25% of Americans believe the sun revolves around the Earth.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2014/02/16/1-in-4-americans-thinks-sun-orbits-earth/

At least we're doing better than Europe? Britain don't need no fancy book-learnin'.

And people wonder why other countries think of Americans as being idiots.

also from the article.

only 48 percent knew that humans evolved from earlier species of animals.

Nonsense, the earth orbits the sun. After all, it's the giver of life, heat, and energy.

All hail the almighty Sun!

LOL...what? You mean 3 in 4 americans actually believe that the earth rotates around the sun? So many uneducated people.

Remember folks, a man with a stick and a building almost exactly figured out the Earth's axis, circumference, and distance from the sun. Today, where we have computers that fit in a single hand, we have this.

I hereby invoke Poe's Law upon this post.

I can't even comprehend how anyone can think this.

I don't watch Hulu, but this is actually an excellent point.

i truly question that surely, then again i question this nation every single day...

"The universe revolves around America." - Copernicus

Came expecting another TC who doesn't realize he's citing a satire site.

Left depressed.

Maybe I can spare a few bucks for a bag of weed tonight.

anybody remember this...

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

lol europe

Well duh -- the world can't revolve around them if it's revolving around something else, like the sun.

It doesn't?!

don't they technically revolve around each other? The earth does have a force on the sun too. I guess that would mean everything revolves... everything... hmmm

....and 100% of them voted for Obama.

@lamprey263:

I'd never seen that.

56% is crazy, but unfortunately that isn't a large enough sample size to make broad generalizations about french people.

yeah, the article is a joke as someone pointed out but I saw opportunity to post this, thought it was amusing

like one of the voice windows in the video shows the people probably gave a wrong answer to mess with the guy, like the right answer was so obvious

To be fair so did many people who know the earth revolves around the sun. But those halfwits deserve what they got anyway...

I'd've been thinking the same thing. Anybody who takes that long to answer a question so monumentally easy deserves to be messed with.

Eh, 25% of Americans are ignorant, got it mixed up or just outright guessed. Its no surprise and you'd probably get similar statistics in most other countries, maybe worse too.

People are ignorant everywhere, its not a revelation and should not surprise anyone.

No

Earth around sun
Sun around galaxy
Relative to us, it doesn't move

wat

Well technically speaking the sun is moving along with the entire solar system and the galaxy but yeah that's pretty stupid.

I always find these things so hard to believe, I've never met anyone that thinks the sun orbits the earth.

This. The results would likely be similar or worse in any other country.

These kind of surveys are pretty useless considering it's always a small sample that's then used to represent the entire sample.

...that's how sample sizes work

what?

I think by whole sample he means the larger population. He does not agree with a small sample size being used to draw conclusions about the general population (entire sample)

Lets not forget this bit --

Here’s the thing, though: Americans actually fared better than Europeans who took similar quizzes — at least when it came to the sun and Earth question. Only 66 percent of European Union residents answered that one correctly.

It's my understanding that tax payer money was used for this waste of time. A scary kind of bad, this is.

"And the fact that only 74 percent of participants knew that the Earth revolved around the sun is perhaps less alarming than the fact that only 48 percent knew that humans evolved from earlier species of animals."

I don't think that statement is necessarily true that 48% didn't know of speciation through evolutionary mechanisms but that 48% don't believe. Most Americans also confuse the concept "Scientific Theory" with "working hypothesis".

They also found that 80% of people couldn't name one Supreme Court Justice. I think that's much more embarrassing.

lol, obvious troll spotted.

As much as it pains me, as an American, to admit; our collective knowledge of science is pretty sorry. Many of those that don't believe in Evolution like to say, "It's only a theory," without any idea as to how much rigor a hypothesis is subjected before it can be called "theory". I mean, General Relativity is only a theory.

It wouldn't surprise me. The way people drive here is a huge indication. There was an accident on the news the other week where I live where someone had a head on collision because they drove into a highway exit, where there is a sign that clearly says "DO NOT ENTER."

@chaoscougar1: party pooper

NOT EXACTLY. A SAMPLE IS A SAMPLE, YOU DON'T USE PART OF IT TO REPRESENT ITS WHOLE. SAMPLES ARE USED TO REPRESENT WHOLE POPULATIONS.