Risks and benefits from science and technology. New perspectives from Ibero-America

Resumen

The study examines the impact of birth cohort, net gender, education and age on attitudestoward science in Bulgaria and UK in late 20th and beginning of 21th century, using the Eurobarometer surveys of public understanding of science and a comparative representative survey in the two countries. Since the items measuring attitudes toward science in the different surveys did not show consistent correlation we treated them as facets of attitude toscience. The following facets were included: support for government funding, distrust inscientists, daily relevance of science, belief that benefits of science are greater than harms,To examine the cohort effect we carried out a series of factorial ANOVAs controlling for sex,age and education. The results reveal a tendency for increasing distrust in science and thesientists, decrease of support for science decrease in the belief of daily relevance of science.The paper speculates on the findings referring to the notion of knowledge based society andto some specificities pertaining to the different socio-political contexts in Bulgaria and theUnited Kingdom.