The Pew Internet and American Life Project and the Exploratorium, a San Francisco-based science museum formed a partnership last year to find out how Americans get science news and information with support from the National Science Foundation. The report from a national survey was released on November 20, 2006. Findings were that fully 87% of online users–128 million adults–have at one time used the internet to carry out research on a scientific topic or concept and 40 million adults use the internet as their primary source of news and information about science. Do people’s habits in interactive online spaces such as Expert Voices blogs fit into the Pew/Exploratorium national survey findings about people’s science news and information gathering habits?

Additional findings suggest that the role of the Internet in inquiry-based learning may increase as Americans’ information consumption habits gain in sophistication. For example, 62% of those who get science information online use other online information to check the reliability of scientific information. 80% of science news and information consumers have engaged in some type of “fact-checking” activity to verify the accuracy of online information. This may mean that people are likely to try and find out if a science fact they they discover in a blog or on a MySpace site is really true.

They study points out that half of all Internet users have been to a website which specializes in scientific content from museums to government research sites and journal publications–people are going directly to science sources to find facts. On the other hand “happenstance”–running into interesting science information while looking for something else–was cited by 65% of internet users as a way to find science information.

The Internet future for science education blogs such as Expert Voices may lie somewhere in between informal publishing of collaborative internet resource discovery and fact checks on science education topics, and sharing analysis and resources from serendipitous discoveries.