The good news, believe it or not: Scientific illiteracy in the U.S. is declining. The bad news is that the majority of Americans is still clueless about such things as DNA, radioactivity or whether the Earth revolves around the sun once a year.
Miller, among the leading scholars about public understanding of science and technology, tracks how people around the world are coping with an increasingly complex society and how U.S. citizens stack up. Miller directs the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy at the Chicago Academy of Sciences.
Q: You recently looked at scientific literacy rates in 11 European countries, Canada and Japan and found that the U.S. ranks No. 1. Was that a shocker?
A: Yes. A lot of people were surprised. About 12 percent of Americans qualify as being scientifically literate. About 25 percent are partially literate and 63 percent are not literate.
The comparable figures for all of Europe are 5 percent scientifically literate, 22 percent partially literate and 73 percent not literate. Japan’s numbers are 2, 12 and 86 percent.
Q: Why do we keep hearing that American high school students do not do as well as European and Japanese students in international math and science competitions?
A: Many foreign countries concentrate on educating a small number of bright students who do well in international competitions. In the U.S. the trend is to educate a lot more people who then have a broader base of scientific knowledge.
Q: What evidence do you have that the U.S. system works?
A: About 40 percent of our high school graduates go on to college. That is by far the highest in the world. Other countries are trying to play catch-up. In Japan, for instance, only 20 percent of high school graduates go to college.
Q: What happens after that? The systems continue to differ?
A: Yes. Unlike Europe or Japan, we have general education requirements. Even if students want to become poets, accountants or journalists, they still have to take one or two years of science and math. Other countries do not require that. If you go to Oxford or Cambridge to read history or literature, you’d never take a science course.
Q: Why is the American system so different?
A: There has been a long-standing belief that it was good for the political culture and good for the country to have people broadly educated. That turned out to be a good idea.
Q: But there’s a paradox. Although your studies show that scientific literacy in the U.S. has increased significantly since 1979, more than half the American public doesn’t know much about science or seem to care. True?
A: Our survey of American adults shows that only 9 percent know what a molecule is and only 27 percent can define DNA. Fifty-three percent still don’t know that the Earth revolves around the sun once a year. We need to do a better job at the high-school level so that students learn these things.
Q: Do you sense any urgency for people to know more than the fundamentals?
A: Absolutely. The biotechnology revolution is at hand, and the number of public-policy issues emanating from this technology alone will be larger than all the science- and technology-related public policy issues in the past.
Q: What are some of the important issues?
A: There is near-unanimous agreement that modern societies will need to make a transition from fossil-based energy systems (using coal, oil and gas) to new energy sources within the next century. There almost surely will be major public-policy controversies over scientific and technical issues that cannot now even be imagined.
Q: Because Americans have more knowledge about science than people in other countries, does that give them an edge?
A: Sure. We’re vastly ahead of other countries in the use of computers–twice as many American workers use computers every day as do Japanese workers. Federal Express, for instance, has a computer in every truck. More than 50 percent of American college students have an e-mail address.
Q: Are there other payoffs?
A: It makes us more sophisticated consumers. We are more willing to try new technologies than anywhere else. Literate people understand that there are often many sides to a question and that science involves theory-building and testing hypotheses.
Q: How would that apply to something basic–like clinical trials that test new drugs for safety and efficacy?
A: We asked a group of people why they preferred a clinical trial in which half the group got an experimental new drug and the other half got the equivalent of a sugar pill. The literate responders said this design compared the drug between two groups and would show whether the drug had any benefits or complications.
I must admit, though, that a majority of the group got it wrong. They said they liked the idea of the trial because if the experimental drug killed a lot of people, it would claim fewer victims since it would have been given only to half the volunteers. That’s hardly understanding experimental logic.
Q: Do Americans tend to be more optimistic about the benefits of science?
A: Compared to Europe, we are a lot less pessimistic. We also have fewer people who believe in pseudoscience. That’s because of our higher level of education. Only about 5 percent of Americans tell us that they really make decisions based on horoscopes, and 80 percent of that is travel-related.
Q: Are countries with lower levels of scientific literacy trying to do something about it?
A: Sort of. Many European companies are looking to build their research facilities in the U.S. because they feel that American adults and our political system are more receptive to science than the Europeans. You’re going to particularly see an emigration of biotech companies from Germany to the U.S.
Q: What is the biggest factor that determines whether people learn about science?
A: We studied 7,000 kids in junior high school, high school and college to try to find out how they acquire this knowledge. We found that parents account for it 8 times out of 10. Parents drive the system.
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An edited transcript
