Looking Up ‘Science’

Carl Sagan

Merriam-Webster, recorded a 176 percent increase for the word “science” on their web site when compared with last year: http://bit.ly/18YtofN I don’t know why people wanted to look up “science”, but it seems like a good thing.

Science can’t tell us what the “right thing” to do is in most cases, but understanding science should inform our choices. You can’t participate fully in discussions about climate change, or genetically modified crops, or disease prevention, or government spying, or much of anything else without understanding the science behind the topic as well as the ethics and values involved. Take a look at http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4037 for a checklist on how to spot pseudoscience. As Carl Sagan said “We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”