2 + 2 = 4.0000

I love Mark Twain for many things: his sharp wit which I didn't appreciate him for until I read his "How I edited an agricultural paper once", and now an excerpt from his writing takes the honorable place of the concluding thoughts of the book "How to lie with statistics":
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

So having read "How to lie with statistics", which is an amazingly informative book (and is sure to make my PhD thesis more convincing ;)) I applied it recently to a report I read on public perception of science. So, here are a few points I made reading the report:

1. When conducting surveys, perhaps in order to avoid introducing hidden bias should not contain emotive phrases which necessarily incite people when 'binning' their opinions.
2. What is the definition of scientists? - there are people who hold PhDs who are not scientists, and people without PhD certification who are excellent scientists...?
3. It was interesting to see agreement in the polls (comparing 'scientists' opinions with the 'general public') when the point was concerning children vaccines. Possibly because this was addressing the common ground of both, as both are parents and want best for their children.
4. I noticed that the 'geosciences' had the most positive outlook of their profession (I can see why...).
5. It was annoying to note that it was seen as a negative that the American public didn't know that an atom was larger than an electron. This was seen as a lack of knowledge in science. What a big smelly load of garbage! Okay, now I've worked myself up, and probably won't make much sense, but I cannot stress how infuriating it is! Who the hell cares?! This is a small, small insignificant 'fact' (I'm cautious using this term), it's basically on par with remembering jokes so that you can entertain your dinner guests. Science is an approach to facts, the systematic ordering of ideas rather than remembering stupid dumb things. How can you expect people to 'anchor' random facts like this, like remembering the names of new people they have met, some do it better than others. AH! (btw, I am partial to this idea of anchoring, fascinating way of looking at why we attach ourselves to certain things and situations. I'm working on being all Zen ('unanchored' about life)...
6. Interesting to see that 'scientists' see themselves as liberal, whereas public opinion is that they are very conservative. Perhaps as scientists we are trained to be liberal, as we are trained to form hypothesis and then be unbiased in our testing, and accept the conclusion whatever it may be. But with advancement of our careers, when our hypotheses build on themselves, finding out that our initial one was wrong is a huge blow to the whole scaffold and our personal ego. And we become conservative, as we cherish most of all those ideas which are our own, and hold on like to our ideas once formed as pitbulls. Hence, we perceive ourselves as liberal (as is our professional training), but portray ourselves as conservative (trying to save our careers)? :P