Public Attitudes and Understanding
NSF surveys of public attitudes and knowledge have consistently shown that the public has a positive view of science but has little scientific understanding. The greatest deficit remains the public's understanding of the scientific method. Recent surveys indicate that elsewhere in the world, including Japan and Europe, public interest in science and technology is lower than in the United States, with China a notable exception. A preponderance of Americans (54%) have heard "nothing at all" about nanotechnology.
In September 2008, the NSF came under scrutiny when the agency's inspector general reported that at least 20 employees had viewed pornography at work. The report took the agency to task for not sufficiently policing its employees' Internet usage. The incident garnered some brief media attention and several of those employees were dismissed or reprimanded.
On May 26, 2011, Senator Tom Coburn released a 73-page critical report, "National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope", receiving immediate attention from such media outlets as The New York Times, Fox News, and MSNBC.
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Famous quotes containing the words public and/or attitudes:
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Normal life cannot sustain revolutionary attitudes for long.”
—Milovan Djilas (b. 1911)