terribly sensible folks we are...

I wasn't going to mention it, but Tara made me...

A public policy report in today's Science shows the popular acceptance of evolution for 34 different nations, and wouldn't you know it: Iceland is #1


This is the image from Science magazine, linked through from their website under fair use.
United States, as Tara notes, is second - from the bottom, right ahead of Turkey but behind Cyprus.

I have to confess I am a bit surprised - Iceland is clustered with the usual Scandinavian liberal nations, but I wouldn't have figured us being on top, would have expected a rank lower down near Norway.

One possible reason is that the issue of genetics and, by association evolution, was very prominent when a major public debate went on over the deCode pushed national genotyping and historical geneaology database the new Book of Icelanders (password protected).

There has been some push back, with evangelical sects with US finances and resources trying to start a intelligent desing/creationism debate, but with relatively little success, last I heard.

For what it is worth, I recall introductory biology teaching in Iceland as mediocre but straightforward with evolution both implicit and explicit at all levels.

While I am browsing Science: there is also an interesting article by Siegfried on the Landscape in string theory and the role of the anthropic principle in modern physics
Here we go again - can't all be as sensible as us Icelanders...

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I wonder why Canada and Mexico aren't listed.

By somnilista, FCD (not verified) on 11 Aug 2006 #permalink

Yes..I am curious to know where Canada would be on all of this. Hmmmmm. The US results are sobering...about once a semester I have a student visiting me during office hours wondering if scientists `really' support evolution.

By Pat Durrell (not verified) on 11 Aug 2006 #permalink

For what it is worth, I recall introductory biology teaching in Iceland as mediocre but straightforward with evolution both implicit and explicit at all levels.

I wonder how much of a difference that makes. Here, evolution is rarely explicitly taught, even at upper levels. My biology courses were almost exclusively "stamp collecting" type--lots of facts, but essentially none of the theory to tie it all together.

That probably puts you in the 60-70% acceptance, there is just no controversy at the intro level, just relatively dry presentation of the mainstream understanding with little bit of local colour (intro of mammals to Iceland, intro of later alien species like minks, and extinctions (ie the Great Auk)). Some talk of local fossils as I recall.

More I think about it, the more I think the population genotype debate is what pushed the acceptance above 80% and to the top, only thing I can think of that is really distinguishing from the other vaguely lutheran liberal scandinavian countries - really forcibly made genetics and associated issues a foreground political issue, which would trigger and recessed memories of K-12 intro bio on evolution etc.
Just a conjecture.