Science at the supermarket: a comparison of what appears in the popular press, experts' advice to readers, and what students want to know

The popular print media constitute a major source of new information about scientific research for the public and for members of the scientific commun ity outside their areas of expertise. Despite the potential importance of m edia reports to scientific literacy and public awareness of science, little is known about the content of these articles. We sampled the popular print media (e.g., publications such as those sold at a convenience store or sup ermarket) and found that the majority of articles about scientific research were in the form of news briefs. We analyzed and compared (a) the content of these news briefs, (b) advice given by experts about how to read media r eports about science critically, and (c) university students' requests for information as they evaluated brief reports about research. Some marked dis crepancies were found. For example, much of the information that experts ad vised readers to attend to or that students spontaneously requested were in frequently available in news briefs. Our findings have implications for con ceptualizing scientific literacy, as well as for changing science journalis m and science education in ways that can enable readers to become effective consumers of scientific information.