It's worth looking at.
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/03/28/what-americans-know-about-science/
We're also ahead of many countries and on par with most others, other surveys have shown over the last 5 years. When we're not "on par" it's usually just one or two questions of little actual importance that stand out.
As for lagging, there are reasons for a lot of what we're seeing.
#1 is that as more countries develop, we're not one of just a few countries putting out a lot of articles. Take China, with 1/7 of the world's population. All things being equal, you expect them to put out 1/7 of the world's research. We have 1/20 of the world's population; no matter how you cut it, we can't keep up putting out 40% of the world's research.
#2 is that our overall time-frame's changed as a culture. We want things now and we don't see a point in what's not going to get us something. Meaning that if you're doing research you're less focused on what will give results in 15 years and more focused on results in 15 months; moreover, you're less focused on finding "gee, isn't that interesting ... but useless" and more interested in, "gee, I could find a use for that" research. It's facile to say that this is because much of research is short-sighted corporate and private, but private corporations funded some pretty basic research for a long time, and a lot of government research is similarly short-sighted. Even a lot of faculty/post-doc research is more here-and-now than long-term in thinking. Basic research requires immediate-reward denial and a willingness to postpone present comfort, meaning trust in the future; we've lost that, largely. A lot of basic research is happening in China; that'll have a big "bite us in the ass" result when they have some crucial patents. Like those using sodium instead of lithium in batteries.
#3 is simple espionage. We may have an edge in a field; we hire motivated, well-educated post-docs to train them in the field and get cheap work out of them; they get jobs in their field and set up their own labs based on what they were doing 3 months ago just to learn that their jobs are in China. Part of having international students as to get the best and brightest here. But for many, it was to train the best and brightest to reduce US hegemony and uplift other countries because, well, #1 was the *goal.* And many countries pay their students' way in the US for the explicit goal of training them and having them return with skills that can easily be turned into challenging US hegemony. But in more than a few cases, though, the post-docs turn out to have copied a lot of confidential information when they still had access to their PI's computer networks--we hear about that when it's at someplace like White Sands, where secure systems are open-system adjacent, but it happens at Berkeley and CalTech, too. Consider that recently there was a suggestion that we check post-docs for conflicts of interest and possible intent to commit espionage. Outrage came from two quarters. The first was PIs who needed the best and brightest for cheap labor and good ideas. And the second was from those who want to spread information and increase general worldwide scientific competence.
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