Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1998

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NATURE | VOL 394 | 9 JULY 1998 107

[WASHINGTON] Public interest in science andtechnology is at an all-time high in the UnitedStates, even though popular understandingof basic scientific concepts remains weak,according to an extensive study for theNational Science Foundation (NSF).

But the study, published last week,reports that this understanding is still greaterthan that in many other countries, and thatUS faith in the ability of science to do good ismarkedly greater than that elsewhere.

The study was conducted by Jon Miller ofthe Chicago Academy of Sciences, and isincorporated into Science and EngineeringIndicators 1998, the NSF’s biennial report on national trends in science. It found that 70 per cent of Americans say they are inter-ested in science and technology; this is thehighest number ever recorded.

The number saying they were interestedin science was up from 61 per cent in 1992and 67 per cent in 1995, and now exceedsthose professing interest in foreign policy (47per cent) and economic policy (68 per cent).The number who considered themselves‘well informed’ about scientific discoveriesand new technologies had also risen sharplyover the past five years, the survey found.

Miller, who has been conducting the survey for NSF since 1979, says the last find-ing reflects growing public familiarity withscientific ideas, partly as a result of strong science coverage in newspapers and on tele-vision. “It is a measure of how comfortablepeople feel with science,” he says.

The survey also finds that Americans arevastly more positive about the overall impactof science and technology than those inEurope or Japan. Using a list of questions togenerate an ‘index of scientific promise’ as ameasure of positive attitudes, and an ‘indexof scientific reservation’ to measure negativeones, the study indicates that Americans’positive impressions of science and technol-ogy have grown from an already high base.

The latest study gives the United States a‘scientific promise’ index of 70 and a ‘scien-tific reservation’ index of 37, resulting in a‘confidence ratio’ between the two indices of1.89, up from 1.76 in 1992.

Numerous studies in European countries(and in Canada) have identified a similarbelief in science’s promise but far greaterreservations, with resulting ratios of between1.1 and 1.3 (see graph). A 1991 study in Japanindicated that people there share Europe’sreservations but have much less faith in thepromise of science and technology, with aresulting confidence ratio of less than one.

Miller attributes Americans’ high confi-

concepts. Only 11 per cent could explainwhat a molecule was, while 44 per cent knewthat electrons were smaller than atoms. Anindex based such questions gave the UnitedStates a score of 55, similar to scores recordedin previous studies in the United Kingdom,Denmark and France, but higher than thoseof other European countries and Japan.

Although recent international compar-isons have suggested that US schoolchildrenare poor at science and mathematics, Millerbelieves that the reason US adults do quitewell in his scientific literacy test is that 40 percent of Americans go to college, and thatnearly all of them are exposed to “at least ayear” of science there. In Europe, as he pointsout, college students pursuing degrees otherthan science often get no exposure to it at all.

Miller adds that most of the public areunable to distinguish between science andtechnology, but says this is unsurprising. “Ifyou asked a scientist whether the humangenome project was ‘science’ or ‘technology’you would get a good dinner-table discus-sion going, so you can’t blame the public forbeing confused,” he says.

Despite the strong support for scienceidentified by the study, Miller worries that asizeable proportion of the population stillhas little understanding of science.

The survey reveals that 45 per cent ofrespondents knew that the Earth goes roundthe Sun once a year. But any science educatorwho might lie awake at night fearing thatmost Americans retain the pre-Copernicanview that the Sun goes round the Earth cansleep soundly: fewer than a quarter thinkthis; the rest think the Earth goes round theSun once a day. Colin Macilwain

dence in science to its successful record inassuring national security and better health-care, and in developing computer andtelecommunications equipment. “Thiscountry has had a string of successes in sci-ence. For the average person, a lot of thingshave improved,” he says. “And once you havea society that comes to celebrate its scientificachievements, that tends to perpetuate itself.”

But the study found little improvement inthe public’s ability to grasp basic scientific

University says sorry for its racist past[MUNICH] The University of Rostock hasbecome the first east German universityformally to apologize for removingacademic titles on racial or political groundsduring the Nazi era from 1933 to 1945. Theuniversity has said that the derecognition ofacademic qualifications was an “arbitrarymeasure” that was illegal and invalid.

The university has found in its archives15 cases of derecognition, all involvingJewish male academics. Only one of them,Georg Cohn, still had a university post at thetime. The others had fled Germany earlier,and so were automatically branded aspolitical traitors by the Nazi regime.

The university’s investigations alsoshowed that derecognition of doctorates was

first proposed by German students, not bythe Nazi government. In a letter sent to theBavarian ministry of education inSeptember 1933, the “German student body— Bavaria district” requested that theministry strip of their doctorates “traitorswho left the country”. The proposal waseagerly pursued by ministries anduniversities all over Germany.

Angela Hartwig, head of the Universityof Rostock’s archives, says that, whenenquiries from Nature drew attention to thefact that the derecognitions had never beenannulled, the university felt the need tocompensate for the political injustice thathad occurred during the Nazi era (seeNature 391, 112; 1998). Quirin Schiermeier

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Japan

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France

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Italy

US

Source: Science & Engineering Indicators 1998

Happy days: the ratio of those seeing high‘promise’ to serious ‘reservations’ in science ishigher in the United States than elsewhere.

US public puts faith in science,but still lacks understanding