US public’s acceptance of scientific knowledge erratic

How old is the Earth? Depends who you ask.

NASA/NOAA GOES Project

The Associated Press has commissioned a poll that delves into the US public's acceptance of some extremely well-established scientific findings—so established that most scientists would consider them facts. Although some of these facts have clearly entered the public's consciousness, there are a number of issues where US citizens haven't accepted reality.

The survey, which had a sample of over 1,000 people (for a margin of error of about three percent), simply stated the facts and then asked people to express how confident they were in the accuracy of the statement. The pollsters broke it down into three general categories: extremely or very confident, somewhat confident, and what you'd call the doubters: those who were not confident and not confident at all.

The good news is that more than 80 percent of those surveyed are strongly confident that smoking causes cancer; only four percent doubt it. Roughly 70 percent accepted that we have a genome and that mental illness is seated in the brain; about 20 percent were uncertain on these subjects, and the doubters were few. But things go downhill from there. Only about half of the people accepted that vaccines are safe and effective, with 15 percent doubting.