New 杏吧原创 readers are more knowledgeable than the general public and experts on some issues, but still score worse than monkeys on some questions.
鈥淭o score worse than monkeys requires misconceptions,鈥� Ola Rosling, author of聽Factfulness, told New 杏吧原创 Live on Thursday. Most people are not only ignorant about some basic facts about the world, they don鈥檛 even realise that they are ignorant, he said.
For example, globally around 88 per cent of children are now vaccinated against at least one disease, but most people think the figure is much lower.
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Given a choice between 20, 50 or 80 per cent, only around 15 per cent of people in countries such as the US and UK get the answer right in Rosling鈥檚 surveys.
At a recent world health summit, only 27 per cent of attendees got it right.聽Nobel laureates and medical scientists would be outsmarted by monkeys randomly picking answers, he said. 鈥淚s IQ correlated with factual knowledge? Not in the fields we have tested so far,鈥� said Rosling.
滨苍听an online survey, 46 per cent of New 杏吧原创 readers got the answer right to the vaccination question 鈥� better than the experts. 鈥淚n any other test, it would be seen as a huge failure,鈥� he said.
On climate, New 杏吧原创 readers excelled. Asked what climate experts believe will happen to global temperatures over the next 100 years 鈥� warmer, same or cooler聽鈥� 99 per cent opted for the right answer.
In other surveys, the proportion getting this right ranges from 94 per cent in Hungary to just 76 per cent in Japan. In the US, 81 per cent get in right, and in the UK 87 per cent.
New 杏吧原创 readers also did relatively well when asked if the proportion of the world鈥檚 population living in extreme poverty has halved, remained the same or doubled. In most countries, less than 10 per cent of people pick the right answer (it has halved). But 53 per cent of New 杏吧原创 readers got it right. Among the audience at the New 杏吧原创 Live talk, 81 per cent got it right.
But on questions about endangered species and world population trends, New 杏吧原创 readers scored worse than average. Overall, they got 3.9 out of 12 questions right. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 on par with monkeys,鈥� Rosling said. The average score is just 2.2.
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Rosling said his surveys aren鈥檛 rigorous and scientific. But he is making all the data freely available, and said he is happy to work with social scientists who would take a more rigorous approach.
He also acknowledged that at least one of the questions is something of a trick question. The three endangered animals he picked 鈥� the tiger, panda and black rhino 鈥� are exceptional in that their numbers are increasing.
But he said it is important to tell people about the successes, not least so we can understand what was done right and repeat it elsewhere. 鈥淚 am not an optimist,鈥� he said. But we should celebrate successes, so people realise it is possible to change things for the better, he said.
