For a host of issues, like vaccine safety, climate change, and GMO foods, public opinion is a poor match for our scientific standing. That dissonance has led a lot of people to ask how we could do better at getting scientific information out to the public. But the Pew Research Center decided to ask a related question that's just as important: where's the public getting its scientific information now?

The answer, disappointingly, is that most people in the US aren't getting any scientific information at all. For the small number of people who do see significant scientific information, most of it comes from news outlets. Oddly, however, the public is not impressed with its primary source, as fewer than 30 percent of those polled think that news outlets actually get the science right.

Questionable quality

The Pew data comes from a survey of more than 4,000 US adults, a big enough sample that the margin of error is only 1.6 percentage points. Within that sample, 30 percent indicated that they actively seek out science news. But nearly half of those folks don't find it, as only 43 percent of them indicate that they see science news a few times a week or more. That's just 17 percent of the overall survey population, a group the Pew refers to as "active science consumers." Within the survey population at large, 36 percent indicate that they see science news a few times a week.

Being optimistic, that suggests that there are enough science news sources out there to ensure that people will stumble across it even if they're not looking for it. On the pessimistic side, that means two-thirds of the US isn't seeing much information about science.

Within the US, there are a variety of sources people turn to. A bit over half saw science information in traditional news sources; a bit under half watched documentaries or other video-based material. A quarter went to a dedicated science magazine (either in print or online), and 10 percent visited museums or other exhibit-focused centers.

The disappointing aspect here is that there's no relationship between how popular a source is and how people rate it for quality. So, while the single largest source was general news, only a quarter of those surveyed feel that the news gets its science right most of the time. In fact, none of the sources was considered especially accurate. Even museums and dedicated science magazines were rated as getting the science right most of the time. These numbers, however, go up considerably among the active science news consumers, more than 70 percent of whom think museums, documentaries, and science magazines get it right most of the time.

A third of the survey population also hears about science news from friends and family, though only 16 percent of those surveyed think their loved ones constitute a good source of accurate information. Similar things are true of social media. A quarter of the public follows at least one science focused account, but half of the public thinks social media is a lousy place to get accurate information.

What has gone wrong

While a lot of research has examined how partisanship affects our acceptance of scientific information, there's not a lot of evidence of it in this survey. Democrats and Republicans are equally likely to be active science news consumers, for example. Republicans are more likely to think the news media gets stories wrong than Democrats are, but the gap between the two isn't enormous.

Despite the low number of regular consumers of science news, the public also says it's interested in getting more. More than 70 percent of the survey population said it was interested or very interested in seeing science news; that's only slightly below politics and well ahead of both sports and entertainment news (the latter two were both at 47 percent). When asked why they don't consume more science news, however, the public had lots of excuses, none of which stood out. These excuses ranged from not having enough time (46 percent) down to disagreeing with the news they hear, at 23 percent. "Boring" and "too hard to understand" both made appearances, suggesting that part of the problem lies with the media.

The media also gets a fair bit of the blame for the public's sense that science coverage is inaccurate. Those surveyed think the media is too quick to report on early results, oversimplify most coverage, and emphasize disagreement among scientists. But the public also shoulders some of the blame, as most people think that we're generally bad at judging which scientific information is solid and try too hard to find ways that results are relevant to ourselves. Scientists get dinged for trying the same thing (acting like every result is relevant to people) and generally hyping their research.

But the Pew also asked people to list some news they had seen that was inaccurate, and the results were pretty mixed. One respondent was convinced that it was irresponsible to suggest aliens could be behind the strange behavior of an erratic star, even though scientists themselves had considered that possibility. And, in some cases, people were upset about accurate coverage (like the person who complained that "There is no obvious link to prove that humans have a significant factor in the change of the global climate"). In other cases, they were upset about genuinely bad coverage, such as a documentary that treated mermaids as real or an article that promoted creationism.

In other words, complaints about the mixed accuracy of science news are based on a mixed understanding of the underlying science. As a result, people come away from accurate reporting convinced that it was problematic.

Overall, the picture that emerges is one of a US public that wants to be enthused about science but doesn't have the time and energy to devote to reading science news and is frequently disappointed with the results when they do. And, while the purveyors of science news receive a lot of the blame for this, the public recognizes that hype-driven scientists and the public's own lack of knowledge make the situation worse.

Is there an obvious solution? One option is to treat science coverage like scientific results and subject it to review by scientists. Climate Feedback (where Ars' Scott Johnson is a contributor) contacts climate scientists and gets their evaluation of relevant press coverage. It's not clear, however, whether the model can be expanded more broadly to other areas of science or whether the public is aware and motivated enough to rely on something like this to evaluate the press' coverage.