Off topic, but it does relate to how our media handles highly technical subjects that many people frankly don’t understand…

I don’t know what’s happening, if there is a coordinated effort or not, but there has been a spate of science writers attacking Native American and indigenous beliefs recent.

There was an article in Reason, which is a nutty glibertarian magazine so we expect foolishness form them.

Discover Magazine blogger Keith Kloor’s new posting:

When Political Sensitivities and Science Collide with Religion

[…] In any case, amidst all the uproar there wasn’t much discussion of the Native American creationist myths that were also on sale at the Grand Canyon National Park bookstores.

For some reason, science advocates who chafe at a biblical story of the Grand Canyon aren’t much bothered by American Indian creation tales that are remarkably similar, if you look closely.

[…]

There is George Johnson writing in the NYT:

Seeking Stars, Finding Creationism

[…]

While biblical creationists opposing the teaching of evolution have been turned back in case after case, American Indian tribes have succeeded in using their own religious beliefs and a federal law called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to empty archaeological museums of ancestral bones — including ones so ancient that they have no demonstrable connection to the tribe demanding their reburial. The most radical among them refuse to bow to a science they don’t consider their own. A few even share a disbelief in evolution, professing to take literally old myths in which the first people crawled out of a hole in the ground.

[…]

I think it is disingenuous to mix up the legal battles over the teaching of religious dogmas in public schools, with cultural baggage from the conquest of indigenous peoples.

The intersection of knowledge (“science”) and politics is always a bit tricky, and if ebola has demonstrated anything it is once again that anything we don’t understand can be made into a boogey-man to scare the masses.

The chasm between specialists who are knowledgeable about a subject and the masses, the customers of “mass” media, is vast.

I think this is one of our biggest challenges - how to get more Americans to care enough to learn about highly specialized and technical subjects, with which we have to deal.

Whether it is viruses or climate change or economics, our society feels as if we are diverging into two communities. Perhaps I’m just getting old and (more) curmudgeonly, but I have little patience for people who want to remain stupid.