percent believed that the world is better off 

 because of science. This compares with the 

 Science Indicators results presented above (not 

 included in Funkhouser's study) which show 

 that most of the public believed in 1972 and 1974 

 that science and technology have changed life 

 for the better. While some 40 percent of the 

 respondents felt that scientists are apt to be odd 

 and peculiar people, a majority of 88 percent 

 believed that most scientists want to work on 

 things that will make life better for the average 

 person. Only 26 percent thought that scientists 

 are mainly interested in knowledge for its own 

 sake, regardless of its practical value. Hence, it 

 appears that at that time the public thought of 

 science in practical terms and believed that 

 scientists themselves also thought of it that 

 way. We recall that Science Indicators reported 

 that in 1972 and 1974 the public was mainly 

 interested in science for its practical results. 



In the late 1960's, at the height of the student 

 protests, West Coast college students were 

 found to have attitudes toward science almost 

 as favorable as scientists had themselves. 

 Beyond this, most data that Funkhouser found 

 had to do with specific, highly visible topics like 

 space exploration, computers, and ecology. 

 From Sputnik to the 1970's, the results would 

 indicate a generally favorable public attitude 

 toward technology. On ecology, the most 

 prominent technological issue, Funkhouser 

 finds that the public has a definite, if superficial 

 and uncommitted, interest in it and virtually no 

 awareness of the scientific and technological 

 issues involved. In summary, his view is that no 

 real effort has been made to assess the public's 

 attitude toward the sciences. 



ETZIONI AND NUNN 



This is another comprehensive study that 

 covers surveys from the late 1950s to the 

 1 9 70' s. 5 The authors begin with the SRC studies 



of 1957. At that time most Americans valued 

 science highly, mainly because they saw it as 

 instrumental in achieving goals they valued. 

 About one person in ten thought that some 

 scientific developments, such as armaments, 

 were undesirable. Only one person in ten saw 

 science as helpful or interesting, and even fewer 

 saw it as "exciting." (By contrast, Science 

 Indicators found 23 percent in 1972 and 22 

 percent in 1974 expressing "excitement or 

 wonder" as their general reaction to science and 

 technology.) 



A later study discussed by Etzioni and Nunn 

 compared the SRC results with data collected in 

 1964 by the National Opinion Research Center 

 (NORC). The proportion of people who thought 

 that science breaks down people's ideas of right 

 and wrong increased from 23 percent in 1957 all 

 the way to 42 percent in 1964. Similarly, the 

 proportion who agreed that science makes our 

 way of life change too fast went up from 43 

 percent in 1957 to 57 percent in 1964. The 

 authors do not mention a repetition of ess' niial- 

 ly the same question by NORC in 1968, in which 

 54 percent answered in the affirmative. 1 ' From 

 these results it would appear that there was an 

 increase in the public's sense of threat from 

 science from 1957 to 1964, and that this feeling 

 remained about the same from 1964 to 1968. The 

 middle 60's, of course, are the time when some of 

 our letter respondents suggested that the public 

 began to react against science. 



The foregoing data have to do with the 

 public's attitude toward science (but without 

 distinguishing science from technology). For 

 further light, Etzioni and Nunn turn to survey 

 data on the public's attitudes toward scientists, 

 in the hope that attitudes toward the prac- 

 titioners of science may serve as an indirect 

 measure of attitudes toward science itself. In 

 1957 and 1958, SRC reported a positive public 



s Amitai Elzioni and Clyde Nunn. "The Public Appreciation 

 of Science in Contemporary America," Daedalus. (Summer 

 1974). pp. 191-205. 



" NORC Study SRS-4050 (April 1969), Question 61. As was 

 noted earlier, Science Indicators asked much the same 

 question in 1972 and 1974. Unfortunately, their method 

 allowed for three possible answers instead of two, so that 

 the results cannot be compared with those reported here. 



CONFIDENCE IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



85 



