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."

Comments

Really good question

[sideslash]

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.

Re:Really good question

[sunderland56]

So instead of 40% of Americans having a poor concept of science, it looks like 40% of Americans have a poor concept of English. Is that any better?

Yes, but

[nani popoki]

How many who could correctly define astronomy still believe that it can be used to predict your future. Because that's astrophysics.

Re:Yes, but

[ebno-10db]

Depends on the time frame. Astropsychics claim to be able to make predictions about years in the future. Astrophysicists claim to be able to do that for billions of years in the future.

I called it.

[Narcocide]

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.

Surveys - be suspicious

[joe_frisch]

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.

Re:Go back ....

[ShanghaiBill]

So instead of being scientifically illiterate, USians are just vanilla illiterate?

This $5 study does NOT support that conclusion since the overwhelming majority of Mechanical Turkers are NOT Americans.

Although there there plenty of stupid Americans, America does not have a monopoly on stupidity. There's plenty of competition from the rest of the world.

US science literacy generally better than EU

[stenvar]

People have actually looked at overall scientific literacy in the US, and it compares favorably to the EU (and the rest of the world):

Jon Miller of Michigan State University reported the numbers at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, this afternoon, during a session on civic science literacy assessments around the world. The new U.S. rate, based on questionnaires administered in 2008, is seven percentage points behind Sweden, the only European nation to exceed the Americans. The U.S. figure is slightly higher than that for Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands. And it’s double the 2005 rate in the United Kingdom (and the collective rate for the European Union).

https://www.sciencenews.org/bl...

Of course, it would be nice if scientific literacy were higher everywhere, including the US.