Scientific Illiteracy/Misinformation, Or The Depletion

Joel Achenbach, the author of the article, “Why Do Reasonable People Doubt Science?” starts of by saying that in today's era the people often disagree with scientific reasoning. The world we live in today is so full of problems it's hard to tell what is real anymore. The decision is left to the individual to decide what to believe is true or false, and then how there going to put their beliefs into action. Achenbach later explains in his article that the scientific method pushes back all the opinions and unfolds the real truth.

Today, the availability of birth control is taken for granted. There was a time, not long passed, during which the subject was illegal (“Margaret Sanger,” 2013, p.1). That did not stop the resilient leader of the birth control movement. Margaret Sanger was a nurse and women’s activist. While working as a nurse, Sanger treated many women who had suffered from unsafe abortions or tried to self-induce abortion (p.1). Seeing this devastation and noting that it was mainly low income women suffering from these problems, she was inspired to dedicate her life to educating women on family planning—even though the discussion of which was highly illegal at the time (p.1). She was often in trouble with

The author’s use of rhetoric and rhetorical devices is viewed as her credibility and evidence that supports the themes, feminism and birth control. “In 1910, 4 percent of Americans

Imagine going to the doctor’s office and as you walk in, you see the doctor smoking a cigarette! The doctor continues to check you and gives you medicine that was made in the 1900s. Most people would agree that changes in scientific knowledge is for the best, but some people just won’t allow for change. For example, some people think that the Earth is flat, notwithstanding all the evidence put against them. As scientific knowledge changes over time, society has adapted to the new knowledge for the better. For instance, we have medical knowledge. If medical knowledge didn’t change, we wouldn’t know how to make new medicine. Some people like to keep to the older ways like smoking. Once in a while, there comes someone who won’t use any medicine

In the mid-1800s American women united to participate in social reforms movements more than ever before. This movement’s involved: struggle to abolish slavery, outlaw alcohol, and ban child labor among others (Rupp, 1987). Despite the failure of the women's movement to attain one among its primary goals, the passage of the ERA , the movement overall accomplished an excellent deal. For several women activists, management over their bodies was a central issue in the campaign. Women needed to be liberated to explore and control their gender, while not being judged by society. An oversized a part of management during this arena concerned having access to birth control, or contraception ways (Fishman, 1998). The contraception pill, associate inoculant,

Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement highlighted a variety of important issues. These issues include women’s right to make decisions privately versus the right of a community to regulate moral behavior; the ethnic demographics of the American people; the ability of women to control their own physical destinies by limiting family size; and the idea that small families were the way to keep the American dream alive. The debate over birth control spoke to personal and political issues, which poses the question: Was birth control merely a matter of individual choice, or was it about power, wealth, opportunity and similar issues? Birth control was not merely a technique to expand the realm of personal freedom; it grew out of a radical

The Birth Control Movement of 1912 in the United States had a significant impact on Women’s Reproductive Rights. Women in the 1800s would frequently die or have complications during or after childbirth. Even if the woman would have died, they would still have a great amount of children. As the years progressed into the 1900s, the amount of children being born dropped. Because of this, birth control supplements were banned, forcing women to have a child that she was not prepared for or did not want to have in the first place.

The battle for reproductive rights began well over a hundred years ago. At a time when families were producing more children than they could afford to feed, many women were seeking primitive forms of birth control and undergoing abortions. It was in the 1860s that a postal inspector turned politician named Anthony Comstock, in partnership with the Young Men’s Christian Association, set out on a crusade to condemn all forms of birth control and any kind of abortion by claiming they violated “anti-obscenity laws” (Baer). These men eventually succeeded and created the Comstock Laws in 1873 that prohibited all “sales, advertising, or information on birth control” (Baer).

Public discussions of birth control were criminalized under the Comstock Act of 1873 because people believed it was immoral. Margaret Sanger, who had opened the first birth control clinic in 1916 despite the Comstock Act of 1873, was a feminist and advocate. After serving prison time, Sanger returned publicly and illegally with drive to present a strong argument that defended the moral use of birth control. Prior to her morally controversial 1921 speech, Sanger was arrested in New York for her intent to advocate public knowledge pertaining to birth control. Although the ethical nature of using birth control is still controversial in America, Margaret Sanger’s 1921 speech “A Moral Necessity for Birth Control” was undoubtedly a catalyst for

Throughout the course of this dissertation it has been incredibly fascinating to evaluate how the notion of birth control has evolved throughout the history of feminism; sparked by the scientific ingenuity of Margaret Sanger. Through the analysis of the wave’s metaphor it is remarkable how the distribution of contraception pamphlets in 1920 can provide a strong undercurrent able to peak in the midst of the sexual revolution in the 1960’s. Sanger reinvented the act of sex from a means of reproduction to a pleasurable burden free experience where women are able for the first time to be sexually liberated from their own bodies. It is this re-invention of a public belief on a private matter which is so applicable to the re-peaking of the contraceptive

During the first part of Hitler’s Regime, the government established concentration camps to confine and detain anyone the Nazi’s though as political, cultural and ideological opponents. The first Concentration camp was built in January, 1933, right after Hitler came into power. Hitler gained further support for his ideas by propaganda, which filled the media of Germany with pro-nazi material. All forms of communication; newspapers, radio, books, TV, art, music and movies were controlled by the Nazis. This way, nonother than what the Nazi’s wanted published could only be distributed to its society, and preventing news about the Holocaust from getting anywhere outside of Germany. This propaganda identified the Jews as an inferior ‘race’, and the source of Germany’s defeat and economic depression in world war one on them.

As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz

This could pass on the message to the next generation that Jewish children were “fat, cruel and nasty” and would discourage them from thinking that they were friendly or likeable. In 1939, there was a mass arrest of Jews, many were sent to concentration camps. By this action, many of the German Jewish population would be scared to be so open about their faith. In September of the same year, WW2 began and Germany invaded Poland to discover over three million Jews living there. Overall, The treatment of the Jews by the Nazis gradually got worse but as the years went by, the message strengthened and people believed more in the Nazi ideology. With the gradual change in the treatment of the Jews, it meant that people would not challenge the thoughts that they were processing whether they were morally right or

The Holocaust is most well-known for the organized and inhumane extermination of more than six million Jews. The death total of the Jews is this most staggering; however, other groups such as Gypsies, Poles, Russians, political groups, Jehovah’s witnesses, and homosexuals were targeted as well (Holocaust Encyclopedia: Introduction to the Holocaust). The initial idea of persecuting select groups of people began with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. In January 1930, Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany after winning over its people with powerful and moving speeches. From this point forward, it was a goal for both Hitler and his Nazi Party to rid the world of deemed “inferior” groups of people (Holocaust Encyclopedia: Timeline

Earlier this year, the Washington State Department of Health reported the first confirmed measles-related death in the United States since 2003. Although the woman herself had been vaccinated for measles, she was infected by another patient with measles while she was taking immune system suppressants. This event is a symbol of the foreboding issue currently facing our society--that of scientific illiteracy. We live in a highly interconnected society, and each person is not only responsible for himself, he is also responsible for the lives of everyone else in his community. In our dynamic world where new ideas are constantly being tested, new technologies are constantly being invented, and new developments are constantly being discovered, we as a society must also adapt our level of scientific understanding, so that we are able to make informed decisions about our lives. A scientifically literate population is the essential cornerstone of an innovative culture. To be scientifically literate means to be able to ask questions, collect information, and apply what we learned to solve problems and communicate results to the public. And as a consumer, as a professional, and as a citizen of this democracy, we must be empowered to form educated opinions so that we are less likely to make mistaken decisions, or misled by others. Yet various polls and surveys have shown that scientific literacy in the United States is staggeringly low. Why is this?