Andy Chalk said:
I have no idea what that means and neither do you
Classy bit of journalism there. Didn't it occur to you to try to find out what it means? All you had to say is that it's more flexible and therefore less brittle than glass, so it's less likely to break.
I see a lot of this lazy reporting on science stories here on the Escapist. An especially bad example was Friday's piece on DNA replication by what the writer referred to as "a bunch of quantum stuff which I'm just going to call 'magic'". I'm not saying the research in question was the paragon of credibility, but come on, it should be allowed to stand or fall on its merits rather than be strawmanned into something that sounds completely ridiculous. The scary thing is that a lot of people leaving comments seem to accept the writer's caricature of the research as an accurate account of what the scientists are doing.
I suppose that journalism like this, with generous support from Hollywood science, is the reason I heard a couple people on the bus the other day ranting about how scientists are just a bunch of nuts running around making stuff up, and whining about the fact that Pluto is no longer a planet just because the scientists decided to be mean to it... or something. Hell, they even said the only reason they liked Pluto in the first place is that it shared the name of a Disney character. They asked just who "that guy" thought he was, to demote Pluto.
First off, he's Niel DeGrasse Frickin' Tyson, and he can kick your butt either intellectually or physically, or both at the same time. Don't mess with him. Besides, if you looked at why Pluto was demoted, you'd see that the demoters had very good reasons for doing so. Second, science is the direct opposite of "just making stuff up". No idea in science survives for any length of time unless it can withstand the attempts of hundreds of the smartest people in the world trying for decades to tear it down, even when such ideas solve all the unanswered questions that the old ideas have failed to. See the opposition to the theories of Plate Tectonics and Quantum Mechanics for examples, or even the idea that the Earth orbits the sun and not the other way around.
And it works. Science is the reason you don't know anyone who's died of smallpox, or even had it or polio in the first place. It's given you computers and game consoles and the internet, and the games to play on them. It's given you your cars and your cell phones. Cell phones, by the way, are courtesy of quantum mechanics, for those who think modern physics no longer does anything useful. For a more recent example, the latest medical scanners use particles originally synthesized in those particle accelerators the press has made you so fearful of.
Even after all it has done for humanity, it seems that science is a very popular cultural punching bag. At worst, science classes are often in danger of being forced to teach things that are not science in order to satisfy the whims of an ancient, discredited, but still widely held belief system trying desperately to maintain its relevance. Many times, it is simply mocked in entertainment and lazily written news stories. Most times, it is completely ignored by those whom it has helped, even saved. The first man to be exonerated by DNA evidence never thought to thank the researchers who developed the technology that saved his life. He thanked God instead.
A society that disregards science will eventually fail to thrive. Baghdad was once the intellectual capital of the world, naming most of the stars in the sky and developing the mathematics that runs our software and ensures that our bridges remain standing, while Europe was in a state that Monty Python and others have represented as people pretty much wallowing around in dung while mumbling incoherently. While it wasn't really that bad, it may as well have been compared to what was happening in the Middle East. But, once the religious leaders of the time decided that it was a sin to say that Allah or anything he made was constrained by laws or patterns of behavior, and the prominence of science in Middle Eastern culture came crashing down, the area became a backwater that has remained a disgrace to its past glory to this day.
The US seems inclined to follow the Middle East's example today, as many in this country seem to feel it is unacceptable to teach children things that contradict the Bible, no matter how many decades of research say they are true. If they succeed, and the booming bioindustry and other science-based industries flourish in every developed country except for the US, and American graduates just can't seem to get hired into those jobs, I doubt they will see a link between their country's slide into economic irrelevance and their misguided priorities. I suppose they'll continue to insist that they're NUMBER ONE!!! and the bestest cuntry evar, completely unaware of the fact that they are one of the main reasons that that is not the case. It is similar to how they insist we are not related to animals and yet, through their fear-driven, extremist response to truth, provide compelling if not particularly quantitative evidence that, indeed, we are. Some more closely than others.
Just a few things that were on my mind when the writer of this article dropped a piece of straw on my back.
