Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has written an article decrying our culture’s anti-scientific tendencies for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Pinker argues that anti-science thinking has penetrated not just the climate change-denying members of the GOP, but also liberal arts universities and the education system as a whole. According to Pinker, the American education system at large has taught students not to take scientific truths as absolute and to undervalue how profound data-driven scientific research can be. Pinker urges those in higher education to revise their understanding of the history of science in order to recenter progress, rather than the historical failures of science. Research, for Pinker, is the most important work of academia, and it deserves more respect.
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