Are people loosing interest in scientific news? I found this downright frightning.

Like a clock that is running out of battery the searches for "science news" is become less popular.

Google Trends ("science news")

I find it fascinating looking at the amount of searches for a keyword over time. I think it can really tell us something important.

 

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It might or might not. I am on the e-mail list for several sources of science news. I am involved with several science forums. However I have never Googled "science news" or anything similar.

 

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Only about people who use the internet (and the majority of the world's population do not), who use google, and who search fo things by keywords via Google.
A rather limited population.

 

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I wouldn't think that there is a "limited population" using Google to find sites which has science news. Either way there is a minimum number of searches required to get any result at all and I believe that the number is set high.

There is no reason why people who has internet and use Google (which is almost all people that can afford it) should have less interest in science than the rest of the population. It's easy to see that Google trends really do reflect trends in the world. Search for Olympics and you will get a peak every four years, search for "christmas songs" and you will get a peak in december each year, etc.

 

I think more People care about Kardashians than about the International Space Station.

I think people are becoming science numb as OP suggests.

I will use Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) as an example. There are now Dozens of reputable universities attaching their name to LENR and that it may be the next big breakthrough in technology and people barely notice. Ho Hum.

I will use an IF here to avoid any arguing about it in this thread.

IF LENR is true and works as has been suggested so far we are looking at a huge Energy Breakthrough that will change the world.

Yes. It is a shame how people are not shocked by things anymore. Maybe it is because our advancements are expected from movies. If we are not teleporting then is it really news?


p.s. Losing, not Loosing.

 

Only about 5 percent of the entire population uses the internet the rest do not have access or are only interested in what the news media and other media sources tells them about. Those who have access to the net use it for many reasones which they want to learen something about or are wanting to buy something for themselves.

 

That five percent figure seems a little low to me. It appears that a third or more use the internet globally, with usage in the developed world approaching eighty percent. Makes the OP even more disconcerting, especially considering that the typical internet user tends to be younger...

Wiki and InternetWorldStats

 

There are over 7 billion people living on Earth today. Less than half of them have no electricity so that means they cannot be connected to anything. Then you have those who are poor and cannot afford such services and that's about another one third so that leaves about 2 billion people who could afford the service and who are wealthy enough to afford it. Many of those do not use the service either say another 50 percent so that leaves about 1 billion who could use the service which is about 15 percent, so I would think that might be closer to an actual number rather than the 5 percent I started with.

 

Sigh...

Why do people just arbitrarily decide to ignore linked references, usually without providing any citations of their own?

Agreed...

Less than half have no access to electricity? OK, so more than half do have electricity, right? The latest figures I found show 1.317 billion without electricity or an eighty percent electrification rate. So your statement, while technically accurate, seems somewhat misleading.

Really? I take it that figure represents your best guess, pulled out of your... err... out of the blue?

A little redundancy for fun? Also, how are you accounting for those that access using schools, internet cafes, friends' accounts and the like?

Some more wild guessing...

I think you're right. Fifteen percent is closer to the actual number (34%) than five percent.

Bottom line, what makes you so much more confident in your back of the napkin calculations than the cited statistics? Unless you can do better than "I would think" I'll stick with my one third of the world's population using the internet. Thanks though...

 

Strangely enough we get a weekly publication (in the actual mail!) called "science news."

 

My sense is that the general public is less interested in science than they once were. The peak of interest, here in the United States, may have been in the 1960's. It seems to have peaked with the Moon landings, and receded from there.

I still remember getting up before dawn with my family when I was a kid to watch manned-space launches live. It wasn't just my family, everyone did it. We felt like we were living at the dawn of a new age of exploration. Today, it seems like hardly anyone cares about that kind of stuff any more.

So my own feeling is that these Google stats may indeed be evidence of a real phenomenon. It's probably part of a longer term trend.

There are other datapoints that suggest the same kind of phenomenon, such as the decline in the percentage of university students who are enrolled in STEM subjects.

 

What is interesting as well about the stats is that the difference in seasons are decreasing each year, which to me sounds like that people that are really interested in science (so much that they search for it even in the summer) are loyal to it, while those who have casual interest are less interested (which are less likely to search for it during summertime). Only my interpretation but I think it's a plausible theory.

One explanation could also be that there isn't as many new discoveries made, perhaps the public feels as if we already know it all?

Google Trends takes the total amount of searches in a country and compares the result of a specific search to that (if I understood it correctly, it's all explained on the site if you want to find out for yourself), which means that the amount of people having internet in a country shouldn't matter that much as the results are normalised. I also think that there is enough diversity amongst Google users that it can serve as a good indication of actual trends. What's also good with it is that people don't know that they are contributing to the statistics, so there isn't any false motives, it's basically as honest a result that you can get, there is a possibility in statistics that the government does that people aren't honest because they want to influence the results etc. or that they "want to be better" than they are, that is less likely to occur in Google searches if you ask me.

If the government sends out a paper to make statistics about a matter do you think it would be enough to send it out to 5% of the population? 5% of the population is a statistically good, if you ask me, even a couple of thousand of people would make good statistics.

You could say that the 5% are "biased" in some way, that they are richer than the average, or that they have better technology, but should that be bad bias if so? Would you think that if we gave out a test to indicate interest in science to 5% that we poor, and didn't have the technology, that the interest wouldn't decline?

Even so, even poor people today usually have some access to the internet, internet is almost everybodies business, and if you do this...
Google Trends; music vs science

...you will find that there is enough people searching for it to make good stats (ALOT of people are searching for music on Google), it's also not surprising that the searches for music goes up during summer (at the same time that searches for science goes down), which is another good indication that Google Trends really show trends.

 

We live in the age of emotion instead of reason, due to liberalism and feminization. Culture was more conservative and masculine when science was at its peak of interest in the 1950's-60's. It was a man's sport. Science is a good ole boys network, that is of itself very conservative with Darwin and Newton still popular. It is not about progressive fads but about what works and has stood the tests of time. Science is not being progressive enough, nor does it take into account enough revisionist history that give women and minorities more of a role in the history of science. Science needs to make people feel science, to be more popular. The liberals have successfully dumb down culture, science requiring the opposite of dumb down to be interesting and inspiring.

The atheists may have also played a role in this departure from science. Atheism connects itself to science while being constantly negative about religion and not positive about itself. This may create a negative feeling for science due to a compassion backlash. Anyone can see who has the power and supposedly the brains, and from that one can see this bully which shadows science.

Another angle is liberalism gets all negative about destroying the environment. Science makes all construction, infringement and destruction possible through invention and technology. You could not destroy the rain forests, without science, since sticks won't work.

I like science since it is rational but again there is a tendency toward empirical which changes its mind all the time. Today coffee gives oyu cancer and tomorrow it help cure something else. This make science look stupid and appear to be anything but rational.

 

Anyone consider the possibility of a measurement artifact? Such as the language used in the search text...?

 

I think that science is too dry, and too "this is the way it works!" for people to feel comfortable. Many scientists when they appear in television seems overly confident that their opinion is the correct one, this will not sit well with most people with differing opinions. I think that science needs to be more humble and explain that this is the current view of science and that it might very well change in the future. This will not only be a way for science to become more popular, it will also be closer to the truth. It is as if scientists think we will be brought back to the 14th century just because they are more humble, it's the opposite I think, I think it will lead us to the future!

I didn't consider it when I searched for it, but this is the swedish equivalent (which shows the same pattern), there wasn't enough searches for "vetenskaps nyheter" (science news) so I had to search for "vetenskap" (science), but "science" and "science news" shows the same pattern, and I expect the same to be true in sweden as well. Since English is the international language then I would think that it is the most relevant language for good results. But if you know what to search for in other languages then I expect the same pattern.

Here's the results when I searched for "science" in swedish (vetenskap): http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=vetenskap&cmpt=q

 

We're a special breed of people.

 

And who appeals to emotions better than the classic enemies of liberalism but the military industrial complex (fear, aggression, patriarcy), mega-corporatism ( greed), the three middle eastern religions (fear, arrogance, ignorance, patriarcy)?

Science doesn't matter to these classic bastions of conservative ideology when women and gays are being oppressed, the environment destroyed and the Eco-system threatened.

You talk about "dumbing down". Those three triads of evil blatantantly stand against the recognition of the mind in anyone else but white males. And any progress that has been made in the "good ol' boys club" of science has been made because of liberal and progressive activism. If any ideology has dumbed down humanity it is conservatism, in all its forms, across the globe.

It just appears we are getting dumber because the minorities that conservative ideology has oppressed and denied suitable education and opportunities for so long have to play catch up. But make no mistake. Thanks to Liberalism, they will catch all the way up and when they do ignorance such as that displayed in your post will be booted out the door.

 

it seems that hte priorities have changed.....pornographic searches are going up....scientfic are going down

 

Hello !!!...I think that the post is a very good question cause people are more interested in eating , war and politic question much before than
scientific question and THAT IS THE PROBLEM !!!...Have a nice day !!!

 

Because scientific abstract from studies are esoteric and boring