23% of American ADULTS cannot name a scientist, living or dead

Source: virology.ws

OK, so it’s a pretty well-known fact that I’m not particularly fond of America. I don’t so much dislike Americans – they’re not all bad people of course – but the way the country is run on a diet of capitalism, misplaced national pride and the ‘bigger is always better’ ethos has the capacity to breed some pretty scary forms of ignorance. Ignorance is one of the most dangerous characteristics to spread about, as ignorance plus enough national pride and encouragement invariably leads to racism, closed-mindedness and intolerance. This is, sadly, the international view of the modern American, and the reputation for ignorance only gets worse when the results of surveys hit home in devastating fashion:

USA Today’s Snapshot for 29 June was a survey in which 1000 adults were asked to name a famous scientist. Here are the results:

47% named Albert Einstein
23% could not name anyone
6% named Marie Curie
4% named Louis Pasteur
4% named Thomas Edison

Now, maybe it’s because America is a relatively young country and doesn’t have such a history of scientific powerhouses. Oh, wait a minute.

I don’t know… you could probably find comparable areas of the UK where general knowledge is about as poor; the survey was carried out by, uh, L’Oreal (“here comes the science!”); and I imagine that the area surveyed could possibly have been along the bible belt, where of course they don’t believe in science… but still. I imagine that if they took the same cross-section of people and asked them to name a Britney Spears single, a Michael Bay movie, or any celebrity who has gained more than 20 pounds in the last year, we wouldn’t be seeing even a mention of “x% could not name any one“. The level of ignorance required to be unable to name a single scientist – living or dead – kinda… scares me.

On a happier note, here’s a video of a very confused (and very cute) dog, trying to work out how the hell he can see his feline friend on a screen AND have him in the room with him at the same time.

Ahhh. I feel a bit better.