Pseudoscience, Biology, and the Education of African-American Students to be held in Phoenix in March 1995

最近的研究详细说明了美国普通民众的科学素养普遍下降，随之而来的是对伪科学理论的信仰上升。伪科学包括炼金术和占星术等观点。有人可能会说，相信这些理论基本上是无害的。然而，在我国发展的日益复杂的社会中，任何分散普通公民对科学技术发展方式的理解的事情都进一步将公民分为在这些领域具有技术和科学素养的人和对这些领域一无所知的人。不幸的是，后一个群体将在我们未来的社会中越来越边缘化。在约瑟夫·格雷夫斯教授的领导下，一群杰出的非裔美国科学家和科学历史学家正在试图确定文化和社会因素是如何影响非裔美国人社区的科学素养的。这些科学家投入了大量的时间和精力来研究伪科学在产生非裔美国人在科学和工程领域代表性不足的模式中的作用。这是一个至关重要的问题，如果不加以解决，可能会阻碍国家机构为扭转非裔美国人在自然科学领域代表性不足的这种模式所做的所有努力。作为这项研究的一部分，这些感兴趣的非裔美国科学家将于1995年3月在凤凰城开会，计划召开一次重大研讨会来解决这个问题。

Recent research has detailed a general decline in scientific literacy among the general American population and a concomitant rise in the belief in pseudoscientific theories. Pseudoscience includes such views as alchemy and astrology. One could argue that belief in such theories is largely harmless. Yet, in the increasingly complex society that is developing in our country, anything that distracts the general citizenry from understanding of the way science and technology develop further divides citizens into technologically and scientifically literate and those who are illiterate with respect to these areas. Unfortunately, the latter group will become increasingly marginalized in our future society. Under the leadership of Professor Joseph Graves, a group of prominent African-American scientists and historians of science are seeking to determine how cultural and social factors have impacted the scientific literacy of the African-American community. These scientists have committed significant time and energy to being the examination of the role of pseudoscience in producing patterns of underrepresentation of African-Americans in science and engineering. This is a crucial issue which, if not addressed, could retard all the efforts made by national agencies to reverse this pattern of underrepresentation of African Americans in the natural sciences. As part of this study, these interested African-American scientists are meeting in March, 1995 in Phoenix to plan a major symposium to address this problem.