"Beware the bad survey: Science literacy isn’t as bad as the statistics make it look"

"Typically, these statistics have a short life cycle. They get used by journalists for amusing articles, grumbled about by science-y people on Twitter, and fade away before being resurrected, half-remembered, at dinner parties. Rarely does anyone take a critical look at where these statistics come from and whether they’re worth listening to. Which is ironic, because anyone who makes it their mission to debunk bad science needs to be just as wary of the bad survey...
Confronted with a long list of agree/disagree questions, I might start skim-reading. Maybe I’ll tick ‘yes’ to everything (people are more likely to unthinkingly agree than unthinkingly disagree on surveys – it’s known as acquiescence bias). Maybe I’ll just agree with all the policies about food labelling, since it’s something I support on the whole. The chances that I’ll spend more than a few seconds weighing up what the question means and what I think about it is fairly low."
http://blogs.plos.org/scicomm/2015/05/12/beware-the-bad-survey-science-literacy-isnt-as-bad-as-the-statistics-make-it-look/

I've been trying to read and share articles that tell me something new, instead of reinforcing ideas I already have and can't remember the source of (i.e. Are probably social perceptions instead of real true things). There are some areas where I know this intention breaks down, but I am reminded of the importance of this habit when I read this article. There is a lot if conversation in science about the problem of the uninformed public - and that conversation itself is pretty uninformed.