work This is something I was working on at a temp job two weeks ago.

Posted October 12, 2005 • Comments Off on This is something I was working on at a temp job two weeks ago.

The graph I’m about to show you was one of about 100 I made this year for the National Science Foundation’s report to Congress (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/indicators/).

Some of the scientific things they list are people’s perceptions of science: there are charts and graphs about who knows what, broken down by things like gender, nationality, and education level.

One was the results of a survey quizzing people on basic scientific facts, like the earth going around the sun, species evolving, and the universe beginning in a huge explosion (the “big bang”). The fact that these were presented as facts by a government agency (considering the current administration believes in mythology) was pleasing to me.

Figure07 07-1

What was not pleasing to me was the bar in a graph that told me 65% of Americans surveyed answered “false” to the universe beginning in an explosion. Almost two-thirds of us apparently think God made the universe in six days. More than half of us think evolution is “false.” A quarter of us think the sun goes around the earth.

We know better than China, on average, but we don’t know better than South Korea. This is why they have the coolest cell phones.

ANYWAY. There was another graph. This is the funny part, and I wish I’d uploaded this one. It listed things like astrology and clairvoyance. I’m not even commenting on the percentages that show how many people believe in this kind of thing—if they think evolution and the big bang are “false,” they’re more than welcome to spend their money on psychics.
Here’s last year’s version of the graph in question, which is pretty similar to this year’s.
Fig07-09

The real joke there, at least to me, is how every topic but one is listed with a long, sentence-style explanation. Then you get “Witches.”

Not a complete sentence, like “Certain people, known as witches or warlocks, have the ability to harness supernatural forces to create magical results.”

Just “Witches.”