A bit over a year ago, we report­ed on the removal of evo­lu­tion from a report by the NSF’s gov­ern­ing body, the Nation­al Sci­ence Board. The NSB is pres­i­den­tial­ly appoint­ed and Sen­ate con­firmed, and sets broad pol­i­cy for the NSF. Every oth­er year, it pub­lish­es a report on Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Indi­ca­tors for the nation, and Chap­ter 7’s dis­cus­sion of pub­lic sci­ence lit­er­a­cy is what I always look at first. I was sur­prised to find evo­lu­tion absent from the 2010 edi­tion, and sleuthing by NCSE and oth­ers result­ed in a report in Sci­ence mag­a­zine, that revealed some dis­turb­ing attitudes. 

Most trou­bling was the idea that evo­lu­tion was­n’t a good fit for a report on pub­lic atti­tudes and knowl­edge on sci­ence. One board mem­ber expressed a desire that “indi­ca­tors could be devel­oped that were not as val­ue-charged as evo­lu­tion.” Anoth­er mem­ber said ques­tions about evo­lu­tion and the Big Bang were “flawed indi­ca­tors of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge because respons­es con­flat­ed knowl­edge and beliefs.” I was quot­ed say­ing, “Dis­cussing Amer­i­can sci­ence lit­er­a­cy with­out men­tion­ing evo­lu­tion is intel­lec­tu­al mal­prac­tice” that “down­plays the con­tro­ver­sy” over evo­lu­tion education.

Last Fri­day, as I was wran­gling with the Texas board of edu­ca­tion over evo­lu­tion edu­ca­tion, Sci­ence print­ed a fol­lowup report (pay­walled). Reporter Yud­hi­jit Bhat­tachar­jee says:

The board now says that delet­ing that text was a mis­take and that the 2012 edi­tion of Indi­ca­tors, which comes out in Jan­u­ary next year, will con­tain an analy­sis of the sur­vey results relat­ing to those ques­tions. But mem­bers hope that future sur­veys will resolve the issue.” 

“In ret­ro­spect, we should­n’t have omit­ted that text from the 2010 Indi­ca­tors,” says José-Marie Grif­fiths, who took over as chair of NSB’s Indi­ca­tors sub­com­mit­tee when the term of the for­mer chair, Louis Lanze­rot­ti, expired in May 2010. Grif­fiths says the 2012 Indi­ca­tors will rein­state the sec­tion and include a side­bar explain­ing the board­’s plans for revamp­ing the sur­vey. And for the first time, the book will include a com­par­i­son of knowl­edge indices–a met­ric of over­all sci­ence literacy–measured with and with­out the evo­lu­tion and big bang questions.

In oth­er words, evo­lu­tion will be includ­ed, but they still want to rework how evo­lu­tion is surveyed.

Toward that end, the NSF com­mis­sioned two reports from small work­shops. One seeks to rather dra­mat­i­cal­ly rede­fine sci­ence lit­er­a­cy, and the oth­er seeks ways to reflect that new frame­work for sci­ence lit­er­a­cy in sur­veys. I think that changes that dra­mat­ic ought to come not from small and some­what idio­syn­crat­i­cal­ly cho­sen work­shop pan­els, but from a full con­sen­sus report by the Nation­al Research Coun­cil. That’s what I told Bhat­tachar­jee, and what I think sci­ence lit­er­a­cy grand mas­ter Jon Miller also said.

Miller’s quotes in Sci­ence show his con­cern: “Miller says the two work­shop reports down­play the con­tin­u­ing rejec­tion of evo­lu­tion by a major­i­ty of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion. ‘The idea that a scale [a ques­tion on evo­lu­tion] should be aban­doned because Amer­i­cans are not scor­ing high enough flies in the face of the most basic prin­ci­ples of sci­en­tif­ic mea­sure­ment,’ he says.”

I’m quot­ed, too, empha­siz­ing that my issue is that evo­lu­tion be includ­ed, and treat­ed like any oth­er sci­en­tif­ic concept:

Joshua Rose­nau of the Nation­al Cen­ter for Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, which has fought to keep cre­ation­ism out of the sci­ence class­room, also finds the reports dis­heart­en­ing. “What­ev­er the cul­tur­al con­text or rea­sons for it, rejec­tion of evo­lu­tion has pro­found con­se­quences for a per­son­’s abil­i­ty to ful­ly inte­grate new and exist­ing sci­ence into their own lives, to par­tic­i­pate in their own med­ical care and in the 21st cen­tu­ry econ­o­my,” he says. “If NSF’s sur­veys down­play that fun­da­men­tal con­cept, they will be mea­sur­ing sci­ence lit­er­a­cy in name only.”

I’m open to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a bet­ter mea­sure of evo­lu­tion lit­er­a­cy can be derived. Indeed, I’ve been at meet­ings in the last year with the top researchers devel­op­ing such mea­sures. That none of those folks were part of, or appar­ent­ly even aware of, the NSF work­shops and reports, does­n’t speak well to the reports’ abil­i­ty to cap­ture the cur­rent state of the art. But if fur­ther efforts at the NSF do bring in the insights of evo­lu­tion lit­er­a­cy researchers, and new­er, bet­ter sur­vey instru­ments are put in the field, I won’t weep. But if evo­lu­tion is watered down, or if ques­tions about evo­lu­tion are han­dled so dif­fer­ent­ly from oth­er ques­tions as to frus­trate side-by-side com­par­i­son, I won’t be satisfied.

I’m glad to hear that the NSB rec­og­nizes that remov­ing evo­lu­tion from the report was a mis­take; that resolves my major con­cern. As this effort moves for­ward, I hope that con­cerned sci­en­tists, sci­ence edu­ca­tors, sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tors, and cit­i­zens will weigh in with the NSB and make sure that they know this is an issue peo­ple real­ly care about. I’d espe­cial­ly sug­gest con­tact­ing — polite­ly! ‑ Dr. Grif­fiths.

There’s also a con­ver­sa­tion to be had about how NSF — guid­ed by NSB poli­cies ‑ will mea­sure the broad­er impacts of research. Every NSF research grant comes with mon­ey for out­reach efforts of var­i­ous sorts, meant to fund the “broad­er impacts” com­po­nent of a grant pro­pos­al. That sec­tion of the grant has all sorts of valu­able uses, and the NSB is lim­it­ing the scope of uses that it can be put to. Con­cerned researchers write to Sci­ence that the changes “move too far in the direc­tion of account­abil­i­ty, at the cost of sci­en­tif­ic cre­ativ­i­ty and auton­o­my.” In particular:

the list focus­es on eco­nom­ics and nation­al secu­ri­ty, but excludes pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment and address­ing oth­er social prob­lems. Aside from the con­se­quences of neglect­ing these areas, this new focus may under­mine the attrac­tive­ness of STEM [sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, math; I hate this acronym] dis­ci­plines to more ide­al­is­tic stu­dents who are inter­est­ed in meet­ing human needs rather than fos­ter­ing eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness. Sec­ond, under the pro­posed new cri­te­ria, appli­cants and review­ers are restrict­ed to the pro­vid­ed list of nation­al needs, which will com­pli­cate efforts to respond to new chal­lenges as they devel­op. Third, address­ing these nation­al needs is now sup­posed to hap­pen “col­lec­tive­ly.” This reopens the ques­tion of whether each indi­vid­ual pro­pos­al must address broad­er impacts. The new cri­te­ri­on thus replaces vague­ness regard­ing what counts as a broad­er impact with vague­ness regard­ing who is respon­si­ble for address­ing broad­er impacts.

This is of a piece with the chang­ing scope of sci­ence lit­er­a­cy sug­gest­ed in the NSF work­shop reports. The first rede­fined sci­ence lit­er­a­cy, and to the extent broad­er impacts funds are meant to influ­ence sci­ence lit­er­a­cy, how that con­cept is defined will have impor­tant impli­ca­tions for what out­reach efforts are fund­ed. As the scope of sci­ence out­reach is nar­rowed, so too will be the insti­tu­tion­al under­stand­ing of sci­ence literacy.

It’s espe­cial­ly wor­ri­some to see this retreat by the NSB on broad­er impacts fund­ing exact­ly as a new gen­er­a­tion of sci­en­tists is work­ing to change the rela­tion­ship between sci­ence and soci­ety. Younger sci­en­tists, whether grad stu­dents or young fac­ul­ty, are seek­ing out ways to com­mu­ni­cate with the pub­lic, as we’ve dis­cussed with the Dar­win Road Show before. It’s excit­ing, and I want to see NSF encour­ag­ing and sup­port­ing such out­reach. The future of NSF fund­ing depends on it, but so does the future of the Unit­ed States as a tech­no­log­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic leader. Already, we’re see­ing US schools bring­ing in for­eign stu­dents to fill up class­es in key dis­ci­plines (based on Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Indi­ca­tors). Already we’re see­ing oth­er coun­tries increas­ing their sci­ence lit­er­a­cy rel­a­tive to the US by key mea­sures. That should wor­ry us all, no mat­ter how we con­cep­tu­al­ize sci­ence lit­er­a­cy. There are great dis­cov­er­ies to be made in the next cen­tu­ry, and fights like the stem cell bat­tles of the last decade will not the last time these dis­cov­er­ies will draw back­lash from the pub­lic, espe­cial­ly if that pub­lic has­n’t had a chance to talk with sci­en­tists about their work. I hope the NSF and NSB are think­ing ahead to those next bat­tles, not redefin­ing sci­ence lit­er­a­cy so they can ignore the problems.