NSF Report Flawed; Americans Do Not Believe Astrology Is Scientific 326
RichDiesal writes "A new report (PDF) from the National Science Foundation, which we discussed a few days ago, states that roughly 40% of Americans believe astrology to be scientific. This turns out to be false; most of those apparently astrology-loving Americans have actually confused astrology with astronomy. In a 100-person Mechanical Turk study with a $5 research budget, I tested this by actually asking people to define astrology. Among those that correctly defined astrology, only 10% believe it to be scientific; among those that confused astrology for astronomy, 92% believe 'astrology' to be scientific."
Result of bad terms in the English language (Score:4, Interesting)
US science literacy generally better than EU (Score:5, Interesting)
People have actually looked at overall scientific literacy in the US, and it compares favorably to the EU (and the rest of the world):
https://www.sciencenews.org/bl... [sciencenews.org]
Of course, it would be nice if scientific literacy were higher everywhere, including the US.
Re: Really good question (Score:4, Interesting)
The horoscope is simply a diagram of the position of the major planets, moon and Zodiac constellations, as such is quite scientific. Astrologers often make predictions of future events based on a person's birth horoscope and the current horoscope which is quite unscientific. Historically astronomers would cast horoscopes and do such saying for their rich patrons to fimance their scientific endeavors