for planning about future life and career situations.

Often the media cites somewhat misleading statics that unemployment numbers hit the best educated last, as this chart shows:

These statics do not seemed controversial, yet such success of keeping the wolf away from the door is predicated on one already having a job.  Thus, having a degree while you're in a job is great, but that should not be confused with having a degree which can likely place you in a job.   This latter is where I believe the grave news lies for anyone thinking of pursuing graduate education.

One often hears retorts that pursuing a graduate degree, especially a Ph.D., is not about getting a job, but about becoming a kind of person--one who pursues his or her deepest interests.  There's no need to deny this laudible motivation; nonetheless, there are some trumping issues to this noble retort.

First, what sort of financial situation can one reasonably hope to manage for decades after the education is complete?  The average graduate student carries somewhat over $40,000 in debt, but this can balloon quickly depending on when payments are due and what the employment prospects are for the degree.  In fact, more than 40 percent of students are burdened with an "unmanageable" amount of debt - defined as more than 8 percent of a person's annual income.  As one researcher realistically summarized it, "spiraling tuition costs and a move to a debt-based financing system make it all but impossible for students to move up and move ahead in life."[3]  The slightly older chart below shows the trend, but one can rest assured trends have continued in the same unfriendly way for the last few years, and will continue to do so.

Second, consider the effect upon one's actual or potential marriage.  About 7% of undergraduates marry while in college,[4] but this number is far higher for graduate students: 32% of men and 31% of women marry during graduate school, thought not everyone who starts married stays married (7.4% of men and 12.1% of women divorce during graduate school).  Furthermore, the majority of students who are married at the start of graduate school have children before leaving (58% of married men and 51% of married women). [4] Can one justly make the case that a spouse should work for ten years or more in support of the other's "deep interest",  and at the opportunity cost of thousands of dollars in debt, and that long with eschewing of other stabalizing social and economic opportunities? Can one successfully hope to manage a child, or the consequence to one's unborn child/children because of such economic impacts?

These are gloomy questions with equally gloomy prospects of being answered satisfactorily in 2010 and for the foreseeable future; therefore, a rethinking, or a bit more optimistically, a careful accounting, of what to do with your life in regards to graduate education is clearly in order.


REFERENCES

[1] "From training to practice: joining the faculty" New voices for Research May 20, 2009. (Accessed Dec. 17, 2010) 
[2] "Doctoral degrees: The disposable academic" The Economist Dec. 16th, 2010 (Accessed Dec. 17, 2010)
[3] Steven Stoddard "Panel tackles graduate student debt" The GW Hatchet March 5, 2009 (Accessed Dec. 17, 2010)
[4] "Joseph Price "Does a spouse slow you down?" (Dept. of Economics, Cornell University) (Accessed Dec. 17, 2010)

O.

Self-checkout lines: the future of education?

As do many millions of people in the U.S., I am now regularly forced to use the self-checkout apparati at such national chain stores as Home Depot (shown above) and Walmart (shown here, in case you live under a rock.) I must admit, I don't like them; but, I also admit they make personnel and commercial sense for the companies that use them. Afterall, a manager doesn't have to hire or fire a machine, and machines don't need insurance, or moral talk, or discipline, or that host of a zillion other interactions required for human resource management. My guess is that they also breakdown at a much more (quantifiably) predictable rate, and probably are easier to price and plan for installation than are employees.

In the 80s, I was a part of a (educationally profitable) band. One day, a few bandmembers and myself were standing around, killing time, and the drummer made a good-natured joke at one of the instrumentalist's expense. The bemused object of the joke retorted, "Hey, buddy, you can be replaced by a machine!" Back then it was quite funny, as the drum machines of the day sounded like a cross between tin foil being crinkled and wine-glasses being dropped. However, with today's technology any such retort would be quite accurate, and maybe also in bad taste. Still, even back then, a short conversation broke out on the matter about machines and drummers, with the eventual conclusion being that "you can 'hang out' with a drummer, but you can't with a machine." That was true at the time and is probably still true for a couple of more decades, though the general drift of how we'll first have A.I. buddies is now clear.

So, as has been well attested since the industrial revolution, people are being replaced by machines. Well, not completely, of course. At checkout kiosks, there is one employee who keeps watch over a half a dozen or so of the devices. The same thing happened in the yarn industry in the late 1700s, where one (lucky) employee could watch over eight or more Spinning Jenny machines. The difference, I suppose, is that now such replacements are occurring in the service industry, not just in the manufacturing industry. It used to be said that this wasn't so bad, since somebody had to be trained to fix the machines. An optimistic view, but not true to the employment threat, since the number of people displaced is far more than the number of technicians required to maintain the displacing technology, as is seen by the automobile industry's usage of robots (video).

The sudden rise of the internet was not at first a problem for the education industry, per se, but the super-addition of broadband tools which make the posting of audio and video almost effortless is. Add to this the ever more-powerful, free and open-source cloud-based software, and one begins to think that education would not require institutions like colleges and universities to deliver an adequate degree. However, at this point, it is way too early to make such a claim, since having access to information and learning a subject are two different things, as anyone who has bought a calculus or foreign language textbook knows.

From my observation, most of the educational success that occurs in formal institutional settings comes from peer motivation and personal coaching. People do best when operating in face-to-face social groups, whether in academics, sports, or even in casual exercise programs. World of Warcraft crack-heads not withstanding, the internet is not yet able to offer a significant substitute for this social activity. Granted, that it might offer this someday cannot be ruled out, but we do not have full immersive, three-dimensional displays (i.e., interfaces) nor even the internet infrastructure to deliver this. Furthermore, not all disciplines are skill-based, template-based, or procedural-based; or, put differently, education and Engineering are not the same kind of endeavor. Still, in the early stages of education, there is information that must be mastered, and often it is somewhat template-based--such as using a technical vocabulary, a fairly-standardized history of the discipline, and other lower-division kinds of overviews and introductions. And it is with these where educational institutions are being forced to change. By analogy, just because the checkout kiosk is tolerable for some retail activities does not mean I would want it for all of them. For instance, the case-by-case, situational complexities of medicine and chemistry means that pharmacists are still required to review and perhaps even discuss what products I get at the back of Walmart, even if the fruit and vegetable guy at the front of Walmart need not review me about my choice of onion.

Ultimately, universities will have to separate (1) content that can be delivered for impersonal learning from (2) discipline-specific knowledge that requires a certain amount of personal interviewing and coaching. Quite a bit of money has traditionally be generated by using instructors to teach the former, but it turns out the latter is the more difficult and important task of education. Acquiring data is one thing, analyzing it is quite another, as Astronomers, for example, well know. The internet will continue to be a fine (if financially disruptive) tool for content delivery, but as a student gets more content, there are subsequently more difficult issues in knowing what to do with such content, and that requires a mind-to-mind engagement.

O.

Is Higher Education Worth it?

Certainly here in the U.S., and across the world's developed nations, the answer is still a clear Yes.

The above image (duly lifted from The Economist) shows that in the U.S. there is an $100,000 dollar advantage to the state's coffers (even after student aid programs are taken into account) and around $165,000 dollar advantage to the individual him- or herself.

Some people have worried that there are too many college graduates, and that high supply will mean a lower demand for them from employers, but this has not been the case, so the time and money investments by a person seeking a college degree still pays off.

Also why people chose college at all is not clearly based on the calculation of these financial advantages:

Alison Wolf of King’s College London, the author of a book provocatively entitled “Does Education Matter?” says a big reason why school-leavers go to university is peer pressure. With many graduates to choose from, employers increasing turn up their noses at anyone who does not sport a degree, no matter what the job’s requirements. The result is more akin to an arms race, with everyone running to stand still, than a recipe for increasing prosperity.[1]

Finally, higher education is always a good way to ride-out times of unemployment and recession, because when the economy returns, graduates are best placed to enter the marketplace with the appropriately acquired technical skills. Of course, as a college professor, it is both prudent and enjoyable for me to purport such analysis.


O.

REFERENCES

[image] The Economist (from article below)

[1] "It still pays to study" The Economist Sept. 12, 2009.

Darwin, Evolution, and Religious Influences on Belief

Education level influences whether you believe in Evolution; but, religious influence matters way more.

Of course in this celebration year of Darwin's birth, there will be plenty of good articles, and Nicholas Wade has written one for the New York Times. Here's an insightful quote, but there were many:

From the perspective of 2009, Darwin’s principal ideas are substantially correct. He did not get everything right. Because he didn’t know about plate tectonics, Darwin’s comments on the distribution of species are not very useful. His theory of inheritance, since he had no knowledge of genes or DNA, is beside the point. But his central concepts of natural selection and sexual selection were correct. He also presented a form of group-level selection that was long dismissed but now has leading advocates like the biologists E. O. Wilson and David Sloan Wilson.[1]

I'm sure this celebration of Darwin's 200th birthday must be excruciating to people who believe that the first two humans in history walked around naked in a garden a few thousand years ago, humans whom subsequently had a bad run-in with a talking snake. A gallup survey released this month found the following:

only 39 percent of Americans say they "believe in the theory of evolution," and just 24 percent of those who attend church weekly believe in that explanation for the development of life on Earth. [...] and 36 percent said they don't have an opinion either way.[2]

The poll also notes that education level has much to do with the issue, since "Among those with high-school educations or less who have an opinion on Darwin's theory, more say they do not believe in evolution than say they believe in it." [2] No big surprise there. Although the numbers are markedly different when direct comparisons of education level are made -- "Just 21 percent of respondents who had up to a high school level of education believe in evolution, compared with 74 percent of those with postgraduate degrees." -- it appears that education is not the predictive factor. Instead, it's the influence of religious beliefs: "55 percent of those who seldom or never attend church expressed belief in evolution, while 11 percent do not, and 34 percent have no opinion."

One thing I find notable is the "no opinion" crowd. I wonder if it because they are really ignorant about biology, or if it's because they don't want to admit their views on the matter publicly just because the matter is (sadly) controversial.




O.

References

[1] Nicholas Wade "Darwin, Ahead of His Time, Is Still Influential" Feb. 9, 2009 New York Times

[2] "Darwin's Birthday Poll: Fewer Than 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution" Fox News Feb. 12, 2009 (Accessed 2/15/2009)

[*] Some people think that there are still too many missing links in the fossil record, and that Evolution, as we understand it today, is therefore not established; or, maybe that evolution at the macro-level is not established, at least, in light of such missing fossil evidence. But this is just an old (religious) wives-tale. Here's a nice article from Live Science which discusses and showcases many types of linkage fossils: Robin Lloyd "Fossils Reveal Truth About Darwin's Theory" Feb. 11, 2009 Live Science (Accessed 2/15/2009)

ACT scores and college readiness

The ACT is an examination used in college admissions. It's been around since 1959, and was conceived as an alternative to the SAT. As a professor, I prefer the ACT; because, in my experience, it identifies students who seem to have natural talent for academic work -- and even for what kinds of academic work. The SAT, another college admissions test, seemingly tells me if the student is generally intelligent, but it's much harder for me to translate that into predictive performance in a specific major (such as in Philosophy). Granted, the SAT does have subject tests, but these must be taken in addition to the standard SAT test. Such an addition is inconvenient for those who want curriculum-based testing already in place; and, of course, for the poor student who has to pony up the extra money, study, and brain-labor to trudge through yet another set of admissions tests.

Also, I see a lot of college-age people arrive from home schooling situations, and from low population counties where the public schools are seriously underfunded. Moreover a person in the top 10% of their High School graduating class means one thing in a class of 20, quite a another in a class of 300. The ACT gives gives me a fairly objective assessment of comparison for various students.

The Washington Post reports that the total number of students taking the ACT jumped by 9% last year. The article further notes that 43% of this year's high school graduates took the ACT, and that three in four test-takers will likely need remedial help in at least one subject to succeed in college. As the above chart shows, the average ACT score is just over 21. (The test range runs from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 36) Surprisingly, only 22 percent met a benchmark score for college readiness in all four subjects (i.e. in English, math, reading and science.) Another finding of interest is that "among 2008 graduates who took the minimum core curriculum in math -- algebra I and II, plus geometry -- just 14 percent met the math benchmark."[1]

Naturally, there is plenty of room for debate about standardized scoring for college admissions. The original idea of entrance exams was to help evaluate a student's potential and to determine if that student was academically ready to attend college. Yet with computerized study guides, the ability to take the test multiple times, and (in 2010) the choice of which among the scores to send where, it looks like the process could be manipulated, especially if the student comes from a well-to-do family that can afford multiple takes and study helps. With all that artificial test-prep, just what is being measured?

O.

REFERENCES

[image] Washington Post

[1] Justin Pope "ACT scores down, but more students college-ready" Washington Post Aug. 13, 2008 (Accessed August 13, 2008).

Textbook prices, publishing idiots, and the future of course content

The New York Times is reporting on a problem that's going to get worse before it gets better: students scanning their textbooks and giving the scans away for free.[1] I've known a long time that textbook publishing houses are playing a losing game. Their books are foolishly over-priced.

For example, I use a textbook in one of my classes, one now in its 6th edition. I can say that the content difference between the 4th and the 6th edition is negligible, but the layout is so different that I'm forced to use the new editions.

One might argue that I could just use another book. There are a couple of reasons against this. First, the textbook in question is very accessible, so I've made a tactical call: it's better to have a book that students will enjoy reading, and therefore do so, rather than it is to have a book that students won't read -- or won't read well.

Second, because I'm teaching 160 students a year for the course, and offering four major objective tests in the class, that means I am forced to offer lots of different tests and versions. There is really only one way such a feat becomes practical: test banks. These contain hundreds of questions on each chapter than can be selectively mixed and matched over different iterations of testing. Prudently, the publishing houses tie their test bank data to the chapter layout of the ever-issued new editions. My classes are fairly small. Imagine classes where a prof teaches 400 students a year. Clearly, the textbook publishing houses have.

With the rise of devices like the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader, textbook usage is on the verge of entering a new digital era. The textbook publishing companies like to think that they will be able to leverage this for more profit margin, since they can eliminate the middle man. They are wrong, at least for the areas of classics and humanities. Why so? Although the sciences change rapidly, classical works in history, literature, and philosophy don't change -- at least no faster than language dialect changes. A good translation from the 1950s (or even earlier) is just as readable today as the moment it fell off the printing press. Profs like myself who are disgruntled at the idiotic prices students are forced to pay will get together and produce their own textbooks with an open license to use each other's material. (This is something like why the open-standards software movement has been so successful.) When, by evolutionary modification and adjustment of better and worse entries, these efforts reach a high level of content and readability, they will live on for many years, for many cost free years. (There are wiki efforts which have started doing this already.)

Classroom content in digital book-reading devices which will eventually be adopted as the standard tool for text-"books" of the future. When the cost of a digital book reader falls to less than the cost of the total cost of books for a semester's classes, that will be the sweet spot when students take matters into their own hands, and when scan-n-share will really take off. Even now, students regularly share textbooks and "rent" them to their friends.

As a social group, college students are the most potent mix of cunning, intelligence, and thrift. When it comes to outsmarting textbook publishers, these students will win; and, this whole industry will probably be forced to move to a non-profit status industry. The old model will die. And I'll say, "Good riddance."

REFERENCES

[image]Tempe in Touch (city website)

[1]Randall Stross "First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry" New York Times July 27, 2008 (Accessed July 27, 2008)

The economics of how to live happily ever after

Stay in school as long as possible, and then get married to somebody else well-educated. That's what been reported in a recent article of The Economist. It also helps if you become a professor:

Research also suggests that middle- and working-class parents approach child-rearing in different ways. Professional parents shuttle their kids from choir practice to baseball camp and check that they are doing their homework. They also talk to them more. One study found that a college professor's kids hear an average of 2,150 words per hour in the first years of life. Working-class children hear 1,250 and those in welfare families only 620.

And make sure you put the bulk of your big spending on their education earlier rather than later, even kindergarten is probably too late. Early childhood education programs (think preschool and earlier) yield profound results:

Participants achieved greater literacy and higher grades, and they were more likely to graduate high school. Later in life, they were more likely to be employed—and to earn more—and less likely to be on welfare. They also committed less crime and had lower rates of teen pregnancy.[2]

The study also points out that not only your kids, but all of society benefits from not having to invest in crime and welfare support for the many children that otherwise are affected by not receiving such care.

The science of family values is giving me creepy, right-wing religious Republican feelings. But as studies and common attestation by their political representatives clearly show ( [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [etc. etc.] ) these people are scientifically illiterate as a social group; so, I'm safe from becoming likeunto them.



REFERENCES


[images] The Economist


[1] "The frayed knot" The Economist (May 24th, 2007)

[2] "Teach your children well." Slate (May 25, 2007)

[3 - 6] in-line links provided.



O.

On Teaching Others (mash-up comics)

Click the above image for full size.

The purpose and character of the use of comix herein is for nonprofit, educational purposes, as subject to limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the Copyright Act (title 17, U. S. Code). Character likenesses adapted from http://cobb.typepad.com

O.

Evolution and the uninformed U.S. American Christian

Here is the sort of of thing that really frightens me about my fellow U.S. American peers – that they have no clue about biology. Any political intuitions they have about stem cells, therefore, must be highly suspect, if not outright invalidated on that basis alone. Consider the following results from a study which came out this week in Newsweek:

Nearly half (48 percent) of the public rejects the scientific theory of evolution; one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact. Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.[1]

Although at first glance it appears as a shocker that over a third of college graduates accept “the Biblical account of creation as fact”, there is probably some room for a less dire analysis to this response. Many Christians I know would be perfectly content to say that (1) it's a fact that the world is God's creation; and (2) it's a fact that God constructed the world such that evolution is God's mechanism for the development of living things. I suspect there would be a split between these two options, with many U.S. conservative Evangelicals (the least scientifically informed group) denying the second; but with other Christian groups affirming both.

Still, this is not good news for America's voting system. A scientifically uninformed populous can only hurt itself in the long run by being clueless on even the most rudimentary foundations of biology. Moreover it's easy to manipulate people with political rhetoric and confusing information on such matters when this is their default view.

The study also notes how deeply religious American sentiments run:

A belief in God and an identification with an organized religion are widespread throughout the country, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. Nine in 10 (91 percent) of American adults say they believe in God and almost as many (87 percent) say they identify with a specific religion. Christians far outnumber members of any other faith in the country, with 82 percent of the poll’s respondents identifying themselves as such. Another 5 percent say they follow a non-Christian faith, such as Judaism or Islam.[1]

Again, and as a sociological observation, the least scientifically informed group, the socially conservative U.S. American Evangelicals, are often decrying how religion is being muted in the public school system and how society is continually suppressing the exercise of Christianity. With 82% of U.S. Americans identifying themselves as Christian, it doesn't appear there could be that many “suppressors” out there to do the job!

REFERENCES

[image] "The New Monkey Trial" Salon News Jan. 10, 2005.

[1] Brian Braiker “God’s Numbers” Newsweek March 31, 2007

O.