male, 40, CIO, High School dropout (25 years ago)

I would love to see the quiz get progressivly more difficuly to see where each demographic segment drops below the 50% mark.

I would really like to see a religion breakdown in the demographics. Now THAT would be interesting.

The Pluto-brats (see what I did there?) are funny. It looks as if they prefer their opinions over others, but that one…. Wow. She reasons like a YEC or AML hoaxer. And I like Pluto. I’ve come to terms with the idea that it spawned its own category by being so different.

BTW – White male, age 50, IT consultant from California, some college/no degree, HUGE fan of science and Bad Astronomy.

I thought that the Water on Mars was old enough that it must be something I hadn’t heard about, so I guessed mold. Oops.

Also, our daughter spent most of kindergarten being sick in one form or another, so my wife and I may have spent more time recently reading up on viruses vs. bacteria and how each one is/can be treated than the everyday person.

And for the stats, I’m a 35 year old American male with a Bachelors degree, who does tech support for a living. I’ve never been particularly religious, and I’ve lived in the Northeast my whole life.

@215 – Agree with you on #9. At the very least people’s reasoning should tell them that sound waves would have nothing to do with lasers. But maybe that’s just me.

Im 18 yo brazilian boy… and i got 100%…

1) Aspirin has advertising saying it can help prevent heart attacks. No surprise 91% of people got it.

2) Considering the kerfuffle about it when it was announced, I would have thought more people would have known this, but it was years ago that it really broke into the mainstream consciousness and it’s only been brought up in very demographic-heavy media (i.e. used by McKay to sneer at Tyson on an episode of Stargate Atlantis) since.

3) The Christmas tsunami happened almost four years ago, it got huge coverage, and most people haven’t forgotten it. It even has an advantage over 9/11 in that there was no media confusion about whether it was Iraq or Al Qaeda that caused the earthquake in the first place…

4) GPS is a piece of technology a lot of people work with often. I’d say the 1 in 5 statistic is a good representative of people who don’t use it at all.

5) I’m a little worried about this figure, given how much attention climate change has been receiving, but given how much of it is, “No, it won’t happen”, few people are actualyl talking about the culprit. Still, more than half know it.

6) The last time stem cells were really in the news was years ago, and its opponents have been succesful at painting it as “controversial” without anyone ever explaining exactly what it is.

7) Not surprised on this one. There wasn’t much of a hoopla, given that we’d discovered, for certain, frickin’ water on frickin’ Mars.

This one impresses me, and makes me wonder about all those polls that should less than half of Americans consider evolution to be accurate.

9) This one scares the crap out of me. About the only thing I can think of is that people are genuinely confused by the portrayal of energy weapons in Star Wars and Star Trek and so on.

10) This one worries me…but I’m not surprised. It’s been a misconception going back at least a decade, and never seems to receive enough attention to dislodge it. (I remember an episode of ER that dealt with it where Dr. Greene made an announcement to the waiting room that people waiting to receive antibiotics for cold or flu symptoms would be turned away anyway, so they might as well go home right now.)

11) Not surprised…even though I would have been able to answer this question by the fourth grade. Most people don’t care about things that small, so they don’t retain.

12) …I’m really not certain about this one.

I got 100%, incidentally. Mid-twenties, some college. Canadian.

Other stats:

Male, 50.
Texan.
B.A. Physics.
Politically independent.
Not affiliated with any religion.

-age 46 with some college… ( oh to go back in time and talk to that impatient student… )

-a born and raised Texan! ( oh the horror! )

-voting Independent or on issues… never on either of the 2 party’s lines.

-Skeptic in training.

Phil, thanks for a great blog. I rarely comment (my bad) but I do appreciate the terrific articles. You’ll also be pleased to know we had our two-month-old son vaccinated yesterday.