Why science education is more important than most scientists think

摘要

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that a shockingly large fraction of the public is willing to ignore scientific judgements on issues such a vaccines and mask wearing. For far too many, scientific findings are viewed as what scientists believe, rather than as the product of an elaborate community process that produces reliable knowledge. This widespread misunderstanding should serve as a wake-up call for scientists, clearly demonstrating that the standard way that we teach science – as a large collection of “facts” that scientists have discovered about the world – needs major change. Three more ambitious and important goals for science education at all levels are outlined. In order of increasing difficulty, these are: (1) to provide all adults with an ability to investigate scientific problems as scientists do, using logic, experiment, and evidence; (2) to provide all adults with an understanding of how the scientific enterprise works – and why they should therefore trust the consensus judgements of science on issues like smoking, vaccination, and climate change; and (3) to provide all adults with the habit of solving their everyday problems as scientists do, using logic, experiment, and evidence. Although examples exist for attaining all of these goals, extensive education research will be needed to discover how best to teach the last two. I argue that such an effort is urgent, and that it can best begin by focusing on the introductory courses in biology and other science disciplines at the university level. All of life is an education, and I have been privileged to experience science from many different perspectives: in academia as a faculty member for 25 years overseeing a laboratory exploring the mysteries of the cell through protein biochemistry, as the full-time president of the National Academy of Sciences for 12 years, as the Editor-in-Chief of Science magazine for 5 years, and as a member of the board of tens of different nonprofit organizations attempting to make the world a better place. What have I learned from these experiences? Most of all, I have become convinced that greatly expanding the impact of science, science education and the global community of scientists will be crucial for the world's future. As powerfully argued in the pioneering publication Science for All Americans [[1]], ‘science is in many respects the systematic application of some highly regarded human values – integrity, diligence, fairness, curiosity, openness to new ideas, skepticism, and imagination. Scientists did not invent any of these values, and they are not the only people who hold them. But the broad field of science does incorporate and emphasize such values and dramatically demonstrates just how important they are for advancing human knowledge and welfare’. Today, unless we can spread both scientific thinking and these critical scientific values much more broadly throughout society, I fear for humanity's survival. The famous American scholar of education, John Dewey, came to the same conclusion in 1910. Arguing in Science magazine for much less teaching of ‘science as subject matter’ (the ‘facts’ discovered by scientists) and much more teaching of ‘science as method’, Dewey wrote that ‘One of the only two articles that remain in my creed of life is that the future of our civilization depends upon the widening spread and deepening hold of the scientific habit of mind; and that the problem of problems in our education is therefore to discover how to mature and make effective this scientific habit’ [[2]]. In this brief essay, I will attempt to address Dewey's ‘problem of problems’ in education: how much progress has been made since 1910, and what do we know about the most promising ways to address his problem today? Dewey claimed that ‘the facts of nature are multitudinous, inexhaustible, they begin nowhere and end nowhere in particular, and hence are not, just as facts, the best material for the education of those whose lives are ce