Scientific Illiteracy

Okay, everybody, it's game show time!

Welcome to --
SCIENTIFIC ILLITERACY!!

Today's contestants are...

• China
  
• EU (European Union)
  
• Japan
  
• Malaysia
  
• Russia
  
• South Korea
  
• USA

We'll ask ten questions designed to measure literacy in basic scientific facts. Who do you think will do the best? Or the worst?

Here are the questions (answers below):

TRUE or FALSE?

1. Lasers work by focusing sound waves
2. It is the father’s gene which decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl
3. All radioactivity is man-made
4. The center of the Earth is very hot
5. The universe began with a huge explosion
6. Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria
7. Electrons are smaller than atoms
8. Human beings are developed from earlier species of animals
9. The continents have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move

   And, finally, the BONUS QUESTION:
   

10. Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth?

So, which contestant got the most answers right? Which part of the world's residents rate the highest in scientific literacy, and which are the worst?

Average % of correct answers:

63% - EU
60% - South Korea
58% - USA
51% - Japan
50% - Malaysia
39% - Russia
37% - China

Hm, I guess Communism don't work so well, do it? As an American, I'm pleased (and somewhat surprised) that the USA did not do worse. But hats off to those Europeans!

Click here for a chart with all the data, compiled by the National Science Foundation.

*** Finally, do you know the right answers? Here they are:

1. False
2. True
3. False
4. True
5. True
6. False
7. True
8. True
9. True
10. Earth around the Sun - - - D'oh!

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Comments

[michael vassar]

You know, "Big Bang" is a metaphor, and not a very precise one. "The density of matter was very high in the early universe" would be true, but an explosion, very very sort of?

[Kaj Sotala]

Question #2 is badly worded, since you can interpret it as true or false, even if you knew your biology. (It's not a single gene that determines a child's gender, but rather the entire sex chromosome, so strictly speaking #2 should be false)

[Tom Craver]

At least 3 of these questions hit on religious territory - where people who know the scientific answers will nonetheless give their religious answer.

I figure those 3 questions cost the US around 5%, compared to the EU.

The creators of the survey surely knew that would happen. If they were really interested in actual knowledge, they could have simply asked for the "scientific answer" to each question.

[Jonathan]

got all of them right!

*pats self on back*

I'm edumacated

[Jonathan]

Explosion: a violent expansion

kind of makes sense

[Jan-Willem Bats]

"got all of them right!

*pats self on back*

I'm edumacated"

I are genius also as well too!!!

Learn me a book!! :D

http://lolcat.net/v/text/edumaction.jpg.html

[M C]

Hm... It seems that this study is more or less useless. First of all, such a study should always have a "I don't know" answer. Otherwise, people will guess and you will get a 50% bias in the results. You will also not be able to distinguish between people that don't know and people with false beliefs canceling out people with true beliefs.

Assuming that people that don't know answered randomly, a 58% result for the US would mean that only about 15% of the people knew the correct answer. The rest of the 85%, answering randomly make up the other 42.5% of correct answers.

Add to this the possibility that people answered falsely because of religious beliefs, and we end up not knowing what the heck the study is measuring.

[Mr. A Non]

Hard to believe that the NSF can be so dense about science. I would like to think they included an "I don't know" answer, but no where does it state that they do. MC: However, the 50% bias can't simply be subtracted, as we don't know the actual numbers. All the data will hopefully be shifted the same at least.

At least three of the questions are answered by religious belief, and question #2 can be misinterpreted: on the one hand, both genes combine to form the final result. It's the nature of genes, it always happens this way. So many people will answer this, not out of ignorance, but simply because it is the default rule. It can also be argued that since the woman's genes are XX, that her's "don't matter," and thus the male genes ultimately determine the result. It's better not to ask ambiguous questions.

Lasers work by focusing radio waves... in some people's minds, this automatically means "sound waves" because they remember the word radio. This can at least be used to indicate ignorance, unlike many of the questions.

And how is "The center of the earth is very hot" a question about scientific knowledge? This one is pretty obvious, and is not an indicator of any significant knowledge to me.

Yes, I did get all of them "right" except one, which could technically be considered correct anyway. But then I know exactly the type of answers they're looking for, regardless of the actual "correct" answer.

To see this kind of incompitence in an international data effort related to science and sponsored by the NSF is just apalling. Even a SINGLE statistician could do way better.