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.
Read more about this topic: National Science Foundation
Famous quotes containing the words public and/or attitudes:
“President Lowell of Harvard appealed to students ‘to prepare themselves for such services as the Governor may call upon them to render.’ Dean Greenough organized an ‘emergency committee,’ and Coach Fisher was reported by the press as having declared, ‘To hell with football if men are needed.’”
—For the State of Massachusetts, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The mother’s and father’s attitudes toward the child correspond to the child’s own needs.... Mother has the function of making him secure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)