Evidence of gravitational radiation from a binary black hole system
A central black hole, with a mass equal to 18 billion times that of the Sun, is orbited by a smaller one, and the interaction of the system with its surroundings produces brightness changes that allow astronomers to study the evolution of the orbit.
And the system evolves in a manner consistent with general relativity.
I agree that finding that half of polled students can’t identify that “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals” is true doesn’t imply that the other half are creationists, given that other science questions also garnered less-than-spectacular results.
However, it also doesn’t mean that all of the negative response is due to insufficient science education, nor would a general improvement in science education necessarily imply an improvement in biology, et. al, if crappyscience™ is what gets adopted be school boards, or actual science education is discouraged.
Blake Stacey has an excellent post in which he has compiled a collection of incidents of educators and others being harassed and hounded by people who didn’t like the conclusions at which science arrives.
Open your mouth about evolution around the wrong people, though, and you can find yourself harassed, ejected from your job and even beaten in the street.
Just ask these people.
The recognition that our science education needs to be improved has to be tied in with admitting that things won’t get better if we don’t actually teach science in science class.
Gordon Watts has become The Margin Lady (and that’s a sequel to the original margin lady story).
One of the things I’m responsible? Make sure the figures are done right. Make sure everyone uses the same units. Make sure everyone is printing on A4 paper. Make sure the margins are right!
I am the margin lady! Shoot me now!
I’ve bet on the over/under for hyphens added to documents I’ve sent in for review. And I recall going into the “Yeah, we got that” store, asking for A4 paper, and being told that they didn’t carry it. (I ended up buying it on my trip across the pond to the conference. The remaining supply is carefully guarded in an undisclosed location)
As for the original Margin-Lady interaction in grad school, I had my tangles with her, including an omission on the copyrights page, which needed to include the phrase “all rights reserved,” despite another page in the submission package where I was required to sign away my copyright, so it made no sense to include the phrase. Of course, logic is a puny weapon against bureaucracy.