{"id":206556,"date":"2010-01-20T13:35:18","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T18:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/intersection\/?p=6120"},"modified":"2010-01-20T13:35:18","modified_gmt":"2010-01-20T18:35:18","slug":"is-the-science-glass-half-full-or-half-empty-the-intersection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/206556","title":{"rendered":"Is the Science Glass Half Full, or Half Empty? | The Intersection"},"content":{"rendered":"

My latest blog post over at <\/a>Science Progress<\/a> <\/em>is a reaction to the NSF’s new Science and Engineering Indicators 2010<\/a> <\/em>report, and in particular, to its famous Chapter 7, which deals with science and the public.<\/p>\n

In essence, the new Chapter 7 gives you the choice of whether to view the glass as half full, or half empty, when it comes to the U.S. public and its relationship to the world of science. I personally lean toward “half empty,” but here’s the pro\/con breakdown:<\/p>\n

On the positive side…the report consistently shows that Americans are not so scientifically benighted as one might think, at least in comparison with the rest of the world. We go to science museums more frequently. We claim a higher level of interest in \u201cnew scientific discoveries\u201d than citizens in South Korea, China, and many parts of Europe. And in terms of sheer factual knowledge, we perform pretty much on par with Europe, and ahead of other countries like Japan, China, and Russia.<\/p>\n

Through such international comparisons, the latest NSF report suggests that if your preferred standard for judging a nation\u2019s engagement with science is to see how it stacks up next to other comparable (e.g., developed) countries, then the United States really doesn\u2019t fare so poorly. Furthermore, NSF emphasizes that Americans profess to have very positive views about science. They overwhelmingly think science makes our lives better and that it deserves federal funding. And they have an apparently abiding trust in the leaders of the scientific community.<\/p>\n

That’s the good side. But here’s the reason I still feel pretty negative in outlook:<\/p>\n

As Science and Engineering Indicators 2010 <\/em>itself admits, seeing how the country fares on science in comparison with other nations isn\u2019t the only possible means of judgment. If one\u2019s standard is more ambitious\u2014emphasizing, in the latest report\u2019s words, \u201cwhat a technologically advanced society requires (either today or in the future) to compete in the world economy and enable its citizens to better take advantage of science progress in their own lives\u201d\u2014then it is very hard to feel good about the current state of affairs in the United States.<\/p>\n

For instance, just 13 percent of the public now claims to follow science and technology news \u201cvery closely,\u201d and this number has been on a downward trend for the past decade, ending with the current low. So while Americans may profess great admiration for science in the abstract, they hardly feel compelled to pay it much attention.<\/p>\n

Similarly, there has been little apparent improvement over time in Americans\u2019 basic ability to answer factual questions about science correctly. Moreover, the vast majority of our citizens have scant familiarity with key emerging scientific fields that will dramatically shape the future, such as nanotechnology and biotechnology\u2014and it is important to note that these are the only such fields that the NSF report focuses in on. Ask Americans about other coming scientific technologies or quandaries\u2014say, geoengineering, or synthetic biology\u2014and I imagine the responses would be even more dismal.<\/p>\n

Anyway, there’s much more to the column, so check it out here<\/a>–and decide for yourself whether, when it comes to science and the American public, you’re an optimist or pessimist.<\/p>\n

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My latest blog post over at Science Progress is a reaction to the NSF’s new Science and Engineering Indicators 2010 report, and in particular, to its famous Chapter 7, which deals with science and the public. In essence, the new Chapter 7 gives you the choice of whether to view the glass as half full, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}