[smcin]

Like high-school level, a very basic familiarity with terms, experiment design, inference. The authors cite and link to the five surveys used in the 'Data availability' section: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01677-8#data-avai...

* Surveys EB, Pew and GSS are publicly available and data and details can be found in refs. [27],[28],[29], respectively.

  \* take the interactive Pew survey (11 questions) here: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/quiz/science-knowledge-quiz/

* The Fernbach study was published in ref. [9] and the authors made the data available.

* Lackner survey data are available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7920776

[27]: Bauer, M. W., Shukla, R. & Kakkar, P. Public Understanding of Science in Europe 1989–2005—A Eurobarometer Trend File (GESIS, 2012); https://www.gesis.org/en/eurobarometer-data-service/search-d...

[28]: Smith, T. W., Davern, M., Freese, J. & Morgan, S. L. General Social Surveys, 1972–2018 (NORC, 2019); https://gss.norc.org/get-the-data

[29]: Funk, C., Kennedy, B., Johnson, C., Hefferon, M. & Thigpen, C. L. American Trends Panel Wave 42 (Pew Research Center, 2019); https://www.pewresearch.org/science/dataset/american-trends-...

[9]: Fernbach, P. M., Light, N., Scott, S. E., Inbar, Y. & Rozin, P. Extreme opponents of genetically modified foods know the least but think they know the most. Nat. Hum. Behav. 3, 251–256 (2019). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0520-3

[smcin]

(useful to note all those surveys are 2019 pre-pandemic, before there was severe partisanization of the phrase "trust in science". I wonder how hard it would be to construct a neutral methodology post-pandemic, now that even the basic vocabulary itself is loaded with associations.)

Even then, the 2019 Pew article is depressing reading: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/08/02/partisanship-...

[calf]

If the abstract actually defined intermediate we wouldn't have comments talking so much about advanced education like PhDs and STEM majors...