Monday 1 June 2009

This would be funny if it weren't so true

This article sums up the onion pretty well. It's funny. It's accurate. And painfully true.

I don't know if it's just my tinfoil hat blocking my ears but when you see stuff like the Simon Singh case the various insanities that are always about (ie creationism and vaccine quackary) it just seems that anti-science is on the rise (ironicly often helped by the 'net).

This is a problem on a number of fronts. Firstly anti-science generally goes hand-in-hand with loss of critical thinking which is not what you want in a democracy - even more so given the current economic and political climate (hello BNP, anyone?) The second reason is that in the increasing technical age that we live in loss of scientific thinking doesn't help anyone. Our current knowledge is close to pushing science far beyond anything we've previously seen: both nanotech and biotech have the potential to fundamentally change how we live beyond even what the internet has done. This will not be helped if half the population are unable to think critically and more importantly unable to get hold of the information that will help with this.

Now more than ever we need GOOD science writers and a GOOD flow of information. Here's hoping it happens

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