Inspired by a post from kanicbird in another thread, where he/she thought it was significant that the general public didn’t know that mercury was dangerous.
I’m pretty sure I’ve read credible surveys that show disturbingly large percentages of people demonstrate much more blatant ignorance than that. For example, here is a survey that shows 78% of college students consider astrology to be scientific. I remember reading other articles that showed amazing ignorance of basic facts, like the earth going around the sun, by the general public.
But I’m only one man. I would like to ask my fellow Dopers to post links to their favorite example(s) of credible surveys that show amazing ignorance of basic facts — scientific, geographic, historical, etc. Note that I’m not looking for “Jaywalking” type of stuff, although I think some of those are hilarious. I’m talking about scientific surveys.
This National Geographic poll from 2006 has some scary findings:
Six in ten (63%) Americans cannot find Iraq on a map of the Middle East.
Three-quarters cannot find Indonesia on a map
Three-quarters (75%) of young men and women do not know that a majority of Indonesia’s population is Muslim (making it the largest Muslim country in the world)
Three-quarters (74%) believe English is the most commonly spoken native language in the world, rather than Mandarin Chinese.
It’s a very interesting link, and I thank you for it, but as you said, not quite what I was asking for. In fact, I’m afraid that a pretty large percentage of the general public doesn’t know enough to have formed many of those misconceptions.
70% of Americans don’t know what the Constitution is.
29% don’t know who the Vice President is (although, I would have thought that number would be higher)
America celebrates Independence Day with fireworks and barbecues and beer, but according to a new Marist Poll one in four Americans don’t even know what country America declared its independence from. And only 58 percent of residents know that the U.S. broke off in 1776. U.S.A.!
The survey of 1,003 adults was taken earlier this month and found that younger Americans were the least likely to know when America broke away from Great Britain. Only 31 percent of adults younger than 30 said 1776 when asked while 59 percent of residents between 30 and 44 got the question right. Americans 45 to 59 were most likely to know the year, with 75 percent getting it right. 65 percent of men got the answer right while only 52 percent of women did.
I’m not trying to question the poster’s intelligence but isn’t trusting surveys or statistics one of the things that the ignorant general public would do? I don’t trust surveys or statistics at all I would take them into consideration but I wouldn’t waste my time looking for them to use as some kind of basis I mean for all you know it could be biased. But I mean I can give you my opinion that the general public definitely is a couple bricks short of a stack.
sorry, no good links. Yes surveys are more useful for plumbing the depths of ignorance than establishing fact. And one only need to spend a little time on the net ot be appalled at the ignorance.
This does remind me of one story. Some kids found a puppy and were trying to decide if it was a boy or a girl. Finally one boy suggested they vote. I pull it out sometimes when I am well outnumbered by the ignorant on some sites.
I find the poll interesting but not scary by any means. As far as the map reading, yeah we should have paid more attention in geography class but most people can’t find it because they for the most part never have to look at that area.
I would have probably guessed that Muslim was the dominating ethnic group in Indonesia, but why would the common person know this?
The only one that I think should be fairly common knowledge is that Chinese is the most common language. Only because most people are aware that China’s population is staggering. It would be reasonable to assume that.
I guess what I am trying to say is that these polls ask people questions that seem so obvious, but when you think about it why would most people know these things? Most people have no connection to Indonesia, so why would they know the main religion. Knowing where Iraq is, I can see that most people should know it because of our involvement there, but Indonesia? Why would they be familiar with its location? Perhaps if they were given a minute to study the map they could find it no problem, but to just point at it on an unmarked map? Why would the common man need to know that? I went to The Gambia once and I am certain that 999 out of 1000 wouldn’t have a clue where The Gambia is located. Why should they?
I’m with you on this. There are many things that the average [American] should probably know about Iraq, including perhaps a general sense of its location (e.g. “Middle East” versus “somewhere in Australia?”), but pinpointing its location on an unmarked map is not one of them. I can tell you for a fact that I am unable to locate my city to within 100 miles on an unmarked map of the US.
And tangentially related to the OP: a YouTube video of a French “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” audience missing a basic fact (although some argue that they did it to screw with the contestant).
So long as the common man isn’t forming opinions about Iraq and Islam and voting for people based on those opinions, I’m totally okay with the common man not being able to locate Iraq on the map or know where Muslims tend to live on the globe.
When I read the results of the Marist post above, I wondered how the questions were phrased. Did the options for when the US broke with England include the years the war started and ended? Where the options for who the US broke away from England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom?
I just checked out the poll - it was a telephone poll, heavily skewed to landlines, slightly skewed to the south.
I found no indication that answers such as “1783”, when the treaty was signed, or “England” would be accepted as correct, or at least not included as “Some other date/country”.