Why Do People Reject Good Science?

Many people will consider factual information and it will change their understanding. But there are some for whom, “Providing more, accurate information doesn’t seem to change their opinions or make them alter their erroneous views,” says Eugenie Scott, Founding Executive Director of National Center for Science Education. For example, Americans have a much lower incidence of acceptance of evolution than people in any other developed country in the world. The same is true about the acceptance of anthropogenic climate change, despite the scientific evidence for both.

What explains this knowledge resistance?

We all view factual information through a filter of ideology, values, and group identification but these filters often make ideas very resistant to change because they prevent us from looking dispassionately at empirical evidence, facts and logic. Scott explores what drives knowledge resistance and what can break it down.

Eugenie C. Scott served as the executive director of the National Center for Science Education, an organization that works to keep publicly (though not scientifically) controversial topics like evolution and climate change in the public schools. Her work has involved a mixture of science, communication, religion, education, law, and community activism.

Watch Why Do People Reject Good Science?

Marvelous Machines

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s popular lecture series, “Science on Saturday,” returns to UCTV with four different lectures, each exploring the theme “Marvelous Machines.” These presentations are targeted to middle and high school students so we can all get our science on.

Checkout these lectures:
Biomolecular Action Movies: Flash Imaging With X-ray Lasers, with Matthias Frank and Megan Shelby

Biomedical Accelerator Mass Spectrometry: Improving Human Health One Atom at a Time with scientist Mike Malfatti

Laser Plasma Accelerators: Riding the Wave to the Next Generation X-Ray Light Source, by Felicie Albert

The Evolution of Computing Technologies: From Following Instructions to Learning, by Katherine Lewis

Browse more programs in Field Trip at the Lab: Science on Saturday.

Why Did Humans Start Eating Meat?

Humans have been hunter-gatherers for most of our existence as a species and hunting has long been seen as a key human adaptation, thought to have influenced our anatomy, physiology, and behavior, indeed, a force in our evolution as a species. CARTA brings experts from across the globe to explore evidence pertaining to understanding the origins of hominin hunting and where this understanding can lead future research.

Browse more programs in CARTA: The Role of Hunting in Anthropogeny.

Join us on Science Field Trips to Lawrence Livermore National Lab!

8232Join a group of science teachers and middle and high school students on a field trip to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) for the annual Science on Saturday (SOS) lecture series. Presented by leading LLNL researchers and supported by master high school science teachers, each topic highlights cutting-edge science occurring at the lab.

Check out this year’s field trips:

82323D Printing: From Imagination to Realization
Revolutionary changes to materials and structures are now possible with 3D printing, bringing concepts that were previously only imagined into reality. This breakthrough technology fabricates components by adding material layer by layer from the bottom up allowing for the creation of highly complex and previously unrealizable structures.

8232Reconstructing a Rabies Epidemic: Byte by Byte
A vast majority of the newly discovered human pathogens are viruses that have jumped to humans from an animal host (“cross-species transmission”). Find out how biologists and computer scientists have collaborated and used cutting edge ultra-deep sequencing technology to study the dynamics of a 2009 rabies outbreak to better understand emergent viruses, such as Ebola and Zika.

8232Forensic Science in Crisis: How Proteins Can Help
In the last decade, the scientific foundations of a number of traditional forensic methods have come under increasing criticism by the scientific community, leading to their discontinuation or reduced effectiveness in criminal prosecutions. These challenges raise questions about the admissibility of certain type of evidence in current cases and the validity of previous convictions. We will discuss the basis of these issues and describe some of the work ongoing at LLNL to try and address some of them. In particular we will describe an entirely new science-based approach to human identification.

Browse Field Trip at the Lab: Science on Saturday to discover more from past field trips!

Oncology from Top to Bottom

If you are looking to work in the medical field, cancer is something you will be forced to face on a regular basis — especially considering that the incidences of cancer are rising, and currently the likelihood of contracting cancer in your lifetime is 1 in 2.

The latest video from the Foundations for Future Healthcare Providers series takes a look at oncology, specifically cancers within the gastrointestinal tract.

Dr. Andrew Ko, from the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center, specializes in gastrointestinal cancers and says that there are many different types, just about as many different types of gastrointestinal cancers as there are different gastrointestinal organs. The most dangerous and most prevalent of these gastrointestinal cancers is colorectal cancer, which is ranked #3 in incidence and in cancer-related mortality amongst all cancers in general.

Find out more about just how different and deadly these types of cancers are in “Oncology from Top to Bottom: A Survey of Cancers through the Gastrointestinal Tract

See what else you can learn from the Foundations for Future Healthcare Providers series!