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January 16, 2010 06:58 AM UTC

Measuring the scientific literacy of our politicians

  • 30 Comments
  • by: DavidThi808

Science plays a very important part in our political sphere. The most obvious is the theory of global warming – do we invest trillions to address the problems it predicts? But it plays a part across the spectrum from food safety to medical research to… the list is endless.

The question I asked was please describe the difference between a scientific theory and a scientific fact. That understanding is core to understanding how science works. It’s also a very general question that does not require any field specific knowledge. A theory is proven, and generally cannot be a fact (although Josh Penry did a great job of delineating how a theory, can become a fact as we learn what to look for and observe).  

So first off, how does this work? You start with a hypothesis which is a guess as to what is going on. You then devise tests to verify the hypothesis. And these tests should include actively trying to disprove the hypothesis. The testing will measure specific observations. Those observations are scientific facts. When your hypothesis is sufficiently tested, then it is considered a scientific theory. This process is what is called the Scientific Method.

Testing a theory in one sense never ends as it is always on trial so to speak and a single new observation, if it is counter to a theory, then disproves the theory. This is why the argument “but it’s only a theory” is totally bogus. And it is why proposals like intelligent design are an assertion, not a theory. It presents no set of tests by which to verify the idea. The best example of this I think is the Wallace Line – this is a line that cuts Indonesia in half with very different species on each side of it, the Northwest matching Asia and the Southeast matching Australia. This is a clear fact that we have known for over 100 years. But the why – scientists could not come up with a reasonable explanation – until continental drift was hypothesized. The Wallace Line is one of the primary facts that validated the theory of continental drift.

With all that said, it’s not that simple. When does a hypothesis become a theory? How clear are the facts that support a theory? Are people gaming or ignoring some of the data? Is a theory actually just a very good approximation (most Newtonian physics falls in this category). A theory by definition faces no facts that clearly disprove it. But the degree of validating facts varies depending on the theory. All of this is important for our elected officials to understand when they make decisions based on the scientific evidence.

So how did our elected officials do? Better than I expected but worse than I would like to see.

  • A  Bill Ritter. There was a short pause and then he walked me through from hypothesis to testing to theory and how the facts are used to prove or disprove the theory. He could teach a class. (So of course he’s the one leaving elected office!)
  • B  Bernie Beuscher, Josh Penry, & John Suthers. They all understood the difference between a theory and a fact, but they struggled to put it in to words. As this is not a common question for elected officials, a bit of difficulty is to be expected. But they understood the difference very clearly.
  • C  Ken Buck, Cary Kennedy, Don Maes, Betsy Markey, Jared Polis, & Andrew Romanoff. All of them have the common misconception that a theory, when validated through experimentation, becomes a fact. Not good.
  • D  Michael Bennet. When asked he thought for a couple of seconds and then replied “no idea.” Kudos for realizing he doesn’t know, but on the flip side, when facing the issue of climate change, that should have led him to ask just what level of validity to apply to the theory of global warming (answer – a lot).
  • F  Mike Coffman, Doug Lamborn, Scott McInnis, Jane Norton, Ed Perlmutter, John Salazar, Mark Udall, & Tom Weins. All declined the request. I first asked three weeks ago for under 2 minutes on the phone to ask 1 question on basic science. I followed up a minimum of two more times.
  • Inc.  Dianna DeGette & John Hickenlooper. Congresswoman DeGette did call me but I was not able to answer my phone at the time. John Hickenlooper just announced and this was not that important (with the million things that he must be addressing this week) so I didn’t even try to get him.

Finally, every politician with grades A – D has guts. I learned that many politicians dislike walking in to a question where they have no idea what it will be. And their press people are even more concerned. Understandable. But every single one of those that answered it did so directly. They all deserve respect for doing so.

first published at Measuring the scientific literacy of our politicians

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30 thoughts on “Measuring the scientific literacy of our politicians”

  1. David,

    Thanks for all your efforts at contacting our elected officials and relaying to us their comments and observations.

    There is one thing I’m not following in your diary, however. Namely, in the 2nd paragraph, where you wrote:

    (although Josh Penry did a great job of delineating how a theory, can become a fact as we learn what to look for and observe)

    Is there some typo here or something of the sort? Because you appear to be praising Penry for claiming something that is absolutely not true (theories don’t ever “become” facts). Later, you correctly point out that that a number of candidates incorrectly claimed that theories can become facts (you gave these folks a “C” grade).

    So, just what did Penry explain?

    1. That continental drift over the last 50 years is a fact – because we have directly observed it. While continental drift prior to that point remains a theory. I think that showed he truly understands the difference well.

      1. Fact: Plates on the surface of the earth are in motion. This can be measured and confirmed by anybody with the tools and desire to do so.

        Theory: The explanation for why plates on the surface of the earth are in motion. This remains a theory for as long as it is the best explanation.

        Similarly, it is a fact that gene frequencies within a population change over time. Thus, evolution is a “fact.” However, the explanations and potential mechanisms for evolution are part of the theory.

        A theory is the pinnacle of scientific thought. Facts can be bought and collected by any average Joe.

        Theories do not ever become facts. Period. Indeed, no self-respecting theory would ever accept demotion to mere fact status.

        1. 100 years ago continents were considered stationary objects. When plate tectonics was first proposed actual drift was a theory. We now know that the continents are moving so that part went from theory to fact.

          But you are right that the entire mechanism remains a theory.

          1. went from hypothesis to fact?

            Here is an example of a fact:

            Theories do not become facts.

            David, you (and Penry) seem to be using two different definitions for theory:

            1) an over-arching explanation for a large set of observations, facts, hypotheses, and predictions, and

            2) an unsupported (or weakly supported) hypothesis and/or prediction.

            Although there are situations in which either definition may be appropriate, they are not the same thing. To suggest that when theory (def’n 2) is evaluated and support is found for it, that means that Theory (def’n 1) has “become a fact” is very misleading.

            A theory of continental drift (def’n 2, aka, a hypothesis or “guess” regarding the motion of plates on the surface of the earth) may gain factual evidence in support of it (i.e., measurements may detect movement over time).

            The Theory of Continental Drift (def’n 1) is not and never will be a fact. That would be a demotion of the gravest order.

            + Facts are on the bottom of the scientific hierarchy.

            + Theories are the pinnacle of scientific practice.

            (Or … when you advance your king across the chessboard, you do not turn it into a pawn.)

            Penry is trying to confuse these two definitions of theory and you are collaborating in this. Your failure to point out this clumsy sleight of hand lends credence to an ideologically-based dismissal of other well supported scientific Theories (def’n 1) (e.g., if evolution is merely a theory (def’n 2) it is not a fact, and likewise with global warming, the germ basis of disease, etc.).

            But … what a cool discussion to be having on a political blog!

            1. What about Public Key Encryption. It started off as a theory in terms of what you could do if you could come up with an algorithm that gave you one-way encryption and decryption. But when first presented there was concern that such a system could not actually be designed.

              We now have it (obviously) and I think in that sense PKE went from theory to fact. It’s definitely not a theory now. You might be able to argue that before it was not a theory but was instead a concept.

              What I think speaks well of Penry was that he said that if/when something that was a theory was directly observed, it would then be a fact. He was not denigrating the level of validity a theory holds, but instead was disagreeing with the idea that no theory could never become a fact.

              1. hypothesis with scientific theory.

                You keep using the colloquial version of theory (which is much closer to the scientific version of hypothesis) while claiming to be using the scientific version of theory.

                And you keep insisting that you are right.

                1. Although there is not a clear line between hypothesis and theory. When has the testing against an hypothesis been sufficient for it to be considered a theory? There is a grey area in that process.

                  Also keep in mind that while a theory is proven and therefore an established piece of scientific knowledge, it is also always open to being disproved – which does happen at times.

                  I’m not claiming that a hypothesis is a theory. A theory has a body of tests that have validated its predictictions and there is no test that disproves its predictions. And a theory is considered scientifically proven and is in no way inferior to a scientific fact. And most theories will never become a fact not because they are inferior, but because they are different. I think we agree on that.

                  Where we disagree is can some theories become fact if the entire process of the theory is directly measurable. I think that can and does happen at times. Although you could also argue that in these cases they are replaced by facts rather than become one.

                  Another good case is Priestly’s theory about plants renewing the air in a sealed container. We now know the mechanism by which plants do this, but his theory, while less complete than what we know today, still matches all known data.

                  1. And a single hypothesis on it’s own does not get promoted into theory status. Nor does the falsification of a single hypothesis bring down an entire theory.

                    Scientific Theories are accepted, in a provisional sense, as our current best explanation for a suite of observations, facts, hypotheses, predictions, laws, etc. about natural phenomena and their natural causal mechanisms.

                    As new observations are accumulated, and hypotheses and predictions are supported or falsified, a scientific theory is modified, if appropriate, or overthrown if (and only if) a new theory does a better job of explaining all the existing observations, facts, hypotheses (etc) that were under the previous theory.

                    Now it may be that an early theory (aka small set of hypotheses and/or speculation) is later entirely subsumed by a grander theory. Perhaps all of the predictions of the early theory have borne out but now connections have been made to a broader suite of phenomena. Thus, it might appear that the early version theory has “become a fact.”

                    I still think that some of our disagreement is due to fluid definitions and the mixing of colloquial usage and more precise technical use of terms.

                    In other words, I still insist that Theory is the pinnacle of scientific practice. Facts are a dime a dozen (ok, sometimes billions of dollars each!!).

                    All the best, Dave.

                    1. I’ll leave it with the AAAS definition of a theory:

                      A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not “guesses” but reliable accounts of the real world.

            2. I think it’s that they are inherently two different things and theories tend to be where we see the beauty of how things work while facts are what we use to verify those theories.

              ps – yes it’s a really cool discussion.

              1. And then see if the definition holds in every instance when you use the term.

                No Theory (i.e., scientific explanation for a set of observations, facts, laws, hypotheses, predictions, etc) will ever become a fact.

                A theory (i.e., a speculative claim about what might be possible, aka an hypothesis) but later be sufficiently supported (by factual evidence) to be so unlikely to be false that we refer to it as a fact.

                But, these two “theories” are completely different animals. Just because the words are spelled identically does not mean they describe the same creature.

                Facts are used to test, evaluate and falsify (and verify?) hypotheses and other predictions, not theories.

                Facts are boring. Any average Joe can observe that when you release an object it moves towards the earth (e.g., a factual phenomenon).

                However, linking this observation to the masses of the objects, and their distances, and the curvature of space-time and mixing it all with general relativity – this is something incredibly special. Something this special earns the rank of Scientific Theory.

                The scientific version of the term Theory is used for this beautiful product of the minds of many trained professionals continually polishing the explanatory power of the scientific method.

                (I will grant you, we might sometimes use the same words to describe some factual phenomenon as well as the theory that explains it. Three obvious cases include gravity, continental drift, and evolution. This does lend itself to confusion which is one reason why definitions are important.

                Oh, and BTW, I don’t know squat about PKE, so I won’t be able to argue anything about what it was, is now, or ever shall be.)

                1. But many of them are small things covering a small piece of the puzzle we are trying to discover. For example, the theory of how protons from an atomic bomb explosion interact with an aluminum shield and how the shape of that shield changes that interaction.

                  And some facts are easy for any Joe to discover, but others require a team of brilliant minds. For example, physicists have been spending 40 years trying to prove or disprove some of the basics facts in nuclear fusion.

                2. Public Key Encryption has, I think, an unusual & interesting history.

                  In 1874 Jevons came up with the concept of having one way encryption where I can give the world a key, anyone can encrypt a message with it, but only I can decrypt that message (that you send to me). And you also have the flip case where only I can encrypt something, but anyone can decrypt it with my public key – proving it came from me. (You can also do both where I encrypt with your key, then encrypt with my key, and send it to you. You decrypt with my public key proving it came from me and then decrypt with your private key which stops anyone else from reading it.)

                  Ok, cool system (and the basis for all of our encryption today). What is so interesting about this is for 100 years there was no known way to do this. It was in the same category of “if you had faster than light travel, the following things would be possible…”

                  But then in 1974 Diffie & Hellman came up with a way to do this. They did not do so independently of Jevons’s idea – they were trying specifically to find an implementation of his concept because it was the holy grail in cryptography.

                  Was Jevons’ concept a theory? Arguably not because this is math and math is more the language of science than a branch of science (this statement may start another agrument). But with the implementation if Diffie-Hellamn, it definitely changed front theoretical to factual.

    1. I think that we had a pretty even grading between the parties – I wouldn’t say one party did better than the other. There are two interesting things in it.

      Of the individuals who declined the interview who are in competitive races – all are Republicans.

      All of the ones who got an A/B either hold an executive office or were running for one (Penry). All of the legislative ones got a C or below. I don’t know if this means anything, but it is an interesting correlation.

  3. Nice.

    Ardy- was your adrenaline rushing a little bit as you realized the whole difference possibly hinged on a relatively simple to solve definitional challenge?

    DT-  I don’t remember seeing this question in any of your interview reports. Was it separate?

  4. The Wallace Line is one of the primary facts that validated the theory of continental drift.

    I realize it’s not central to the point of the diary, but it’s just not right, on many levels.

    May I suggest that you read The Road to Jaramillo. It’s actually quite a good read about the “discovery” of plate tectonics.

      1. Indonesia sits at the edge of a northward moving Oz plate but Indonesia isn’t an agglomeration of exposed land from Oz and Asia. Any rock from Oz that might appear in Indonesia (I recall that some of the sediments exposed in PNG are of Oz origin) are from sediments from the edge of the continental shelf.

        So maybe you’re talking about the fossil record (and not living flora/fauna). Even then, it’s not so clear. For example, in the 80s, one of the raging arguments in geology was the notion of far-travelled terranes along the western edge of North America. One line of evidence was the disparate fossil assemblages. However, the doubters could show other locations where disparate fossil assemblages existed in close proximity due to differing environments. For example, if you look at the marine fauna north and south of Cape Hatteras, you will see very different critters.

        And remember, there was no plausible mechanism for continental drift at the time.

        The data that finally nailed down plate tectonics was the convergence of 3 lines of evidence over a very short time period in about 1967. These were the release of WWII-era maps of magnetic anomalies on the seafloor that showed seafloor “stripes” (positive and negative magnetization), perfection of potassium-argon dating of rocks, and the construction of the geomagnetic polarity timescale (how the earth’s magnetic field has reversed its polarity over time). As it turns out, the relative widths of the seafloor stripes correlated very nicely with the relative lengths of times in the polarity timescale. By examining the patterns of the stripes we could see that crust was being created at ridges and consumed at trenches. This set off an absolute explosion of research and within a decade there was a complete paradigm shift in earth sciences.

        So, overall, I’d have to say that plate tectonics and continental drift nicely explain the Wallace Line, but I wouldn’t say that the Wallace Line provided strong evidence.

        1. We got the theory of continental drift in the early 1900’s. The Wallace Line was important for that. I agree with you that plate tectonics was hypothesized in, I think, the 1950’s and the evidence is as you quote.

          I also think it’s fair to say that plate tectonics was a refinement or more detailed explanation of continental drift. But for the original theory that the continents are moving – for that the Wallace Line was a strong piece of evidence.

          1. It’s caused by the fact that there is always deep water along the Wallace Line, even during low stands of sea level. Animals that can’t swim, can’t cross. The different species reflect the fact that animals evolved differently in Oz and Asia, not that continents drift. If you look at the Wallace Line on a map, it doesn’t correlate well with the edge of Australian continental shelf.

            Evidence for continetal drift would include things like similar fossil assemblages on both side of the Atlantic, observations that suggest that regions now far apart were once close together. This is what Alfred Wegener did after remarking on the similar continental outlines on both side of the Atlantic.

            Whether plate tectonics and continental drift are the same thing is more of a semantic argument than one of substance. While Wegener was correct about continental drift, he never proposed a plausible mechanism, and thus it never gained widespread acceptance. Plate tectonics provides that mechanism. In the discussion at the top of the thread, I suppose that Wegener’s continental drift was a hypothesis, while plate tectonics is a theory.

            1. I suppose that Wegener’s continental drift was a hypothesis, while plate tectonics is a theory.

              I can see the argument for that. But I think it’s fair to call continental drift a theory back then as it explained what was happening and had numerous means of testing were the continents moving.

              The fact that there was no described mechanism can also be leveled at the theory of gravity.

              On the flip side, I think it would also be fair to say that continental drift with no proposed mechanism is just half the work and until they came up with how it was happening, it didn’t pass the bar of being called a theory.

      1. It’s remarkable that traditional media can’t seem to find the time to interview candidates the way you do.

        In Boulder, politics are buried deep in the second section. Only by going online can you find out what’s going on politically in this state.

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