From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Nov 20 2002 - 05:36:13 MST
On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 01:50:03PM -0800, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> This term, I am taking a sociology course that is part of the core
> curriculum at my college. Part of the course is to actually create a
> sociology project and complete it. I have decided to do a study of the
> relationship, if any, between relative knowledge/understanding of
> science and technology and fear of them. I think that the results of
> this study might be helpful to Pro-Act and other technophilic groups to
> further our agenda.
That is a good idea. I have looked at studies of the view of
genetics and knowledge of it, and they show some interesting things
(the main source is the Eurobarometer study, see _Biotechnology in
the Public Sphere: A European Sourcebook_, John Durant, Martin W.
Bauer & George Gaskell, red., Science Museum, London 1998). One
factor at least in Sweden has been that the resistance is focussed
on two core groups, the "blue" christian-conservative resistance or
rural, less educated people and the "green" risk/environment
resistance concentrated in cities with younger and more educated
members. Finding out whether these groups/resistance patterns exist
generally would be worthwhile. Hence it would be a good idea to
include questions about education level, religious affiliation,
location etc. The survey mentioned above has some good questions
that can be borrowed (it is not stealing if you cite the source :-)
http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/quality-of-life/eurobarometer.html
Worlds Apart? The Reception of Genetically Modified Foods in Europe
and the U.S. George Gaskell, Martin W. Bauer, John Durant, and
Nicholas C. Allum Science 1999 July 16; 285: 384-387.
> Since list members here are involved in many different sciences and
> technologies, I am asking for you to propose various true/false
> questions from your own areas of expertise to include in the battery
> which would be known to an informed layman, particularly questions
> which deal with facts versus common urban myths about sciences or
> technologies. Please contact me offlist at mailto:mlorrey@yahoo.com
> with your contributions.
"We only use 10% of the neurons in our brains" (false)
"Once someone has "lost their mind" to mental illness, there is no
coming back" (false)
"The brain uses chemical signals to communicate internally" (true)
> Once I've built the survey, I'll be making it an online survey for list members
> to promote across the internet, though I do not want list members who help me
> construct the survey to become subjects, for objectivities sake.
Net users are a somewhat biased demographic, especially if it is
promoted along social network lines - it would start here, and be
biased towards the pro-tech subculture (especially since the net is
generally dominated by people who understand or use technology more
than average).
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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