CREATIONISM vs PSEUDOSCIENCE
ATTITUDES IN
EUROPE
(Finnish version here)
Sometimes I've observed positive views about homeopathy and astrology among creationists and evolutiondeniers. Here I study this kind of relation comparing 32 european countries.
In the beginning of the year 2005 European science attitudes were measured in gallup poll by interviewing 32'897 people in 32 european countries. There lives 452 million citizens in those countries. Results were published in June 2005 (Eurobarometer 224(63.1),June 2005 [pdf 1.87MB]). Huge amount (292 pages) of data that is not so easy to handle.
These 13 Science knowledge questions were asked among others:
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Quiz statements (with European averages)
(Sci=Science answers; T= true; F= false; DK/NA=Don't know)
Sci True False DK/NA
1. The Sun goes around the Earth (F) 29% 66% 4%
2. The centre of the Earth is very hot (T) 86% 7% 7%
3. The oxygen we breathe comes from plants (T) 82% 14% 4%
4. Radioactive milk can be made safe by boiling it (F) 10% 75% 15%
5. Electrons are smaller than atoms (T) 46% 29% 25%
6. The continents on which we live have been
moving for millions of years and will continue
to move in the future (T) 87% 6% 8% *
7. It is the mother’s genes that decide whether
the baby is a boy or a girl (F) 20% 64% 16%
8. The earliest humans lived at the same time as
the dinosaurs (F) 23% 66% 11% *
9. Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria (F) 43% 46% 11%
10. Lasers work by focusing sound waves (F) 26% 47% 28%
11. All radioactivity is man-made (F) 27% 59% 14%
12. Human beings, as we know them today,
developed from earlier species of animals (T) 70% 20% 10% *
13. It takes one month for the Earth to go around
the Sun (F) 17% 66% 16%
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Source: Eurobarometer 224 (63.1), June 2005, page 40-41.
In addition to those there were asked in EUROBAROMETER also if homeopathy, astrology, biology, physics etc were scientific or not.
I have made some statistical analysis of diffrent european countries using Excel (after some exercise ;). I omitted rows EU25(average), DE(because it is average of D-W(West Germany and D-E(East Germany). I omitted also Turkey(TR) because it is clear "outlier"(showed up in my previous stats)and muslim country versus quite homogenous christian culture european countries.
Factor "HumEvo" is averages of those right answers in each countries where people answered "True" to human evolution question 12.
Picture 1. Correlation between Humanevolution and astrology scientific attitudes. (Excel).
Clearly: The more evolution deniers - the more people think astrology is scientific. Pearson's correlations is 0.471494 with remarkable significance p=0.006 (Fig 6).(Finland was "outlier" (red dot), I removed Finland from analysis. Only 11% of us thinks astrology as science).
Picture 2. Correlation between Humanevolution and homeopathy scientific attitudes.
Pearson's correlation is weaker than previously. It is now 0.414722 but still remarkable with p=0.018271.(Here too I had to remove Finland not to disturb my analysis below).
Clearly: In those countries were more people deny human evolution, there are more people who accept view: "homeopathy is scientific".
PSEUDOSCIENCE versus CREATIONISM
Next I made factor pseudoscience, which is mean of attitudes of homeopathy and astrology. And I compare those to HumanEvolution attitude and YECindex factor. YECindex is sum of creationistic=antiscientific anwers to questions 6,8 and 12. (Man who believes 6000 yr old earth would answer NO! to questions 6 and 12 and YES! to question 8).
Picture 3. HumanEvolution(fig 3) and YECcish (fig 4) attitudes versus pseudosciences.
In upper graph (Fig 3) there is SPECIALLY STRONG correlation with R2=0.601809, p=0.00027. In lower graph there is weaker correlation but still statistically nonzero. So we can conclude:
IN MOST CREATIONISTIC EUROPEAN COUNTRIES PEOPLE CONSIDER PSEUDOSCIENCES (Astrology, Homeopathy) SCIENTIFIC MORE OFTEN THAN IN THOSE COUNTRIES WHERE HUMANEVOLUTION DENIERS ARE LESS FREQUENT.
Regards,
Mr.Kari A. Tikkanen, Finland, EU.