{"id":13506,"date":"2018-09-03T21:19:09","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T21:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=13506"},"modified":"2018-09-03T21:19:09","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T21:19:09","slug":"teaching-the-public-more-science-likely-wont-boost-support-for-funding-but-sparking-their-curiosity-might","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/teaching-the-public-more-science-likely-wont-boost-support-for-funding-but-sparking-their-curiosity-might\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching the public more science likely won’t boost support for funding, but sparking their curiosity might"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Motta<\/a>, University of Pennsylvania<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

After 19 months without a director, the Trump administration recently tapped meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier to lead the the White House\u2019s Office of Science and Technology Policy. Perhaps surprisingly, given the administration\u2019s previous efforts to slash funding<\/a> for government-backed research, Droegemeier is a strong supporter<\/a> of increased federal science funding.<\/p>\n

Most Americans agree with him. About eight in 10 Americans<\/a> say that the government ought to provide some amount of financial support for scientific research done in federal labs and at universities. The amount of support the government ought to provide, however, is a more contentious question. Few Americans think that the government should cut science funding, but less than half<\/a> see a need to increase it.<\/p>\n

As a scholar of the science of science communication<\/a>, I\u2019m interested in what factors lead people to support<\/a> \u2013 or not support \u2013 federal funding for science. Do people with a stronger understanding of scientific basics feel better about seeing their tax dollars headed to the lab? Could a strong interest in science lead to more support for science funding \u2013 potentially even in the absence of basic science knowledge?<\/p>\n

These questions have important implications for public policy. Many scientists worry that status quo levels of funding are insufficient<\/a>. Fewer dollars to go around could potentially hinder their ability to research complex problems and offer evidence-based policy recommendations \u2013 like how to curtail the spread of disease or mitigate the effects of a changing climate. <\/p>\n

Who supports science funding?<\/h2>\n
\n \"\"<\/a>
\n If only scientists could teach us everything they know\u2026?<\/span>
\n Gaelle Marcel\/Unsplash<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why do some Americans oppose increasing funding for scientific research? Many in the scientific community tend to focus on the public\u2019s lack of knowledge about science<\/a> as a reason. Sometimes called the \u201cknowledge deficit model,\u201d this view suggests that people who better understand scientific basics should be more likely to appreciate science\u2019s policy relevance and thus support increased funding. <\/p>\n

But recent studies provide only mixed support for this idea. Although knowledge is correlated with increased support for federal science funding, the effect tends to be small<\/a>. People who know more about science may also be more likely to reject certain research findings, especially when scientific consensus conflicts with their ideological<\/a>, religious<\/a> and cultural<\/a> worldviews. For example, highly knowledgeable conservatives are more likely to reject scientific consensus on climate change than conservatives who are less up to speed on science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An alternative to the knowledge deficit model is what I call the motivational deficit model. According to this theory, people who are more interested in science \u2013 but not necessarily more knowledgeable \u2013 should be more likely to appreciate the importance of scientific research and therefore support increased efforts to fund it. When I use the term \u201cscience interest,\u201d I\u2019m specifically talking about the kinds of people who enjoy following scientific discoveries in the news, even if they don\u2019t know the difference between a proton and a neutron.<\/p>\n

Studies suggest that being interested in science does encourage people to think more positively about scientists<\/a> and scientific consensus<\/a>. And other studies<\/a> have found that Americans who are more ideologically conservative, less trusting of the federal government and more likely to interpret the Bible literally rather than figuratively are all less likely to support government funding. But less work has been done to study the effects of science knowledge and interest on science funding attitudes in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t know or don\u2019t care?<\/h2>\n

Does a lack of knowledge or a lack of interest, or some combination of the two, best explain why some Americans oppose federal science funding? To investigate this question<\/a>, I made use of two nationally representative surveys of U.S. adults from the General Social Survey<\/a>. This survey interviewed two groups of people multiple times \u2013 one group between 2008 and 2012 and another group between 2010 and 2014. Surveys that interview the same people multiple times are often known as \u201cpanel studies<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

I wanted to see whether people who grew more interested in or more knowledgeable about science over time also became more likely to support science funding.<\/p>\n

I measured science knowledge using respondents\u2019 answers to a short quiz about scientific basics: things like knowing that antibiotics do not eliminate viral infections. I used respondents\u2019 own self-reported interest in science related issues \u2013 like medical discoveries and space exploration \u2013 as a measure of their science interest. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n If your favorite articles are the ones about science, you\u2019re in the \u2018highly interested in science\u2019 group.<\/span>
\n C O N D O R I A N O<\/a>, CC BY-NC-ND<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To measure respondents\u2019 attitudes toward science funding, I used a question that asks whether they think the federal government is spending \u201ctoo much,\u201d \u201ctoo little,\u201d or \u201cabout the right amount\u201d on funding scientific research.<\/p>\n

What I found<\/a> provided strong support for the motivational deficit model. People who became more interested in science over time were much more likely to support increasing federal funding for scientific research. On average, I found that a 10 percent increase in science interest over time was associated with between a 7 to 8 percent increase in support for more science funding. <\/p>\n

Interestingly, and in contrast to conventional wisdom in the scientific community, people who became more knowledgeable over time did not become any more likely to support federal science funding. Both sets of findings held even when considering the effects of people becoming more ideologically conservative, religious or distrusting of the scientific community over time.<\/p>\n

Time to change communication priorities?<\/h2>\n

Informing the public about the basics of science is, no doubt, important. However, my research underscores the potential usefulness of boosting public interest in science. Someone doesn\u2019t necessarily need to know the difference between a quasar and a pulsar to be fascinated by NASA\u2019s recent discovery of subglacial water on Mars<\/a>. Prioritizing efforts to get people interested and excited \u2013 instead of attempting to fill them up with facts \u2013 contrasts with conventional practice in the scientific community. <\/p>\n

Interviews with scientists<\/a> suggest that, for many, their primary communication goal is increasing public knowledge. Most see boosting public curiosity about science as secondary \u2013 something better left up to \u201cscience popularizers\u201d like Bill Nye or Neil Degrasse Tyson. My research<\/a> underscores the potential benefits of rethinking these priorities.\"The<\/p>\n

Matthew Motta<\/a>, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Science of Science Communication, University of Pennsylvania<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew Motta, University of Pennsylvania After 19 months without a director, the Trump administration recently tapped meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier to lead the the White House\u2019s Office of Science and Technology Policy. Perhaps surprisingly, given the administration\u2019s previous efforts to slash funding for government-backed research, Droegemeier is a strong supporter of increased federal science funding. Most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":13505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3410],"tags":[3792,1911,1805,2956,4594],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13506"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13507,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13506\/revisions\/13507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}