Malaysia lacks literacy in science

COMMENT In a science communication event I attended back in January 2013, I was fortunate to be in the audience during the performance of Canadian rap artist cum science communicator Baba Brinkman.

Trained as a classicist, he went from producing albums that rap about the Canterbury Tales to ones that rap about evolution and genetics. One of his more 'notorious' hits is the song, Don't Sleep with Mean People.

This song basically reminds women (he did say it is a song for the women) to be careful about their choice of their sexual partners and mates so that negative traits can be weeded out of future generations. In other words, if you don't procreate with an moron, your probability of producing future morons decreases, even after accounting for both nature and nurture.

It is a contemporary rendition of the theory of sexual selection as old as Charles Darwin (that guy who went around the world on a ship collecting specimens from exotic places before writing his On the Origin of Species). At the same time, it is a clever way of showing how a better appreciation of science can help us in making better decisions, including for our love lives!

On a more serious note, science and technology, viewed as the elixir to progress by policy makers, has been part of every development plan in Malaysia since independence, or at least the technological aspect of it.

Should you read the executive summary of any economic and social engineering plan (such as the 10th Malaysian plan), or even pay a visit to the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation website, you will find manifestos of how science and technological progress will set the country more firmly on an upward path of knowledge economy, and therefore, moving us into higher income growth.

Among the oft-cited perennial favourites are biotechnology, electronics (think Penang and a new Silicon Valley of Malaysia), engineering, medicine (pharmaceuticals), and of course, the perpetually hot 'IT' item, also known as Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

However, a close scrutiny of the documents makes it clear, pretty quickly, that the motive is purely utilitarian: science and technology are treated like any commodity that can be manufactured while its other more important values are ignored.

In other words, the values upheld in the documents are not unlike the tale of three blind men trying to figure out what an elephant is by merely feeling around one area.

Let's begin with how Malaysia likes to measure its achievements. An example is the recent measurement of its performance in science and mathematics. Malaysia's performance of these subjects in last year's Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies administered to students between primary four (grade four) and Secondary 2 (grade eight) had parents, such as the Parents Action Group for Education, and politicians out for blood, because of its rather embarrassing outcome.

However, save for a valiant attempt here, I have yet to come across reports that attempt to unpack what constitutes that decline (beyond the obvious test scores) and what are the values being measured.

Solution in the medium of instruction?

The obvious solution for some groups is the medium of instruction. While little is mentioned about content and style of instruction, the choice of the language has been bouncing back and forth among the ministers, educators and parents.

Even as some educators would insist that it is pedagogically detrimental to teach in English, a language that some students struggle bitterly with for lack of facility, parents of children from the other pond also banded together to say that this is why we need to begin, anew, to teach mathematics and science courses in English, to give the children that head start they otherwise will never get, so as to prepare them for dealing with the increasingly intricate sub-specialisations in these subjects.

However, through all of these discussions, it appears that any discussion with regard to how one would and could appreciate science has dropped out, the sort of appreciation Brinkman raps about. Does learning the subject in one language over another increase the appreciation and understanding of science?

In none of the squabbles has it ever occurred to most to ask if a utilitarian approach to looking at science and technology in anyway encourages students to care about the objective of studying these subjects beyond the accomplishment of good grades and capital for a 'brighter' future, all of which are short-term gains?

The mental model of pure acquisition does not breed a creative attitude towards the subject. Neither does such an attitude help educate one on the meaning of science, and to differentiate science from a quasi to pseudo version.

There is acquiescence to scientific authority without the questioning of what constitutes such an authority. In other words, there is no sense of criticality in engaging with science (I include mathematics whenever I mention science, not with an intent of conflating the two, but merely for expediency).

Or, to think about science as being a subject in perpetual dialogue with other seemingly unrelated disciplines, such as the arts and the humanities, which are all part of the creation of a humanistic form of thinking?

In other words, much of science education today appears to promote scientific illiteracy, which will, in the end, derail any real progress in science education, or the science and technological aspirations of the country.

At one level, the lack of appreciation for science and scientific illiteracy have both led to the application of faulty logic and scientistic attitudes as an outcome of a set of myths that one holds about science and how it works.

A good example is how multi-level marketing involving health, beauty, and 'Islamic' products. Most marketers recruit their 'their clients by touting the amount of 'scientific research' that has gone into their products, citing clinical trials, statistics and other supposedly evidence-based data; or they might say that a product has been scientifically verified to fulfil some requirements of a religious creed.

Pseudo-scientific religious marketing

Of course, if the salesperson appears authoritative, such as if he or she is a qualified medical practitioner or ustaz, you are more likely to be sold. Zurairi AR has written about the whole pseudo-scientific religious marketing spiel predominant in Malaysia with humour.

Another more direct example of scientific illiteracy pertains to environmental issues. Environmentalism becomes the site for perpetuating multiple myths, as crank science are mixed up with solid science.

Most recently, is the case of Lynas, an Australian incorporated company that refines rare earths in Kuantan. It has been difficult to find critical, informed, and disinterested journalism on this issue.

Just as in the case of the incinerators that rocked part of the western peninsula in the first half of the 21st century, there is little information on environmental impact, with only the most vague references to compliance to laws we do not even get details of for a more critical evaluation.

It took a citizen blog to throw some light onto the case. Science, as many popularisers of the subjects will readily agree, is more than the memorising of facts or knowing how to apply those facts for problem solving in an artificial environment of school exams or competitions, even when you train for an Olympiad.

Science is part of one's lived experience (our climate, for instance, and how changes in the biosphere have their implications on our bodies and psyche), of making significantly important decisions (from the medicines you take to why you would choose to lead a particular lifestyle), and even of philosophy (many of the great discoveries we learn about today were by people we refer to as 'natural philosophers' and natural historians, some of whom were amateurs with great capacity for curiosity and critical thought).

I blame this on how science education has been reproduced in an asociological, ahistorical, and aphilosophical manner, and not just in Malaysia.

In fact, it is not farfetched to assume that many of the textbook writers probably have little clue of the different controversies, paradigm changes, knowledge developments and political moves that have allowed one form of 'factual' interpretation to be accepted over others.

Compartmentalised education a disservice

Scientific literacy allows you to make that critical evaluation to discern between supported arguments and intentional obscuration or hype. This is as true in medicine and environmental studies as it is in physics.

A real and stronger appreciation for science, in all the richness of its context, will actually help raise appreciation in other areas such as in the interpretive and creative arts. The compartmentalised education that we have now does a major disservice to the nation's young (and old).

In terms of scientific communication, Malaysia has a pretty dismal record, notwithstanding how it used to crib science news from foreign sources, with only the occasional local science reportage that do not tend to be particularly informative. Many years ago, Malaysia had a few fledgling magazines that tottered and sputtered around for a bit before getting knocked off the market.

Today, we have Scientific Malaysia (this one is free) and I hear, Malaysia's version of Popular Science (this one you buy).

For science communication to even reach a level of criticality, criticality has to commensurate with an increase in science blogging and science-writing in the ever expanding Malaysian online media sites, not only in terms of science reportage but in actual critical takes, the way one does with politics. In the same way one trains someone to write about other life topics, one also should provide the same training for science writing.

While universities are now developing research clusters to promote R&D in S&T, there is insufficient outreach to the same public whose tax ringgit are funding the research.

Most recently, there have been debates in the US (and elsewhere) on how public-funded research should be made more accessible to the members of the public. Scientists are socially responsible to provide science education, by way of creative outreach, to the public, as part of their job, and universities should encourage and enable such activities.

More bridges should be built between citizen science groups and institutions. There are citizen science groups in Malaysia, from astronomy to birding to ham radio, but they are not well publicised. This can be rectified with more collaboration.

In fact, citizen science itself should be transformed and deployed as a form of activism for combat scientific illiteracy. One cannot claim true political savvy when one is scientifically illiterate or incurious.

Maybe science communication in Malaysia can take on a vein similar to the hit I F**king Love Science Facebook page, minus the drama about getting famous from filched (and uncredited) images and copyright infringements, by creating a social media site that encourages original contributions from Malaysian scientists, citizen scientists, science bloggers, and artistes with a passion and interest for science and communicating science at a level that breaks out of the constriction of the disciplines.

This is the first of a semi-regular series about all things science and technology in Malaysia. The writer thanks her two original reviewers for their critical input on this debut article.

CLARISSA AI LING LEE is a PhD candidate at Duke University, specialising in Science and Technology Studies and Comparative Media (including new media). She blogs about various facets of the culture of science and technology for Scientific American and tweets as @normasalim.