The National Science Foundation Finds Ignorance
09 Apr 2014
Back in February, much was made of an NSF study showing roughly a quarter of Americans believe the Sun revolves around the Earth. The well-educated know this was dispensed with by Nicolaus Copernicus nearly 500 years ago.
Remarkably, this survey is conducted every few years and the graph above shows two things. First, the percentage of respondents who think the Sun revolves around the Earth is consistently around 25. Second, it’s an improvement over 2005 when 29 percent of respondents believed in a geocentric model. This also better than the percentage of Americans who believe all radiation is caused by humans, below.
