Nature website

Science, it is often said, is an international language. But how international are attitudes towards science and scientists? Nature and our affiliated publication Scientific American set out to learn how the views of the scientifically literate public vary around the world. Our web-based survey of more than 21,000 readers of Scientific American and its translated editions in 18 countries revealed that although these science enthusiasts read the same publication and share many attitudes in their perception of science, they seem to diverge on some of the hottest- button issues.

The differences are most striking between east Asia and the rest of the world. For example, a startling 35% of the Japanese and 49% of the Chinese respondents agreed that there is "reason for doubt" about evolutionary theory's ability to explain the variety of species on Earth. In contrast, the numbers for the rest of the world fluctuated around 10%. Japanese and Chinese respondents were also less likely than others to say that they trust scientific explanations of the origins of the Universe. And almost one-third of scientifically literate Chinese people say that scientists should not get involved in politics, compared with around 10% of respondents in most of the rest of the world.

The results are not conclusive. Far from being rigorous, the survey sampled countries unevenly, with thousands of respondents in the United States and several European countries, 1,195 in Japan and just 269 in China. The respondents were self-selected, so some subsets of readers may simply have bypassed the questionnaire. And cultural differences may have influenced how people from different countries responded to identical questions. Still, the results are sobering for anyone who believes that a public informed about science will necessarily share scientists' views.

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