Is Healthcare a Right? I Still Have No Idea.

Well… I will cut it straight. This talk had nothing to do with healthcare. In fact, it had so little to do with healthcare that I was mildly angered. Bernard Harris started his talk by saying, “I know it says I came here to talk about healthcare, but I know you guys don’t want to hear about that.” … OF COURSE WE DO! That’s why we paid him to come here. Bernard Harris talked about being an astronaut for about a half an hour. He then discussed future technologies of how we can bring down the cost of healthcare. And that was it. I was stunned. I was not engaged in any sort of mental stimulation or deep thought about human rights.

Universal Healthcare is still a topic that I am on the fence about. While people deserve a right to being healthy isn’t there an expectation under a universal plan that a person does what they can to be healthy. We talk in this country all the time about “abusing the system.” Under Universal Healthcare wouldn’t being obese or smoking cigarettes suddenly become an abuse of the system and a voiding of an individual’s right to health. When you are delivered your Miranda rights you are told that you have the right to remain silent, but as soon as you talk you have voided that right. Should we treat healthcare the same way? If you smoke a cigar at graduation that isn’t a big deal, but a two pack-per-day-smoker maybe doesn’t deserve healthcare. When this law goes into place and people see a smoker getting the lung transplant over the non-smoker the proverbial shit will hit the fan.

Another reason I am skeptical of Universal Healthcare is that I have no clue how the system is supposed to suddenly deal with an influx of millions of new patients. Every time I mention this the counterargument typically looks like this: “Well now that these people are insured they are less afraid to go to the doctor for early symptoms and the system actually ends up spending less money in the long run because we have fewer people in the ER with severe illnesses.” I admit this idea seems logical and even very likely, but that still does not answer the question of how our medical infrastructure is supposed to handle millions more people. Do we have enough doctors? If we do, are they in the correct fields? Do we have enough equipment? Do we have enough hospitals and doctors’ offices?

These questions segue nicely into my final concern: rationing. During the afternoon discussion with Harris he talked about rationing. In fact, he said it was inevitable. He stated this as if it was no big deal. To me, rationing is the biggest concern. If I need a heart transplant I do NOT want to be told, “Sorry. You don’t get one.” Rationing is the kind of thing that sounds fine until it affects me. I, for one, do not want to be a part of a healthcare ration. Maybe that’s selfish, but right now I have good enough insurance to get a heart transplant and I don’t want to lose that right. That last word in that sentence is “right.” I (or rather my parents, currently) pay enough so that we deserve good healthcare. Won’t people who are paying for insurance currently, lose their right to good healthcare in the ration system envisioned by Bernard Harris? I think so.

I believe Universal Healthcare can be enacted correctly if we use smart legislation, health incentives, and really good science. I do not want to lose what I have, so any system that is attempting to change the healthcare system better not be changing my healthcare for the worse. Call it selfish. Call in greedy. But at the end of the day are you alright losing your health or your life for the good of a new healthcare system?

Assignment 10

Why are some people gay or queer or bisexual or questioning or just not heteronormative? We do not have an answer to that question and it is possible we may never know. Or it may be that there simply is no reason, but there are definitely things we know that do not cause deviance from the established heterosexual norm.

In a recent Huffington Post article an elderly Italian researcher was interviewed and quoted saying that vaccines cause homosexuality and this change in sexuality can somehow be handed down from one generation to the next. The inanity of his claim is clear: mercury in vaccines can cause precise genetic shifts which cause this change in sexuality. This  is entirely unfounded in science. But I don't want to write a whole angry post about people's attitudes toward homosexuality in the western world.

No, this article is an extreme example of something that is likely more common than we think: people with advanced degrees plaguing on people's lack of knowledge on a subject. This man is clearly a cracked scientist and he uses his training and commendations to convince others that he has answers. In this case I think it is clear to many (although, not all, unfortunately) that this information is false. But in other cases, people in his position can perpetuate misinformation.
Scientists like him undermine those who are practicing good science. Opponents of science can point at this man as anecdotal evidence that scientists are not to be trusted. The danger people like this pose to the institution of scientific research is quite high. I only wish people could see that the majority of scientists are not like this, but only scientists like this guy are really making headlines. It gives a false perception that this is a big problem.
Honestly, the best way to make people like this guy go away are to stop putting them in the news. Who cares if some wing-nut says vaccines make us gay. I see crazy people in the subway making outlandish claims. The only two differences between this researcher and the people on the subway are their commendations and the amount of press they receive. We have the power to take away one of those things from him. If we stop paying attention to these insane and inflammatory individuals it can do a lot for the credibility of the scientific community.

Assignment 9

A question I have always struggled with is does a person reflect the news program that they watch or does a news program in some way reflect the individual? In some way, it's both.

I have worked for a widowed octogenarian for about 4 years now just doing her housework and gardening. We are very close and she is a good friend of mine, but she watches Fox News. It is a clear and unspoken rule that we leave political conversation light and agreeable because we know that we won't agree on a single major issue. Sometimes we break this rule and when she starts spouting her opinion I hear Fox News in her words. Clearly, a media outlet like Fox is influencing her ideas just like NPR influences what I say.

But then there is other side of the coin. If I didn't possess many of the same biases as my particular news outlet, then would I listen to what they say? The answer is, "probably not." I try to balance myself out sometimes by mixing conservative talk radio in with my NPR... It's infuriating. I yell and scream and shout at the radio. "HOW? HOW? HOW can you BELIEVE that?" or "WHY? Why on Earth did you treat that caller with such disrespect? That's not fair." or simply "sigh..."
There is a positive feedback loop. The news tries to draw in a niche audience because attempting to appeal to all viewers would be incredibly difficult. If a news outlet creates an image that a certain type of person feels comfortable with then that person will follow that news source. In return the news outlet feeds listeners the biases they want to hear.
So, to pin the blame entirely on the media outlet is unfair. While the expectation of a media outlet is to be unbiased, anyone you ask will tell you that there is no such thing as an unbiased news source. Yes, a media outlet has an agenda: to keep their viewership and increase their influence, but a news outlet's desire to really report on news for increasing knowledge or informing the public is secondary to the reality of increasing profit margins and market share.
The answer to this question, "How might the goals of a media outlet affect their audience's knowledge?" is a complicated one. News media wants to keep its viewers so it must stay true to its perceived code if it wishes to do this. At the same time viewers crave media that they feel most aligns with their ideals. It's a complicated mixture of what the providers and consumers expect to receive from media.

Assignment 8

I think presenting balance in scientific writing can easily be compared to how we present data in science. In science we find results and we create a confidence limit, which means we take a set of random data and we say the 95% of the data closest to the average are accepted and the radical data, or outliers, are left out. Sometimes the outliers may deserve mention, but often times they do not.
The same can be said for writing about science for the public. If 95% of the scientists say that global warming exists (I actually think it's more like 99%, but I am not sure) then is it really worth it to include the 5% that are the outliers? No. This 95% is an overwhelming majority. If there was a 50-50 split in the scientific community or even an 80-20 split, I think it would be important to present the other side. But 5% is such a samll minority.
That is not to say those 95% agree on every aspect of global warming. The mechanics of climate changes is still very much up for debate. We need to accept their predictions on the average. The average says that global warming is real and it is a considerable threat. We can ignore the outliers in this instance, i.e. the doomsday-types that say we will all be dead tomorrow and the deniers that reject the theory of global warming outright.
But the issue that keeps nagging at the back of my head is this: what if they are right? Copernicus was a radical. He was an outlier when he said the Earth revolved around the Sun, but his ideas turned out to be right. What if that's true of the global warming nay-sayers and or the people that say HIV doesn't cause AIDS? What if those folks are correct? My idea is that if they are correct then that will become clear through the continuation of good science. In other words, it's acceptable losses. I will believe the 95% for now. This is why we test and retest and try new experiments. If our theories are wrong then that will become clear with time. If we follow the wrong path for now then the best we can say down the road is that we tried. It's a risk. But not a very big risk. For the handful of times that the outliers have been correct there have been thousands of times that they haven't. Like I said before: acceptable losses.
So when debating if we should present the other side in a story it is important to look at how big that other side is. Is it one wing-nut shouting from a street corner or is a respectably-sized group of independent research teams coming to a similar conclusion? Stick with the 95% when presenting science. If there is no 95% then that is when you present both sides of the argument.

Assignment 7

Drawings of scientists

My Drawing

Gender: Male

Age: 60s

Facial expression: poker faced

Clothing: Lab coat over button down shirt and dress pants

Grooming: Silver hair slicked to the side like a stone-cold silver fox. Clean shaven.

Height: Medium stature

Skin color: White

Eye color: Brown

Build: Thin, but not scrawny

My Friend's Drawing

Gender: Male

Age: 60s

Facial expression: sinister or frustrated?

Clothing: Lab coat buttoned up

Grooming: Bald. Moustache.

Height: Medium stature

Skin color: White

Eye color: N/A

Build: Scrawny

When I look at these drawings and think about the scientists I interact with daily I find them to be quite similar. First, and most strikingly obvious, is their skin color. In the chemistry department every professor is white with one exception of a Latina professor. My experience in the biology department has been with all white professors although I have only had a few bio classes. My two math teachers have been white.The list goes on like that. Not just in the sciences, but in all of higher education. We are used to being taught by white people, especially men (although the gender trend is shifting, I believe, more quickly then the racial trend).
Both my friend's drawing and mine were of males. I thought about drawing a woman when I first got the assignment to draw a scientist, but I thought that would be odd for me to do that as a male. I am not sure why that is. Maybe I somehow expect that as a male I should aspire to follow male scientists as role models, which may speak to a deep-rooted expectation of gender roles in my life.

Age was another striking thing. I am used to looking up to older white, males as my science teachers. In high school my two favorite science teachers were older white men and the same can be said for my two favorite science teachers here, as well.

Neither my friend and I drew the "wacky scientist" though. This makes sense since we are both science people. While I know many eccentric scientists I do not know many with the Einstein hair and badly-matched clothing. My friend's drawing did have a sinister expression, but I think he was trying to make him appear as if he was thinking hard. Neither he or I are particularly good artists.

Finally, the lab coat is important. I have only seen one professor on campus in a lab coat so I don't know where this idea really comes from. I guess it is more of an identifier for the person viewing the drawing. Once you see a lab coat it becomes obvious what the artist is trying to convey about the identity and role of that person even if many scientists don't actually wear a lab coat.

As a science writer, the stereotypes represented by these drawings can make our view of interviewees more narrow then it should be. When seeking out experts we are looking for someone who looks like an expert. I expect a sagacious, aged man in a lab coat to sit me down and tell me all I need to know about some complex subject. But this is a prejudice I (and other people) need to rid myself of. Scientists come in all colors, genders, and ages. Some of the brightest professors on this campus are extremely young (only 10 or 15 years older than me). One of our most qualified chemistry professors (she graduated from Oxford) is a young woman. Why I assume intelligence comes with age is an old idea that must be thrown out. I cannot carry a bias when listening to an expert opinion just because a person is in their 30's rather than their 50's, or is a woman rather than a man.

I think an notable prejudice that people carry when considering what scientists are like cannot be easily conveyed in a drawing. Scientists are typically thought of as eccentric, impersonal people with few friends and an obsession for their work. While science certainly attracts a good deal of eccentrics and socially-awkward people there are many great scientists who are just normal people. Scientists are thought to only advance their work without considerations of the ethical implications, but the scientists I know are people with families and homes and lives. They are people who put family and community first. They constantly question the ethical dilemmas that science brings with it and encourage their students to do the same. I hope that as a science writer I can come to recognize every person as a potential science expert because physical characteristics do not make the expert; it's about what they know that counts.

Assignment 6

Francis Bacon believed that the senses deceived us in two distinct ways. They either alter our perception of what is actually occurring or they completely fail us. When he wrote the New Organon, which is the foundation of modern science, he wanted us to abandon our dependency on the senses and instead use experimentation to acquire knowledge. Basically, he started the argument between trusting our instincts and disregarding them.
A lot of conventional wisdom revolves around going with our gut feeling. It is said that on a multiple-choice test the first answer you circle is typically the right one. And when it comes to taking a risk we are supposed to "not think about it; just do it." But is all this gut-trusting really something we should welcome into the scientific community? Yes and no. Basing an experiment on a hunch is what science is all about. We think that maybe X is true so we test it, but instinct should never make it into the laboratory. When we are in the lab and a suddenly gas Y is seen evaporating off the reaction we should not just assume it is hydrogen and move on. Maybe it's nitrogen and that could change everything.
Instinct also has a place after we perform the experiment. That's basically what a theory is. We have all this data and our gut says, "This data seems to insinuate that X causes Y." Granted, we have something to back up our gut with, i.e. scientific data, but even with numbers our idea may not be true. Just because one guy figured something out does not mean it is correct.
Which brings me to the science writer. Is it their place to use their gut when writing a story? No. Not at all. First of all, as a journalist they should not be reporting on anything except what is factual or what is stated in interviews. Secondly, to include educated guesses or gut feelings from you, the writer, is not accurate. You are not an expert and have no place to be making such an assessment.
Things become a little less clear when we are quoting our sources. If a doctor lays out three possible theories for why X causes Y then all three should be included. Even though all three possibilities are based on the gut feeling of a scientist, they are educated proposals.
What if the whole subject matter is based on a gut-feeling, though? Is it fair to write about it? Is it fair to call it science journalism? To talk about something that we are not sure is true is to propagate falsehoods and animosity towards science. Take the bees for instance. It seems there are millions of different reasons why people seem to think that the bees are disappearing from their hives. It's global warming, pesticides, diseases, parasites, loss of habitat, genetically modified pollen, cell phone towers, industrialization of the bee industry, and so on and so on. Some of these allegations seem to have more merit than others, but every time we see an article about the bees it is hard to tell if this is an article based on a hunch or research.
As discussed in my last post, the propagation of misinformation is awful for the public. It is damaging to our perception of truth and science. It is possible that a hunch is correct, but a science writer should never state a hunch as fact. If they do want to include an expert's speculation the comment should be labelled as such.
And it is easy to understand why a science writer wants to write a sensationalist piece about a hunch. For one, if it is a really juicy story then that means they can get their name out there. Also, it is understandable that maybe we feel obligated to publish a gut-feeling before the research has moved forward because if people believe it and the gut-feeling turns out to be correct then you saved a lot of people from a lot of trouble.
But it is still important to wait for the data and to only report on data. It is also important to label all speculation as such. When writing about science it feels right to stay grounded in research because you are being honest with the reader. So when writing an article, just go with your gut: stick to the facts.

Assignment 5

People like patterns. This is a simple part of our cognitive process that made living as hunter-gatherers easier. We eat a mushroom. We have an upset stomach. We throw-up. That means the mushroom caused our stomach problems so we should avoided it in the future. Learning through correlation is what makes living possible, but unfortunately, correlation- as the saying goes- does not mean causation. Maybe there was a bacteria on the fungus that made us sick. The mushroom may be perfectly edible if we just wash it. In order to find causation science takes our impulse to jump to conclusions and throws it out the window.
We have a very particular method in science that aims to remove as much human bias as possible, but unfortunately some methods designed by scientists are inadequate and fail to do this. In 1998, Wakefield et al famously published a paper that was ethically and methodologically flawed. They determined vaccines may cause autism in toddlers. Their conclusions were unfounded and the paper was retracted 12 years later. But the damage was done. There is a large portion of our population that still believes vaccines cause autism.
Does this mean that these people are scientifically illiterate? Yes. Just as people who refuse to acknowledge climate change ignore the majority of evidence supporting its existence, people believing in the autism-vaccine link latch on to one or two pieces of evidence contrary to the overwhelming majority of research findings. Science is based on consensus. If one study says A and twenty thousand studies say B it is typically the case that B is correct. Now this is not always so. Copernicus said the earth revolved around the sun and he was outnumbered. But people tested his theory and found he was correct. Reproducibility of results is key to science's claim to being declared as truth. Denial of the majority of evidence directly contradicts science's foundations.
That is not to say it is unacceptable to question results. We must always double check findings in science because verification is also important to the scientific process.
So what does the above information mean for the writer of science. First of all, basing your writing on one study is a mistake. Always check to see if others agree with the results of the particular paper you are studying. Also, the previous information tells us that debunking theories (whether true or false) is very difficult. People like to take what makes sense because of correlation and accept it as true. In fact, we do more than accept these correlations. We become married to ideas and emotionally invested in what we believe is true. Challenging peoples perceptions of truth can often be an construed as an attack on them, personally. When writing for science it is important to carefully lay out why one theory is incorrect and why another is true. Instead, of bulldozing someone's perception of reality, it is better to deconstruct it carefully and then rebuild it.
Correlation and causation are at the heart of this argument  As scientists and science writers we must be very careful to differentiate between the two and base our research on the latter, because basing it on the former can be devastating for the public's perception of truth.

Assignment 4

The science journalist is certainly in the best position to "give science away." Giving science to the public is easy when you have a large audience, access to top scientists, and good writing technique. It is the torch that the science writer carries. The scientist can be thought of as the fire giver. These Promethean figures have this knowledge and light, but their ways of disseminating to the public are poor. They publish papers that are intensely boring to anyone not already interested in the subject matter you study. The public is left in the dark about most science. It is the job of the science journalist to get that information out. When we think of a world with no science reporting most people in this country would know nothing beyond what they can remember from high school biology.

But there is still this issue of scientific illiteracy. Our biggest issue as science writers is the distribution problem. How on earth do we get people to read an article in a section of the paper they simply skip over? I think one way is to insert science into articles in other sections of the paper or online newspaper. By adding science into stories related to other topics of news we can expose a larger audience to the wonderful field of science. For example,  If an article on water wars is printed in the international section then a section of the writing should consider why there are water shortages and how we can resolve these issues scientifically, as well as politically.

What about the people who do not read the news? Television media does not seem to be a great substitute. There is some science reporting, but on television you cannot enter the kind of depth you can in text. To reach the non-news reading public it is not necessary to abandon science writing as a tool. I tutor K-5 children and part of my job is to teach science lessons. When I do this I use science writing as a way of getting predigested information, images, and ideas. Science writing can still be useful even when it is not being read. It is possible to take the torch from science writers and carry it yourself for a little while.

So, written above are several ways to give science away to the public, but does this dissemination of information have a large impact on the common good. Yes, it does. A more informed scientific public may lead to more scientists. My chief concern is not to increase scientific literacy, but rather inspire some children (or maybe even adults) to work in the sciences. If we can inspire some people to get into science then we have done a good job as the torch carriers.

Assignment 3

Why do people lose interest in science? I think the answer to that is pretty easy: math. When I learned science in second grade I learned about birds and mammals and dinosaurs and planets and oceans and other incredible concepts. They are concepts that captured my imagination and feed into my imagination. I loved planes and trains as a little kid. I still do. They are massive hunks of metal that can carry thousands of tons of cargo or break the sound barrier or drop bombs on targets the size of a 55-gallon drum from several thousand feet. What isn't incredible about those things?

The answer lies in how we learn science. By the time we reach high school the magic is taken away from science and broken down into meaningless numbers. Yes, sound travels at 340 m/s, but when in physics class do we discuss how absolutely incredible it is that a sound traveling through a fluid can reach our ears and be distinguishable as a syllable or word? Sure, a strong acid has a pH of 1, but can we discuss what that kind of acid can do to metal or your hand? That's what people want to hear. Nobody cares about numbers unless they are given context (except mathematicians, which is good for them, but not the point I am trying to make here).

Once kids struggle through high school chemistry it is no wonder they have an aversion to the sciences. In five years from graduation all they will remember from that class is they received a C+ and their teacher was a real jerk. They won't be able to describe a molecule or the ideal gas law because those concepts were broken down and spoon-fed to them as definitions and numbers. It's a shame. Numbers can be interesting when we take the time to understand what they mean.

As science writers it is our job to get people re-interested in science. We can't just bring science to people. They need incredible science; the kind of science that makes you take a moment and say, "Holy shit, they can do that?" In my opinion nobody does this better than Radio Lab on NPR. They take cutting edge science and make an hour of easily-understood, yet shocking, break through science. We need to make it clear as science writers that sea floor spreading is not just a calculable rate of rock movement across the ocean floor. No, we need to tell them that the very living rock of this planet is not stationary. Even the earth, our most solid and unmoving of objects, is not static. That's amazing.

So as a writer of science we cannot report on boring crap, nor can we report on exciting things and turn them into boring crap. It is our job as writers of science to take the unfathomable world of science and make it enthralling. We need to make it great, make it fun, and make it interesting. Our education system and textbooks have done enough damage to science so we must take great caution to not cause any further aversions to the incredible discoveries that our scientists make. Our job is to make science interesting by removing the numbers and formulas and, instead, illuminate the incredible discoveries of our scientific discoveries.

Assignment 2

The ASR findings came to a few major conclusions. One is that on average public trust in science has not declined in this country over the last 40 years. Only two groups have had drops in there trust in science: conservatives and church-goers. Other groups have stayed fairly level in their trust in science. The other finding is that education does not correlate to trust in science. A more educated public does not mean that public trust in science will increase.

Essentially, this report is a very long way of saying, "People are stubborn." I do not understand why any of us should be surprised by any of the results of this finding. The conservative base is so far removed from science that is scary at times (the opposite is also true, however, where liberals are sometimes too married to it).

We have long known that people are stubborn. Very rarely do people have epiphanies about religion or science and change their whole way of thinking. Sure there are born-agains and people who lose faith, but there are a slim margin of the population. The decline in trust in science among conservatives is likely not due to a bunch of "science-believers"  suddenly denying its veracity, but rather people switching parties or becoming independents or moderates.

So, how does this information make me become better science writers? It doesn't. It can't. My audience is now more partisan, more biased, more one-sided.. The audience of science readers is moving left and that means we do not need to worry much about alienating our conservative readership because they are already being alienated. The report tells me some people, no matter how educated they are, do not trust science. Will they even read the articles I write if they are outright rejecting the subject matter? No matter how much evidence I present I cannot reach that particular part of the audience if they never even read past the title.

Does this information make me become a better scientist? Probably not. My job as a scientist is to perform scientific experiments and increase our understanding of the natural world. Whether a minority of people wish to accept that information or not is up to them. As a scientist and student of the physical world I need to be concerned with performing experiments. It is not my role to interfere politically and socially in an attempt to make my work more appreciated or trusted.

Does this information make me a better citizen? It can or it can't. With this information I have the power to say, "Those darn conservatives/Charlie-churchers will never get science so this is all the more reason not to try to talk with them about it" or it is my opportunity to try and show them that science is something they should trust. I hope I can make the latter choice. Most people take medicine and use computers. That is science that they have put their trust in so why should other science be different. It is all done the same way. It is my job as a citizen, more than as a scientist or science writer, to talk with them and try to make them see that science is not trying to lie to them and dissuade them from their beliefs or principles. By reasoning logically with people and starting to convince them that science is not only trustworthy, but also their friend, I hope at least a small fraction of people will come to believe that that is true.

Assignment 1 Prompt 1

Science has the potential to make or break the United States and the world. It has the power to cure cancer and the power to blow up whole countries. For these reasons it is safe to assume that knowledge of the sciences is of the utmost importance in modern society. Jon D. Miller warns us in his article "What Colleges and Universities Need to Do to Advance Civic Scientific Literacy and Preserve American Democracy" that around the developed world scientific literacy is abysmally low with a mere 24% of Americans being satisfactorily literate. Scientific progress moves at an ever increasing rate and numbers like those presented by Miller should tell us that we are all doomed. But then again, maybe not.

Scientific literacy is important to me because I am intensely curious about science, but whether or not it is important to keep a functioning democracy is arguable. I agree that politicians need to be scientifically literate. It is definitely important that they understand the science behind the issues because there are several important debates being argued right now that are highly technical in nature. We depend on our elected officials to educate themselves (or have there interns do it, at least) and look at the data to make an informed decision.

Here is where you say, "But politicians don't always do that. They refute solid scientific evidence frequently and end up basing there decisions on moral, religious, or partisan affiliations." An excellent point, which in fact supports the idea that scientific literacy is hardly important at all. There are many politicians that seem to be able to look at a mountain of data saying global warming is real and then throw it in a landfill somewhere while they go off and start a tire fire at an endangered species hunting party. So, who cares about what the science says? I do! ... but my elected official doesn't and neither do most Americans according to the most recent Gallup poll which came out at the beginning of the month. It is a poll that asks which issues are most important to them. A mere 1% said the environment, which is probably one of the greatest existential threats facing our species besides nuclear proliferation. Another 4% said healthcare, while nobody said energy or lack of resources or overpopulation. These issues are scientifically driven and few people seem worried.

The issues topping the poll are things like governmental dissatisfaction, the economy in general, the national deficit, unemployment, and other such issues. And who can blame the American public for being concerned about those things? These are issues that affect us every single day. Does that make them the most important? Absolutely not, but they are the most pressing and the ones that hit the closest to home. Unless rising sea levels are carrying your house out to sea (which they may do one day) then global warming probably seems a pretty distant and unimportant issue.

So, how do we make people care about science? How do we make them understand that it could save them? Or destroy them? Simply, we cannot. Not by writing about it, anyway. The only way science will ever interest anyone is by making it personal. Talk to people going working in medical research, for instance, and you will likely find someone who knew a friend or family member affected by cancer, ALS, or Downs syndrome, which has pushed them to do their research. I love science because my father loves it and he taught me to enjoy it, too. If my parents hadn't encouraged my scientific curiosity I am sure I wouldn't be studying chemistry at all.

So the final question is: can we increase scientific literacy and save our our democracy? No, for two reasons.   One, people don't care about science. It isn't at the forefront and it may not be for a long time. Two, we aren't going to magically breed an interest in science among the general public by writing articles in an often skipped over "Science" section of a dying media outlet. Scientific literacy can only be fostered within schools and homes where people can have role models who love science. Scientific literacy is important, but only to some of us, and it is certainly not important in maintaining our democracy... at least not yet.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx
This is the link to the Gallup poll referenced above.

Testing 1... 2... 3...

The large intestine is quite large... or so I have heard.