while we're talking about science...

[_Blixa]

To be honest, I kind of felt the exercise was just a science-heavy trivia quiz...

Totally. That's why I did so well. Anything about geology, dinosaurs, astronomy, basic science history and terms I knew. Beyond that, the choices were often not that difficult to hazard an educated guess. I've not taken a science course since 1972.

[_RayAgostini]

EARTH AND ALL LIFE RESURRECTED. Every creature on the earth, whether it be man, animal, fish, fowl,
or other creature, that the Lord has created, is redeemed from death on the same terms that man is redeemed. These creatures are not responsible for death coming into the world any more than we
were, and since they have been created by the Father, they are entitled to their redemption and eternal
duration.

Resurrection of Animals(pdf).

I'm not sure who'd want to spend eternity as a resurrected cockroach, or a microbe?

Yet this is the ridiculous scenario proposed by McConkie. No one needs 100/100 in science to realise this.

In short, literalism is a gigantic fail.

[_EAllusion]

Now tell us how many you weren't sure of or had to guess on.

I didn't randomly guess on any. Some I was more certain of than others. I got stalled on remembering if a Newton involved a gram or kilogram. Eris was something I felt like I vaguely recalled.

[_keithb]

"You answered 49 of 50 questions correctly for a total score of 98%."

Yay

But I guessed on at least two.

Of course, this was bad test in many ways. Not much actual science.

I was going to say that as well. I work as a scientist for a living (like you do), and I don't know what "nimbus" means off the top of my head. I am sure that I could Google it though, if the need ever arose.

This is the same misunderstanding that a lot of people have about science: they think that real science has to with the trivia aspects of it, like whether electrons have a positive, negative, or neutral electrical charge. While that sort of stuff is important -- at least at some level -- it's not really what science is about.

Science is much more about reasoning, deduction, and problem solving. Someone who does science for a living would not be so much concerned about whether electrons have a positive or negative charge but about problems where, say, the electrical field is zero when ensembles of protons and electrons are placed in fixed positions in a lattice structure.

[_Chap]

"You answered 49 of 50 questions correctly for a total score of 98%."

Yay

But I guessed on at least two.

Of course, this was bad test in many ways. Not much actual science.

I was going to say that as well. I work as a scientist for a living (like you do), and I don't know what "nimbus" means off the top of my head. I am sure that I could Google it though, if the need ever arose.

This is the same misunderstanding that a lot of people have about science: they think that real science has to with the trivia aspects of it, like whether electrons have a positive, negative, or neutral electrical charge. While that sort of stuff is important -- at least at some level -- it's not really what science is about.

Science is much more about reasoning, deduction, and problem solving. Someone who does science for a living would not be so much concerned about whether electrons have a positive or negative charge but about problems where, say, the electrical field is zero when ensembles of protons and electrons are placed in fixed positions in a lattice structure.

Yup. In my experience people who practice some particular branch of science end up knowing a lot about facts associated with their work as a by-product of what they do every day, but the real criteria that decide whether their fellow-professionals treat them as excellent workers or just humdrum have to do with their skills, not with whether they happen to remember e/m for an electron without looking it up.

I had a look at that test, but did not think it worth while to go all the way through. I think I would have ended up in the high forties if I had, judging by the questions I saw. I came away with two points:

1. It certainly was largely a trivia test, even though knowledge of such trivia probably does correlate with scientific skill level (which the questions did not really test) to a considerable extent.

2. I'd like to know who compiled it. The nature of some of the questions and the way some were expressed makes me speculate that it was done by a science journalist using some encyclopedic source rather than by a science educator habituated to systematic reflection on how a scientist gets trained.

[_Sethbag]

While the points made are great, and I agree with them 100%, I should point out just for the sake of argument that the test was not whether one is a scientist, or qualified to be a scientist, but rather whether one is "science-literate", which isn't going to be exactly the same thing.

And it's remarkable how even in the case of someone who did well because they were able to figure out Greek or Latin roots or whatever, that's still an indicator of greater than average literacy, even if not science literacy specifically. I thought that was interesting anyway.

[_Some Schmo]

I scored a 90 (after converting it to Fahrenheit - I thought that was part of the test).