The two questions that determine your scientific literacy (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]

“Through basic science literacy, people can understand the policy choices we need to be making. Scientists are not necessarily the greatest communicators, but science and communication is one of the fundamentals we need to address. People are interested.” -James Murdoch

Are you scientifically literate? Do you even know what that means? You’ll periodically see quizzes designed to assess some measure of science literacy, and they’ll usually focus on a slew of general knowledge questions, inevitably decrying what a large fraction of people don’t know. But is that a fair assessment of scientific literacy, or what it means to be scientifically literate? Highly doubtful.

At its core, scientific literacy isn’t about being able to answer questions about science correctly or to explain various phenomena, but about two things that most people generally don’t think about: having an awareness for what the enterprise of science is and having an appreciation for what scientific knowledge and discoveries do for humanity.

If you think both of those things describe you, or you’d like them to, come find out what that really means and entails, and learn what it truly means to be scientifically literate.