Narrator Listen to part of a lecture in a biology class. Now get r

Professor
    When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, the first edition sold out overnight. His revolutionary theory of evolution was of interest not only to his fellow scientists, but to great numbers of ordinary people, who avidly read The Origin and argued over the details of the theory.
    Today, public interest in biology is even greater. When a previously unknown Scottish biologist cloned the first mammal, a sheep, in February of 1997, the story made front-page headlines all over the world and sharply increased the value of biotechnology stocks overnight.
    Biology is a discipline in full flower. Biologists now have the capacity to understand the workings and the interactions of organisms and—at the cellular level—to alter them, almost at will. Biologists have bred new crops, discovered the frailties and strengths of precious ecosystems, developed new treatments for diseases, and begun to solve many puzzles of the human mind.
    Spectacular as these developments are, they are a mixed blessing for instructors and their students. The sheer number of facts can be overwhelming. How, for example, can we remember the difference between a missense mutation and a nonsense mutation? Between a plasmodia slime mold and a cellular slime mold? And, more importantly, why should we care?
    Yet, to make even the simplest decisions in the 21st century you will need to understand how science works and, at least, the bare basics of biology. If you are sick, should you take an antibiotic? If one of your parents has a genetic disease, should you be tested for the disease- causing allele? If the vacant lot down the road is to be turned into a playing field, should the creek that runs through it be preserved? Is there any harm in running the creek through an underground, concrete culvert? The answers to all of these questions and hundreds of others depend on the ability to understand and evaluate scientific arguments.
    The greatest barrier to understanding science is the common misperception that science is inaccessible to ordinary folks. We know that it is accessible. It’s about asking questions, getting a partial answer, and then asking further questions.