For us, developing this confidence is one of the basic goals of scientific literacy. Scientific literacy ought to mean instead understanding the process of knowing, or making science knowledge. Demystifying Science People often work practically with some of the basic ideas of science without being aware of it.
Science is presented as the activity of an intellectual elite.
Understanding science as a practice, as a way of knowing, is valuable for demystifying science and that in turn opens science up to groups who in the past have been intimidated and excluded. See below discussion of science as practice. There will be no agreement about this among scientists from different disciplines and indeed there are no sensible criteria for making judgments about which facts or laws are most important. Sustain the Science Pipeline Scientific literacy is about general education, not the production of specialists in the sciences. Moreover, there is no evidence that currently there is a shortage of scientists in most disciplines.