Americans favor science, but less than before

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James R

James R

Just this guy, you know?
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Link to news story - AP

Some highlights of a new Pew Research Centre poll. (My comments in square brackets.)

  • 27 percent of Americans say the nation's greatest achievements are in science, medicine and technology, more than any category other than don't know. ["Don't know" was the most common response? Hehe.]
  • Most Americans — 64 percent — see this country's science as "above average," but with advances by other countries getting increasing attention, just 17 percent say it's the best in the world. Indeed, the European Union currently published more scientific papers than the United States.
  • Overall, the new study found that science remains well thought of by Americans, with 84 percent of respondents saying it has a mostly positive effect on society. Only 6 percent rated science as largely negative for society.
  • For example, 63 percent of respondents who believe in creationism and 64 percent of those contending there is no evidence of global warming still said science does much to contribute to the well-being of society. [Double-think?]
  • About 91 percent of the general public knew that aspirin is recommended to prevent heart attacks, 82 percent knew that global positioning systems rely on satellites and 65 percent correctly linked carbon dioxide gas to rising temperatures.

    On the other hand, just 54 percent understood that antibiotics do not kill viruses and fewer than half — 46 percent — knew that electrons are smaller than atoms.
  • The public and the science association members did not always see eye-to-eye. For example 87 percent of AAAS scientists believed that humans and other living things evolved naturally, compared with 32 percent of the general public. And while 84 percent of the association members say the Earth is getting warmer because of human activities, just 49 percent of the public agreed.

    [In other words, there's a correlation between knowing about science and believing in evolution and global warming. Basically, the more educated you are about science, the more likely you are to accept global warming and evolution.]

For more, see the full story.
 
Since there's not allot of media coverage on TV or other sources it is difficult for anyone to understand science as much as they do other media hype.
 
Some random thoughts...

Most Americans — 64 percent — see this country's science as "above average," but with advances by other countries getting increasing attention, just 17 percent say it's the best in the world. Indeed, the European Union currently published more scientific papers than the United States.
Click to expand...
Hmmm...comparing one country to the combined efforts of 27 countries?

Anyway, rather than looking at raw number of papers published (which might include many useless and irrelevant papers that no one will actually read or care about), it is perhaps more informative to look at numbers for how often papers are cited to see what sort of impact they have.

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/sep252007/750.pdf
[*]About 91 percent of the general public knew that aspirin is recommended to prevent heart attacks, 82 percent knew that global positioning systems rely on satellites and 65 percent correctly linked carbon dioxide gas to rising temperatures.

On the other hand, just 54 percent understood that antibiotics do not kill viruses and fewer than half — 46 percent — knew that electrons are smaller than atoms.
Click to expand...

I'm always kind of torn on whether or not these sort of questions should be included in these sorts of surveys. The things about aspirin and GPS, for example, seems more like medical and technological trivia than "science". I'm sure there are plenty of good, productive biologists who couldn't give you a coherent explanation of how GPS works, and plenty of young physics grad students who don't think about their heart and so don't know/remember that aspirin is supposed to help with heart attacks.
 
Note: SAM's off-topic diversion on the topic of atheism has been moved to a separate thread [thread=94482]here[/thread].
 
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