(Off Topic!) National Survey shows only 1/5 (American) adults can answer 3 science ?'s correctly

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.calacademy.org/newsroom/releases/2009/scientific_literacy.php

AMERICAN ADULTS FLUNK BASIC SCIENCE

NATIONAL SURVEY SHOWS ONLY ONE-IN-FIVE ADULTS CAN ANSWER THREE SCIENCE QUESTIONS CORRECTLY

California Academy of Sciences conducted omnibus survey

SAN FRANCISCO (February 25, 2009) — Are Americans flunking science? A new national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences and conducted by Harris Interactive® reveals that the U.S. public is unable to pass even a basic scientific literacy test.

Over the past few months, the American government has allocated hundreds of billions of dollars for economic bailout plans. While this spending may provide a short-term solution to the country's economic woes, most analysts agree that the long-term solution must include a transition to a more knowledge-based economy, including a focus on science, which is now widely recognized as a major driver of innovation and industry. Despite its importance to economic growth, environmental protection, and global health and energy issues, scientific literacy is currently low among American adults. According to the national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences:

• Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.
• Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time.
• Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth's surface that is covered with water.*
• Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly.

Knowledge about some key scientific issues is also low. Despite the fact that access to fresh water is likely to be one of the most pressing environmental issues over the coming years, less than 1% of U.S. adults know what percent of the planet's water is fresh (the correct answer is 3%). Nearly half didn't even hazard a guess. Additionally, 40% of U.S. adults say they are "not at all knowledgeable" about sustainability.

…

:cry:

To test your own scientific knowledge, please visit the California Academy of Sciences' website at www.calacademy.org

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Really sad.

[Bigmack]

2. But, alas, NOT surprising......

[Lorien]

3. But according to many here our educational system is "just fine"

and doesn't need "fixing".

[ananda]

4. Here's the thing.

If you don't know the answer to the first two q's,
you are probably an ignorant fundie who
believes humans and dinosaurs lived
6000 years ago or something.

And if you don't know the answer to the first
q., you are just plain ignorant.

However, not knowing the exact percentage
of water on earth is not really indicative of
anything. I knew it was over fifty percent,
but didn't know the exact 70%.

So sue me. LOL

Sue

[hlthe2b]

8. I knew it was close to 70% , but < 75%, so I chose wrong category

That's the problem with these kind of tests... Almost correct is like "almost pregnant" ;)

[billyoc]

5. I'm shocked that it's as high as 1/5.

[theoldman]

7. I agree, I think it is much lower.

Of course I live in the Bible belt.

[Viking12]

6. The percent of the Earth's surface that is covered with water is awkwardly presented

...it offers possible responses of 61%-70% and 71%-80%. If looking for a rough approximation, either answer could be correct.

[hlthe2b]

10. That was my problem... Too categorical to be that precise...

[T Wolf]

9. This test is unfair because the scientists rigged the answers to discriminate against Christians.

* Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.
Trick question because the sun revolves around America, which as everyone knows, is on the Earth.
* Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time.
I know they did cause I saw the picture of jesus riding one.
* Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth's surface that is covered with water.*
Only holy water counts as real water, so the true answer is very little.
Except that one-third is covered by Gary Maddox.
* Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly.
I drank a fifth before answering the questions, so the fifth is in me. Therefore, I cannot be in the fifth.

[gcomeau]

11. Gah... bad question format on one of those on the website.

The "percentage of the earth covered by water" question has, as one of the options, 61-70%, and as another 71-80%.

The answer is 70%. RIGHT on the margin. So if someone thinks it's 62% they'll get the right answer even when they're off by 8%, but someone off by even 1% in the other direction will get it wrong.

I hope they didn't put it that way in the actual survey.

(I thought it was just over 70%, and thus got it wrong... which blemished my perfect score and irritated me)

[OKIsItJustMe]

12. I had learned it as 2/3's, which is less than 70%, but…

Well, you know the drill…

[wtmusic]

13. Not surprised.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxmccYBXJLg

[tom_paine]

14. Who could have FORESEEN such low numbers?!?

:rofl:

That's all there is left to do now,

:rofl:

unless Obama literally IS a miracle worker and Bushification is a nonexistant fear, in psite of massive piles of evidence and revelations that BEGS to be investigated...but no one is brave enough to take them on. Maybe Obama, but at key points where it seems to my eyes is REQUIRED for continued Bushification, he seems to yield for whatever reason. Maybe they have him boxed in, "I, Claudius" style.

But without an educated public, and WITH the most massive propaganda machine and reality rewriter ever known to humankind arrayed against him, it is going to be hard.

[OKIsItJustMe]

15. The good news from the survey

http://www.calacademy.org/newsroom/releases/2009/scientific_literacy.php

…

Despite this lack of knowledge, U.S. adults do believe that scientific research and education are important. About 4 in 5 adults think science education is "absolutely essential" or "very important" to the U.S. healthcare system (86%), the U.S. global reputation (79%), and the U.S. economy (77%).

"There has never been a greater need for investment in scientific research and education," said Academy Executive Director Dr. Gregory Farrington. "Many of the most pressing issues of our time—from global climate change to resource management and disease—can only be addressed with the help of science."

…

[tom_paine]

16. Sorry, no good news assuages me right at this moment.

What good is the will if there is no way to get there easily accessible.

Bushification of our media means poisoning the information stream. There literally is no shared reality anymore. There's one for Bushies-Nazis, one for the rest of us.

If the Hannity/Weiner/Limba/Coulter Bushiganda scream machine started on it tomorrow, 30% would start believing 1 + 1 = 2 is a liberal trick within three months.

The Bushiganda wears people down, andeventually they give in.

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. Well, there are several streams of information

There's Right-Wing information (ex. FOX News)
There's Semi-Left-Wing information (ex. MS-NBC)
There's semi-moderate information (ex. PBS, NPR…)

But, really, there's nothing new here.
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1600.htm

"The most effectual engines for (pacifying a nation) are the public papers... (A despotic) government always (keeps) a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, (invent) and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632

"A truth now and then projecting into the ocean of newspaper lies serves like headlands to correct our course. Indeed, my scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper makes me indifferent whether I ever see one." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1815. ME 14:226

"The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:225

"We... who are retired from the business of the world are glad to catch a glimpse of truth here and there as we can, to guide our path through the boundless field of fable in which we are bewildered by public prints, and even by those calling themselves histories. A word of truth to us is like the drop of water supplicated from the tip of Lazarus' finger. It is as an observation of latitude and longitude to the mariner long enveloped in clouds, for correcting the ship's way." --Thomas Jefferson to John Quincy Adams, 1817. ME 15:145

"I think an editor should be independent, that is, of personal influence, and not be moved from his opinions on the mere authority of any individual. But, with respect to the general opinion of the political section with which he habitually accords, his duty seems very like that of a member of Congress. Some of these indeed think that independence requires them to follow always their own opinion, without respect for that of others. This has never been my opinion, nor my practice, when I have been of that or any other body. Differing on a particular question from those whom I knew to be of the same political principles with myself, and with whom I generally thought and acted, a consciousness of the fallibility of the human mind, and of my own in particular, with a respect for the accumulated judgment of my friends, has induced me to suspect erroneous impressions in myself, to suppose my own opinion wrong, and to act with them on theirs." --Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1811. ME 13:49

"It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness." --Thomas Jefferson to M. Pictet, 1803. ME 10:356

[TreasonousBastard]

22. Other good news is...

that with over 14,000 people answering, the average was 4.2 questions out of six correct. Not bad, really, considering the two water questions required exact answers that even the better educated might not know.

(And, it has been my experience that even smart and educated people sometimes get hung up on questions like how long the earth takes to go around the sun-- they over analyze and think it's a trick question)

[OKIsItJustMe]

24. For a bogus survey of my own

I asked a few people the question about the Earth and the Sun. Each got the correct answer, but—as I like to say—“Statistically speaking, ‘the people I know,’ makes a lousy sample.”

One of them did start to over-analyze, pointing out that the question depended upon your frame of reference…

[OKIsItJustMe]

18. What I find most upsetting is that roughly half don't know the Earth orbits the Sun in a year

If you don't understand that, then:

• You don't know what causes the seasons.
• You don't know why the days are longer during the Summer.
• You don't know why it gets cold during the Winter.

If you don't understand any of that, then how can you separate the lies from the truth when it comes to the causes of "Global Warming?"

:cry:

[phantom power]

19. Explains a lot, doesn't it.

[Nihil]

20. More evidence (as if any more was needed) that some people should not be allowed to breed ...

... but I guess that is also a forbidden topic of conversation as well ...

:shrug:

[trof]

21. Ha! I got 6 out of 6 right. I'm a BRAIN!

;-)

[The2ndWheel]

23. "Despite its importance to economic growth, environmental protection"

Well, unless the economy grows somewhere other than within the environment, you can't really do both at the same time.