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NSF Report Flawed; Americans Do Not Believe Astrology Is Scientific
RichDiesal writes "A new report (PDF) from the National Science Foundation, which we discussed a few days ago, states that roughly 40% of Americans believe astrology to be scientific. This turns out to be false; most of those apparently astrology-loving Americans have actually confused astrology with astronomy. In a 100-person Mechanical Turk study with a $5 research budget, I tested this by actually asking people to define astrology. Among those that correctly defined astrology, only 10% believe it to be scientific; among those that confused astrology for astronomy, 92% believe 'astrology' to be scientific."
Go back and give all those folks who posted on Slashdot that this WAS IN FACT the case 2 - not one - but TWO Internets!
I searched/skimmed the NSF paper, and it wasn't obvious that they took any pains to define astrology for their interviewees. So you very well may be right; good job.
How many who could correctly define astronomy still believe that it can be used to predict your future. Because that's astrophysics.
Even more of them will confuse cosmetology with cosmology. Someone trying to weigh a poll to make Americans look uneducated could have done much better.
I absolutely believe that ... astro... something science to be scientific!
It probably has electrolytes too!
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The problem is not that we are mystical idiots, just that we are can not spell and are not sure of the correct pronunciation of words.
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100 people isn't that big a sample size. If one could expand that by a few orders of magnitude, it might be more useful.
I'm not sure if it's worse that these people believe that astrology is a science. Or that they were too stupid to not know the difference between astrology and astronomy. It's one thing if a few people got confused. But for so many to not know the difference is a little frightening.
Given the state of education, what else would you expect? We're talking about a nation that doesn't even know it's own geography, much less that of neighbours in the world. If they think Toronto or Vancouver are the capital of Canada, how can you expect them to know something like astrology vs. astronomy?
Regardless of whether the majority of the population believes astrology is "scientific" or not, one thing is clear: the population as a whole has a shitty education.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
99% of Americans are idiots; 1.0% run the Country. Much like the UK.
Great. So now people are just stupid, not crazy.
It is easy for surveys to give very misleading results if the questions are not well thought out, or if they have intentionally been designed to produce some result. The media tends to pick up on the more surprising results from surveys so that magnifies the effect in the public perception.
"do you believe in evolution" "do you believe the current theory of evolution is correct" "Do you believe that god was involved in the creation of life" "should students be taught to question scientific theories like evolution". "do you think evolution likely is a correct description of the species we see on earth now" These may seem to be asking the same question, but are really quite different.
40% of Americans can't differentiate astrology from astronomy.
When you don't know one of those from the other, what does it matter how you think about their scientific merits?
They are, if you think about it, poorly-chosen words. After all they both start with "astro" - meaning star. Then "ology" meaning study, versus "onomy" meaning naming of. Logically it might well be the other way around. On the other hand I agree with the conclusions. I'm an astronomer, but I notice that more and more of my colleagues are calling themselves astrophysicists rather than astronomers. They may simply be choosing what they think of as a higher-status term, or perhaps to avoid the confusion between astrology and astronomy, which (in my experience) is more common in the USA than in the UK.
A friend of mine in 7th grade signed up for a cosmetology class thinking it was cosmology, and boy was he surprised. At least it was only one of those 1 hours per week deals to fill in a gap with our weird rotating schedule (7 classes for 6 periods).
Adam Corrolla and Jimmy Kimmel (and many, many other pranksters) have proven that people really don't know the language, but will gladly treat a misconception with confidence when given just a little nudge.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
So you're saying that it's not that Americans are prone to believe in pseudo-science, but that they lack basic English comprehension skills? Even if I were to believe that this unscientific internet study with a small sample size somehow trumps the observations of the National Science Foundation's wide ranging academic study, the conclusions derived are equally troubling. It's not that they're scientific illiterate - they're simply illiterate! Either conclusion indicates a serious deficit in US education standards, and rather than trying to justify the survey results away, we should be looking at ways to improving American education standards. If they can't distinguish between astronomy and astrology I'd be worried about their English vocabulary.
Friend of mine use to get these Fan boy catalogs for Star Trek/Star Wars trinkets. (ie. Stuff people made in their basement)
One of the ads was for "Official Star Trek Badges". Engineering, Command, Medical, Security, and Astrology.... and it took us 10 mins to explain to him.
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Please stop trying to spoil a fun narrative that gave the rest of the world a chance to reaffirm their feelings of superiority. If they ever stop believing Americans are stupid, they might start making it harder for us to tap their phone lines and "secure" communications.
By the way, we have a picture of you and that Buttercup All Grown Up doll, dated last February 17.
Thank you,
Your friends at the NSA
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'Astrology' means 'the study of stars'. When real scientists began to study stars, this term had already been taken over by crackpots.
So, they adopted 'Astronomy' which is the NAMING of stars, because the more correct term now meant something else.
So, really, astronomy should be called astrology, and astrology should be called bunk.
Faith in humanity... remains the same.
I actually had a discussion with someone who could define astrology and thought it was scientific until I defined "science". She still believed in astrology after that but she understood that it wasn't scientific.
People have actually looked at overall scientific literacy in the US, and it compares favorably to the EU (and the rest of the world):
https://www.sciencenews.org/bl...
Of course, it would be nice if scientific literacy were higher everywhere, including the US.
When you don't know one of those from the other, what does it matter how you think about their scientific merits?
It's the difference between being confused and being a complete idiot. If you simply mistook two similar-sounding words for each other in a survey, words which likely define things you aren't particularly interested in, then it doesn't mean you're a complete idiot, it just means there's something you don't know, which is true of everyone since no one can know everything. On the other hand, if you study science for a living, and you conduct a scientific survey to ask people whether astrology is scientific and it doesn't occur to you that people may confuse it for astronomy, then you are indeed a complete fucking idiot because only an idiot could do scientific surveys for a living and not have such a possibility be painfully obvious to them.
The fact that someone on the internet had to spend $5 to show that the National Science Foundation made the most obvious mistake imaginable says far more about the sad state of American intelligence than anything else I've seen recently. Remember this the next time someone says "they're experts, you don't think they accounted for something obvious like that?" Some of these "experts" are the last people you want to assume to have thought of anything.
...these people are confusing astrology with astronomy, then it indicates that they are as stupid as they would be if they thought astrology was scientific.
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Wait, YOU didn't that you were part of the 1%, did you?
Ya know, other, better scientists figured out long ago there was co.fusion between astrology and astronomy, not jist that some may not k.ow the difference, but that plenty who do may get briefly confused by the question, thinking the questioner *must* mean the one with telescopes.
Ever since every time this comes up, I wonder if the latest study is done by terrible scientists who don't research past studies and analysis.
This isn't the only thing. Face symmetry relating to beauty is another, as it ignores an equally important study that the most beautiful are also those with the most average dimensions of features and placement. For that matter, scientists this week announceed they got more energy out of fusion than they put in "for the first time"...for at least the fourth time.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Thank heavens!
.So they are just ignorant dumb fucks then.
Yes all's well. USA USA! #1
Well, let's run the same poll, done the exact same way, across Europe, in Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Japan and others too, and see what those results say, before getting too cocky. Otherwise knock off the bandwagon bashing of "dumb fucks" just because it's great fun to join the crowd and a surefire ego booster as well.
NASA bests any other space agency in the world, yet somehow Americans are "dumb fucks". RIP logic.
that they don't know the difference isn't much better
My first thought was, only 40% of Americans believe astrology to be scientific? WTF people, how is it not scientific? Then I kept reading and realized I made the same reading comprehension mistake.
You got me.
At the risk of receiving flames of /. hellfire, I'll admit that I am a professional astrologer. Any astrologer that actually understands the art knows that it's not a science in the conventional definition of the term. It is something between science and art, as it contains elements of both. Observation and correlation play a major part, then so does the harmonization of conceptual understandings, since it is impossible to empirically verify every possible combination of planet, sign, house. The number of variables is too great.
Astrology is not a hard predictive tool either. The astrological symbols indicate tendencies and potentials, but free will is the factor that determines how those potentials manifest. In my own practice I veer away from prediction and instead focus on the astrological chart as a symbolic reflection of the conditioning of the psyche of the person I'm working with. Synchronistic reflection is the key term here -- the planets do not influence us in any direct physical sense. Thus, 'scientific' is not the right term for astrology, but it's not completely not-science either.
Side note: I came into astrology quite skeptical, but found it interesting enough to study. Over time, through my own experience of seeing it validated again and again, I've come to understand the principles that make it work. And in the right hands and mind, it does work, quite surprisingly well. Again, direct experience is the arbiter here, nothing to do with blind faith or illusory thinking.
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Of course it's scientific! Astro is the Jetson's dog, and they are from the future where we will have flying cars and buildings floating in the sky with treadmills perched dangerously outside...
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If the NSF Report actually stated "that roughly 40% of Americans believe astrology to be scientific," this would be an interesting use of five bucks. But that's not what the report says.
Here's what the NSF report acually writes—and it's actually interesting:
Page 7-6 of the report gives actual details about the survey—speciically, the Science and Technology portion of the General Social Survey". You can search the GSS survey for the word 'astrology' to see the actual question:
The whole point is that they're asking Americans if they know what the word 'astrology' means.
If there was a mass epidemic of amnesia between 2010 and 2012, I don't remember it. So what caused the reversal in a steady trend that lasted from 1983 to 2010? Why did the number of Americans who know the definition of the word 'astrology' make a sudden and very large negative drop from 2010 to 2012?
This is an interesting result, and to their credit the authors of the NSF report do a good job of accurately reporting their finding without resorting to hyperbole or finger-pointing.
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The National Science Foundation got it wrong?
How is that possible? They're scientists! They're infallible masters of logic and fact. How could they possibly be wrong?
Unbelievable!
No, it is better. "I used the wrong Greek-derived word" is a lot better than "I think that the movement of planets influences my destiny". One denotes ignorance of language, one denotes ignorance of basic scientific principles; give me the first any day.
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It's just like one of those meme fads going round where they ask (perhaps gullible) people about non existent super bowl plays & players.
Or like the classic Dihydrogen Monoxide 'prank'
Ignorance and intelligence is not linear. It is not worthwhile or fair to measure either outside of a properly executed experiment.
A member from an Amazonian Tribe may well find life in NYC a little daunting, perhaps as daunting as you would find life naked in the middle of South America.
People trying to fit in, especially young people trying to fit in WILL answer a question for fear of ridicule if they do not full understand the question. And people do tend to TRY TO FIT IN.
If a word they have never heard of sounds scientific they WILL treat it as such. and trust it for the word.
The US and the UK are rife with people screwing with words to take advantage of people.
We have protected titles, for example. Anybody can call themselves a Nutritionist. But you need to be licensed to call yourself a Dietitian
A Chiropractor fucked my back because I thought he was a type of Physiotherapist. He had xRay machines and everything. But not a licenced or recognised medical practitioner.
Somebody asks you if Astro this or astro that is important - if they don't KNOW the word, they will make a MEAN guess.
What if one of the problems with all previous poll data, was no verification was actually occurring to see if the questioned understood the questions, or even understood the information they thought they knew about the given subject?
Lets say you do a political poll to ask if people think the NSA surveillance program is necessary or if they are for or against it, .. how many of those people even really know what it is, or bothered to look into before answering, or got their information from statements made by Barack Obama or the NSA who blatantly lie, saying its' not occurring, or being done for the security of our nation?
Lets just assume that all polls are flawed, and that the insiders know the flaws exist and use the polls merely to push through certain agendas, even thought they don't represent anything with any sort of accuracy. They do have an impact on public opinion and knowledge, and lead people down a path of misunderstanding, which might be the purpose; to deceive and sway peoples opinions.
When I was an undergraduate, the telescope a few miles away was listed in the phone book (remember those?) as the National Radio Astrology Observatory. Nobody really felt like correcting it.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Keep in mind that studies have shown that we only read the beginning and end of the words to save time, particularly when we are in a rush. Therefore astr - onom - y and astro - log - y can be interchangeable depending on how quickly you are reading. In the context of a survey that is predominantly concerned with science, your brain is most likely to spit out the definition for astronomy if it only receives astro **** y as input. The US has its fair share of idiots, but I'll bet that a significant amount of the 40 percent that "confused" the two actually know the difference.
P.S. I am too lazy to provide a citation because my psych 101 textbook has been in a landfill for 10 years and google did not immediately return the result I wanted.
That Americans are ignorant of what occurs outside of their neighborhood is no big surprise, but if you read the NSF report you will find out that Europeans are pretty ignorant in same areas as well. Page 7-23 of the NSF report finds that 1/4 of Americans do not know that the Earth orbits the Sun. Pretty dismal isn't it. However, if you follow the row over to the EU column you will find that 1/3 of EU responders did not know that the Earth orbits the Sun.
In China 1/2 of respondents were unaware that the continents move, while in the US it was only 1/8. Oddly enough while 84% of American believe that the continents have been drifting around around for millions of years, less than half (48%) believe that humans have evolved from other species.
And nowhere, expect South Korea, does a majority believe in the big bang theory.
In a similar move tell people they are wearing garments and see how offended they get. I would argue that garments is further from garbage than astrology from astronomy, but people are still insulted. The simple fact is we as a species fill in the blanks with what we expect over what we actually see and hear, often without knowing we've done so. Sometimes it is useful, as with being able to ignore or instantly comprehend misspelled words. Sometimes it hurts us, like when we replace the word in our minds, but the initial word was intentional.
so, americans are not stupid as we thought, they are stupid in a different way. cool.
It is much more revealing to see how many people (Americans, whatever,) find that any field of endeavor can be, "sort of scientific." Why not ask Americans how many people are, "sort of pregnant?" I usually believe in a world of grey, and I do understand that some disciplines can use elements of the scientific method without being "science," maybe. While I'm on that track, for those who responded, "sort of scientific," did they attempt to find out what that person's concept of "sort of" entails? Utilizing elements of it, or simply resembling being scientific? Anyway, design a survey which is false to fact, one cannot expect truthful results. Garbage in, garbage out applies to survey design as well as the scientific method.
This isn't about English literacy, either, unless you think that most people regard "debt" and "deficit" as abstract coinages passed down from Cleopatra's personal mentat.
Here's how the lizard brain encodes language in people with an aspy deficit:
jackpot = pussy
debt/deficit = no pussy
astronomy/astrology = preoccupations of pointy hats who get no pussy
There's simply no need in this model to discriminate words from the second cluster. Here's a truly horrible capsule summary of what we're up against:
Secret Formula For Persuasive Writing Techniques
This is designed to influence exactly the kind of person who fails to conceptually discriminate astronomy from astrology. Advertising is not a universal technique. It's merely a universal technique for the shaking the trees most easily shaken: small cognition, big lizard.
The core element is the appeal which answers "What's in it for me?" and the answer either needs to be "more pussy" or something from the first list of things regarded as being directly associated with more pussy, or the proximity of more pussy, or the vain fantasy of the proximity of more pussy.
The bottom brain works on a system of warm, warmer, warmest. I know of a person who has made at least three trips to China thinking he's going to score himself a docile second wife; he has no clue whatsoever that these Chinese women he meets can decode his demeanour as an OCD control freak by the second interaction—if, in fact, there was any legitimacy to their desire to score a comfortable N.A. lifestyle in the first place. In his own culture, most women decode his personality style in a single glace. In his mind all these women have be ruined by a culture which turns them into snooty princesses. Who knows how much money this guy has poured in this project, where 60 seconds of input from a properly functioning top brain could have informed him that "warmer" amounts to a snowball's chance in hell on day where hell's barometer is falling.
Judging from how long he's had his top brain stored in the garage under a dusty tarpaulin, he long ago gave up on welcoming any input from this part of his brain. Either the input is faulty (unlikely), or it conflicts with his cherished lizard-brain fantasy self-image (likely). He's plenty functional in an ordered environment where he has far fewer options to make his own choices.
The problem with this study is that a large slice of the population—in one or more major spheres of living—fails to curate their "beliefs" into consistent/inconsistent, but merely partitions into warmer and colder, using an internal vocabulary where there's only a single word for snow.
These scientists who conducted this study without comprehension of this are living in a similarly tiny mental closet. s/pussy/p-value This is the lizard brain of successful careers built upon bad science.
Scientific method: Statistical errors
I guess it accords with a cherished lizard-brain fantasy of someday scoring tenure. For three decades, at least, tenure has become practically synonymous with barometer rising. Engaging in this kind of research project is an awfully indirect way to confront their own delusions.
Said most of the respondents.
I'm the refuted claim! I never get publicity unless there was really noting better for our talented and professional reporters to do that day!
http://science.slashdot.org/co...
OK the NEWS is pretty sad. But that implication that, for once, I'm right, is pretty refreshing!
-Styopa
How many correctly defined NSF as a bunch of incompetent morons?
I think astrology predicts what planet the mentally retarded stare at on a given night that ruins your concentration or love life.
... how will we know who to mock? And for what?
you know your own examples. astro-whatever is whatever-spoon.
How many who could correctly define astronomy still believe that it can be used to predict your future. Because that's astrophysics.
Surely that's more the area of cosmetology? It can answer fascinating questions like will the universe end in heat death due to hair dryer misuse.
It's high time that the National Science Foundation of the United States of America within the Executive Branch of the Federal Government be disestablished, its director and staff imprisoned in solitary at GITMO and its slush fund i.e. budget given back to the Department of Treasury.
Well if that was their goal, then it would've been FAR better to ask them to define "astrology", and count up the results manually. Otherwise there is definitely an issue where the results are contaminated with people who DO know what 'astrology' means, but ALSO think it's a science too.
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is a lot better than "I think that the movement of planets influences my destiny".
Which is just as bad as "God created humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so" Which is the belief of 48% of the respondents in a 2007 Newsweek poll. http://www.pollingreport.com/s...
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Americans are dumb for confusing astrology and astronomy.
If you go to college and pick cosmology classes expecting cosmetology classes, you will be in for a big surprise first day of class. And if you pick them vice-versa as well. I don't know which situation would be more interesting -- maybe there's a TV sitcom in the concept somewhere. A young Howard Wolowitz-type mistakenly goes to cosmetology class, decides to stay with it what with all the girls there and all, and is vastly rewarded for doing so.
americans
Now we know that this 40% is functionally illiterate. Somehow that seems worse to me than just having absurd beliefs about the stars.
I understand that people can be confused. A guy I knew a long time ago said he was taking an Astrology course in university. Reading palms and tarot cards and researching the signs of the zodiac? I asked. No, he said, its stars and comets and the universe. I inquired, do you mean Astrology or Astronomy? Didn't I say Astronomy? he said. No, I replied. ..... which leads me to a conclusion about the Steven Spielberg movie "ET". "ET" is the only thing separating Cosmology from CosmETology. Did you see the makeup on that little alien?
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-americans-unaware-earth-circles-sun.html
People aren't superstitious idiots. They're just idiots.
Just because so many people didn't know what astrology was doesn't change the fact that they believed "astrology" (whatever they thought it was) to be scientific. :)
Of course when reporting the results, then, you *should* put "astrology" in quotes.
I knew exactly what happened when I read the first article. Someone underestimated the lack of education in the general public. There's probably only 1/10 people that even know the difference between astrology and astronomy off the top of their heads. So asking if astrology is scientific would obviously lead you to a large percentage of people saying yes. Glad to see someone made a post to correct their blatantly incorrect poll.
This just in: 40% of Americans aren't uneducated, just stupid.
"NSF Report Flawed; Americans Do Not Believe Astrology Is Scientific"
I knew that initial report couldn't be accurate. Americans don't believe in astrology or it's sister, climatology. They're both fun pseudosciences though. One predicts good things in your future, and the other predicts that you need to be taxed more to save the planet.
. . . in the same sense that alchemy was chemistry. Galileo was actually an astrologer, in the parlance of the day; so was everyone else who looked at the stars and tried to derive reason from them. As modern science developed, those who applied it to astrology became known as astronomers whereas those who applied it to frivolous nonsense such as horoscopes remained known as astrologers. In the modern English-speaking world, astronomy is a science and astrology is a pseudoscience, but it is important to remember that was not always true. I think it is fair to call Galileo an astronomer, because his methods were close enough to the modern scientific philosophy applied to astronomy today, just as it is fair to call Newton a physicist, despite the fact that, back in his day, he would have been known as a natural philosopher. But it is important for people to understand the history of how modern science developed and the meanings of these words.
Economics is "sort of scientific". It makes testable predictions - change the price by X, consumption changes by Y - but it's not as precise as physics. Medicine is also "sort of scientific"; it's not a given that malady M can be cured by treatment T. You could say a similar thing about engineering.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I told you... http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
As an astronomy educator in New Zealand I encounter this almost daily - it's certainly not limited to America. Almost half the people I meet confuse astronomy with astrology. I'm often introduced as an astrologer. I even have friends who pause when they introduce me as they mentally make sure they're saying the right thing (they know from experience not to get it wrong). I think one possible cause could be the number of times people see the word "astrology" in daily life, vs the word "astronomy". "Astrology" is the more familiar brand and people instinctively lean towards the familiar word as correct.
Had they asked if they believe in horoscope, the poll results would have been much better.
Funny poll:
* do you belive hroroscopes are scientific?
* do you believe astrology is scientific?
Rather an IQ test, to see who knows that astrology produces horoscopes.
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I am Canadian and I also live in America, I mean the continent(s), thus I am an American (and by that I don't mean a US citizen...)
I cringe every time I hear "stupid Americans", and then I realize it's not me they're talking about. I mean they can't even differentiate between a continent and a country to start with...
Oh and Mexico is also formed of united states btw...