A recent Pew survey finds that more Americans think scientists contribute a lot to society (70%) than do doctors (69%), engineers (64%), the clergy (40%), journalists (38%), artists (31%), lawyers (23%) or business executives (21%). The apparent statistical tie between scientists and doctors may be explained, however, by the fact that many people seem to conflate the two. When asked for an important scientific achievement, about half referred to a biomedical advance.
The survey contains a great deal of information and is worth reading in full. A few other things stand out to me: 49% of scientists, but only 17% of the public, think American science is the best in the world. The objective numbers are that American science is the best in the world. True, this has been rapidly changing, which may explain scientists' pessimism. But why is the public unaware of America's huge historical scientific advantage on the world stage? At the very least, this indicates poor PR on the part of US science.
1 comment:
Dear Blogger,
We have received 473 nominations for the top 100 language blog 2009 competition. For each category, we have admitted 100 blogs into the voting phase. You are amongst the 100 blogs in the 'Language Technology' category, congratulations!
As stated before, 50% of the final score will be based on user voting. You can promote your blog with the following voting button on your page. Simply add the code to a blog post (similar to embedding a YouTube video) so that your readers can vote for you directly.
[Find the HTML code on our website]
The voting phase starts today and ends July 28. Winners will be announced July 30.
Good luck for the competition!
Kind regards,
Marc
on behalf of the bab.la and Lexiophiles team
[http://bab.la]
[www.lexiophiles.com]
Marc Lütten
bab.la GmbH | Baumwall 7 | 20459 Hamburg | Germany
Phone: +49(0)40-707080950 http://bab.la/
Handelsregister AG Hamburg | HRB 101207
Geschaftsführer: Dr. Andreas Schroeter, Dr. Thomas Schroeter, Patrick Uecker
Post a Comment