The warmism-loving Economist opines:
Americans’ inclination to spurn scientific consensus and be unreasonably suspicious of research, more than a gap in enthusiasm, will make it tough to get kids interested in science. The science laureate bill may eventually make it back to the House floor. Squaring it with a politics that insists on the validity of scientific viewpoints inconsistent with rigorously reviewed, well-accepted research is another matter. Even if someone emerges to extol the virtues of science to American schoolchildren, it will be hard to hear him above the echoes of doubt.
With so many publications having Science in their names flooding the public with junk as a matter of course, is it a big surprise that a journal which never had anything to do with science fills its pages with nonsense?
I do interpretation of science at a museum (as a volunteer), and one of the most exciting things I have to talk about is the nature of science – that it is always coming up with something new, and that nothing is fixed. This is such a basic point that I am baffled that the Economist could write such nonsense. “Always the beautiful answer which asks the more beautiful question.”
How about we stop telling kids all life’s mysteries have been solved, the science is settled, and there’s nothing left to discover. Being honest with kids about what we don’t know is the greatest way to stoke the fires of wonder in their minds.
The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
Thomas Huxley