Damn you Japan!

[andrewducker]

(from this NY Times article).

Comments

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

another good reaso not to have Turkey in the EC..

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

The Science article talks about Genetic Literacy, which sounds interesting, but isn't really expanded on.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Oh, I take that back. It's in the Supporting Materials.

The Index of Genetic Literacy (IGL) is based on the following items:

Ordinary tomatoes do not have genes, whereas genetically modified tomatoes do. (F)
Genetically modified animals are always larger than ordinary animals. (F)
Cloning is a form of reproduction in which offspring result from the union of sperm and egg. (F)
Today it is not possible to transfer genes from humans to animals. (F)
If someone eats a genetically modified fruit, there is a risk that a person’s genes might be modified too. (F)
All plants and animals have DNA. (T)
Today it is not possible to transfer genes from animals to plants. (F)
Humans have somewhat less than half of the DNA in common with chimpanzees. (F)
It is possible to extract stem cells from human embryos without destroying the embryos.(F)
All humans share exactly the same DNA. (F)

Each respondent received one point for each of the 10 items that he or she answered
correctly using the absolutely true or absolutely false response, as appropriate. Each
respondent received a half-point for each probably true or probably false response, as
appropriate. The Index of Genetic Understanding (IGL) ranges from zero to 10 and has
good psychometric properties.

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

Those are *scary* statistics.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

What's remarkable is just how many of these rankings have the US amongst third world rather than developed nations. Gini rating, for instance. And if you compare the US with other advanced nations, it almost always comes out either top or bottom on each criteria -- in other words, it's more extreme on all measures, and very different from places like Scandinavia, Europe, the UK and Japan.

[allorin.livejournal.com]

http://foreveramber.typepad.com/blog

Note the subtitle? Weird how my friends think alike....

[andrewducker]

I suspect that a lot of America's problems come from the fact that it's not really one country, but lots of little ones joined together. This makes doing things on a federal level difficult, especially when there has been such a large rural/urban divide. If Europe had tried to go from no health service to one spread across its entirety it would no doubt have similar problems to the US.

The stats above will (I suspect) break down on a rural/urban basis, urban, well-educated people being more likely to believe in evolution than rural types.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Sure, but those urban / rural, well-educated / less-well-educated splits probably apply in all the other countries on that list too. I don't think you can say those, or its size, "explain" the US' position. I tend to agree with the people who did the study, who say, in Science magazine's summary, "The acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in Japan or Europe, largely because of widespread fundamentalism and the politicization of science in the United States."

[andrewducker]

Yes, but...

The fundamentalist parts of the US are notably the more rural areas. Those parts which are more city-based tend to be better educated, vote democrat and less religious.

http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/proc05/papers/pap2184.pdf is well worth taking a look at for more details there.

My own belief is that urbanisation allows a phase change in efficiency which leaves more money left over in society to pay for things like education (a well as healthcare and the other fripperies that you get in the first world). It also inspires people to get on better with people from other cultures, because they encounter them more often (provided, of course, they aren't in a bad financial state and looking for someone to blame it on).

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Something else to love Scandinavia for...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

But aren't the urbanization rates in the US some of the highest in the world? For instance, I'm sure there are more people working on the land in France than in the US (as a % of population), because France has made efforts to prevent the kind of farming mechanization seen in the US.

[balthial.livejournal.com]

My country is full of idiots.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Actually, the US is considerably less urbanized that Western Europe. While many liberals support family farms and suchlike, I'm firmly against them and cheer on economic conditions that make rural life less attractive. It seems clear that if the US ubanizes more, there will be fewer idiots who do not accept evolution.

[andrewducker]

If you take a look at the maps on pages 5,6 and 8 of the PDF I linked to, you'll see that America has some massively urban areas (on the West and East coasts), but also huge swathes that are very sparsely populated. Because those huge swathes are _so_ huge, it comes out to about 50% of the population.

The one on page 5 gives the most immediate "wow" effect, because it simply illustrates huge pillars of voters on both seaboards.

[andrewducker]

I _think_ there was a nut scare recently, which is where I picked it up from...

[andrewducker]

Cheers for that!

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

YOu're welcome. There's a whinge about the phrasing of some of the questions in my LJ.