Science News & Information (Page 4)

reportMay 11, 2017

Americans Divided on Whether Recent Science Protests Will Benefit Scientists’ Causes

More Democrats and younger adults believe last month’s science marches will lead to public support for science, while Republicans and older adults tend to disagree.
short readsDec 9, 2016

People concerned about GM foods are particularly skeptical of information from food industry

Many Americans are distrustful of information provided by the food industry on GM foods, and those who are concerned about GM food issues are especially skeptical.
short readsDec 2, 2016

Most Americans take conflicting food studies in stride

While a majority of Americans encounter conflicting news stories about food and healthy eating, most see it as a sign of continued progress in food science.
reportDec 11, 2015

Public Interest in Science and Health Linked to Gender, Age and Personality

Fully 32% of online adults say science and technology is among the topics they find most interesting; 37% say health and medicine.
short readsSep 16, 2015

The art and science of the scatterplot

This type of chart is growing more popular, but just half of those with a high school education or less correctly interpreted one in our science quiz.
short readsSep 15, 2015

The race gap in science knowledge

When asked a series of 12 science-related questions, whites, on average, fared better than blacks or Hispanics. What’s behind this knowledge gap?
short readsSep 14, 2015

Does water’s boiling point change with altitude? Americans aren’t sure

Only 34% of Americans correctly answered a question about the difference (if any) between boiling water in Los Angeles and Denver. So what’s the right answer, and why?
reportSep 10, 2015

Comparison of Science Knowledge Questions Across Pew Research Center Surveys

The set of 12 questions from the new Pew Research Center survey is, of course, only a small fraction of the possible topics and approaches to measuring public knowledge and understanding about science. In this section, we show the 12 questions from the new survey alongside other science knowledge questions asked across a handful of […]
reportSep 10, 2015

Other Demographic Patterns in Science Knowledge

People’s science knowledge sometimes varies by age, race and ethnicity, though the patterns are far from uniform across this set of 12 questions in the new Pew Research survey. On some questions, younger adults tend to know more than their elders (such as which kind of waves underlie cellphone calls). But that pattern is reversed […]
reportSep 10, 2015

Gender Gaps Evident on Topics in the Physical Sciences

Men tend to answer more of these science knowledge questions correctly than do women, the new Pew Research Center survey found. Men score an average of 8.6 out of 12 correct answers, compared with women’s 7.3 correct answers. Some 24% of women answer 10 or more questions correctly, compared with 43% of men who did […]