Students and pseudo-scientific beliefs

"The Dean insists that we add creationism and crystal theory and spiritualism to the curriculum."

"They already have those--"

"Not as equal time in the physics and chemistry departments"

Fallen Angels (Niven, Pournell and Flynn, 1992)

Luckily, chemistry and physics departments aren't forced (yet) to add these kind of courses to their curriculum, but that doesn't stop the students from believing in all sorts of pseudoscience, from astrology to faith healing. Since 1988, students (mostly freshmen and sophomores) at the University of Arizona were given a questionnaire in order to determine their attitudes toward science and pseudoscience, as well as examine their basic scientific knowledge. Normally, the students take the survey during the first week in General Education astronomy courses, before any discussions in class about astrology and/or pseudoscience.

Do students consider astrology a science?

Less than a third of the students "disagree" or "strongly disagree" with the statement "The position of the planets have an influence on the events of every day life." Female students tend significantly more to believe that astrology is "sort of" or "very" scientific.

Students majoring in science did better than students studying non-scientific majors:

Strangely, the findings of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the U.S. regarding astrology are considerably better: in 2006, 65% of the Americans said that astrology was "Not at all scientific", in comparison with 5% who thought it was "Very scientific", 26% who thought it was "Sort of scientific" and 4% who didn't know. Female respondents tend to think more than male respondents that astrology is "Sort of scientific" (29% and 23% respectively). Five percents of both genders believe that astrology is "Very scientific".

The authors aren't sure why the NSF results and their differ so much. They mention that the NSF survey takes place over the phone, as opposed to their paper-based survey. Also, the survey is given as a part of an astronomy course and the similarities between "astrology" and "astronomy" might have confused the students. While the NSF survey population comes from all over the U.S., this survey's population is mostly for the Southwest, so the sample might be location-biased.

Science literacy and astrology

There is a negative correlation between belief in astrology and science classes. The more science classes student take, the less they tend to believe in astrology.

On the other hand, there was only a small (though significant) difference in the number of correct answers to the scientific knowledge questions between those who thought astrology wasn't scientific and those who did. Out of 15 questions, the former answered, on average, 12.5 questions correctly (83%), while the latter answered 11.6 correctly (77%).

Pseudoscience and scientific knowledge

Nearly 39% of the students think that "Some people possess psychic powers". About 32% have no opinion about the matter, and only about 29% "Disagree" or "Strongly disagree". Things are a bit better with "Some ancient civilizations were visited by extraterrestrials": only 15% or so said they "Agree" or "Strongly agree". More than half of the students (51.66%) didn't have an opinion about the subject. Less than 40% "Strongly disagree" or "Disagree" that "Faith healing is a valid alternative to conventional medicine".

In conclusion, it seems that scientific knowledge doesn't necessarily make people (at least Arizona students) disregard pseudoscience beliefs. However, studying science correlates positively with rejection of pseudoscience such as astrology.

Sugarman et. al (2011). Astrology Beliefs among Undergraduate Students Astronomy Education Review

Hyping Astronomy

Astronomers from the Carnegie Institution and the University of California, Santa Cruz, have discovered and earth-sized planet called Gilese 581. It's 20 light-years away, which makes it an unlikely traveling destination, but this is exciting news nonetheless.

The abstract is enthusiastic yet cautions, saying that:

"The estimated equilibrium temperature of GJ 581g is 228 K, placing it squarely in the middle of the habitable zone of the star and offering a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet around a very nearby star."

The press release is about the same, emphasizing the potential habitability of the planet, how hard it was to locate it and explains a bit about radial velocity. It more-or-less follows the rules I mentioned in a previous post.

The news, however, say: "Odds of life on nearby planet '100 percent,' astronomer says." (Fox News and others).

What went wrong? Where did the over-hyping come from? Unfortunately, Prof. Steven Vogt, one of the discoverers, told AP that "We don't have any direct way to sense that there's life there, my own personal opinion is that it is hard to imagine that life has not taken a foothold there."

He also said: "Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say that the chances for life on this planet are 100 percent. I have almost no doubt about it."

It went downhill from there.

So, we have a scientist hyping his findings, and media all-to-ready to hype it. The results are false (or at least unverified) headlines.

(video: Steven Vogt talking to AP)

Hat tip: Yoav Landsman (Hebrew)

Vogt, S. S., Butler, P. R., Rivera, E. J., Haghighipour, N., Henry, G. W., & Williamson, M. H. (2010). The Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey: A 3.1 M_Earth Planet in the Habitable Zone of the Nearby M3V Star Gliese 581 Arxiv : 1009.5733v1

Don't say you found aliens (unless you actually have)

Unlike with health and medicine press releases (Woloshin and Schwartz have a few good papers about the matter) I haven't seen much research about other scientific press release. That's why I was glad to find the paper "Credibility of science communication: An exploratory study of astronomy press releases" by Nielsen et al. (2007).

They conducted 11 in-depth interviews with journalists, scientists and public information officers, and came up with several conclusions regarding the accuracy and credibility of astronomy press releases.

• Credibility was defined by the interviewees as "being honest and doing your homework." Hype was defined as overstating the importance of results in order to increase visibility.

Credibility problems with press releases

Problems were usually caused by either the press release trying to make the issuing institution look better, or trying to make other institutions look worse.

1. The level of communication effort: finding some well-known person to tell the media how much the research described in the press release is significant to science.
2. The wording of the press release: even if it is possible you found alien life, keep that question mark at the end of "Alien life found?".
3. Dictating the timing of a press release: we just happened to discover something really important, just in time for the annual budget meeting! Other time-related sins are publishing the press release before the peer-review paper is out, and timing the release to screw up the competition's own press release or event.
4. Omission of reference to other scientists' work: this isn't the 17th century. It is hardly likely you did everything by yourself, or haven't built on some previous research.
5. Unjust comparison with other facilities.

Good ways to avoid lack of credibility (which can be in science, unlike in politics, problematic) is to have internal referees to the press release before its publication. Also, the importance of a peer-reviewed paper backing the press release can't be overstated.

Despited everything said here, the authors' overall conclusion is that "...credibility problems for astronomy press release do not exist, though examples certainly exist."

I find this conclusion very encouraging.

Nielsen, L. H., Torpe Jørgensen, N., Jantzen, K., & Christensen, L. L. (2007). Credibility of science communication: An exploratory study of astronomy press releases Proceedings from the IAU/National Observatory of Athens/ESA/ESO Conference, Athens, Greece.