Team:Dalhousie/ORoberts

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Olivia Roberts

Questionnaire Answers

Why would ¼ of the population with university education not very comfortable (scoring 3/5 or below) to interpret scientific news publications?
I think some the discomfort may be a result of simply not knowing/being intimidated by science terminology. The socio-cultural divide between STEM subjects (like the sciences) and the Arts may also be a factor in some Arts majors (like myself) feeling unwelcome in a conversation about socially ‘elite’ topics.
Why would most people with a university education trust scientific reports with dramatic and opinionated language to some extent?
Regardless of the program, most professors require their students to gather information from well-known, trusted sources, which are usually scientific journals. As someone who does not know a lot about science I find myself trusting the authors of these journals because I believe their knowledge of science is far beyond my own.
More than half of the people with a university education would not verify new scientific claims with credible source half of the time. Why is that?
I feel like some people may fall victim to hearing about a piece of information so many times that they assume the information is automatically true, or even ‘common knowledge’. I think it also has to do with many non-science people automatically assuming a scientist’s claims as fact (which can be both a good and bad thing, I imagine).
Although insignificant, why would people with a university education share scientific news articles on social media solely based on the title? What risks do you associate this behaviour with?
I think that people may do this for a number of reasons. One, I think sharing certain titles on social media may grab the attention of followers or to paint a certain picture of the person sharing (for example: somebody may post an article with complex terminology to look smarter, or certain articles may insinuate something about the poster that they don’t outwardly reveal). Two, I think people may do this because of the human tendency to make short-cuts and take things at face value. Because writers know this, even scientific articles may include some form of ‘clickbait’ that involves reading deeper into the article to find out more.
The most popular resources that people reference to understand a concept are: Google (scholar), Wikipedia, NCIB, PubMed. What are your views on the credibility of these resources? Do you have any other suggestions?
As far as my knowledge goes, I feel as though those resources are, for the most part, trustworthy (with the exception of Wikipedia). I think it’s still important to take into consideration the author’s credentials, the year it was written, if it is peer reviewed, etc. to make an informed decision.
Why do you think people with less education tend to refrain from figuring out new scientific concepts?
I think many people who are educationally disadvantaged aren’t sometimes encouraged in their environments to continue learning or think critically about subjects like science. I think for many people science just seems so ‘out of their league’ that they don’t bother with trying to learn.
Similar to the group with some post-secondary education, the group without a university degree shows similar trend in terms of trusting skeptical scientific claims and blindly distributing articles without assessments. Do you think general post-secondary education level play a significant role in scientific literacy?
I definitely think that scientific literacy and learning how to cite credible sources is more emphasized in post-secondary institutions than in secondary schools. That being said it doesn’t surprise me that non post-secondary people scored similar to their beginning post-secondary counterparts. In my own experience, learning how to find and cite a credible resource wasn’t taught very in-depth until I took a third-year psychology course. Although the course helped me immensely I still find myself unsure of my sources sometimes, but overall it was a great first-step for learning how to think critically. The course, unfortunately, would have been a great help had I took it a couple years earlier… If any course should be mandatory in post-secondary institutions, it should be one on how to distinguish a credible source!