So apparently, a quarter of Americans gets "Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth?" wrong. Imagine my surprise that of EU citizens, a third got the question wrong! We score lower than India and Malaysia, which scored significantly lower at the earlier questions.
I'm totally baffled about how so many people from well-educated nations with space programs can get this wrong.
Well - I had a friend of mine that didn't knew who Cardinal Richelieu was - and he had two masters degrees with flying colors.
So he never bothered to remember the history lessons thought at school (the Cardinal was somewhat influential figure during the uneventful times known as the 30 year war that shaped modern Europe and set in motion the processes that culminated in WWII) and never even watched or read the Three Musketeers. Sometimes ignorance could be found in the most surprising places.
"the Cardinal was somewhat influential figure during the uneventful times known as the 30 year war that shaped modern Europe and set in motion the processes that culminated in WWII"
I am going to take this point by point.
- Cardinal Richelieu was extremely influential: he was the "Prime Minister" of Louis XIII, King of France, for 18 years, and he had a drastic impact on his time.
- The Thirty Years' War was not "uneventful". Millions of people were slaughtered, notably about 60% of the population of Central Europe.
- The first half of the 17th century changed the shape of Europe: absolutism won over feudalism, while catholics massacred a great deal of protestants in Western Europe, almost destroying the Holy Romano-German Empire en passant. But the shape of Europe changed again after that.
Your reference to WWII is so far-fetched that I will wait for you to provide me with a reference before I start arguing against it.
Also, I am not American, so I fell into the trap, thinking Richelieu was actually "supposed to be known" by the average American. Retrospectively, I see it know.
Richelieu introduced the concept of raison d'etat which elevated the nation and national interests above that of the church (he was supporting protestant rebels against the catholic aligned rulers to avoid encirclement of france by the Hapsburgs)
The 30 year war lead to fragmented germany kept this way for two centuries, dominant france up to the Napoleonic wars. The dominant france lead to the whole balance of power concept that GB tried its best to upheld up to the 1940s. The fragmented Germany was natural battleground for the bloodiest conflicts on the continent since which lead to the ingrained desire for strength power and security above all. Germany never had the chance to mature out of it as a country after the unification - Bismarck left it with too much power for the leaders to absorb and control which led to WWI - it was the braking down of the balance of power order. And WWII was just extension of WWI mainly because of the idiotic treaty of Versailles that did squat to reconcile overpowered germany with the rest of the continent and the inability of USA to contain the great depression.
> Richelieu introduced the concept of raison d'etat which elevated the nation and national interests above that of the church (he was supporting protestant rebels against the catholic aligned rulers to avoid encirclement of france by the Hapsburgs)
Yes.
> The 30 year war lead to fragmented germany kept this way for two centuries, dominant france up to the Napoleonic wars.
Oversimplified. The Peace of Westphalia destroying the Empire and its ideals is a common misconception (Axel Gotthard, Das Alte Reich 1495–1806). Despite a bad financial situation, the Empire lived on. A "dominant" France is an overstatement: yes, Austria and the Iberian Union were hit hard, but England and Russia were unharmed by the war, and the Republic of The Netherlands became independent.
> The dominant france lead to the whole balance of power concept that GB tried its best to upheld up to the 1940s.
No. The United States were a British colony that the French helped free: looks more like France upholding the British balance. Then they won the Napoleonic wars, and the British Empire started indisputably dominating the world again.
> The fragmented Germany was natural battleground for the bloodiest conflicts on the continent since which lead to the ingrained desire for strength power and security above all.
Yes, German unification was a long and painful process. No, it was clearly not the stage of the "bloodiest conflicts on the continent since" — since when, by the way? I did not read a lot of German literature from/about that era, so I cannot argue for/against the "desire for strength power and security".
> Germany never had the chance to mature out of it as a country after the unification - Bismarck left it with too much power for the leaders to absorb and control
I do not know enough about Bismarck's political manoeuvres, so I will take your word for it.
> [...] which led to WWI - it was the braking down of the balance of power order.
No. It took more than Bismarck to start WWI — actually, it took more than all Germans. WWI was the result of escalations between France, the British Empire, and the German Empire, respective to their colonies, due to the mesh of alliances tying all those countries together and to the rest of Europe.
> And WWII was just extension of WWI mainly because of the idiotic treaty of Versailles that did squat to reconcile overpowered germany with the rest of the continent and the inability of USA to contain the great depression.
No. Oh, no.
Yes, the Treaty of Versailles had major flaws, and some of those played a part in the settings of WWII. Yes, Germany was not fully reconciled with the rest of the continent. Yes, there was the Great Depression in the USA.
Germany was not overpowered: they were severely underpowered at the time. They lost a lot of land, mainly to Poland and the Czech Republic. They were forbidden from having real armed forces. They got hit by the economic depression harder than any other country.
Also, a major cause for WWII was a guy named Adolf Hitler, who either misunderstood great philosophers like Nietzsche, or understood less great ones like Thomas Malthus.
* * *
Just look at the length of your explanation — disregarding my own remarks. I think it screams "far-fetched".
You could look at all events in history and try to highlight links between them, and overjustify those links. Some links would always be far-fetched.
"Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth?"
Fortunately, Americans are not stupid. They know that "A goes around B" and "B goes around A" are equivalent because there is no real Galilean reference frame.
The Earth goes around the sun from the Sun's perspective. Considering this is true means the Sun has a fixed position. This holds for the Solar System — by definition, the Sun is fixed at the center. Moreover, there is a lot of other stuff going around the Sun — while the Earth only has the Moon and a bunch of metal boxes.
Concerning the Universe, neither the Sun nor Earth are fixed. Depending on the reference frame, one is going around the other, and vice-versa. So both "true" and "false" are correct answers.
I totally agree with you; my comment was intended as a joke. I also wanted to point out that "not knowing about science" cannot be brought down to a handful of True/False questions.
I'm probably taking your comment far too seriously, but....
The Sun's reference frame is privileged compared to ours: it is far closer to being an inertial reference frame[0], deviating from wobble induced by Jupiter and its long orbit around the galactic core.
(This is from a purely Newtonian perspective: both would be considered inertial in GR.)
I think you mean "both would not be considered inertial in GR". An inertial frame of reference suggests the existence of a homogeneous, isotropic region of space; in general relativity, gravitation shapes space and, since gravitation has infinite range, such a region does not exist.
The closest relativistic thing would be a reference frame free-falling inside a gravitational field: it is locally inertial.
So yes, the Sun is more inertial than Earth, but neither are a real inertial reference frame — because such a thing cannot exist. In Newtonian perspective, they can both be considered inertial — but you will also need to pick three stars far enough so they seem immobile.
> The Earth goes around the sun from the Sun's perspective.
Let me put this one to rest.
1. The earth and sun mutually orbit their common center of mass.
2. That common center of mass is located within the sun.
3. Therefore, from any local perspective except the earth, it is more accurate to say that the earth orbits the sun than the reverse.
> Concerning the Universe, neither the Sun nor Earth are fixed. Depending on the reference frame, one is going around the other, and vice-versa. So both "true" and "false" are correct answers.
This is false. One is overwhelmingly to be preferred: the earth orbits the sun.
I can't quite understand what model people have if they think the sun goes around the Earth.
It's a bit like the people who don't understand the miles per hour thing ("a car is travelling at 60 miles per hour. How long will it take to drive 60 miles?")
The existence of a left hand tail is not evidence that a distribution is skewed.
Americans may be answering not based on knowledge, but on belief. As shown above, only 48 percent of Americans responded "true" to the statement "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." But if the question was reframed slightly, far more people responded with "true." Given the statement "according to the theory of evolution, human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals," 72 percent answered "true." (Emphasis mine.) A similar pattern happens with the Big Bang question. When the statement is simply "The universe began with a huge explosion," 39 percent responded "true." When it is "according to astronomers, the universe began with a huge explosion," 60 percent said "true." This seems to indicate that many Americans are familiar with the theories of evolution and the Big Bang; they simply don't believe they're true.
To wit, people don't believe everything they read.
What I find more shocking is that the EU number is even lower than that. I would very much like to see this divided up by EU countries because I seriously don't understand what is going on here.
This is what I would personally expect from a survey here in Germany: Answers shaped by "worst-case" assumptions and disdain towards nuclear power, genetic engineering and possibly some misinformation regarding vaccinations and homeopathy. With the "Is all radioactivity man-made" question, for instance, I would expect sub-par performance of my fellow countrymen.
But the Earth moving around the sun??? I mean even if somebody were to get all their information from watching television over here, they would know _that_.
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
"You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it."
"To forget it!"
"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
"But the Solar System!" I protested.
"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."
Sherlock is actually misguided here (the same concept was also featured in the BBC's Sherlock, where it bothered me considerably at the time). Learning is not well-modeled as junk in an attic, it's more like an interconnected network (like everything in the brain). The more you learn, the easier it is to learn more.
A poll like this should ask the questions both ways around (and/or with multiple phrasings), so you can distinguish guessing (which should come out at 50% correct if the question is not biasing people and no-one knows the right answer) vs incorrect knowledge (which will come out <50% whatever the phrasing).
We should remember though that the earth does not revolve around the sun.
They revolve around each other in an ellipse. Practically speaking, the ellipse heavily 'favors' the sun such that it doesn't move much ... but it does in fact move in response to the earth's gravitational pull.
I just want to double facepalm, then bang my head against a wall whenever someone recommends taking antibiotics against the flu or the common cold, as I've given up trying to explain why it doesn't work (viruses are basically bacteria, right?)
Aren't antibiotics a panacea? When you are sick you just take them and they magically make you better. If you have a flu and doctors don't give you antibiotics, they are trying to kill you!
I don't thing that those are the right questions to ask. Most of then expects a 'simplified' answer, like the earth revolving the sun and the Big Bang being an 'explosion'.
Seriously, lots of these questions are ambiguous to educated people:
> The center of the earth is very hot
Not it's not. Stars are way hotter.
> Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth?
Yes. Both? Neither? Depends on which point of view is the most useful.
> The universe began with a huge explosion
No. It did not. The universe expanded. It is a huge difference.
> It is the father’s gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl
What is "this gene" you're talking about? Are you sure you now the difference between a gene and chromosome?
> Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals
This is way more ambiguous that you may think: from this statement, you could infer the theory evolution or something totally stupid.
Additionally, other questions are just made to be answered wrong for common people.
> The continents have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move
The question is long, there must be a trick somewhere, I'll answer no just in case.
> All radioactivity is man-made
I have heard that bananas were radioactive too, but I guess that's not so important so this is not what this question is about, right?
> Electrons are smaller than atoms
Err… whatever, I'll just guess.
> Lasers work by focusing sound waves
Lasers is dangerous light. I don't know how they are made though and this explanation sounds sciency, why not?
And just as a bonus:
> Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria
You do know that viruses are not commonly considered as living beings, right? Using "kill" make it so that you don't know what the question is about anymore.
tl;dr: these questions were just selected to trick people into answering wrong, I would say they were other questions whose results shown opposite trends (due to randomness), but were not disruptive anough for the article
35 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 74.4 ms ] threadI'm totally baffled about how so many people from well-educated nations with space programs can get this wrong.
So he never bothered to remember the history lessons thought at school (the Cardinal was somewhat influential figure during the uneventful times known as the 30 year war that shaped modern Europe and set in motion the processes that culminated in WWII) and never even watched or read the Three Musketeers. Sometimes ignorance could be found in the most surprising places.
I am going to take this point by point.
- Cardinal Richelieu was extremely influential: he was the "Prime Minister" of Louis XIII, King of France, for 18 years, and he had a drastic impact on his time.
- The Thirty Years' War was not "uneventful". Millions of people were slaughtered, notably about 60% of the population of Central Europe.
- The first half of the 17th century changed the shape of Europe: absolutism won over feudalism, while catholics massacred a great deal of protestants in Western Europe, almost destroying the Holy Romano-German Empire en passant. But the shape of Europe changed again after that.
Your reference to WWII is so far-fetched that I will wait for you to provide me with a reference before I start arguing against it.
Also, I am not American, so I fell into the trap, thinking Richelieu was actually "supposed to be known" by the average American. Retrospectively, I see it know.
Yes.
> The 30 year war lead to fragmented germany kept this way for two centuries, dominant france up to the Napoleonic wars.
Oversimplified. The Peace of Westphalia destroying the Empire and its ideals is a common misconception (Axel Gotthard, Das Alte Reich 1495–1806). Despite a bad financial situation, the Empire lived on. A "dominant" France is an overstatement: yes, Austria and the Iberian Union were hit hard, but England and Russia were unharmed by the war, and the Republic of The Netherlands became independent.
> The dominant france lead to the whole balance of power concept that GB tried its best to upheld up to the 1940s.
No. The United States were a British colony that the French helped free: looks more like France upholding the British balance. Then they won the Napoleonic wars, and the British Empire started indisputably dominating the world again.
> The fragmented Germany was natural battleground for the bloodiest conflicts on the continent since which lead to the ingrained desire for strength power and security above all.
Yes, German unification was a long and painful process. No, it was clearly not the stage of the "bloodiest conflicts on the continent since" — since when, by the way? I did not read a lot of German literature from/about that era, so I cannot argue for/against the "desire for strength power and security".
> Germany never had the chance to mature out of it as a country after the unification - Bismarck left it with too much power for the leaders to absorb and control
I do not know enough about Bismarck's political manoeuvres, so I will take your word for it.
> [...] which led to WWI - it was the braking down of the balance of power order.
No. It took more than Bismarck to start WWI — actually, it took more than all Germans. WWI was the result of escalations between France, the British Empire, and the German Empire, respective to their colonies, due to the mesh of alliances tying all those countries together and to the rest of Europe.
> And WWII was just extension of WWI mainly because of the idiotic treaty of Versailles that did squat to reconcile overpowered germany with the rest of the continent and the inability of USA to contain the great depression.
No. Oh, no.
Yes, the Treaty of Versailles had major flaws, and some of those played a part in the settings of WWII. Yes, Germany was not fully reconciled with the rest of the continent. Yes, there was the Great Depression in the USA.
Germany was not overpowered: they were severely underpowered at the time. They lost a lot of land, mainly to Poland and the Czech Republic. They were forbidden from having real armed forces. They got hit by the economic depression harder than any other country.
Also, a major cause for WWII was a guy named Adolf Hitler, who either misunderstood great philosophers like Nietzsche, or understood less great ones like Thomas Malthus.
* * *
Just look at the length of your explanation — disregarding my own remarks. I think it screams "far-fetched".
You could look at all events in history and try to highlight links between them, and overjustify those links. Some links would always be far-fetched.
Fortunately, Americans are not stupid. They know that "A goes around B" and "B goes around A" are equivalent because there is no real Galilean reference frame.
The Earth goes around the sun from the Sun's perspective. Considering this is true means the Sun has a fixed position. This holds for the Solar System — by definition, the Sun is fixed at the center. Moreover, there is a lot of other stuff going around the Sun — while the Earth only has the Moon and a bunch of metal boxes.
Concerning the Universe, neither the Sun nor Earth are fixed. Depending on the reference frame, one is going around the other, and vice-versa. So both "true" and "false" are correct answers.
How many do you think have some other understanding of the question? ('The sun rises and sets, so it is the sun that is moving')
(I'm avoiding the tedious hurr durr amuricuns is dumb stuff because the results for Europe are similar.)
The Sun's reference frame is privileged compared to ours: it is far closer to being an inertial reference frame[0], deviating from wobble induced by Jupiter and its long orbit around the galactic core.
(This is from a purely Newtonian perspective: both would be considered inertial in GR.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_reference_frame
The closest relativistic thing would be a reference frame free-falling inside a gravitational field: it is locally inertial.
So yes, the Sun is more inertial than Earth, but neither are a real inertial reference frame — because such a thing cannot exist. In Newtonian perspective, they can both be considered inertial — but you will also need to pick three stars far enough so they seem immobile.
Let me put this one to rest.
1. The earth and sun mutually orbit their common center of mass.
2. That common center of mass is located within the sun.
3. Therefore, from any local perspective except the earth, it is more accurate to say that the earth orbits the sun than the reverse.
> Concerning the Universe, neither the Sun nor Earth are fixed. Depending on the reference frame, one is going around the other, and vice-versa. So both "true" and "false" are correct answers.
This is false. One is overwhelmingly to be preferred: the earth orbits the sun.
It's a bit like the people who don't understand the miles per hour thing ("a car is travelling at 60 miles per hour. How long will it take to drive 60 miles?")
Facepalm with the audience results.
Americans may be answering not based on knowledge, but on belief. As shown above, only 48 percent of Americans responded "true" to the statement "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." But if the question was reframed slightly, far more people responded with "true." Given the statement "according to the theory of evolution, human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals," 72 percent answered "true." (Emphasis mine.) A similar pattern happens with the Big Bang question. When the statement is simply "The universe began with a huge explosion," 39 percent responded "true." When it is "according to astronomers, the universe began with a huge explosion," 60 percent said "true." This seems to indicate that many Americans are familiar with the theories of evolution and the Big Bang; they simply don't believe they're true.
To wit, people don't believe everything they read.
Just looks like The Bible is more trustworthy than On the Origin of Species.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/147824/adults-estimate-americans-...
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/who-responds-to-tele...
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/01/young-pranksters...
TLDR: It's not unknown for people to answer these things like Bart Simpson, and sniggering in the background.
Thank you for clarifying.
This is what I would personally expect from a survey here in Germany: Answers shaped by "worst-case" assumptions and disdain towards nuclear power, genetic engineering and possibly some misinformation regarding vaccinations and homeopathy. With the "Is all radioactivity man-made" question, for instance, I would expect sub-par performance of my fellow countrymen.
But the Earth moving around the sun??? I mean even if somebody were to get all their information from watching television over here, they would know _that_.
"You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it."
"To forget it!"
"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
"But the Solar System!" I protested.
"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."
They revolve around each other in an ellipse. Practically speaking, the ellipse heavily 'favors' the sun such that it doesn't move much ... but it does in fact move in response to the earth's gravitational pull.
Aren't antibiotics a panacea? When you are sick you just take them and they magically make you better. If you have a flu and doctors don't give you antibiotics, they are trying to kill you!
> The center of the earth is very hot
Not it's not. Stars are way hotter.
> Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth?
Yes. Both? Neither? Depends on which point of view is the most useful.
> The universe began with a huge explosion
No. It did not. The universe expanded. It is a huge difference.
> It is the father’s gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl
What is "this gene" you're talking about? Are you sure you now the difference between a gene and chromosome?
> Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals
This is way more ambiguous that you may think: from this statement, you could infer the theory evolution or something totally stupid.
Additionally, other questions are just made to be answered wrong for common people.
> The continents have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move
The question is long, there must be a trick somewhere, I'll answer no just in case.
> All radioactivity is man-made
I have heard that bananas were radioactive too, but I guess that's not so important so this is not what this question is about, right?
> Electrons are smaller than atoms
Err… whatever, I'll just guess.
> Lasers work by focusing sound waves
Lasers is dangerous light. I don't know how they are made though and this explanation sounds sciency, why not?
And just as a bonus:
> Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria
You do know that viruses are not commonly considered as living beings, right? Using "kill" make it so that you don't know what the question is about anymore.
tl;dr: these questions were just selected to trick people into answering wrong, I would say they were other questions whose results shown opposite trends (due to randomness), but were not disruptive anough for the article