Why we don't really know what the public thinks about science

"Around the world, the scientific community is confronting challenges to its cultural authority. Funding is under pressure, expertise is subject to political attack, and vaccine scepticism and disputes over climate policy are rife. This is often interpreted as a problem of the public - a result of limited scientific literacy, declining trust in experts and misinformation - rather than of science itself. Yet, working with limited assessment tools, it is striking how little knowledge researchers have about the extent to which the public understands science."

"Scientists and researchers who study public understanding should reckon with their own role in this cultural disconnect. In particular, they need to reimagine the ways in which scientific literacy and trust have long been conceptualized and measured. For decades, researchers have relied mainly on surveys - asking what people know or how much confidence they have in scientists and experts."

"The limitations of measures of science literacy over time and across populations are well established. Early efforts assessed an individual's capacity to engage with scientific information as a technical form of civic competence, such as the ability to comprehend popular-science magazines or the science section of a newspaper. Over time, such measures came to stand in for broader claims around public understanding. And the distinction blurred between knowing scientific facts and understanding how science operates as a social and institutional enterprise."

Scientific authority is under pressure from funding constraints, political attacks on expertise, vaccine scepticism, and climate-policy disputes. These issues are often attributed to public deficits such as limited scientific literacy, declining trust, and misinformation, while assessment tools remain limited. Researchers who study public understanding must rethink conceptualisations and measurements of literacy and trust. Heavy reliance on surveys that probe facts or confidence generates useful insights but also perpetuates gaps. A broader approach should assess public knowledge of how science and its institutions function and consider the social contexts in which people encounter science.

Read at Nature