Americans Say Up With Science, Down With Facts

Survey shows US citizens value scientific achievements, but reserve the right to reject the ones they don’t agree with.

July 10, 2009

The story you're about to read is not (entirely) true. It is, however, more accurate than most things on network television.

doc brown + einstein It seems while Americans largely approve of science as a general concept, they’re not entirely sold on the specifics. According to a new study by the Pew Research Center, which polled more than 2500 scientists and 2000 ordinary citizens, many Americans prefer to treat science more like a buffet: picking the theories they like to believe in, and pushing the rest to the sides of their plates. To wit:

The survey found nearly 9 in 10 scientists accept the idea of evolution by natural selection, but just a third of the public does. And while 84 percent of scientists say the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, less than half of the public agrees with that.

But the differences between science and society at large are much starker than that.

In a follow-up poll conducted by eSarcasm, 37 percent of respondents said they believed the law of gravity should be repealed; 26 percent said the planet’s inhabitants should be tethered to keep people living near the edge of the earth from falling off; and 14 percent said they believed first cousins should be allowed to marry, regardless of what the theory of relativity has to say about it.

Nearly 7 out of 10 Americans were unable to distinguish between a photo of the father of modern physics, Albert Einstein, and Doc Brown from the Back to the Future movies. Approximately 62 percent were pretty sure Sir Isaac Newton invented the fig, while a whopping 98 percent said they were not entirely certain about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

Yet individuals created for the purpose of generating a silly quote for this story defended their right to believe what they damn well want to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary.

“It’s a free country, in’it?” said Phineas T. Muggle, who had strapped himself to flagpole with bungie cords to keep from floating off into space. “If I decide to reject the laws of gravity, then that’s my right. It’s why George Washington Carver founded this country in the first place, and there’s not a damned thing you can say to convince me otherwise.”

Keep up with Dan Tynan on Twitter (@tynan_on_tech) or via dantynan.com.