Science Literacy in the US – Some Good, Some Bad…
July 14th, 2007
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(if this sounds Ameri-Centric, it’s because this is a US-based page. Of course, understanding science transcends cultural and political boundaries)
About 25% Americans did not know whether the earth revolved the sun or the sun around the earth, in a 2004 study. But that’s still better than the EU, which could not break 70% on the earth-sun relationship. South Korea did considerably better, where a good 85% got the answer correct. And Japan got a dismal 57%.
All in all, Americans are (contrary to the popular stereotype) doing quite well in terms of science understanding within the general population. The USA clobbered other countries in such things as “Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria,” an important question in this day and age, where drug resistant infections are on the rise, and the question “Is all radioactivity man-made?” once again comes back “USA #1.”
But one area of questioning turns out to set the US back quite a bit. On questions like “Are human beings evolved from earlier species?” or questions relating to the Earth’s ancient past and the Big Bang, the US looses points big time. This may very well be a sign of the bible-literalism lobby, who don’t have a problem with science – as long as it does not conflict with the beliefs that they want taught.
Click Chart to Enlarge:
But while Americans may be a bit inconsistent on science knowledge, Americans have the some of the most positive views of science of any nation in the world. The US has the highest number of citizens who believe that scientific research has benefits which outweigh harmful results and better than 90% Americans believe that science and technology makes lives better and more comfortable; only China has a higher percentage, and only by a hair. Americans view scientists better than other nations surveyed, with about 90% believing scientists want to work to make life better for the average person. Surprisingly, Japan, a nation known for it’s gadgets seems to have a rather low opinion of science and technology.
Perhaps the most hopeful aspect that is revealed by surveys given to Americans is the high proportion of the population who recognize the importance of science knowledge for the present and future. When asked if science wasn’t important in their daily lives, more Americans gave a big Yankee “HELL NO” than other nations. In the EU, nearly 80% of the population thought science wasn’t very important in daily life. And attitudes and knowledge of science in the US is on an upswing. Optimism in biotechnology rose from 51% in 1999 to 78% in 2005. And while in 1988, only 10% of Americans had sufficient knowledge of science to understand reports in major newspapers, by 2005 it was up to 28%. (Still a bit low, but headed in the right direction.) And 80% of Americans would be happy to have a child become a scientist, the figure is identical for both sons and daughters
The message is still a bit mixed, however. While the majority of Americans do appreciate the importance of science, pseudoscience continues to rear it’s ugly head. Beliefs in astrology and conspiracy theories are on the rise and the creationism pushers seem to be gaining some headroom. [A future post will go into how these studies reflect pseudoscience and paranormal beliefs further]
Sources:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17206139/
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind06/c7/c7h.htm
Note: Charts provided are taken from the National Science Foundation website and can be found at the link listed above. Charts are issued to reflect statistics of the 2006 “Science and Engineering Indicators. These are posted with an understanding that they constitute legal use of government publications.
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 14th, 2007 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Education, Good Science, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 17th, 2007 at 12:14 am
Heh. Decent post on it’s own, but the French dude makes it ten times better!
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July 17th, 2007 at 9:47 am
The apparent bad performance of the US in the question of the Big Bang is an interesting one for another reason. The question takes the idea that the universe started with a “huge explosion” to be the correct answer. Thing is, if asked that question (not that I’m from the US, but pretend for a moment that I am…), I’d probably answer with “false” too.
Not that, for a moment, I think that the US has a low “score” there because so many people in the US know what the Big Bang really means, but, still…
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September 14th, 2007 at 1:22 am
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Great points you raise here. I dont agree with everything you have written but overall nice writing style.
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March 18th, 2010 at 12:24 am
I’ve been wanting to see education gauged this way for years.
It’s very common to hear references to US schools performing poorly when compared to other countries, but they don’t seem to take into account the fact that different countries educate different segments of their populations differently than we do. In many countries, lower classes and lower performing students do not make it into secondary education. If they remain in the education system at all, they are placed on a vocational track rather than academic. A sample of schools in those cultures would include a disproportionately high number capable students compared to the general population. In the US, however, (right or wrong) we attempt to educate all children equally, and I would guess that a sample from American schools is more likely to be representative of the total population, bringing the average scores down.
So to compare education between countries, it would be necessary to survey, not students, but the general adult population. I have always assumed that the US would fare much better in that case. The data you present seem to bear that out.
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