Scientific literacy

A few weeks ago, I watched a Japanese TV program "tameshite gatten". It introduced a phenomenon that hot water can freeze more quickly than cold one. The behavior, called "Mpemba effect", seems to be contrary to thermodynamics, and so it raised a debate and became a controversial topic. Some scientists questioned the experimental results and insisted that the effect is not scientific and is impossible.
Can hot water freeze faster than cold? I have not examined it yet, but it is likely to be observed in certain circumstances. I guess that this argument may help us cultivate our scientific literacy.

United States National Center for Education Statistics defines scientific literacy as "the knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts and processes required for personal decision making, participation in civic and cultural affairs, and economic productivity".
http://www.literacynet.org/science/scientificliteracy.html
It says, "A literate citizen should be able to evaluate the quality of scientific information on the basis of its source and the methods used to generate it".

To discriminate propaganda and bias from information, we also need media literacy, a potential analyzing it critically. Perhaps the Youtube videos "popping popcorn with cell phones" are another good model for evaluating the literacy.
(See my previous entry: http://shinkammy.blogspot.com/2008/06/popcorn.html)