New statistic! 20% of Americans think the universe is geocentric!

[Blake]

My dad thinks that gravity is caused by air, like no air = no gravity, and satelites don't fall out of space because there is no air. Maybe I havn't got his logic quite right but it's pretty stupid and incoherent.

And "boots wont kick up dust on the moon because there is no air" - that statement makes perfect sense to him. (gotta love the stuff those "moon landings never happened" folk come up with, altough it really shouldn't get on TV...)

And the misconceptions regarding radiation... geez.

A lot of older people are just pretty stupid when it comes to Sciencey stuff.

[Kuciwalker]

Isn't gravity caused by invisible rubber bands?

[KrazyHorse]

No, that would be the strong force.

[Kuciwalker]

Do rubber bands obey F = kx?

[KrazyHorse]

To a decent approximation, yes.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Blake
A lot of older people are just pretty stupid when it comes to Sciencey stuff.

Or just out of date...

Only today I was surprised just how many moons Uranus has today - apparently the most in the Solar System!? Wasn't like that when I learned about all that stuff...

And yes I do know about all the major stuff - it's just Uranus' moons crept up on me from behind, so to speak...

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Pyrodrew


The 'sun goes around the earth' question was sooo Poly2004.

Euro- 'shmen don't seem to be doing that well either.

[MOBIUS]

Show me a UK poll and I will comment...

Actually I will comment - basically anyone in the UK younger than in their early 30's has suffered an inferior education that is getting progressively worse as the years go by due to the cumulative 'dumbing down' of GCSEs from the time that they replaced the old 'O' levels...

We are starting to get children passing English and Maths exams who are barely literate and numerate...

[Rufus T. Firefly]

This stuff is true, and irrelevant. You know, whenever I see a poll like this, I think back to high school. I graduated from a pretty middle-of-the road high school, where our parent's average incomes were probably pretty close to the national average, and the student body (and my friends) ranged from doctor's kids to welfare kids. Except for race, we were probably a pretty good cross section of America.

I graduated in a class of 800 students, some of whom went on to Ivies or near-Ivies. But if I think of that graduating class, and then think of the bottom 20% -- the slackers, the burn outs, the Future Felons of America, the just-plain-morons -- is it plausible that those 160 were unaware of the Copernican Revolution?

Oh hell yeah.

So 20% of our population is unaware of the most rudimentary facts of their own existence. Big deal. That number is probably lower than it has been at any other time in human history.

If we're going to worry about what a percentage of the population believes, let's worry about the number who think Iraq attacked us on 9/11. Or let's worry about the number who believe that you can rack up consumer debt indefinitely, without consequences. But this is nothing.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
If we're going to worry about what a percentage of the population believes, let's worry about the number who think Iraq attacked us on 9/11. Or let's worry about the number who believe that you can rack up consumer debt indefinitely, without consequences. But this is nothing.

Hear, hear...

[Ming]

I have to chuckle... We do advertising awareness studies. And we include a factor we call ghost awareness. We can ask a bunch of people if they have seen our ads on TV. And even if we have NEVER EVER run an ad on TV, we sometimes get at least 15% of the respondents claiming they saw our ad... and actually even playing back to us copy points.

You could probably ask people if Abe Lincoln is still alive, and get at least 15% of the people to claim he is.

[SlowwHand]

Another nimrod making statistics out of thin air.
Big whoop.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Hell, we've seen some public schools in the US teaching creationism. We've seen Europe go overboard in banning the importation of GM food. Both of those are due to poor scientific understanding in the public.

The latter is about protectionism for EU farmers.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Some people who aren't ignorant may be opposed to any GM on some sort of weird moral naturistic basis. But most of it is fear and paranoia based.

Or some might be wary of it because they know it means more environmental damage from increased use of pesticides (Roundup Ready Soya anyone?) and increased monopolization by seed companies and a decrease in the variety of crops available. Of course, there are stupid reasons to oppose GM foods, but there aren't any good reasons to be for it, unless you're a shareholder in a GM company.

[Proteus_MST]

And of course GM seed means, that farmers have to spend a lot of money every year for buying seeds instead ob being able to use part of their currents harvest as seed for the next year (as GM seeds normally are deliberately manipulated to produce infertile plants)