In news that should come as no surprise to most people, the Internet is a major source of science information, second only to television. That’s the conclusion of a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which found that 20% of all Americans, or about 40 million people, turn to the Internet for most of their science news.
Television, of course, is tops, with 41% of Americans say TV provides most their science news. (In an interesting finding, broadband users are as equally likely to use the Internet as a source of science information as they are to use TV.) Newspapers and magazines fall a distant third with each cited by 14% of Americans as their main source of science news, although the questionnaire didn’t allow respondents to say whether or not they were looking at online versions of newspapers and magazines as they looked for science news.
Libraries, which used to be the main venue for finding out about science, seem to be antiquated locales of knowledge. The Pew study asked the survey respondents about three areas of scientific inquiry, one of which was “stem cell research.” Slightly more than two-thirds (67%) of Americans turn to the Internet to find out about this difficult subject, but only 11% go to libraries to learn more about stem cell research.
One encouraging finding is that 62% of Americans double-check the science information they obtain on the Internet — bad news, of course, for all those web-based businesses hawking phony scientific studies that proclaim the miracles of hoodia for weight loss, for example.
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:02 AM|Comments(0)
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