One in four Americans unaware that Earth revolves around Sun: poll

[jakeXT]

Chicago: Americans are enthusiastic about the promise of science but lack basic knowledge of it, with one in four unaware that the Earth revolves around the Sun, said a poll out today.

The survey included more than 2,200 people in the United States and was conducted by the National Science Foundation.

Ten questions about physical and biological science were on the quiz, and the average score - 6.5 correct - was barely a passing grade.

Just 74 per cent of respondents knew that the Earth revolved around the Sun, according to the results released at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/offbeat/one-in-four-americans-unaware-that-earth-revolves-around-sun-poll-483711

[avebury]

1. The Republicans and religious right

are so ant-science that this is really not much of a surprise. They don't understand that falling behind in science will not bode well for this country in the long run.

[Auggie]

2. 2,200 is a small sampling

[Historic NY]

3. >>>

[proudretiredvet]

4. To me this speaks to the education stats in our country.

All the tests education/knowledge tests that I review point to the conclusion that we are leaving behind a quarter of our children at a very young age. This statistic does fit the conclusions that are drawn from that area or research.

It is sad to say but this falls more along the lines of failing to educate some of our minority children in the inner cities. This is just sad.

We failed again.

[longship]

5. Welcome to DU!

About your post...

It's probably worse than that. I used to teach high school math. In the 9th grade algebra classes at my school only about 25% managed to pass. I did a bit better in my classes, but some students did not even know how to multiply two numbers. None of those students are going to perform well and should not have been taking algebra. The administrators' hands were tied; algebra in 9th grade was mandatory by state rules. Total idiocy.

[arcane1]

7. Why single out urban non-white kids? It's the rural white religious nuts that celebrate ignorance.

From the article:

"Fewer than half (48 per cent) knew that human beings evolved from earlier species of animals."

Hmm, whose fault is that..?

[JoeyT]

10. Pretty much.

Polls are always coming out about the people that believe in demonic possession, think the Earth is bigger than the Sun, refuse to accept humans evolved from earlier species of animals, don't know what in the solar system revolves around what, etc. There's a *huge* overlap. We're mostly being horrified by the same batch of idiots, and the problem isn't a failing of schools. The problem is they're raised from an early age to never pay attention in science class lest they hear something that contradicts their beliefs.

[DreamGypsy]

6. The full report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science is available...

...here (pdf): Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding

It's Chapter 7 of a larger report, only 711 KB, 59 pages, the information about the survey/poll starts on page 20.

The report discusses the history, methodology, and presents a thorough analysis of the accumulated data. For example,

The public’s level of factual knowledge about science has not changed much over the past two decades (figure 7-6). Since 2001, the average number of correct answers to a series of nine questions for which fully comparable data have been collected has ranged from 5.6 to 5.8 correct responses, although scores for individual questions have varied somewhat over time (appendix tables 7-8 and 7-9). Pew Research used several of the same questions in a 2013 survey and received nearly identical results (Pew Research Center 2013a).

Factual knowledge of science is strongly related to people’s level of formal schooling and the number of science and mathematics courses completed. For example, those who had not completed high school answered 45% of the nine questions correctly, and those who had completed a bachelor’s degree answered 78% of the questions correctly. The average percentage correct rose to 83% among those who had taken three or more science and mathematics courses in college (figure 7-7). Respondents aged 65 or older are less likely than younger Americans to answer the factual science questions correctly (appendix table 7-8). Younger generations have had more formal education, on average, than Americans coming into adulthood some 50 years ago; these long-term societal changes make it difficult to know whether the association between age and factual knowledge is due primarily to aging processes, cohort differences in education, or other factors. Analyses of surveys conducted between 1979 and 2006 concluded that public understanding of science has increased over time and by generation, even after controlling for formal education levels (Losh
2010, 2012).

The report includes comparisons to other countries and analysis of other aspects of people's understanding and attitudes toward particular areas of science, the scientific method, and technology.

I didn't read it all in detail, but found it the report interesting, accessible, and well-written. I intend to go back and explore it more.

Thanks for the post, jakeXT!

[xocet]

11. Thanks for the link. Table 7-8 on p. 23 gives the questions and the percentage of correct responses.

[Vashta Nerada]

8. Not the Onion?

You mean people really are this stupid?!?

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. More depressing: in 2005, 1 in 3 in the EU were unaware

Page 7-23 of the pdf DreamGypsy linked to above (Tabled 7-8). Source for that: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_224_report_en.pdf

Even more depressing is the UK number who got it right: 56%. Were people just thinking this was a question about a metaphor, or something?

"QA10.1 Here is a little quiz. For each of the following statements, please tell me if it is true or false. If you don’t know, say so, and we will go on to the next one.

The Sun goes around the Earth
TOTAL True False DK
UK 1307 40% 56% 4%"

What that also shows is that ex-East Germany got it right 81% of the time, and West 66%. Dear FSM, maybe it really is about what people believe, not a language misunderstanding.

[HereSince1628]

12. Or is it that 25% of Americans don't know the meaning of 'revolve'?

I haven't seen the quiz but I wonder if it's really a matter of scientific understanding or if instead it's a matter of the depth of an average Americans' vocabulary.

My teaching experience suggests that among entering college students a large percentage don't have particularly advanced vocabularies. It wouldn't surprise me that 25% of American's aren't secure in the meaning of the word "revolve". Rotate and revolve are easily confused...the spin of electric motors is discussed in terms of 'revolutions' per minute rather than rotations per minute.

I wonder where that 25% Americans' made their mistake on the quiz--lack of awareness that the earth orbits the sun...or lack of awareness that with respect to our planet, orbit and revolve are related concepts?

[Jim__]

13. NPR doesn't have the word "revolve" in the actual statement of the question.

From the NPR article:

To the question "Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth," 26 percent of those surveyed answered incorrectly.

It would be interesting to see the results if the question were asked differently.

[TxDemChem]

14. I wonder if they surveyed any of my relatives

So sad and disturbing.

[defacto7]

15. It's a trick question.

Like, "Don't put the ice cream on top of the pie, put the pie under the ice cream". That one gets me every time and I never know where to put the ice cream. Then I don't get none.

[eppur_se_muova]

16. "Knowledgable people are aware of the deep fundamental similarity between ... "

spontaneous symmetry breaking of the Higgs field in particle physics and the formation of Cooper pairs in superconductivity ..."

One of my professors used to have a little "POINT/COUNTERPOINT" blurb posted next to his door. The "point" was made by the statement re spontaneous symmetry breaking (as nearly as I can remember it) and the "counterpoint" by something similar to the OP.