The BBVA Foundation has carried out an extensive empirical study of the scientific culture of citizens in 18 countries, including Spain, several states of the former Eastern bloc – Bulgaria, Slovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania. – and also three other societies with differential profiles: the United States, Israel and Turkey. And some of its conclusions do not leave citizens in a good place. And some of its conclusions do not leave the population in a good place.
One of the objectives of the research was to measure the level of knowledge about science in the population, which was subjected to a test made up of 11 basic concepts. And the results show that some fundamental notions are known and understood by the majority of citizens, although they remain alien to a not insignificant segment.
For example, the statement that the Sun does not revolve around the planet Earth was supported by 76% in Europe and the US as a whole, 72% in Spain, 71% in Israel and 52% in Turkey. That means that, in the Spanish case, 28% believe that it does.
Another assertion raised was that the origin of the universe was born from the great explosion of the big bang, which received the approval of 75% of those surveyed in Europe, 78% in Spain, 71% in the USA, 67% in Turkey and 49% in Israel.
Other concepts are also understood by a significant part of the population, such as that the X or Y chromosome of the father determines the sex of the newborn (75% in Europe, 63% in Spain, 76% in the USA, 75% in Israel and 81% in Turkey) and that cells divide (62% in Europe, 63% in Spain, 60% in the USA, 52% in Israel and 42% in Turkey).
However, there is a greater lack of knowledge about other notions, such as the role of antibiotics (only 52% of US citizens, 48% of Europeans, 43% of Spaniards, 29% in Israel and almost 23% in Turkey correctly answer that “antibiotics destroy viruses” is false).
The low rates of knowledge that occur in a large part of the populations surveyed about two issues that appear prominently and recurrently in the media and public debate are striking: genetics (around 40% of Europeans and Americans, 30% of Israelis and 55% of Turks believe that “the ordinary tomatoes we eat do not have genes, while genetically engineered tomatoes do”) and especially the causes of climate change (only a third of Europeans and Americans, 27% of Spaniards, 20% of Israelis and 16% of Turks know that it is not “produced by the hole in the ozone layer”).
The grouping of the test answers into four segments of knowledge -high (9 to 11 correct answers); medium (6 to 8); low (3 to 5); and very low (from 0 to 2) – reflects that in Europe and the United States societies are relatively homogeneous in the cognitive facet of scientific culture, with a medium level of knowledge predominating (57% in Europe and 60% in the United States).
There are no significant differences between men and women, and they are weak depending on the formal educational level with respect to the test as a whole of 11 items, which suggests that elementary scientific culture is part of the ecosystem of these societies to which various sources and agents, including the media and the scientific community itself. If we look at the most difficult items, such as the one referring to genetics, marked differences appear depending on the educational level and media coverage.
Comparatively, Spain obtains results slightly below those of all European countries, with a very low-low knowledge segment of 24% compared to 21% in Europe and the United States and a lower percentage at the other extreme, that of the segment with a high level of knowledge, with 14% in Spain compared to 19% in the United States and 22% on average in Europe. The medium level of knowledge segment is 63% in Spain and 57% in Europe as a whole.
It is also part of the cognitive facet of the scientific culture of a society to know the way science operates, and specifically its verification and validation systems. In this facet, large majorities in all the countries analyzed understand the process of validation of scientific knowledge, giving the greatest importance to the empirical verification of theories through experiments and to the results of these experiments being reproducible by other researchers (over 85 % in both cases).
When asked who the most important scientists in all of world history have been, among the citizens of the majority of the countries surveyed there is consensus on two great references, both from the field of physics: Albert Einstein and, from a distance, Isaac Newton.
Einstein is mentioned first in almost all societies: his mention reaches its peak in Israel and Germany (61% in both countries) and its lowest value in Hungary (33%) and Turkey (32%). At a great distance, names such as Isaac Newton stand out (more mentioned in the United States and Israel than in Europe, with the exception of the United Kingdom), Marie Curie (more in Europe), Thomas Alva Edison or Nikola Tesla.
The great national figures usually appear with a percentage of significant mentions in the respective countries: Louis Pasteur and Marie Curie in France (36% and 33%), Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking in the United Kingdom (33%, 19% and 16%), Galileo Galilei in Italy (25%) and Albert Szent-Györgyi in Hungary (32%). In Denmark, Niels Bohr, with 49% of mentions, is even ahead of Einstein.
In the case of Spain, the anomaly appears that a figure of such relevance as Santiago Ramón y Cajal, in a particularly dynamic scientific area at the present such as neuroscience, does not appear in the first positions – occupied by Einstein (48%), Marie Curie (25%) and Newton (22%)–, being mentioned by only 8% of those surveyed. The scientist Margarita Salas, who has had a wide and continued presence in the media and in public spaces, reaches the same percentage of mentions as Cajal.
Taking into account the impact and development of genetics in recent decades, the absence in all countries of two great pioneers of the discipline, the co-discoverers of DNA, is striking: neither Francis Crick nor James Watson appear among scientists with a significant number of mentions in the 18 countries analyzed.
The survey had a sample of 1,500 citizens per country, in a general population aged 18 or over and was carried out by telephone except in Turkey and Israel, which was in person.