who’s more scientific? let the people decide!

Omar

The 2006 GSS is certainly shaping up to be one of the more interesting in a while. In addition to asking people questions about planetary motions, the good folk at NORC asked a representative sample of Americans what they thought the “scientificity” level of various disciplines was. Here’s the prompt:

Please look at Card B20. How scientific are each of the following fields? If you have not heard of a particular field, just say you haven’t heard of it.

[name of scientific field]. Is [name of scientific field] very scientific, pretty scientific, not too scientific, or not scientific at all?

This of course sets up a great pissing contest among representatives of each field. The results (shown below; columns are N, %, and cum. %) are not very surprising. Although two interesting things stand out. The most “scientific” field in the popular imagination is not Physics, but medicine, with about four fifths of population bowing to its pure scientific power. Clearly this is an informational and practical proximity effect, since people don’t usually come into contact with particle accelerators, but they do take pills every time something hurts. In this vein, both Medicine (80%) and Biology (70%) beat Physics (68%) in being thought of as very scientific (the percentages reported below do not use the GSS provided weights, so the exact number will change slightly is these are applied; however the pattern of results would probably remain the same).

Towards the bottom of the scientificity scale are the social sciences, with sociology thought to be the least likely to be “very scientific” (9%) and the most likely (no surprise to any sociologist reading this) to elicit the response: “haven’t heard of it!” (8.4%). While economics is close to twice as likely to be thought of as “very scientific” than sociology (16%), I’m sure this number is still to darn low for our physics-infatuated friends. Furthermore, we do slightly better in the proportion of the population that thinks of both disciplines as “pretty” scientific and actually do better in the “not too scientific” category. The most depressing part of these results is that even history beats sociology (it’s probably a statistical tie, but let me make my joke) in being thought of as very scientific. Clearly this is because there is no such things as The Sociology Channel. Thankfully, there are more people who think of history as “not very scientific” or “not scientific at all” than do the same for sociology.

Medicine:

Very sci	1,495	80.20	80.20
Pretty sci	305	16.36	96.57
Not sci	24	1.29	97.85
Not sci	5	0.27	98.12
HAVENT HRD	1	0.05	98.18
DON’T KNOW	30	1.61	99.79
NO ANSWER	4	0.21	100.00

Physics:

Very sci	1,262	67.70	67.70
Pretty sci	394	21.14	88.84
Not sci	59	3.17	92.01
Not sci	15	0.80	92.81
HAVENT HRD	50	2.68	95.49
DON’T KNOW	80	4.29	99.79
NO ANSWER	4	0.21	100.00

Biology:

Very sci	1,300	69.74	69.74
Pretty sci	447	23.98	93.72
Not sci	39	2.09	95.82
Not sci	14	0.75	96.57
HAVENT HRD	14	0.75	97.32
DON’T KNOW	46	2.47	99.79
NO ANSWER	4	0.21	100.00

Economics:

Very sci	299	16.04	16.04
Pretty sci	648	34.76	50.80
Not sci	579	31.06	81.87
Not sci	243	13.04	94.90
HAVENT HRD	23	1.23	96.14
DON’T KNOW	68	3.65	99.79
NO ANSWER	4	0.21	100.00

Sociology:

Very sci	167	8.96	8.96
Pretty sci	736	39.48	48.44
Not sci	540	28.97	77.41
Not sci	150	8.05	85.46
HAVENT HRD	156	8.37	93.83
DON’T KNOW	110	5.90	99.73
NO ANSWER	5	0.27	100.00

History:

Very sci	195	10.46	10.46
Pretty sci	389	20.87	31.33
Not sci	676	36.27	67.60
Not sci	539	28.92	96.51
HAVENT HRD	6	0.32	96.83
DON’T KNOW	55	2.95	99.79
NO ANSWER	4	0.21	100.00