Natural History Museum Visitors' Understanding of Evolution

摘要

Natural history museums are the principal repositories of the collections that represent much of the objective evidence for evolution. With approximately 50 million visitors annually, US natural history museums can significantly influence the public's understanding of evolution. Here we present the results of a study that investigated the knowledge of key evolutionary concepts exhibited by high-school students and adults who visited natural history museums. Ninety-five percent of the study participants understood relative geological time (superposition), but only 30 percent explained biological change (microevolution) in terms of natural selection, and 11 percent explicitly rejected evolution. In general, museum visitors have an incomplete understanding of evolutionary concepts. For example, while participants have a good understanding that fossils represent evidence for evolution, they have a poor understanding of the mechanisms of evolution. Natural history museums can foster visitors' understanding of evolution by integrating this content—particularly concepts that are difficult to understand—throughout all relevant exhibits and public programs.nnEighty years after the Scopes “monkey trial,” one could argue that we as a society have not improved public understanding and acceptance of evolution. Since 1859, when Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published, the tenets of religious fundamentalism and the recent intelligent design (ID) movement have done much to influence the understanding and acceptance of evolution. This is particularly true in the United States: politicians have expressed their particular viewpoints, and in certain instances have legislated that creationism and ID be taught in public schools either along with or in place of evolution. Although the US Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard (482 U.S. 578 [1987]) that teaching creationism and “creation science”is unconstitutional, proposals that encourage or require teaching creationism along with evolution in public schools have been advanced in 37 states since 2001 (Holden 2004). In the landmark decision Kitzmiller v. Dover (400 F. Supp. 2d 707 [M.D. Pa. 2005]), the Pennsylvania federal court ruled that ID is not science, and thus teaching it in public schools violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution (Jones 2006). In Kansas, despite several years of wavering (Holden and Bhattacharjee 2005), the recent Kansas elections once again shifted the control of the Board of Education to a majority view that evolution is well supported by scientific evidence and should be taught in public schools (Bhattarcharjee 2006).nnIn a recent Gallup poll, 35 percent of US respondents said that evolution is well supported by evidence, and 35 percent said evolution is not supported by evidence (29 percent said they did not know and 1 percent expressed no opinion). Forty-five percent of the respondents reported that they believe God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years. The public's understanding of evolution and their beliefs about it have not changed significantly over the past quarter-century (Gallup 2007, NCSE 2007). In a recent survey administered in 34 countries, the United States ranked second to last in public acceptance of evolution (Miller et al. 2006).nnThe fundamental evidence for evolution, such as actual specimens and related exhibits, represents the objective scientific knowledge that is displayed in natural history museums (e.g., Suarez and Tsutsui 2004, Thomson 2005, West 2005, Diamond and Scotchmoor 2006). In 2004, approximately 50 million people visited US natural history museums (principally collections-based museums [AAM 2004]). Although exhibits and related public programs with natural history or evolution content are on display or presented at science centers, botanical gardens, zoological parks, national parks, and other museums (e.g., Hansen 2005), collections-based natural history museums provide unique opportunities to promote the public's understanding of evolution, and these are the focus of this report. Except for a few recent studies (e.g., Spiegal et al. 2006, Storksdieck and Stein 2006), little research has been done to ascertain natural history museum visitors' understanding and acceptance of evolution.