A recent paper in the journal Science Communication suggests, amongst other things, that reading science blogs leads to a decreased factual understanding of nanotechnology, and that the effect is greater for readers with lower socioeconomic status (SES). The paper by Su et al. (Leona Yi-Fan Su, Michael A. Cacciatore, Dietram A. Scheufele, Dominique Brossard, Michael A. Xenos (2014) Inequalities in Scientific Understanding. Differentiating Between Factual and Perceived Knowledge Gaps. Science Communication. DOI: 10.1177/1075547014529093) addresses the so-called science ‘knowledge gap’ that is thought to develop between lower and higher SES groups because of the nature of the material they are exposed to. The authors use nanotechnology as a specific topic area to correlate actual knowledge and perceived understanding with SES and exposure to newspapers, television and science blogs.
There’s a lot of information packed into the paper – which is unfortunately behind a paywall – but what caught my eye was an apparent decrease in factual knowledge of nanotechnology amongst people who self-report a high use of science blogs. A little over 1,000 people completed the survey, representing a cross-section of the US population. Participants in low SES and high SES groups were asked five questions about nanotechnology, and their factual understanding quantified. They were also asked how much they read science blogs.
For respondents who didn’t read science blogs, factual knowledge in the low SES group was slightly lower than in the high SES group. For low blog usage, factual knowledge increased for both groups, and the gap between the groups narrowed quite a bit. But for people that read science blogs a lot, factual knowledge about nanotechnology decreased compared to people who didn’t read blogs that much. And here’s the kicker – as well as the gap between high and low SES participants increasing, low SES participants who read a lot of science blogs appeared to know less about nanotechnology than those who read no blogs at all!
From the data presented, it’s hard to tell how large the effect is and how reproducible it would be in another study. It does concern me that at the time of the survey – 2010 – there wasn’t massive mainstream coverage of nanotechnology in blogs. It also worries me that I would have answered a couple of the questions incorrectly according to the paper’s authors, which suggests some ambiguity in the measure of factual knowledge (see below).
Nevertheless, the apparent decrease in factual knowledge does flag up a potential phenomenon worth following up on. The authors felt they could only speculate on any underlying mechanisms asspcoated with the results, but Dominique Brossard, one of the study’s authors, noted in a press release “we know people rely on their values and preexisting attitudes when confronted with science news”. Interestingly, although the authors aren’t sure what might be leading to the observed knowledge gap, Dietram Sheufele – another author on the paper – noted “blogs may be the perfect knowledge leveler for casual science audiences”. I’m not sure how this squares with the data, but again, it’s something worth exploring in more depth.
And the questions to assess factual knowledge of nanotechnology? here they are:
(a) “Nanotechnology involves materials that are not visible to the naked eye”
(Authors: true. Me: False, as the materials themselves are visible in the case of macroscopic materials with nanoscale features, like a nanoscale powder for instance)
(b) “A nanometer is a billionth of a meter”
(Authors: true. Me: true, but deducible with no knowledge of nanotechnology)
(c) “Experts consider nanotechnology to be the next industrial revolution of the U.S. economy”
(Authors: true. Me: False – some people have said this, but many experts would consider it hype and rhetoric)
(d) “So far, there are only a few dozen consumer end products using nanotechnology on the market”
(Authors: false. me: false);
(e) “Nanotechnology allows scientists to arrange molecules in ways that do not normally occur in nature”
(Authors: true. Me: On the fence, as this describes chemistry, not necessarily nanotechnology – which deals with engineering small clusters of atoms and molecules precisely, and occasionally relying on directed ‘nature’ to achieve this)