You’d answer that you’ve always believed a thing you haven’t always believed?
As did a good-sized chunk of the 18-24 types.
And so, what, the 55+ types are all lying then? The younger folks are just being more honest or something? Or is your thesis that the younger you are, the more philosophical and literal you are about parsing the question? Or that young people were more likely to be stupid and think at one time the earth was flat and older people always thought the earth was round?
And let’s eliminate answers A & E? The trend is still there, still fairly predictable, and still indicative, I think, of an anti-science trend. I don’t literally believe a third of Millennials think the earth is flat. Of course not! But those numbers do show to me a science skeptic trend.
Well, I guess my take is this: first, it’s a badly-worded poll; second, it’s an incredibly badly-worded poll. So, third, maybe 55+ types are more likely to give a pass when it comes to badly-worded polls and figure they know what’s meant; and maybe younger types are more likely to say, look, if you’re going to ask a question and you can’t be bothered to phrase it any better, I’ll give a literal answer.
That leaves a considerably littler discrepancy to be explained away by trolling the pollsters; and, if we figure that younger types are even a little more likely to troll pollsters, then there’s maybe not all that much left to explain…
I’ll agree that the poll could be better. I would tend to think that the confusion in the wording is fairly equally spread among the responses of all the age groups. I also think, sure, there’s probably some trolling going around. But I think after removing the noise, there is still some signal, though not anywhere near as amplified as it seems here, that indicates a trend toward science skepticism. And I think that’s reflected in other areas, like, say, the anti-vax movement.
Of course, yes, those are all my personal suppositions.