This is going to be a pointless waste of diary space (not exactly a previous or non-renewable resource, but I digress), but I had to mention a couple things after reading the front page linked article from ScienceDaily about how little American adults know about basic scientific facts.
I'm not going to repeat the whole article because the article itself is unsurprising: Americans are woefully ignorant.
Only half of us know that a year is defined as the amount of time it takes for the Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun? Is it just an amazing coincidence miracle that summer is always the same time of year? Literally, fail.
Over 40% of us think that Fred and Wilma actually palled around with dinosaurs? I know that Sarah Palin is one of those 120 million people, but frankly, 120 million people like Sarah Palin? YIKES.
I'm not going to express shock at the rest of the article. I am sorry I wasted your time rehashing the points above. The article was completely vacuous, with the exception of the link at the end of the article. It sent you to the webpage of the California Academy of Sciences, who conducted the survey.
The CAS is pretty sweet; they just built an amazing new facility that was showcased on some History/Discovery/Whatever Channels shows recently. It's beautiful, eco-friendly, all that jazz. I mention that because that's the centerpiece of their website, but tucked away in a corner are some replicas of the questions they asked the participants in their study, along with the correct answer and links to more information. I was kind of blasé about this because I had already seen the right answers, but then my interest was piqued when a question about evolution came up. It gave four choices: Evolution is happening now; evolution happened in the past; evolution doesn't exist; don't know.
We all know what the right answer is.
The shocking thing? 62% of Americans agree with us. Yes, 62% of American believe evolution is happening. More Americans have the correct view of evolution than know how long it takes for us to circle the Sun. At least 3% of Americans both believe in evolution and that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.
But wait, there's more. According to this survey, 70% of Americans believe that humans are directly responsible for the evolution of other species and are doing it now. So, again, at least 8% of Americans have the contradictory view that evolution is not currently happening, but humans are in fact causing evolution.
WTF? And why didn't ScienceDaily pick this up? I mean, it's the only truly surprising result from the survey.
Epic Fail.
UPDATE:
Link: California Academy of Sciences