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Americans' Evolution Knowledge Isn't That Bad, If You Ask About Elephants (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: In 2014, a poll showed that just 49% of Americans agreed with the statement: "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." But it's difficult to tell whether those numbers measure ignorance about science, because belief in human evolution is closely tied to religious belief, especially in the United States. Yesterday, researchers at the annual meeting of AAAS, previewed data from a recent poll showing that when the word "human" is replaced with "elephant" in the evolution question, 75% of Americans agree — about 25 percentage points higher than before. Plus, the new elephant question does a better job of predicting general science knowledge than the human question, especially among those who say they don't believe in evolution. So it seems that America's dismal performance on past evolution polls can be blamed at least partially on this disbelief, rather than a lack of knowledge.

1 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Religion is poison by UnknownSoldier · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    1. Apparently you failed to learn the lesson on: "Judge not, lest ye be judged"

    2. Why do you spew hatred towards an inanimate object? There are informed Theists and Atheists, likewise there are ignorant Theists and Atheists.
    Of-course you are free to be myopic as you want to believe, but I think it is fair throwing out the baby with the bathwater is extremely short-sighted.

    3. . /sarcasm Oh Noes, we must stop the "toxin" of "The Golden Rule". But let's conveniently ignore all the GOOD that people do, regardless of their belief system.

    4. I think it is fair to treat all Atheists as having ZERO knowledge about religions and supernatural belief systems. Asking an Atheist to define Religion is about as fucking stupid as like asking a Blind Man to define Color. They have no frame of reference to even understand the question, let alone the answer.