US public's knowledge of science: Getting better but a long way to go, study finds

US public's knowledge of science: Getting better but a long way to go, study finds
Amid concerns about the lagging math and science performance of American children, American adults are actually scoring higher than they did 20 years ago on a widely used index of civic scientific literacy, according to a University of Michigan researcher.

In 1988, just 10 percent of U.S. adults had sufficient understanding of basic scientific ideas to be able to read the Tuesday Science section of The New York Times, according to Jon Miller, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). By 2008, 28 percent of adults scored high enough to understand scientific ideas at that level.

Despite the improvement, the American public has a long way to go, says Miller, who contributed to the latest publication of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Science and the Educated American.