"Just out of interest – where do you consider yourself to be on the scale of scientific literacy?"?

Hi Joe,

Summary

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Taking climate science as a whole then I’d say I was a 4 or 5, focussing only on the areas in which I specialise then perhaps an 8 or 9. If we take into consideration the fact that there is so much we still don’t know, then even the most respected authority on a particular aspect would perhaps only get a 3 or 4.

Details

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There are some areas about which I know very little and often have to refer to books, papers, the internet etc. There are other areas that I am more competent in – primarily because these are areas that interest me and ones in which I have conducted much research.

If the question related to marine ecosystems then I’d have to rate myself as a 1 or 2 out of 10. If it were dynamic climatologies (not synoptics) and boundary transitions then perhaps it would be an 8 or even a 9.

One area in which my knowledge is embarrassingly lacking concerns atmospheric spectroscopics, I really should know much more but it’s one of those things that never really appealed. In this area I’d rate myself as a 3 or 4 out of 10. Someone such as d/dx (who has been quiet of late). I’d rate as a 9 or 10.

Much of my research happens in the coldest parts of the planet – the Polar regions and at altitude. If you were to ask me what my favourite substance was I’d immediately say it was ice. I think it’s fascinating and I love the cold environments. My second degree was in glaciology and along with cosmology (currently studying) it was my favourite subject. In the area of cryospherics I’d rate myself perhaps as a 7 or 8.

Having been involved with climatological research for 30 years there are inevitably some areas that I have focussed on which very few other people have touched. Given that the knowledge pool is so small, then anyone who is an expert (or even moderately competent) in such areas would, by default, be rated as a 9 or 10.

Other Comments

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Thanks LINLYONS for the links to the tests, I’d come across the Pew one but the others were new. I had fun doing them. I did get them all right but some of the questions/answers were somewhat ambiguous and some folks may have got a supposed wrong answer when if in fact it could be argued that they were correct.

COMMENT: TO JC

I think JC is being very generous in some of his ratings. Gore. Monckton, Limbaugh and Maher I would rate as no more than 2 at the most. Put them together and collectively they know almost nothing about climate science.

EDIT: TO JC

Your baseline is different to mine and hence we gave different ratings. You were applying ratings as measured against the population as a whole whereas I was using a rating system based more on the amount of knowledge. In my ratings system, given that the average person knows very little about climate science, my average rating would be about 1 (4 = knowledgeable, 6 = good comprehension, 8 = degree level).

GCNP: Re your comments, the thing about Limbaugh, Gore, Monckton etc is that they don’t really understand climate science; what they know is nothing more than pieces of information that can be recalled from memory; there’s little or no real comprehension of the subject. To actually understand climate science (or any science) it is of course essential to have the necessary insight and perception, the ability to actually work things out rather than just recalling them.

I haven’t read Earth In The Balance so perhaps I’m doing Gore a disservice. However, what I have seen of him doesn’t instil any confidence that he has a scientific understanding of climate science. He may know a lot of facts and figures but that’s not science. Out of Gore, Monckton, Limbaugh and Maher I would rate Gore the highest, but still only a 2 out of 10 (Monckton = 0, Limbaugh and Maher = 1).

I don't think I have a high level of scientific literacy in any area. JC's ratings are "interesting". We do have a number of PhDs posting here and some have been climate scientists for much of their working lives. Their knowledge of the subject will be so far in advance of where I am that it would be difficult for me to put us both on the same scale.

However, if we change the subject from a narrow aspect of climate science to another subject then are those same people so far in advance of me? I suspect not.

I have a fairly numerate background from my engineering training. We covered Fourier and Laplace transforms, vectors, calculus including tensor calculus, matrices, determinants, Eigenvalues/vectors, basic stats.

The question does not recognise the fact that there is more to solving a problem than knowing the answer. For instance, climate models produce answers but they run on computers that know nothing about climate. They are given all the facts they need to know from the scientists who do know. All the computer does is piece together those facts and derive an answer. People who are logical enough can do something similar. Just understanding something about conservation of mass and energy will raise you above most of the population.

To see if you are in that category look at this clip and see if you think the inventor is really on to something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQGvXx4rfUY

Based upon your scale in your first update, I would be an 8 in my field of statistics.

How this translates to the climate is a different story. While I do think my experience and expertise gives me some insight into the modeling process and understanding the generalizability of models, I admittedly am not very strong in terms of understanding the climate science.

For the climate science aspect, I would say around a 5. My independent research as well as knowledge of statistics allows me to have an apprentice level knowledge in many areas of climate science. Clearly knowledge in all areas of climate science is nearly impossible.

On the aspects of climate science that are entirely separated from modeling and statistics, I would be a 3.

Now if I rank myself so low, why would I disagree with the "experts" and argue with people with moer knowledge here?

If the experts were not constantly making claims beyond what is warranted by the statistical analysis done, I would not have likely even set my sights on climate science. Further, even the experts can be biased. In fact, in my experience the people who are the "experts" tend to be the most biased.

As far as arguing with people who are seemingly more informed than me, climate science hits so many areas that someone with an overall 9 in the field of climate science may still only have a 3 in certain aspects.

It depends. In my own rather restricted field, about 8. In chemistry, physics, astronomy, I'd be overly generous to give myself a 2. Maybe a bit higher in a few other fields.

Great idea to rate the others contributing to the forum, although we would be working on the basis of incomplete information and subject to bias depending on how we stand on environmental issues. As an example, see where different people ranked Al Gore. The rankings, I'd wager. are based entirely on his knowledge of climatology, a very small segment of science.

Around 7 I'd say, though self-assessment is a bit suspect. I got 13/13 in linlyons' simple Pew test which puts me in the top 7% of the population. Don't ask me about biology though.

I got a Physics HND (2 years compared with a 3-year degree) a good few years ago and later a Masters, not in physics.

Both here and in other places I'm appalled by the people who clearly don't understand the basics of even school-level science but readily swallow any old rubbish fed to them by (usually right-wing) denier blogs, columnists and lobbying organisations with NO science behind them. It's sad that they imagine their ill-informed opinion of science carries any weight in the light of views of many experts based on large bodies of evidence and analysis.

I liked linlyons quote: "Unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude." I see this all the time.

EDIT: Alongside Trevor, pegminer or Alph I've given myself too high a score. Compared with certain others here who gave themselves a 5-6 but demonstrate no understanding of science, my 7 seems too low. I have to fit in this gap but there's no room for honest self-appraisal!

My initial self assessment would have been a 5 or 6 but, having read your additional details, also the answers of others, I think 4 would be about right for me; an engineering graduate with a lifelong interest in science.

I give myself a 4 which is about as high as anyone can get without a PHD in math, physics, or biology.

We can read the books and scientific papers, but without an understanding of physics, calculus, and lab experiments, we are really just getting regurgitated material from other scientists. Many of these scientists are pulled by political agendas, which muddies the water of scientific fact.

Scientific fact has been influenced by politics a lot lately and for good reason. These scientists get their money and prestige from governments and the universities that get their money from governments.

For this reason many scientists have resigned recently because they are not willing to lie about certain scientific debates that would reveal other facts and opinions that go against the political regime that is control.

As time goes by, the corrupt scientific opinions are exposed for what they are.

Einstein went through some of the muddled scientific opinions. So did Galileo. The only way to expose this to come up with arguments that can't be debunked. But when you are facing the loss of your career, and the possibility of losing your career, you will almost always go along with what 90% of government and university controlled scientists are saying.

I have learned, through my research, that evolution and geology is spot one. But the global warming debate is tainted. But, as time goes by the truth will come out.

My initial self assessment would have been a 5 or 6 but, having read your additional details, also the answers of others, I think 4 would be about right for me; an engineering graduate with a lifelong interest in science.

I don't think subjective self evaluation makes much sense. Also, I'd say that "up-to-date knowledge of research, thinking, speculation and implications of all science" is well beyond the ability of any human nowadays. By any measure, science is vastly more complicated and specialized now than in the days of Galileo and Newton. I took LinLyons first linked-to quiz (Pew) and got 12 out of 13. According to the results thereof, I "scored better than 85% of the public, below 7% and the same as 8%." That would imply that I might be an 8 or 9. By your scale, Joe, maybe a 4. Higher for climate science since I have been following it, partly using science journals, since well before it was something one could read about regularly in the daily newspaper, e.g. long before the fossil fuel industry and its bought politicians bothered to routinely lie about it.

I'm pretty knowledgeable at mathematics, physics and earth science (atmospheric science, geology and geophysics, oceanography), so I'm "scientifically literate" in those areas, but I'm certainly not an expert in all of those areas. I've delved deeply enough to do fundamental research in the particular subfields of plasma physics, atmospheric water vapor, monsoon climatology, lightning detection, plate tectonics and electronic circuit theory.

I've also done applied research on automated filter tuning and testing, nuclear magnetic and quadrupole resonance for explosive and element detection, and selective absorbers for solar collectors.

But despite having done research in all those areas, and having a Ph.D. in earth sciences and everything but the Ph.D. in physics, there are lots of things I wouldn't be an considered an expert at. Whatever a person's background, It's important to always keep reading, studying, learning. Personally I want to become better at numerical modeling and weather prediction, and I want to become fully literate in quantum field theory.

I think the best thing for anyone to do to up their scientific literacy is to study physics.