Many people are poorly informed about things they depend on. It would be difficult to argue that people's ignorance of how their plumbing or their cars work constitutes a threat to national security. Perhaps, like plumbing literacy and car repair literacy, scientific literacy can be safely left to the professionals. Putting the problem of scientific illiteracy into perspective, it pales before other threats to our national security, such as the widening gap between rich and poor nations. Perhaps we should spend our energies addressing this and other more menacing threats, and view scientific illiteracy in its proper place as an educational problem, rather than a national security problem.
Science is one of American society's most important and effective tools for keeping itself secure.
We use it to maintain our prosperity, monitor our safety and to confound our enemies. To use any tool effectively, one has to understand what it is for and what its limits are. If national security is the business of all citizens, rather than the sole province of government, than every citizen would be well served by basic scientific literacy. The National Science Foundation's Science and Engineering Indicators 2000. Frankel, M.S. 1998.