Poll: American public respects science but disagrees with scientists views

American’s have always had a strong relationship with science and innovation. From Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Edison and NASA science has been a part of America’s history. The relationship is strong enough that the best scientists in the world including Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla and Elon Musk have come to America to do their work.

A new poll from the Pew Research Center that surveyed a sampling of the American public and American scientists shows that the public still shows strong support for scientists and the work that they do. When asked if science has made life easier for most people 79 percent said that it had.

A majority of survey respondents also felt that science had had a positive impact on health care, food and the environment. Most respondents (54 percent) felt that U.S. scientific achievements were either the best in the world or above average and more than 70 percent of the public felt that government investments in science and technology usually pay off.

While this is all good news for science generally, the bad news is that the publics view of science is diminishing. While 54 percent of the public has a positive view of US scientific achievements, that number is down from 2009 when 65 percent had a positive view. The number of people who felt that science had made life more difficult for people has also climbed from 10 to 15 percent since 2009. Over that five year period, Americans have also become more skeptical about scientific contributions to health care, food and the environment.

According to the Pew Research Center survey, the decline in public support may be due to the fact that a broad disconnect exists on specific issues. Americans may respect science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) generally but when asked about specific issues or scientific findings there is little agreement between scientists and the public. Among the scientists surveyed, 84 percent said that limited public knowledge about science is a major problem.

The divide between the public view and scientists view on scientific issues ranging from the big bang and evolution to vaccinations and climate change.

The widest gap was on the issue of genetically modified (GM) foods. When asked if it was safe to eat GM foods, 88 percent of scientists said yes compared to only 37 percent of the public. Scientists also largely agreed that it was safe to eat food grown with pesticides (68 percent) compared with only 28 percent of the public. Nearly all scientists surveyed (98 percent) believe in human evolution compared with 65 percent of the public and 86 percent of scientists felt that vaccines should be mandatory compared with 68 percent of the public.

When it comes to environmental issues and space the gaps were not as pronounced but still large. Scientists showed a strong consensus when asked if climate change was due to human activity (87 percent) but only half of the public agreed. Scientists were deeply concerned about overpopulation (82 percent) compared to 59 percent of the public. To combat climate change 65 percent of scientists favored more nuclear power plants compared to 45 percent of the public.

To make matters worse, there were broad misconceptions among the public about the views of scientists. In other words, many survey respondents were unclear about what scientists views of the issues were.

Only 42 percent of the public felt that there was a scientific consensus about the big bang, 37 percent felt that scientists were still divided over climate change and 29 percent felt that the scientific jury was still out on evolution.

In one hopeful sign, however, scientists and the public generally agreed that U.S. science education needed improvement. Of those surveyed, only 16 percent of scientists and 29 percent of the public ranked US stem education in K-12 schools as “the best in the world” or “above average”. On the contrary, 46 percent of scientists and 29 percent of the public felt that US STEM education was “below average”. A full three-quarters of scientists said that poor STEM education was a major factor in the divide between scientists and the public.