18 Eugenie Scott & Ann Reid - The Assault on Science Education

Inquiring Minds

Science, Society & Culture, Neuroscience, Female Host, Interview, Social Sciences, Critical Thinking

4.4 • 848 Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2014

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In recent decades, there have been countless infringements, and attempted infringements, upon accurate science education across the country. The "war on science" in national politics has nothing on the war playing out every day in public schools, even if the latter is usually less visible. The attacks are diverse and ever-changing, showing an array of tactics and strategies that almost rivals biological life itself. "If nothing else evolves," explains evolution defender Eugenie Scott on this week’s episode, "religion does. Creationism does."Scott spoke to us on an auspicious occasion: She is stepping down as the director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), an organization she founded in her basement 27 years ago, and that has since become the chief tracker of attacks on science education across the US. Joining the conversation was Scott's successor Ann Reid, who led the sequencing of the 1918 flu virus at the Army Institute of Pathology in the mid 2000s, and most recently served as director of the American Academy of Microbiology.This week’s episode also features a discussion looking back at the science in the last three State of the Union addresses, and examines a recent science-of-memory study, which suggests walking through doorways might actually be making us forget things.Subscribe:itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-mindsSupport the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Friday, January 24th, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds. I'm Chris Mooney.
0:06.9	And I'm Indrae Viscontas.
0:08.3	Each week, we bring you a new, in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.
0:14.1	We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.
0:18.3	You can find us online at climatedust.org, and you can follow us on Twitter
0:21.8	at Inquiring Show and on Facebook at slash Inquiring Minds podcast.
0:32.3	So, Indra, this week I spoke with not one, but two women who are at the center of something that we
0:38.7	here on the show care a lot about, which is protecting science education, basically
0:43.3	protecting the brains of our kids from all kinds of intellectual pollution that anti-science
0:48.7	forces are putting out all the time. So the first guest was Eugenie Scott, who is the founding director of the National
0:55.7	Center for Science Education or NCSE, and she's been in that post 27 years fighting the good
1:01.9	fight to protect the teaching of evolution and more recently the teaching of climate science.
1:06.6	She started this organization in her basement. It has become the go-to place for defending
1:11.3	good science teaching, and its greatest moment was the famous 2005 Dover-Penzylvania Evolution
1:17.9	trial where good science proved victorious in the courtroom against pseudoscientific
1:22.4	intelligent design, a kind of round two of the Scopes Monkey trial. So Eugenie was very involved in that.
1:29.8	My second guest was Anne Reed, who's a woman who actually led the sequencing of the
1:34.7	1918 flu virus while she was working at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and she's
1:39.2	taking over for Eugenie as the director of NCSE, and she's its new director. She's going to chart a new course,
1:46.1	not just on continuing to protect evolution, but also more and more also in ensuring that we
1:51.3	have good climate science education. So here's a clip for my interview with both of them. This is
1:56.0	Eugenie Scott speaking, and she's explaining how they help teachers deal with attacks on science in a range of
	...

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