Telegraph:
Modern children do not know the difference between astronomy and astrology because schools fail to give them a grounding in “rational thought”, the president of the Royal Society has warned.
7:30AM GMT 21 Feb 2012
Sir Paul Nurse said many young people were unable to distinguish between “nonsense” and science because they are not taught to differentiate between reliable and unreliable information.
In an interview with Radio Times, Sir Paul said better scienceeducation was crucial to Britain’s economic future and improving society.
The Nobel Prize-winning geneticist and cell biologist said: “Astrology might be amusing and entertaining, but it has nothing to do with rational thought.
“Astronomy is a science where you get ideas and hypotheses, you test them, you try to shoot them down and, at the end of that rational process, you have reliable knowledge.
“Learning to make that distinction between reliable and unreliable knowledge is really important in education.”
