Why you should be suspicious of "people on the street were more ignorant of X than Y" stories

[mmcirvin]

I missed this in March: Mark Liberman of Language Log takes apart the "more people could name the Simpsons than First Amendment freedoms" story.

The people who could correctly name N First Amendment freedoms (I assume they didn't split freedom of religion into the establishment and free-exercise clauses) decreased monotonically with increasing N, whereas the Simpsons distribution was bimodal, with more people ignorant of even one Simpson than of one First Amendment freedom, but also a fairly large population who could name all of them. From these numbers it is possible to extract just about any message you want, especially if people repeating the story are inclined to garble the result in the desired direction.

Comments

[twillis.livejournal.com]

Also, I like pie.

[piehead.livejournal.com]

I would also like to declare a liking for pie.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Those links are brilliant! Especially:

And the most shocking statistics in the report, in my opinion: only 51% identified Homer, and only 43% identified Marge. Barely half of Americans can remember that Homer is a Simpson?!? Fewer than half can remember Marge?!? I mean, talk about burying the lede. An emergency educational initiative in Simpsonology is clearly required.

[bottlroktt.livejournal.com]

uh oh, jay leno's in trouble!

That should have said

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

"decreased monotonically with increasing N for N>0".

[pompe.livejournal.com]

I certainly can name the Simpsons but I must admit I'd do quite poorly on First Amendment Freedoms.

I guess America is far more effectice in exporting your brand of entertainment than your brand of democracy. Honestly, that's something to be proud of.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I have terrible trouble remembering the numbers of the amendments dealing with unreasonable search and seizure, no forced quartering of soldiers in private homes, the right to jury trial, etc. (I know that freedom from self-incrimination is in the Fifth, because everyone who's watched an American courtroom drama knows that.)

I know that those rights are in the Bill of Rights, but a survey of this type would probably flunk me for forgetting which number is which.

[eb-oesch.livejournal.com]

Some other bozotic poll archetypes --

"Can you hunt a haggis?" If somebody asked you this, could you bring yourself to say no?

"Do you support eating roasted babies?" Five percent of poll respondents will say yes to anything. What can we do about America's estimated 15 million baby eaters?

Oh, and right now there's another "Fewer Americans than Europeans believe in evolution" poll making the rounds, which gets routinely distorted into "Most Americans don't believe in Evolution", even though the poll indicates the opposite. Yes, Europe, we know. American religious attitudes are usually somewhere between European attitudes and attitudes in, say, Mexico. (Part of the explanation is that there are a lot of Mexican and Hispanic immigrants in this country -- a small part, granted, but sufficient all by itself to explain some of the narrower gapes, such as between the most religiously conservative European countries and the United States.) I don't mind making fun of anybody for their silly beliefs, but let's be fair. The French have homeopathy. The UK has UFOs. South Koreans have ... heck, I don't remember, but it's weird. America's got astrology and creationism. Big diff. Countries with worse educational systems generally have more of the same, along with occasional really dangerous superstitions like AIDS witch-doctoring, Lysenkoism, or witch hunts, but superstitions that are very self-destructive tend not to become too prevalent for too long. (Then there's religious/ideological wars, but that's a different category.)

Not only is a weak science education a direct cause of greater superstition, but universal chauvinist tendencies (even if the bias is manifested as "We're internationalists, and that makes us better than you") tend to accentuate these differences. Patriotism only works in science's favor in countries that are good at it. It's facile and stupid to say that science is just another kind of prejudice, but prejudice can work in favor of a scientific viewpoint, and that's more likely to happen in Germany than the Congo. Unfortunately, chauvinism depends on relative and not absolute achievement, and not everyone can be at the top or, practically speaking, even believe that they are, so there will always be groups for whom the chauvinist impulse is anti-science.