Cientistas, mostrem-se ao mundo!

Já que o assunto é ciência, vamos apontar para o outro lado para crenças e ver como na real as pessoas agem em função delas?

Gostaria de indicar a vocês assistirem um pedaço ou todo o programa da TV Globo chamado Globo Reporter, que passa em horário nobre na tv aberta brasileira, o assunto de ontem foi sobre 2012, profecias, comunidades alternativas, maias, NASA, etc..

http://g1.globo.com/globo-reporter/videos

O programa sempre teve uma intenção de reportagem voltada para um perfil muito popularesco, logo, de qualidade duvidosa, mas fiz questão de ver para “puxar as orelhas” deles caso noticiassem algo fora do conhecido pela ciencia.

Mas valeu por outra coisa, e por isso estou indicando, para voces perceberem nas entrevistas, feitas com as pessoas que estão se envolvendo com a data de alguma forma, as crenças que cada um diz acreditar.

É impressionante como a mente humana pega qualquer coisa que aparece para justificar atitudes que não são lógicas nem racionais. É de se assustar.

Um tema muito interessante…

Sugiro este link (que também explicará parte da atracção pela pseudo-ciência):

Let’s give science a bad name in schools
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21397-lets-give-science-a-bad-name-in-schools.html

Saliento algumas partes desse artigo:

Today, the UK’s Royal Society announced its intention to stimulate a “world-class, high-performing education system for science and mathematics”.

If that’s really what it wants, its members will have to give up a 60-year pursuit of a squeaky-clean image for science and scientists.

One of the biggest problems is that, although the subject fascinates elementary-school children, most lose that fascination between the ages of 10 and 14.

This is when adolescents are forming their sense of self. As young people seek to turn themselves into adults, they experiment with risk-taking, rebellion, deception, corner-cutting, questioning morality, coping with failure and suppressing self-doubt.

This has strong repercussions for their response to science lessons.

The key phrase here is “popular representations”.

The science of popular account is essentially a carefully crafted and unrepresentative distortion; as Nobel laureate Peter Medawar put it, “the postures we choose to be seen in when the curtain goes up”.

Behind the curtain, scientists are surprisingly colourful.

The world-changing ones are, by definition, anti-authoritarian, risk-taking rebels.

The history of science is littered with instances of fighting, disregard of authority, dogged determination in the face of scorn and even that staple of teenage rebellion, wilful intoxication.

Such behaviour seems to be inseparable from the creative pursuit of a breakthrough.

The problem is, school students only ever hear about the breakthrough itself.

The crooked path to success has been whitewashed out of sight.

This is not an accident: it is the result of a long-running PR campaign carried out by organisations such as the Royal Society – the creation of Brand Science, if you will.

Bad rep

It started after the second world war, which made science look terrifying.

The atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the V2 rockets that rained down on London, the experiments carried out in Nazi concentration camps and Japanese prisoner-of-war camps – and Allied mustard gas experiments on their own soldiers – enveloped science in a cloud of fear.

That was why the geneticist Jacob Bronowski wrote in a 1956 issue of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

“People hate scientists. There is no use beating about the bush here.”

Senior figures reacted by trying to put science in the best possible light wherever it might be on display.

Across the Atlantic, scientists were making similar public promises of the benefits that they would bring.

For more than 60 years now, science has striven to be seen as trustworthy, morally upright, objective and dispassionate, and providing a well-defined path from hypothesis to experiment to deduction that will reliably deliver advances and improvements.

Introverts only

The unfortunate spin-off of this PR effort is that it made the subject look dull, inhuman and robotic.

Perhaps that’s why, when asked to pick out the scientists from a gallery of photographs, children chose the ones that weren’t smiling – although in reality, all the photos were of scientists.

Scientists are not perceived as smiley or fun, and the general population certainly does not think of them as creative or dynamic.