Previously I wrote about a great report from MASTIC that surveyed the perception of the Malaysian public regarding Science and Technology. What I failed to mention or rather what I ‘chose’ not to mention at the time was a specific portion of the report that dealt with the Theory of Evolution, and the reason why I didn’t want to address it was to not distract from the original intention of that post.

This however, is a different post, one with a different intention that aims to ‘inspire’ some question regarding the Malaysian public attitude towards the Theory of Evolution and towards science in general.

What MASTIC says about Evolution

1. Human Beings as we know today developed from earlier species  of Animals (True or False)

2. The Universe began with a big explosion (True of False)

For both these questions, MASTIC believed that the answer was False! This is of course inconsistent with what the European and the American survey that deemed the right answer to be TRUE! More importantly– this answer is inconsistent with the scientific evidence at large.

When government officials begin to inject their personal beliefs into the scientific establishment without any regard for the evidence to the contrary– then we begin to see a decline in science, that’s when science itself comes under attack. Science is above all interested in the pursuit of truth, and that pursuit has led it to the theory of evolution that establishes a framework to understand the diversity of species in the known world–both past and present–and connect the past to the present via Darwinian natural selection. Evolution maybe a theory, but it definitely isn’t theoretical–and the scientific community has long accepted Evolution as ‘THE’ definitive theory that explains the diversity of species that exist today (and yesterday), while its supposed ‘competition’ receives no attention at all–mostly because the supposed competition of the theory of evolution are without basis and are not supported by the evidence.

The fact that MASTIC think that they can change the answers to something so fundamentally agreed upon by scientist the world over is disturbing–nearly all of biology involves a solid understanding of Evolution, and yet here is MASTIC denying a scientifically accepted FACT!

The Star today reported on ‘4D fortune teller’ who was arrested for in connection with a cheating case worth over RM1 Million.

Of course most of think that the guy got what was coming to him, however the question becomes how do we say a ‘4D Fortune Teller’ was cheating–to the point where we can charge him in court (under section 420A of the Penal code). The report goes on to state that:

DCP Mohd Shukri said the man would distribute pamphlets in various areas, highlighting his supposed ability to predict lottery numbers.

“When he gets a call from someone interested in his service, he would tell the person to deposit money into his bank account to perform special’ prayers to get the lottery number.”

“He would also scare the victims by telling them they would suffer bad luck if they did not deposit the money,” he said.

My only question is, why was this one particular person singled out?

Why not go after the entire Feng Shui industry in Malaysia–after all don’t they promise the same thing? Isn’t Lilian Too doing nothing more than promising her customers better luck? Isn’t this guy doing the same thing–promising his customers better luck (albeit in more concrete terms)

We haven’t even begun to talk about how Financial institutions make predictions of the stock markets by placing ‘buy’, ‘sell’ or ‘hold’ calls on various counters–does anybody do a thorough analysis on these calls to make sure they’re nothing more than just random guesses? In fact for the most part, many studies have shown that Index funds (that simply buy all the stocks in a given index at a weighted average) do better than actively managed funds (where a fund manager actively selects counters from a specific index). 

The study makes for a good read–but the main point I was interested though is this one question on how the Public Viewed science, in which 3 possible answers were given, either they thought Science did more good than harm, Science did more harm than good or that Science was neutral. In 1998, nearly half the population viewed science as causing more good than harm, but in 2008 that number increases to nearly 3 quarters. So we see a stark rise of about 25% of people going from being on the fence about science to believing it causes more good than harm.

However, there were about 8.7% of the population who believed science caused more harm than good, these are those who think that science has a negative effect on society, and what’s interesting is that the number of people in this country has barely changed in the last 10 years, remaining more or less constant around the 6-8% range.

In conjuction with the release of the Government Transformation Project Annual report, the Star today reported:

The Malaysian education system is on track to becoming among the world’s best as stringent monitoring is in place to ensure its success under the Government Transformation Plan (GTP).

“The rate of improvement of the system in the last 15 years is among the fastest in the world,” the GTP report said.

Malaysia also ranks among the top in the world for equitable access to education.

This is so true.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is probably the most famous astrophysicist  on the planet, and of late he’s been the face of science education in America. He’s got the coolness of Jay-Z mixed with the lovability of Bill Cosby and the intelligence of Carl Sagan all rolled into one. He’s been promoting science in America a lot, and fighting for a budget increase for NASA.

However, he’s pointed out in this video, that the barriers to scientific inquiry don’t lie with our children or our kids, it lies with the adults. Adults that in most cases control budgets and policy regarding science–just like a Minister of ours who suggested we send an astronaut to space to play traditional games. I’ve also noticed this a lot in the past, ever since I wrote about having a career in IT I’ve had more than a few emails sent to me from young people who’d like to pursue IT but face a stumbling block in the most unfortunate places–they’re parents.

Sometimes good intentions lead to bad things, particularly when they’re not grounded on rational science. Just like how some still believe that Wi-Fi poses a health hazard and even more common myth of how Mobile phones cause gas station fires.

Now that’s a myth that’s been around a loooong time.

No matter whether you call them handphones or cellphones or mobile phones–they’re not allowed in most petrol stations (or Gas Stations) simply because people still believe that somehow these phones can ignite petrol fumes. This is related to the myth that Wi-Fi poses health hazards because Mobile Phones, just like WiFi transmitters use microwaves–and people are irrationally afraid of microwaves.

Microwaves have been getting a lot of bad publicity for the last 2 decades, ever since we discovered we could heat food up with them everyone has freaks out everytime they’re mentioned–everyone except the engineers.

Engineers love Microwaves–they’re the waves that transmit everything from WiFi to WiMax to 3G to HSPDA to LTE, from Astro to Maxis to Digi to Celcom, and we’re constantly bathing in microwaves because everyone uses them–but for some reason it’s not OK to use a Mobile Phone at a Gas Station.

The next time you’re a petrol station, look on the roof, there’s a GIANT ass satellite on it, just bathing in microwaves. That’s a VSAT satellite that most Malaysian petrol stations still use for connectivity.

Techdirt recently reported on how Canadian Schools are Banning WiFi based on bad science, and I was appalled by the complete lack of science we have operating in the minds of these clueless parents. No doubt they’re well-intentioned but their complete and utter disregard of the scientific evidence in favour of fearful knee-jerk reactions are actually causing more harm than good for the very children they intend to protect.

Of course it doesn’t take much research to find out that WiFi isn’t dangerous, and there’s no evidence to show that it is dangerous. In fact, most studies suggest WiFi radiation is so weak, that a year of WiFi radiation equals to 20 minutes on a cell phone. The most important thing of course is not to fall into the trap of thinking we’re ‘better safe than sorry’ because we already are safe with WiFi and we have enough evidence to suggest what WiFi poses to health risk.

Wireless@PENANG : The Health risk of Public WiFi

Unfortunately, the consumer association of Penang wrote a long open-letter to Lim Guan Eng, chastising him for not engaging them enough. It was clear from the letter than the Consumer Association, while having the right intentions in mind–were clearly misled in terms of the science. It was even clearer that all they wanted was for them to be engaged, but from my end I can’t see how a consumer association who has looked at the scientific data (and lack thereof) not conclude that the benefits of WiFi almost astronomically dwarf the ‘perceived’ health risk– quite frankly there are no health risk. More to the point, I would not even begin a conversation with them, till they point to some scientific proof of how WiFi is a health risk. At present there is no such data.

Lawrence Krauss is a smart guy, he’s a professor of physics, he’s written a whole plethora of books on science and has an award list from the scientific community that’s longer than my sunday grocery list (and trust me that list is looong).

He’s also famous for one of my favorite books, the science of Star Trek, in where he explains things like warp speed an teleportation. So in general Lawrence is a pretty big voice in the physics community and when he says something people usually listen–they may not agree, but at least they listen.

I recently watched a 2 hour video of him conversing with Richard Dawkins about ‘Something from Nothing’, and I was really intrigued, but what really caught my attention was a 5 minute piece he did for Big Think about why Science Teachers should be paid more than Humanities teachers. It’s quite interesting to think about, the general premise being that:

I wrote recently about the sad state of Science Education in Malaysia, now I’m beginning to see some examples of really bad Mathematics as well.

Bernama today reported that:

BN has the ability to obtain a two-third majority in the 13th general election (GE), that is expected any time soon, Department of Special Affairs (Jasa) director-general Fuad Hassan said.

He said to garner two-third majority, BN needs to draw at least 30 percent votes from the Chinese voters, and respectively 65 percent from the Malay and Indian voters, nationwide.

The White House has a “We the People” website where any member of the US public can submit a petition.If the number of people supporting the petition exceeds 25,000 then the White House will at the very least respond. While for the most part, the petitions are boring and politically slanted – the coolest and most techy petition to date was one to “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016” . Now some of you might be thinking this was a joke–well it may have started out as one, but to date more than 34,000 Americans have signed it, well exceeding the minimum 25,000 required to elicit a response. Some of you might wonder what the hell a death star is, to those people I say–your lack of faith is disturbing!!

The coolest part about all of this though, is that the White House actually responded as promised, and they did it in style. Check this out: