America loves science. It has always loved science. As long ago as the 1830s, Tocqueville remarked on America's love of science, and present-day surveys establish not only that 85 per cent of Americans believe that science 'makes the world a better place' but that an astonishing 80 per cent endorse Government support for scientific research even when no material benefits are in view. True, Americans sometimes show their love of science in ways that foreigners find strange. So many cultural practices now claim to be scientific that Americans can be notably hazy at distinguishing between academic orthodoxy, vaunting scientistic ambition, and New Age or fundamentalist claptrap. The best-armed anti-Darwinian organisation in my neighbourhood styles itself the Institute for Creation Research; its leading lights call themselves Creation Scientists; and its website flaunts their doctoral degrees in natural science from distinguished universities. There is no reason necessarily to infer disrespect for science from belief in, say, alien abduction, especially when a professor at the Harvard Medical School takes it very seriously indeed. Americans are keen on the idea of science and its promised goods, while their familiarity with the facts, theories and practices of orthodox science is demonstrably more shaky than that of many other developed countries. Sociologists securely document the fact that remarkable numbers of Americans think astrology is at least probably true (40 per cent) and that the idea of human evolution is probably false (44 per cent). Only 11 per cent can say what a 'molecule' is, and 52 per cent don't know that the Earth makes an annual trip round the Sun. (These statistics are apparently on the conservative side: if you want them, other surveys will give you even more appalling figures.)

LRB 18 October 2001 | PDF Download