I seriously think that a major reason for the lack of public scientific literacy (I get an earful of anti-evolution, anti-climate change, anti-Big-Bang crap from my conservative family) is the lack of a competent institution for communicating these truths.
Outside of scientific journals, and the occasional pop-sci bestseller, the average person has to rely on university press releases, bloggers, and magazine writers - and they generally seem to be terrible at their jobs.
At least anecdotally, my conservative family is like this because those topics have been used in the past to attack/bludgeon their religious beliefs which leads my family to dig in their heels, double down on their beliefs, and close their minds to accepting them.
I've made a lot of progress by instead showing how those things are not only not anti-religious topics, but quite the opposite - they bring us closer to the truth of how God accomplishes what he does. Once they feel that their core beliefs are not being threatened, but merely augmented, it's much easier to accept them.
I mean, I'm all for more engagement and scientific literacy, but let's not pretend there isn't some conflict here; specially for the more hardline churches -- while catholicism in particular seems happy to transition its role (into important lessons and social support) and turn dogma into allegory.
Science and religion can get along just fine.
Half of the craters on the moon are named after priests. "Cells" are named for the places where monks live. The Vatican has operated scientific observatories for centuries. There's even one in Arizona that makes important discoveries to this day.
The whole science vs. religion meme is something that the internet has amplified out of proportion by latching onto fringe groups and smaller denominations and holding them up as the only kind of religion that exists, creating artificial levels conflict to justify their position.
Sure, religious folks often don't have a problem with simple empirical observations (I mean, the Catholic church _did_ get around to pardoning Galileo 350 years after they murdered him).
But Lord help you if you apply the scientific standards of empirical rigor or explanatory parsimony to any topics further afield. Most obviously, there isn't a shred of evidence - none whatsoever - for the existence of a divine being along the lines of what's posited by the Abrahamic religions.
I'll just copy-paste another comment I apparently made 4 years ago... (Time flies I guess!)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7899626
Of a particularly relevant note here is agnosticism [1], or the viewpoint that there are certain things that are simply unknowable to humans. The implication being that humans can neither confirm NOR deny the truth value of the statements. Metaphysical statements often fall into this category. And hence, you can also have agnostic theists [2] and agnostic atheists [3], who both recognize that they are taking a stance on an unknowable truth value. Some would then define this as the very essence of the word faith, but I would like to at least point out that both sides are subject to the same definition.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism
There's a lot of people you can reasonably argue were murdered by the Catholic Church, but Galileo isn't one of them.
This isn't the place for a discussion about the details of religion, but I guess my response to this is, "So what?"
You may need evidence, but people who believe in God don't need evidence. To them, God exists whether there is evidence or not.
At one time there was no evidence that hydrogen existed, yet is was still there.
At one time there was no evidence that x-rays existed. But they were still there.
At one time there was no evidence of other galaxies or planets. But they still existed.
Something can exist without there being current scientific proof of it. That certain people can see beyond what is physically in front of them is called "faith."
Adopting this scientific principle basically undermines all religious thought. Why am I bringing this up? Because it underscores a deep epistemological and methodological differences between religion and science.
This bludgeoning, historically, especially in the US, has gone almost entirely outward from Christian conservatives, though inventing fantasies of attacks on the Christian community has been a key mechanism the leaders within that community have used to rally their congregation into participation in the bludgeoning; the persecution complex of the most politically, economically, and socially powerful religious group in the nation is the result.
Fixed that for you
Not just science journalism. I've yet to see a journalist get a story 100% right where I knew the facts personally ahead of time. If you're lucky, they've just garbled people's names...
The problem is also compounded by the fact that Wikipedia discourages primary sources in favor of shoddy reporting. It makes sense to reject self published scientific articles in favor of journal-published articles. But more often than not, modern media outlets just seem like a vector for adding political bias and inaccuracies by reporting on things they don't really understand.
Objectivity is dead.
HN is funny...
https://www.nature.com/news/intelligence-research-should-not...
This article was published before the 2016 election, so at the time it might have been merely naive, but I see that the author has a video from just a few months ago where he "explains that the real war on science is the one from the left." He is absolutely not arguing in good faith.
[1] http://columbiaclimatelaw.com/resources/silencing-science-tr... [2] http://columbiaclimatelaw.com/silencing-science-tracker/fws-...
Why write like this?
Either the writer is trying to dumb it down to a ridiculous level or they have no idea what they are talking about and just threw technical words together.
I think the writing in this article is not so good, but I've seen this usage by plenty of respectable writers. Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" is not comically bad writing, and it's full of even more outlandish usages of "million million million ..."
https://www.google.com/search?q=brief+history+of+time+"milli...
No, it's a terrible way to do it. It's fundamentally wrong. It's not even reasonable metaphorically. It's like trying to explain the automobile to a 17th century pirate and saying it's a horse with 4 sails.
Try 10 billion
https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/30/apple-announces-a12x-with...
SpiNNaker is built using old ARM968 cores on an ancient process (because that was cheap, for various reasons). The SpiNNaker2 hardware (under design; I can't remember if it is next year or the one after when it is finalized) will be on a modern process that will let us pack ten times as many cores on per chip, with those cores being quite a lot more powerful. Which isn't bad; we're not a commercial outfit here…
I kinda doubt that.