Scientists Differ Significantly From The Public
First, test your science literacy against the general public with this short quiz.
The Pew Center recently released the results of a study comparing scientists to the general public and have found that scientists views of themselves, of controversies and of politics are significantly different than the public.
First, 84% of Americans say that science has a positive and effect the difference is very small between Republicans and Democrats, and 70% say that scientists contribute positively to society. Only teachers and military personnel have a more positive ranking. In fact, the approval rate for scientists is almost double that for clergy and journalists. Can you guess who’s at the bottom? It’s business executives at 21%.
There is also this interesting result: 55% of Americans see a conflict between science and religion while 38% do not. However, only 36% see a conflict between their particular religion and science. 31% of Americans do not believe in evolution while 32% do. The survey also finds that scientists tend to view the achievements in science more positively than the general public does. Scientists also have a very poor view of the coverage of science issues by the media, specifically citing that the media does not distinguish between well-founded studies and those that are not.
When it comes to politics scientists also vary significantly from the general public. One issue in particular is the claim that the Bush administration suppressed scientific reports:
This issue resonates strongly with scientists, but not with the general public. An overwhelming majority of scientists say they have heard a lot (55%) or a little (30%) about claims that the Bush administration did not allow government scientists to report findings that contradicted administration policy. By contrast, just 10% of the public heard a lot about the claims and 34% heard a little; most say they have heard nothing at all about it.
About three-quarters of scientists (77%) believe the claims about the Bush administration are true, while just 6% say they are false. And virtually all of the scientists who say these claims are true – 71% of scientists overall – believe that these practices occurred more often during the Bush administration than during previous administrations.
For political party identification, scientists are much more likely to describe themselves as liberal or very liberal than the general public. The partisan breakdown for scientists (general public) is 55% Democrat (35%), 6% Republican (23%) and 32% Independent (34%). With leaners, the numbers are 81% Democrat (52%) and 12% Republican (35%). That is quite a divide!
The biggest divide in survey appears to be religious belief. 83% of the American public believe in God, while only 33% of scientists do, and 41% of scientists believe in no God or higher power compared to 4% of the public.
OK, I’ll stop here. There’s plenty more at the report if you’re interested in reading it.
Tags: Science
HA! I got 100% correct which put my in the top 10%! Full disclosure though I am really into science and read it regularly so that explains some of it. But some of the questions and simple current news items or 8th grade earth science.
12/12 also. I found it pretty easy, actually. I would think that people get the GPS question wrong. It is rather complex and new to the average person. I find this interesting:
31% of Americans do not believe in evolution while 32% do.
I think that is a slight change over the last time I saw a stat. I suspect that it has to do with the breakdown of the other 37%…
BTW, UI, I like the thumbnail photo that accompanies the post. Just today a very close friend of ours (DV, Not Brian, Von Cracker and yours truly) from Turkey sent us a PDF of a letter dated 17 September 1933. The letter was addressed to MK Ataturk the president of Turkey asking for him to allow 40 German Jewish scientists to emigrate to Turkey so they could continue their professional work – as German laws were prohibiting them from plying their trade. All 40 were allowed to emigrate and became Turkisk citizens. The letter was signed by “Prof. Albert Einstein”. Pretty cool!
12/12 here as well. The test was easy. Other than a couple tricky questions, everyone should have done well. The fact they didn’t worried me.
Yes, I found the quiz quite easy.
12 / 12 on the quiz also – although given that I have a bachelor’s in a science field and am doing science education research in pursuit of a PhD, I’d be kind of ashamed if I hadn’t.
Thanks for posting this, UI, it makes me feel like the work that myself and my fellow science ed. researcher brethren do is definitely needed. The evolution statistics alone (a particular area of concern for me having a biology background) suggest to me that we’ve got to do a much better job presenting the theory and explaining the mountains of supporting evidence behind it.
It is an easy poll, all of the information is common knowledge.
As for the “evolution statistics”, it depends what you mean by evolution, what theory, and what is expected. Do you just mean change in time or something else? That is why 1/3 of the public takes a pass. Macro evolution as a source of origins is a theory in crisis. It does not explain the origin of anything.
I finished Prof. Jerry Coyne’s book this spring (“Why Evolution is True”) and Dawkins has one coming out called “The Greatest Show on Earth – Evidence for Evolution”. There should be a huge push this year since it’s Darwin’s 200th birthday and “On the Origin of Species” turns 150!
David – What the fuck are you talking about? 1/3 of the public “takes a pass” because they are afraid of the ficition of hell. Evolution explains all of modern biology… in total… that’s pretty good I think. It also explain why you are an ignorant douche bag… it does actually.
I hope I don’t get “banned” based on the new rules! 🙂
David, is ignorance really bliss?
Believe what you want, but evolution does not explain efficiently competently the world around us. Other models do a far more effective job of it with fewer contradictions. To make the evolutionary model work you twist and exclude too much for me to take it seriously. It is as bad as the young earth creation model, but at least they have an escape value. You all have become too closed minded to what you think you know and do not look at the information that is available. That is why you seek to ban debate.
That is propoganda rubbish. I question whether you can get out of your partisan, idealogical shell and do any real intellectual analysis. Making assumptions based on mountains of evidence is NOT twisting and excluding. Should we debate that 2 + 2 may not in fact equal 4?
You are a prefab idealogue of the highest order. You comments are an absolutely worthless waste of space. Why don’t you go fuck off to the Red State site, on the Weekly Standard, or go read about fucking Jesus or something. Your horrible mental capacity is wasting everyone’s god damn time.
Even the Catholics believe in evolution… but only after they got burned on Galileo.
I crushed that test 12 for 12. And I did it much faster than liberalgeek. Just sayin’
“Macro evolution as a source of origins is a theory in crisis. It does not explain the origin of anything.”
As opposed to your theory of Skydad, which explains everything if you don’t require proof.
12/12.
The evolution responses changes in terms of percentages fairly dramatically if people are given three options: non-belief in evolution; belief in evolution as a mindless natural process; belief in evolution as a process guided at least partly by God–then you get about a one-third split, because the latter is essentially the Catholic Church’s position, which it has done a good PR job in advocating.
Contra David there is recent research about evolutionary processes stimulating basic proteins into developing features of self-replication, and some serious new work that goes even below the previous threshold of the “RNA world” thesis. Curiously, modern evolutionary theory has also proven elastic enough to accept certain apparently Lamarckian traits among bacteria. So the study is alive and well.
That said, there does remain this caution: some of the wheels are starting to fall off the long-held, often-adjusted “standard model” of cosmology, suggesting that eventually our understanding of complex nonlinear processes takes us into places we would not expect.
After all, if serious physicists and cosmologists accept the possibility of the Boltzmann Brain, and the new Cosmic Landscape approach works out, there actually is room in the multiverse for an entity with the processing power we associate with … a flying spaghetti monster or even God.
Evolution seems like a done deal. The origin of life and intelligenc from inanimate matter will be a done deal soon.
Cosmology and the origin of matter is another thing altogether. As Steve points out the standard Big Bang theory is likely wrong. The real answer is likely to be weirder than we can conceive right now.
The top theories right now have matter arising from fluctuations in a vacuum – which supposes that a vacuum contains a pre-existing property that allows it to generate matter. Not very satisfying.
12/12 and I hated science (and trig/calculus, etc.).
David should start a rebirth of the flat-earther/know nothing party, as it’s evident that he would fit right in with them. Oh, David, you forgot to mention that dinosaurs roamed the earth as recently as 6000 years ago. That being the case, why didn’t Noah have any on the Ark?
If by “theory in crisis” you mean the “central organizing principle of biology” then David is correct.
As for “macroevolution” I’ll just point you to the Index of Creationist Claims:
Thanks for comments that don’t waste my time. But I’d expect that from you two. 🙂
The only problem I have w/ Dr. Newton’s assertion that there may be room for god or whatever is that there is really room for ANYTHING as far matter creation. (Anon’s vacuum properties, etc.) We have this cultural bias to stick the god of the bible in there… that’s really meaningless.
People get so hung up on this god thing thing. They try to inject it into every gap. The problem is, OK Steve, there is room for god at the beginning. How come everything since then (the generation of life as we know it on earth) can be reasonably explained sans allah with measurable scientific evidence?
“If by “theory in crisis” you mean the “central organizing principle of biology” then David is correct.” Awesome. I reckon maybe theories are “in crisis” in his mind. I think more and more that he should probably be hospitalized. I don’t feel safe knowing he’s free.
DG
I really don’t want to go there, but there is some really weird stuff at the edges of modern scientific research. Unfortunately, as you know, trying to get it into a blog comment is a self-defeating proposition. Let me try one snippet (and realize I only used God in the Arthur C. Clarke sense, not the Christian sense)….
Physicists have long held that the speed of light was an absolute barrier to the passage of information, and that–therefore–we can know nothing about the area beyond our own 16 billion LY radius bubble of the cosmos, because no information can be passed beyond this barrier. Therefore: even if the multiverse allowed for the existence of “god” (a being smart enough to simulate the visible universe and therefore functionally ominipotent), she would be powerless because there is no way for her to intervene in the visible universe.
Except that last year (I linked to this but I have to go back and find it because I forgot what I titled the post) astronomers discovered that a wide “river” of galaxies seems to be accelerating rapidly in a manner that cannot be accounted for by general universal expansion. They seem to be going toward a point source at higher speeds than general expansion allows. The theory they developed to explain this is that something outside the visible universe (visible in our terms) is pulling them.
This has tremendous implications for the idea that the visible universe (like black holes were once thought to be) is a complete barrier to the passage of information. If a force from outside the visible universe can have a measurable effect on things inside it–then we are in fact accessing information from beyond the visible universe in apparent violation of the light-speed barrier. If ANY information can cross that barrier, then the barrier is not absolute, and there is the potential for that which exists there to impact that which happens here.
And I can do this without even invoking quantum non-locality.
This is not a theological argument, but just raising the point that the discussion is going places we wouldn’t necessarily expect.
Your universe sans God argument is essentially a restatement of Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation does not require external intervention, so why postulate it. Go with the simplest explanation that explains all the facts.
Ironically, it has been evolution that has taught us that the simplest explanation for the development path of any particular characteristic is often least likely to be true.
With respect to history (my own field) I can say with great confidence that in very nearly every case the simplest explanation for a particular historical event or phenomena is the least likely to be accurate.
I don’t have a position so much as an ADHD fondness for following all these scientific and theological threads.
(A1–I suspect I will really regret not having an edit button available for this one.LOL)
SN – Thanks for the thoughtful response. One quick point… I myself find evolution via natural selection a perfectly simple solution to a complicated problem. So it meets the Occam standard as far as I’m concerned. The fact that the genetics and biology bits are very intricate is beside the point.
As far as historical (political, economy, etc.) question, I agree that these are never simply defined… because there are NOT “natural”. These are artificial human creations… evolution works without human animals… actually evolution worked a very long time without us.
I’m not disagreeing about evolution in the slightest, DG. The ontological problem with observing evolution (from the inside, as it were) is that human beings both see patterns where there are none, and appear to be incapable of grasping certain other patterns that do exist (i.e. nonlinear, patterned relationships that can only be expressed in mathematical terms and not visualized), which leaves us this question: how would we discern an external intervention in our evolutionary process if it happened, and it was subtle?
Moreover, we work with evolution through what Alexei Valenkin (a physicist) calls the principle of mediocrity. We have only one example of a biosphere with life in it, and some limited possibilities (Mars, Europa) of other areas in our solar system that might now or might once have contained life. Therefore the only reliance we actually have is the statistical likelihood that if you only have one sample it will probably be from the middle 90% and not from the 5% extreme outliers on either side.
We know evolution can be directed, because we do it: with plants, with bacteria, with fruit flies. We don’t always get the result we intend, but do the plants know they are being tinkered with?
As much as I think conventional religion tends to shut down some avenues of inquiry for otherwise thoughtful people, I think the perceived need to combat it can also lead to some very different shut-downs of imagination and logic.
help! I’m stuck in moderation and I didn’t call anybody a — or use too many links
12/12, hurrah
I’m amazed you look for “efficiently competently” explained theories, David, since you supported an inefficiently incompetently run administration.
Zing!
Back to the more mundane Pew test and results, those were very easy questions, a few of which folks had great difficulty. A HS graduate should certainly easily get 12/12.
As a society we seem to be totally confused about the distinction between science and religion, the understanding of the conflict between creationism and evolution being an example of this confusion.
Moreover, it seems easier for far too many of us to deny a scientific theory instead of attempting to understand it, as with the global warming theory.
These knowledge shortcomings impact policy decisions that could well have drastically negative implications for the future, not a good place for a nation to be, nor a globe!
On the other hand, what good has science ever really provided us other than robot that are destine to turn on us and wipe out the human race.
Thanks science!
Religion, particularly Christianity, built the science you knee-jerk reactionaries worship. The Church afforded opportunities for the creative mind that the exhausted Roman State could not. Look beyond ritual and dogma. The road from the Minoan civilization to the modera Western era was facilitated by Christianity….for the unenlightened, Toynbee, Lewis and McCauley would be a good place to start.
“There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dream’d of in your philosophy”……WS