American people and science policy: the role of public attitudes in the policy process

The conclusions of the study are based particularly on four major surveys
administered by Jon Miller's team: two of the general public (administered in
1979 and 1981), one of high school and college students (1978), and one of the
leadership of the science and technology community (1981). The study estab-
lishes the size of the attentive public for science, its growth over time, its social
composition, the recruitment and socialization of science attentives in the high
school and college years, the areas of agreement and disagreement of the atten-
tive public and the science leadership on policy questions, and finally the sig-
nificance of these properties of the attentive public for science policy and for
democratic politics.
Miller's main argument is that the attentive public for science is a substan-
tial and growing stratum of the population (20% as of 1981), interested and
informed about science, which is mobilizable in support of scientific and tech-
nological growth. In a sense it is a “reserve army” for the political support of
science, since its high prestige in the last decades has made it possible for
research and development to get an increasing share of public resources without
much political controversy. But given the declining rate of economic growth in
recent years, the leadership of science in its struggles for its share of public
resources may have increasing need for this motivated, informed, and politically
sophisticated mass of supporters.