The Pew Research Center offers a short science knowledge quiz that shouldn’t challenge anyone reading this blog — and they share the percentage of each demographic group that answered each question correctly in their telephone survey. Men did better than women, college grads did better than less-educated folks, and those in their 30 and 40s did better than younger and older folks. Not too surprising.
The Audacious Epigone noticed a pattern in the right or wrong answers:
The following nine questions were more frequently answered correctly by men than they were by women:
- According to most astronomers, which of the following is no longer considered a planet?
- Which of the following may cause a tsunami?
- The global positioning system, or GPS, relies on which of these to work?
- What gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures in the atmosphere to rise?
- What have scientists recently discovered on Mars?
- The continents on which we live have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move in the future. (T/F)
- Lasers work by focusing sound waves. (T/F)
- Electrons are small than atoms. (T/F)
- All radioactivity is man-made. (T/F)
In contrast, women did better than men did on the following three questions:
- Which OTC drug do doctors recommend that people take to help prevent heart attacks?
- How are stem cells different from other cells?
- Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria. (T/F)
This sheds some light on Steve Sailer’s lament that women are being pushed into physical sciences, to bolster their numbers there, when they find life sciences more interesting and important.