Australians report an interest in science, but not all Australians feel they are well informed, particularly with regards to AI, and many are unable to identify objectively true responses to a series of scientific questions. Respondents were asked ‘How well informed do you feel about science?’, as well ‘How much have you heard or read about AI?’
Most Australians (53.4 per cent) think that they are fairly well informed, with a further 7.4 per cent saying that they are very well informed.
Since 2010, there has been a small increase from 55% to 60.8% in the number of Australians who say they feel fairly or very well informed.
Most Australians (59.1 per cent) said they have heard or read a little about AI, while an additional 33.6 per cent have heard or read a lot.
Only 7.3 per cent of respondents said that they had heard or read nothing at all.
To compare self-reported knowledge to direct knowledge, we asked respondents a set of eleven true or false questions. Ten of these questions had an answer that would have been taken as objectively true by experts in the field. One of the questions, however, is in many ways much more contentious amongst experts, with opinion likely to be divided on whether it is true or false that ‘The methods used by the natural sciences and the social sciences are equally scientific.’
For the remainder of the ten questions, the majority of Australians gave the correct answer to the question. The question that the highest proportion of people got correct was on the movements of the continents, with 94.0 per cent giving the correct answer. The question with the highest proportion of people giving the incorrect answer was on the world’s human population, with 42.3 per cent of Australian adults saying incorrectly that the current population is more than 10 billion.
When aggregating across the ten questions with a generally accepted correct answer, the average number of correct answers was 7.6. Only 18.1 per cent of Australians had ten correct responses, with the most common number of correct answers being nine (20.6 per cent of respondents).
Females got fewer answers correct than males, but only by a small margin. Without controlling for other factors, females on average had 7.4 correct answers, compared to 7.8 for males. Those aged 18 to 24 got more answers correct than all other age groups.
Those who had not completed Year 12 got fewer answers correct than those who had completed Year 12. Those with a postgraduate degree got the most answers correct, followed by those who had an undergraduate degree.
Those who lived in relatively disadvantaged areas got fewer answers correct than those in relatively advantaged areas, while those in non-capital cities got more answers correct than those in capital cities.
The number of answers that the respondent got correct was strongly associated with their self-reported level of knowledge about science. That is, self-reported knowledge correlates well with ability to answer factual questions.
Those Australians who say that they are they are very well informed had 8.5 responses correct. For those that think that they are fairly well informed, it was 7.9 answers correct, followed by 7.1 correct for those saying that they were not very well informed. The option with the lowest number correct was those who said that they were not at all informed, with 6.2 answers correct.