To be scientifically literate is _x000D_ to empower yourself to _x000D_ know when someone else is _x000D_ full of bullshit.
Interpretation
Scientific literacy enables individuals to distinguish credible information from misinformation.
Neil Degrasse Tyson's quote emphasizes the importance of scientific literacy in today's world. It suggests that being scientifically informed empowers individuals to critically evaluate information and recognize when falsehoods or misleading claims are presented, ultimately fostering a more discerning and knowledgeable society.
In practice
In a discussion about misinformation in health, I quoted Neil Degrasse Tyson to emphasize the need for scientific literacy.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
The press still thinks [global warming] is controversial. So they find the 1% of the scientists and put them up as if they're 50% of the research results. You in the public would have no idea that this is basically a done deal and that we're on to other problems, because the journalists are trying to give it a 50/50 story. It's not a 50/50 story. It's not. Period.
As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.
In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.
One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.
Lots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.
Children get smashed for hours on some strictly limited aspect of the Great Big Everything, the Universe, such as water or snow or mud or colors or rocks.
Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.
Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope... Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition.
I just think that giving a child a chance and sharing what you have with a child is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, as well as a child.
Children will go with any story as long as it's good, but white adults sometimes think that if a black child's on the cover, it is perhaps not for them.
Violence is black children going to school for 12 years and receiving 6 years' worth of education.
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