Survey Points to Need for More Science Communication

Quick!  Can you name a living scientist?  All of us at UTMB can, because we work with them (or are them), but according to a nationwide survey of 1004 U.S. adults, 84 percent of those surveyed could not name a living U.S. scientist.

That was just one of the interesting data points presented by Research!America president Mary Woolley during a visit to UTMB and a presentation to faculty, students and staff.

That particular statistic underlined one of Ms. Woolley’s major points for her visit: scientists need to be more vocal about what they are doing, and we all need to be sharing the progress and results of our work with the public, the news media and elected officials.  As Ms. Woolley stated, “It’s not about fame or ego, it’s about ensuring that federal funding for science continues.”

All is certainly not lost when it comes to federal science funding.  In fiscal year 2017, institutions within the state of Texas received $1.16 billion in funding for research from the National Institutes of Health, ranking Texas third among the 50 states for funding.

According to Ms. Woolley, there are over 81,000 jobs in the bioscience “industry” in Texas, and these are jobs with significantly higher wages (more than $30,000 more per year) than the average job within the private sector.

Along those same lines, Texas is the nation’s leader in job creation, and the state has added more than 1.8 million new jobs in the last ten years, although only 4,000 of those positions were in the life science and medical research arena.  

These numbers together seem to bode well for the U.S., but analytics also show that the U.S. share of global research and development is shrinking.  In 1960, the U.S. was responsible for 60 percent of all healthcare R&D in the world, and by 2016, the U.S. was only providing 28 percent of the world’s R&D. 

On the public opinion front, Research!America’s May 2018 survey conducted with Zogby Analytics showed that 81 percent of Americans surveyed believe that global health is a concern.  In addition, 70 percent of those surveyed believe the federal government should do more to educate the public about global disease outbreaks and the risk to the U.S.

At the same time, opinions about the importance of vaccines are falling.  In 2008, 80 percent of those surveyed felt that vaccines were very important, while only 70 percent believe that today.  Likewise, 75 percent of those surveyed in 2008 felt they had personally benefited from vaccines, while only 59 percent of those surveyed in 2018 felt they had personally benefited.  Interestingly, the same survey showed that 85 percent of those responding favor additional spending on vaccine research.

For more information about Research!America and their work to promote funding for medical research and development, visit www.researchamerica.org