Survey: half of EU citizens believe scientists are dangerous

[The Minx]

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Despite World Cup and Wimbledon fever, a survey published this week suggests that more Europeans are interested in scientific discoveries and technological developments than are interested in sport. According to the latest Eurobarometer survey for the European Commission, 80% are interested in science and technology whereas 65% are interested in sport.

However, the same survey found that 57% think scientists should be doing more to communicate their work to the general public and 66% believe governments should do more to interest young people in scientific issues.

Europeans overwhelmingly recognise the benefits of science, but many also express fears about risks from new technologies and the power that knowledge gives to scientists.

An alarming 58% of respondents across the European Union agreed that:

"We can no longer trust scientists to tell the truth about controversial scientific and technological issues because they depend more and more on money from industry."

The figure falls to 49% for UK respondents. Given the tough news delivered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the budget on Wednesday and likely cuts in R&D funding to be announced in the autumn spending review, industry might well be expected to step into the breach and provide more cash.

This raises the question: will the British and wider European public be happy about more money from big business paying for scientific research? This survey suggests the answer is no, but at the same time the public is hardly likely to demand higher taxes to pay for purely government-sponsored science.

Worrying too is the finding that 53% of European respondents (46% of UK respondents) agree with the statement that, because of their knowledge, scientists "have a power that makes them dangerous". Not potentially dangerous, notice, but dangerous. When you take into account the 23% who didn't know or who neither agreed or disagreed, the survey suggests that just 24% of EU citizens believe that scientists are not dangerous.

Some consolation can be taken from the fact that in the equivalent Eurobarometer survey in 2005, 59% of EU respondents (58% in the UK) thought scientists were dangerous.

According to the latest survey, a majority believe that scientists do not put enough effort into informing the public about new developments in science and technology (57% of EU respondents and 56% of UK respondents).

The majority of EU citizens (63% of respondents) feel that scientists working in university or government laboratories are best qualified to explain scientific and technological developments. Just 32% believe that scientists working in industry are best placed and a mere 16% of respondents (14% in the UK) that newspaper journalists are best equipped to discuss such developments.

Compared with 2005, there has been a noticeable shift towards trusting scientists in academia or the public services to explain science and technology (up 19 percentage points in the UK) and away from newspaper journalists (down 9 percentage points in the UK).

Commenting on the findings, EU research, innovation and science commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn said:

"The success of the Europe 2020 strategy depends on cutting-edge science to keep Europe competitive. In turn, that means ordinary Europeans need to back science and keep the pressure up on government and on industry to invest in it. These results show a very high awareness of the importance of science. But they also show that both politicians – like me – and scientists themselves need to explain better what we are doing and why."

Overall, the survey shows that European citizens are optimistic about the benefits of science and technology for the economy. Some 75% of respondents agree or tend to agree that thanks to science and technology there will be more opportunities for future generations.

However, there has been a shift towards greater scepticism about science's impact on people's lives compared with the 2005 survey. For example, when presented with the statement "Science and technology make our lives healthier, easier and more comfortable", 78% of EU respondents agreed in 2005, whereas 66% agreed in 2010.

On the evidence of this survey, this scepticism can only be reduced if more scientists, in particular those in academia, make a greater effort to communicate their work to the general public.

As Peter Fiske wrote in Nature earlier this year:

"Scientists must communicate about their work – to other scientists, sponsors of their research and the general public ... searching for opportunities to give talks and lectures – and seeking audiences that are outside one's immediate sphere of scientific influence.

"Many scientists are incredulous at how little the general public knows about science and technology, but scientists do little to address the gap in understanding. Most think that their successes in the lab are manifestly evident, making education about the value of their work unnecessary. Few ever communicate with their elected officials. With the public footing most of the bill, this misguided belief seems naive and undermines those who campaign for more funding.

"Excellent work is a prerequisite for career progress, but is not sufficient by itself. Broadcasting one's accomplishments and exercising the 'active voice' in all aspects of one's work is the best way to earn notice, gain recognition and make the public at large aware of the value of the scientific enterprise."


Eoin Lettice is a lecturer in the School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences at University College Cork, Ireland. He also writes the Communicate Science blog where the original version of this article appears

Pretty sobering result. I wonder what the statistics are in the US.

As always, the comment section has examples of cringe worthy ignorance that seems to echo the article's conclusion (though not in the way the commentators intended).

[frigidmagi]

and a mere 16% of respondents (14% in the UK) that newspaper journalists are best equipped to discuss such developments.

Oh Thank God Someone is grasping it. My own experience tells me journalists are rather useless in explaining anything... Because they understand very damn little and the average one refuses to admit that!

[Hotfoot]

and a mere 16% of respondents (14% in the UK) that newspaper journalists are best equipped to discuss such developments.

Oh Thank God Someone is grasping it. My own experience tells me journalists are rather useless in explaining anything... Because they understand very damn little and the average one refuses to admit that!

Yeah, it's thanks to reporters looking for a damn headline that we get crap like, "Large Hadron Collider to Create BLACK HOLES!"

You wouldn't believe how often I have to explain that one.

I agree that the public should be wary of what is said at times regarding scientific advances, because frankly yes, some scientists do try to whip up public fervor to get additional funding. Any time you see a news article from a trial or research group that is still in research, they're usually trying to play the public to get more cash for whatever reason. It's usually frowned upon, but since it works, people desperate to keep their labs open will do it in a heartbeat. Remember, as much as some people like to glorify the scientific method, the people involved in the process? They're just people like the rest of us. Some of them are willing to do whatever it takes to prove themselves right and/or keep food on the table. Now, these people still have to put their results on display for the rest of the scientific community before it's going to be "generally accepted", but who here has read or been trained to read articles from a scientific journal?

I'll tell you point blank that journal articles are practically written to be obscure. When I was in college I took a course which detailed how to read the articles, even if you knew nothing about their subjects. If you train yourself to look for certain indicators, you can sniff out bullshit over time, but it's not always so easy. I remember being shown a collection of articles that, individually, looked okay to moderately dicey, but when viewed together (they were published several months apart), were clearly bullshit.

And this wasn't just some highly publicized claptrap about crisps causing cancer, these were published in respected scientific journals. They were eventually caught, and the careers of the individuals in question ruined forever, but deception is everywhere, and when a few individuals who have a perceived authority abuse it, it poisons the well for those that did nothing wrong.

On a somewhat lesser note, I would like to blame Hollywood for the rest of this distrust. Look at one of their latest offerings, Splice. Words cannot describe the amount of disdain I have for this abomination of a movie. "The horrors of human cloning and genetic manipulation!" "Why can't science remember they are not god!" "Attempt to toy with things beyond your current level of technology and be destroyed!"

The fact that the monster is called "Dren", which in Farscape was the Xenoism for "Shit", to me was some small comfort, because it gives me hope that some writer sat up one night with a bottle of Jack, tears falling from his eyes as he realized what he just wrote and left a note for science fiction fans of some measure of apology.

Back to the original point however, there needs to be better communication between scientists and the general population. This is easier, however, in Europe, where public education grants the average person a much better grasp of science than, say, in the United States, where up to half the population refuses to believe in something as basic as evolution.

[Hotfoot]

As a quick addendum, this sums up most of Hollywood's grasp of science fiction.