The Pew Foundation has conducted a survey concerned with basic science knowledge in the general public using telephone interviews under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International.

The 12 multiple-choice question quiz is on-line, so you can take it for yourself and see how you fare with respect to their sample of Americans – 1500 via landline telephone and about 500 via cell phone. I am unable to say how representative their sample is but they have placed their report on-line as well, which contains a description of their methodology. If you answer all 12 questions correctly, you will have done as well as 10% of those surveyed, which they claim is representative of the general American population from 18 to 65+.

The quiz is at: http://pewresearch.org/sciencequiz/.

The report is at: http://people-press.org/report/528/.

For this forum, a salutary result is that, although the questions may not be considered to be difficult, overall, women did as well as men. How much this quiz actually tells us about the degree of science knowledge or ignorance, I leave to forum members.

I’m sorry that the table does not display quite correctly.

Questions % Correct M F
1. Which over-the-counter drug do doctors recommend that people take to help prevent heart attacks? Correct 89 94
2. According to most astronomers, which of the following is no longer considered a planet? Correct 63 58
3. Which of the following may cause a Tsunami? Correct 80 74
4. The global positioning system, or GPS, relies on which of these to work? Correct 88 78
5. What gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures in the atmosphere to rise? Correct 70 59
6. How are stem cells different from other cells? Correct 51 54
7. What have scientists recently discovered on Mars? Correct 69 54
8. The continents on which we live have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move in the future. Correct 77 75
9. Lasers work by focusing sound waves. Correct 57 37
10. Antibiotics will kill viruses as well as bacteria. Correct 49 59
11. Electrons are smaller than atoms. Correct 50 42
12. All radioactivity is man-made. Correct 67 59

If nothing else, the quiz is fun and does not take long to complete.