The Fallacy of Widespread Personal Responsibility

I was in a checkout at a Safeway in Marin.  It was late at night.  I was in the Express Line.  My sweetie was with me.  Two women, maybe eighteen, were in front of us.  They each had two full grocery carts worth of food.  They were parceling it out in groups of ten or so, then paying for each group with state voucher checks.  They were talking about their kids and about the group home they were living in, completely oblivious to anyone else and to the line forming in back of them.  I shot the grocery clerk a glare.  He looked completely cowed by the situation and was politely cashing in voucher check after voucher check.

I would have erupted at the girls, but my sweetie was with me and she hates it when I do stuff like that.  So I just held it in.  I was just steaming inside.  I glared at the girls and listened to their banter.  These two -  attractive (it was Marin after all), sloth-like in their minimal use of motion, and with the combined brain power of a single cow - were about to make me turn into a Republican.  But then I thought about the likely numbers.

How many women like this are on the state's food voucher rolls?  I figured it was about one half million.  It turns out that that's about right.  Those checks were from the WIC program, which feeds about 1.4 million mothers and children under the age of five in California.  It's supposed to promote the use of healthy foods.  That's one of the reasons these two women were breaking up their purchases.  They paid for the chips and nicotine out of their wallets.  Now to add insult to all of this, one of these teens pulled out an iPhone during her transaction. This girl is supposedly living below poverty level and she's paying $1200 a year for a device that I consider frivolous even for me.  Now I'm about to turn into a Republican again.

OK, these two are abusing the system.  They are abusing Express Line privileges, too.  No one is telling these two slackers that they are wasting money, are rude, and have no sense of personal responsibility.  Someone should at least make these two feel uncomfortable.  And I'd feel a whole lot better if I were the one doing it.  Now I'm really about to erupt.  I look at my sweetie.  One Mississippi.  Two Mississippi.

I go back to the numbers in my head.  How many shit-for-brains slackers like these two are abusing this program?  Ten percent?  How many children are being helped by getting real food instead of the crap people like these two would likely buy without WIC?  It turns out it's about ten million kids at a cost of about ten billion dollars nationwide.  That's a lot of kids.  Maybe in other ways these kids aren't being raised right, but this program is giving them a little edge at least in terms of nutrition.

I hang around smart, privileged people almost always.  I believe in competence.  I have no tolerance for people I work with who don't pull their own weight.  I have a thing about slackers.  I wish I could have flunked every one of those slack jawed privileged white kids I taught in college who knew that because they were paying 40K a year in tuition I would have to give them a B or better no matter what.

But our society has all kinds of welfare programs.  We have a smorgasbord of corporate welfare programs from ridiculous tax breaks to federal bailouts of companies deemed too big to fail.  We have personal welfare programs for the poor and as I noted above, "grade welfare" programs for the rich in college.

The fact is that most people are not competent in their day to day lives.  Most people just aren't that smart (just think of what an "average" IQ of 100 means and the knowledge base of a typical adult).  As the saying goes, ten percent of the people do ninety percent of the work.  But what do we do with the rest of the nation, the ones that don't really work, don't really use their brains, and are at best plodding along? 

Societies have always had to deal with this problem.  The response has been mixed.  But with the advent of the nation state and the increased wealth of nations the tendency is that we lend a hand.  We don't let young mothers - even iPhone carrying white girl slackers who abuse the system - feed one hundred percent junk to their kids.  I'm glad we do this.  There really is no other alternative.  Expecting everyone to be intelligent and personally responsible is a fantasy.  I don't know if it's "the moral thing to do."  I don't even know what morality is half the time.  But it actually is the practical thing to do.

There's a school of thought out there - the libertarian school -  that says that such ideas are harmful to personal liberty.  The idea is that freedom comes with the requirement that people be responsible for their own actions good and bad.  That's a nice idea, but it isn't at all practical.  It works in criminal matters.  But in day to day actions, it doesn't.  We are all interconnected.  It's a fallacy that somehow we can be individual towers of freedom and responsibility.

So I'm happy to carry people along a bit.  I consider myself lucky in so many ways that it would be ridiculous for me to not have some compassion and empathy for those that don't happen to be raised by caring parents, to test well on their SATs, don't have decent health, didn't get lucky with their investments, or happened to pick some s.o.b. for a husband or wife.  I'll never be a Republican.  But those two girls.  If I ever see them in Safeway again, and my sweetie isn't around, there is no doubt that I'm going to give them a piece of my mind.

A Placeholder For Some Grading Research I'm Working On

Below are some data I prepared for a news publication on the topic of grade distributions at 39 schools over ten to as much as sixty year intervals.  After I handed them this list, they expressed disappointment in what I had done and said they would do it themselves.  The only problem with that is that they didn't even have the high school algebra skills necessary to do it themselves.  After they expressed their disappointment, I told them they couldn't use my data or work, that I was pulling out of this little project. 

The publication will come out soon.  It will be interesting to compare the data below with what they come up with.  My guess is that it will be almost identical.  Some of the schools won't be on their list, but almost all will.  My guess is that they will have appropriated my work almost entirely.  But that's just a guess.  I could be wrong.  I hope I'm wrong.  But I'll be curious as to how it all ends up.

At any rate, it's actually interesting data.  I think it's worth exploring.  Chris Healy started looking at the compilation of data below (he actually found the preponderance of the data) when I sent it to him and he came up with some neat observations.  I'm starting to add to those he made.  I think it makes a nice story about the evolution of grading patterns.

Here's a nice summary graph that shows some key points. 

You can see the evolution from C as the most common grade to B as the most common grade to (since the mid-to-late 1990s) A as the most common grade.  You can see the post-Vietnam wane in grade inflation, the reduction in D's and F's caused by Vietnam (they really did stop flunking students as often), and then the firm floor of D's and F's that lasted until the mid-1990s or so.  Cliff Adelman likes to point out as an argument against grade inflation that there are still plenty of poor  students.  He's right.  But it's also true that grade inflation hasn't caused all boats to rise equally.  The C student of the 1940s is now a solid B student.  The B student of the 1940s is now a solid A student.  But D and F students haven't benefited as much from grade inflation.  What was true in the 1940s still seems to be true today:  if you don't show up and take tests, you still flunk the class.

You can also see that Adelman's transcript data line up well with this compilation.  They should.  It shouldn't matter if you get your data from large numbers of individual transcripts or from bulk school statistics.  They should both tell the same story if they are done right.  The two sources line up even better if you adjust Adelman's data to account for  likely SAT differences in the populations.  You can also see why Adelman's data don't see grade inflation: his sample times aren't appropriate.  His circa 1974 and 1984 snapshots cover a period of post-Vietnam grading stability and slight declines.  His circa 1984 and 1994 snapshots cover more of the post-Vietnam era and then only a little bit of the current wave of inflation.   It's as if someone sampled for hurricanes along the East Coast in April through July for one year, and then declared that the East Coast has no hurricanes

If I have time, I'll finish a draft paper up in the next two weeks.  In the meantime, here is this placeholder with some of the data and one rough chart.

School Number	Year	%A	%B	%C	%D	%F
1	1977	26	35	27	7	5
1	1987	22	35	28	9	6
1	1997	35	36	19	5	5
1	2007	40	33	17	5	5
2	1997	56	35	8	0	0
2	2007	66	28	5	0	0
3	1997	41	31	18	5	5
3	2007	37	28	17	5	13
4	1978	22	30	27	9	11
4	1988	23	30	26	8	13
4	1998	25	28	21	7	20
4	2008	30	30	20	6	14
5	1998	35	43	18	3	1
5	2008	45	41	11	2	1
6	1978	21	30	28	13	9
6	1988	24	35	28	8	5
6	1998	33	40	18	5	3
6	2008	45	40	11	2	1
7	1958	13	32	35	13	7
7	1968	13	33	35	12	6
7	1978	24	38	28	8	2
7	1988	25	43	26	5	1
7	1998	33	43	18	4	1
7	2008	41	42	14	3	1
8	1998	37	34	20	6	3
8	2008	42	34	16	5	3
9	1997	39	47	11	2	1
9	2007	50	40	8	1	1
10	1969	19	44	28	6	2
10	1978	31	40	21	5	2
10	1988	37	39	18	4	2
10	1998	54	32	11	2	1
10	2008	57	30	10	2	1
11	1998	38	37	18	4	3
11	2008	45	36	14	3	2
12	1998	37	38	18	4	3
12	2008	42	38	15	3	2
13	1947	14	35	42	8	2
13	1957	19	33	36	10	2
13	1967	19	37	33	8	3
13	1977	24	41	28	5	2
13	1987	27	42	25	4	1
13	1997	36	43	17	3	1
13	2007	43	40	13	3	1
14	1998	38	25	19	7	11
14	2008	37	24	18	6	14
15	1997	46	43	9	1	1
15	2007	55	36	7	1	1
16	1998	40	41	14	3	2
16	2008	49	37	11	2	1
17	1998	39	37	17	5	2
17	2008	41	36	15	4	3
18	1958	19	35	31	12	4
18	1967	23	37	29	8	3
18	1978	31	36	24	7	3
18	1988	31	36	22	7	4
18	1998	38	34	18	5	4
18	2008	44	32	15	4	5
19	1944	23	43	28	4	1
19	1959	25	43	27	4	1
19	1967	26	49	22	2	1
19	1977	31	51	15	2	1
19	1987	36	50	12	1	1
19	1997	51	41	6	1	1
19	2007	64	32	4	0	0
20	1997	41	36	17	3	3
20	2007	45	33	15	4	4
21	1978	37	42	15	3	2
21	1988	39	44	12	3	2
21	1998	47	43	8	1	1
21	2008	41	49	9	1	0
22	1997	30	50	16	2	2
22	2007	33	51	13	2	1
23	1998	27	40	24	7	3
23	2008	29	38	23	6	3
24	1968	20	36	32	9	3
24	1998	28	38	24	6	5
24	2008	34	37	20	4	4
25	1999	26	44	24	3	4
25	2008	26	41	24	4	6
26	1998	30	33	22	7	8
26	2008	37	31	18	6	8
27	1988	26	36	25	8	4
27	1998	33	36	22	6	3
27	2008	38	34	18	5	4
28	1967	14	34	34	11	7
28	1978	26	33	26	9	6
28	1987	24	31	26	10	9
28	1997	29	34	24	7	6
28	2007	34	33	20	7	6
29	1998	34	37	21	5	3
29	2008	44	35	15	3	2
30	1997	33	38	21	5	3
30	2007	47	33	14	3	2
31	1987	34	27	22	7	9
31	1997	35	32	21	6	6
31	2007	43	30	17	4	6
31	1987	34	34	21	6	5
32	1997	41	31	18	5	4
32	2007	43	32	16	4	4
33	1998	41	32	17	5	5
33	2008	42	32	16	5	5
34	1988	30	33	22	6	9
34	1998	38	36	17	4	5
34	2008	44	35	14	3	4
35	1958	11	31	40	13	6
35	1998	37	39	17	4	3
35	2008	45	37	13	3	2
36	1977	30	34	23	7	6
36	1987	27	35	25	7	6
36	1997	36	32	19	6	7
36	2007	40	34	17	4	5
37	1997	38	35	19	5	3
37	2007	53	29	13	3	2
38	1997	47	41	10	1	1
38	2007	59	33	6	1	1
39	1998	41	40	15	3	1
39	2008	47	37	12	2	1
11 School Average 1977-1978		28	37	24	7	4
11 School Average 1987-1988		29	38	23	6	4
11 School Average 1997-1998		38	37	16	4	5
11 School Average 2007-2008		43	36	14	3	4
15 School Average 1987-1988		29	37	23	6	5
15 school Average 1997-1998		38	36	17	4	5
15 school Average 2007-2008		43	35	14	4	4
All US Average 1997-1998		38	37	17	4	4
All US Average 2007-2008		44	35	14	3	4
Private US Average 1997-1998		41	41	14	3	1
Private US Average 2007-2008		49	38	11	2	1
Public US Average 1997-1998		36	35	19	5	5
Public US Average 2007-2008		41	33	16	4	5
34 School Average 1940		14	33	35	12	6
5 School Average 1950-1951		15	35	36	10	4
8 School Average 1959-1960		17	32	34	10	6
10 School Average 1970-1971		26	39	25	6	4
Adelman Transcripts 1974		30	35	24	6	4
11 School Average 1977-1978		28	37	24	7	4
Adelman Transcripts 1984		28	36	24	6	5
11 School Average 1987-1988		29	38	23	6	4
Adelman Transcripts 1994		33	35	21	5	5
11 School Average 1997-1998		38	37	16	4	5
11 School Average 2007-2008		43	36	14	3	4

"A" The Hard Way, 2010: GradeInflation.com's Sweet Sixteen of Tough Graders

March Madness is upon us. Last year at this time, GradeInflation.com came up with a Sweet 16 of grade inflaters. As the graph above shows, grade inflation is pervasive in academia. It's present at almost every school that's part of a major athletic conference.

We could have made a new Sweet 16 of inflaters this year. Some university administrators were worried that we would. One provost actually sent us data a couple weeks before this year's NCAA tournament began in a pre-emptive effort to show that his school wasn't much of an inflater and lobbied to stay off this year's Grade Inflation Sweet 16. We didn't know we had that kind of clout!

But this year finds us in a very good mood. We've decided that it's both just too easy and mean to out schools for being slacker havens. We thought it would be much better to look at the other end of the spectrum: the schools that defy the trend of the easy A. These are rare schools, but if you look long and hard, you can find them.

Just like tough D wins basketball games, tough A's help to create an environment for a rigorous education. Here are 16 schools where getting an A is significantly harder than at your average college or university. Not all of them have particularly low GPAs compared to national averages, but there are schools where the talent level is so high that one should expect A's to be more prevalent. We've taken talent level into account in the creation of this Sweet 16.

The East

1. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Engineering and science based schools dominate the Sweet 16 of Tough A's. Their workloads are higher and their grades are lower than national averages. Rensselaer fits right in with a high quality student body and an average GPA about 0.25 below typical private schools of its caliber.
 
2. Princeton University. The Tigers are a newcomer to the tough A. Leadership here has worked hard over the last few years to make sure that excellence is accorded only to those that truly deserve it. Princeton may be new to reversing grade inflation, but in this year's tourney, they may go all the way.

3.  Boston University. BU's student body complains mightily about grades and how hard it is to get an A.  At a lot of schools such complaints defy reality. But at BU, getting a B average puts you right in the middle of pack. Graduating with a 3.5 makes you a star.

4. MIT. The Beavers likely deserve a higher seed, but their leadership is very, very tight lipped about their grades. When MIT last slipped and published some data several years ago, the average GPA was less than 3.2. At schools with comparable talent like Harvard and Yale, GPA's are 0.2 to 0.4 higher.

The South

1. Virginia Commonwealth University. Public schools in urban settings can be very tough places to earn an A. At VCU, even getting a B can be an achievement. Its average GPA is 2.6, far below national averages.

2. Hampden-Sydney College. H-SC is a very small school tucked away in the South. It's had modest problems with grade inflation over the last decade, but H-SC's grades are still so low relative to other liberal arts colleges that it fully merits a number 2 seed in the very tough Southern region.

3. Roanoke College. Liberal arts colleges tend to be easy A heaven. That's not so at Roanoke where B is still the most common grade and A's are earned less than 30 percent of the time.

4. Auburn University. Another Tiger in this year's Sweet 16. Eat your hearts out 'Bama; Auburn is just a tougher place to earn an A.

The Midwest

1. Purdue University. Getting an A is hard for the Boilermakers with an average GPA that has hovered around 2.8 for over 30 years. Purdue doesn't even seem to know that grade inflation exists in America. In that regard, ignorance is bliss.

2. University of Houston. The Midwest is our weakest division and to make up for it, we've shipped some schools from the South to here. Like VCU, Houston is a tough urban public school to earn an A with a GPA that has held at a steady 2.6 for 15 years.

3. Southern Polytechnic State. Another hard-nosed science and engineering school.  Its state rival Georgia Tech is no piece of cake either, but SPSU gets the nod for a Sweet 16 seed this year.

4. Florida International University. A's are far harder to come by at FIU than they are at Florida's flagship school in Gainesville. Earn a 3.4 GPA at FIU and you're well ahead of the pack. Maybe next year the Midwest will toughen up and be able to compete with the Southern schools that we've shipped into the land of the wind chill factor.

The West

1. Reed College. If you go to Reed, you know in advance that A's are earned.  There's a reason why this school places so many students in Ph.D. programs and medical schools.

2. CSU-Fullerton. Resources are tight in the CSU system and Fullerton has its share of real problems. But grade inflation is not an issue here. Grades are about the same as they were in 1978 and the average GPA is 2.7.

3. Harvey Mudd College. This small science and engineering school outside of LA has, to our mind, one of the funniest names for a school in America (OK, Chico State is even funnier). But the name is where all jokes end. Harvey Mudd's average GPA is in the 3.2 range, which might seem high at face value. But these students are some of the best in the country.  If they took classes with their liberal arts college neighbors across the way (Harvey Mudd is part of a consortium of colleges), they'd be getting A's ten to thirty percent more frequently.

4. Simon Fraser University. Unlike the NCAA, GradeInflation.com is not restricted to seeding only American schools. Just across the Washington state border in beautiful British Columbia, SFU has avoided grade inflation as successfully as Celine Dion has avoided Tim Hortons (you might have to be Canadian to get that one). They are stingy with their A's, giving them only about 25 percent of the time.

That's it for our Sweet 16 this year. If you feel your school has been slighted by omission, send us a verifiable record of their grading history. They just might make the Sweet 16 in 2011!

Money, Time and Plumbing

Our house was built in 1941. We met the original builder about 25 years ago. He came for a visit down from Anchorage with a copy of the original plans. He said he built the house for his mother. The total cost including furniture was $5600. Now if that doesn't me you nostalgic about 1941 and Pearl Harbor, I don't know what will.

We remodeled the house in 1987, adding a second story. In terms of fixtures, there is nothing original except for the downstairs bathroom. All the plumbing there is seventy years old. About 20 years ago, I replaced the original faucet.

About 28 years ago, the brass return valve for the original toilet completely corroded away. They don't make parts like that anymore. I was 25 years old with not a lot of money. I've been fixing toilets and plumbing since I was twelve, when I started to do repairs for my parent's real estate business. I know what I'm doing. So I fabricated something with PVC and a lot of silicon glue. It worked until two weeks ago. Twenty eight years isn't half bad for a kluge job.

Time does funny things to memory. I completely forgot how hard it was to fabricate that new part. But it started to come back to me as I began to try to fabricate a new one. Then I remembered the silicon glue. Last time, I had to use an entire tube of the stuff to keep things from leaking.

I was two hours into this job when I thought why am I doing this? I'm not a cash-strapped kid any more. I can easily afford a new commode. It will be better than the old one. This thing has had seventy years of use. It's had a good life. It's time to bury it in the local landfill.

And that's exactly what happened. I stopped trying to make a seventy year old toilet work again. I instead pulled it out, went to the hardware store and bought a new Kohler (I grew up near the original Kohler factory and have a childhood nostalgia for the stuff; yes, I know that's strange) for one hundred and twenty bucks.

Two hours later I was back in business. It is a better commode. Tremendously better. It uses half as much water, is quieter and somehow flushes more efficiently. Those boys from Sheboygan aren't resting on their laurels. This thing is a modern engineering miracle!

I figure it's good for another 30 years. I also figure I'm personally good for another 30 years. But next time, when that fateful day happens, I'm going to be a little too ripe to be dragging 40 pound pieces of porcelain around. Age has its limitations and privileges. I'm going to hire a plumber.

The Don Quixote Thing

Ten days ago, an article I wrote about grading with Chris Healy was published in a scholarly journal that hardly anyone knows about who isn't in the field of education, the Teachers College Record.  Normally articles like this are read by a hundred people over the course of a few years and are referenced at most about 10 times by other scholars.

On the day of publication, I sent an email with a copy of the paper to about six media types that have been interested in my stuff.  Two of them picked it up and published summary articles that day, Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education.  In the old days, that would have been it.  The summary articles by the media would have been read by a few tens of thousands of people interested in higher education.  The actual article would have gathered dust in bound journals in a few hundred libraries in the US.

But times have changed.  USA Today picked up the Inside Higher Ed article word for word.  I put a copy of the original Teachers College Record article on this blog.  Two web sites that I never heard of, Metafilter and Neatorama, found the USA Today article and linked to my blog.   Thousands of people suddenly started to look at the Teachers College Record article.  For a day or two it became the stuff of conversation on Twitter and Facebook.  Some of the conversation was pretty sophisticated.  Most of it wasn't.

For just a while my little article went viral.  Then in the ADD world we live in, the public moved on to another topic. 

The goal of that article was not really to generate public interest, but to try to influence people in higher education.  We've turned college into an easy part-time job.  I'd like that to change.  Grading is only a small part of what needs to be changed, but America is numbers obsessed, and focusing on grade inflation is probably not a bad start.

Is it stupid and quixotic to write articles like the one I wrote with Chris Healy? Sometimes I think so. Most college administrators are wed to the status quo. Most parents and students like the fact that we've turned college into an easy part-time job with high grades for most. The only people who suffer from the way we "do college" today are the achievers. They somehow have to find a way to get a good education despite being surrounded by far too many slackers and being taught by far too many professors who don't challenge them.

The achievers are certainly in the minority. There is something else that suffers from the way we do college as well. This country. We end up with a workforce with diplomas that are indicative of an increasingly wan education. We are losing our economic competitiveness.

As coincidence would have it, the week that my article came out, grade inflation became big news in Ireland. Last year, Google and Intel Irish executives complained vehemently to the Minister of Education that Irish university graduates simply did not have the stuff necessary to be valuable employees. The Minister of Education conducted a study whose preliminary results last week showed the presence of pervasive grade inflation in higher education over the past decade. In Ireland, the loss of standards in their universities was the stuff of scandal.

Here, the loss of higher education standards is given a shrug. Unlike in Ireland, executives of Google and Intel in the US don't want to rock the boat. I know Google won't. I asked them to do just that. They said no. While Google can't find the college graduates they need in the US, they are happy to get cheap labor from visa-based labor programs. In a way, they benefit when we discount US higher education. It saves them money.

So why bother writing articles on education? It is quixotic. But maybe not. Since I put gradeinflation.com online in 2003, about one million sets of eyeballs have looked at the data Chris and I have placed there. That's a lot of visibility for a site on such an obscure topic as college grading. Seven years ago, people debated whether grade inflation was real or a myth. Now, one million sets of eyeballs later, it's accepted that college grades are going up virtually everywhere. That's progress.

Seven years ago, there was only one school that had made a concerted effort to control grades, Reed. Now we're up to three more, Boston University, Wellesley, and Princeton. That's a little progress, too. Three weeks ago at Stanford, a faculty committee went public and stated that they had consulted with Princeton on how to keep grades in check.

Stanford. That place virtually invented grade inflation. It has just about the highest average GPA in the nation. If you graduate with less than a 3.5 GPA from Stanford, you're truly retarded. One of Stanford's past presidents - a real bad apple who did a lot of nasty things along the way to becoming a college president - was arrogant enough to celebrate Stanford's out of sight grades in a NY Times oped. For Stanford to admit it has a problem, oh my. That's a little progress, as well.

This is how it works, I guess. You think you're tilting at windmills. When your writing starts to get noticed, the Village Voice calls you a "lone wolf howling in the wilderness". But a website you put together as an afterthought day by day has its impact. You write an article in an obscure journal and it goes viral for a couple of days. Little by little you score some points and half points. Maybe it's not such a quixotic and stupid thing to do after all.

We Don't Like Scientists Very Much; We Never Have

When you grow up and are nerdy like me, you of course develop a certain affection for science.  It's a beautiful thing to describe the world around you in a rigorous and testable way.  It's even more beautiful to be able to use the language of science, mathematics, to do it.  If you're in that insular world of science though, you tend to be clueless as to how the real world sees science and scientists.  Basically, the real world doesn't like science very much.  They don't like scientists either.  They especially don't like scientists with theories and data that run counter their preconceived notions about how the world works.  And they absolutely hate scientists who come up with bad news.

This tendency for science hatred goes back a long ways.  The first modern scientist, Galileo, was reviled for having the nerve to tell the world that astronomical observations - real data - indicated that Earth was not the center of our solar system.  He was punished severely for telling an unpleasant truth - one that ran counter to our egocentric notions about our importance and primacy - and was eventually forced to recant his correct statements about the heliocentric world we live in.

Even when scientists do work that is valued, their fate can be bleak.  The physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer expertly directed the development of our first atomic weaponry.  One would think he would have been viewed as a hero.  But he was hated by the Army and after the war was stripped of his security clearance and all his political influence.  He was just too nerdy, smart and philosophical for them.  As far as they were concerned, someone who was so eccentric must be a communist.

If you're a scientist, then you believe in the value of data.  It's just not in your nature to ignore valid observations.  And you might think, like me, that the rest of the world - the non-geek-world - would value data and observations the same way.  But they don't.  Data and careful observations are nice to those outside of science.  But if they run counter to personal prejudices, they just get ignored.

Take for instance, evolution.  Darwin was a genius.  Whenever I read him, I'm struck by just how smart and unique that man was.  Darwin's theory of evolution is so beautiful, so allied with observations, that one would think that it would be accepted by everyone.  It's certainly accepted by all scientists.  But in the real world it's a 50/50 proposition that you'll meet someone who thinks evolution is hokum.  How can this be so?  The data are irrefutable.  But that's the view of a scientist.  Data are always refutable to those in the real world, especially in the political world, when they are inconvenient.

Brushing aside data is common with both the left and the right.  Everybody is willing to ignore science and basic logic if it runs counter to their world view.  For example, the left of the US is dead set against nuclear power as an energy source.  Somehow they think that we can instead supply our energy needs with solar cell panels and wind turbines (All in areas of course that no one might want to visit for recreation.  They don't want to see the panels and turbines; they only want the power from them.).

Where does this fear of nuclear power come from?  I have no idea.  Nuclear power already supplies our nation with 20 percent of our energy needs.  It is cost effective, something that solar power is not.  You can throw piles upon piles of data at the environmental left about the value of nuclear power and you will get nowhere.   Emotions always supersede data.

Science is often ignored by the right as well.  With the right, scientists are the enemy when it comes to global warming.  The data are irrefutable, but the right doesn't care.  We have raised CO2 levels dramatically through our burning of fossil fuels.  It doesn't matter.  Climate will certainly change in response to our actions.  But the message from the scientists says that we'll likely have to alter our lifestyles to avert significant problems with climate change.   That's an unpleasant message to those outside the scientific community, especially the political right.

So it's not surprising that the response of the public is to ignore the scientific community on this issue.  Who wants to change their lifestyle?  As of late, the response of the public on this issue has gone from ignoring scientists to reviling them.  Supposedly, scientists are part of a vast global conspiracy to deceive us so they can keep getting research money for their climate studies.  Scientists are lying to us, supposedly.  It's starting to look like Galileo and the Church all over again.  It's starting to look like Oppenheimer and the US government again as well.

We don't like scientists very much.  We never have.  That's why I think that the scientific community has no chance to convince society to alter its behavior on the issue of global warming.  It's nice that scientists have their data and theories, but data and theories can and will be easily ignored when they are unpleasant.  That's where we are right now.  That's where we almost always are when it comes to science.